HR Shadow Puppets


GREAT Shadow Puppetry - The funniest home videos are here

[Embedded video. If you can't see the video, click here.]

My friend, Bill, used to talk about people using shadow puppets when they weren’t prepared. I’ve sometimes felt like that when I hear weak discussions about “HR needs a place at the table” instead of HR grabbing a place at the table because of their business contribution. It’s shadow puppetry. But not this kind.

If HR is showing shadow puppets, at least do them like this. You’ll get a place at the table. Dazzling people is always the right thing to do.

By the way, one of my favorite all-time blog taglines is for The HR Capitalist: Get to the table — stay at the table.

You Know You’re Old in HR When…

Today is Guy Kawasaki’s birthday, and he did a fascinating post called You Know You’re Getting Old When…. It’s a fun read. I even contributed three to the mix. Go have a look. You’ll get a laugh. In that spirit, here are a few HR-related “you know you’re old when” statements.

You know you’re old in HR when…

  • You remember when HR was called “personnel.”
  • You remember that human capital were called people. (Soylent Green was people, too.)
  • Engagement meant that people were getting married.
  • You could work your way up, and it wasn’t by climbing a career ladder.
  • MBOs were in vogue, and you loved them.
  • Stock option scandals didn’t happen because people didn’t get stock options.
  • You did what you were told to do because you were part of Generation GET-TO-WORK.
  • You doled out twice annual double-digit increases in the 1980s.
  • You lived through the rise of self-directed teams, the end of self-directed teams.

What other things let you know you’re old in HR when…?

UPDATE: Guy Kawasaki reads The Best of You Know You’re Old When. Some of them are really funny. Your truly even rates a mention. ;-)

[Subscribe to KnowHR Blog for free.]

The Company Without Us

I’ve been fascinated with Alan Weisman’s book, The World Without Us. The book looks at what would last and what would decay in a world without people. Some things start to fall apart after days. Without us, the New York subways would flood in a week, bridges would crumble in 50 years, and CO2 levels would return to normal after 10,000 years. You can see an interactive demonstration of the world without us here. That’s the World. What about our little business world?

With so much talk about human capital in HR circles, could we imagine The Company Without Us? What would happen if we went away? Do you think that company leaders ever consider a company of no one? Or a company that’s different every year with different people in place? A company without HR? Is that a form of The Company Without Us? What would crumble?

Goggle’s Used-Generated Gmail Video

Goggle did a fun promotion asking Gmail users to submit a little snippet of video that passed the Gmail logo from left to right on the camera. They got thousands of submissions and compiled many of them into this clip. (If you can’t see the embedded video, click here.)

It would be so cool to do something like this with employees and HR could take the lead. This video has a real teamwork element to it — the envelope “passes” from one hand to the next. If you’re really into teamwork, maybe you could use it as a communication device, and have people pass something. (Or, to be funny, you could “pass the buck.”) Make it highly visual and get your employees to play along. They’re already posting user-generated video. How about letting them play along at work?

[Subscribe to KnowHR Blog.]

Give High School Grads a Chance

There are no entry level jobs anymore.

My friend Rich M. said that to me at least 13 years ago. He was talking about the idea that a person could start out at the bottom with a high school diploma and work his way up. That’s how it used to be in the old days. That’s how it was in his family and in mine. But, to paraphrase Dylan, the times were a-changin’.

It hasn’t been that many years ago that having a college degree wasn’t a yawn. The number of college graduates in the U.S. rose 40% between 1993 and 2003. Rich was right — there are no entry level jobs if “everyone” has a college degree. A bachelor’s degree these days seems to be about the equivalent of a high school diploma from back when I started working.

So where does that leave the talented high school graduate? Stuck.

Do You Have to Be a College Graduate to Be Smart?
What do Thomas Edison, Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs have in common? They didn’t graduate from college. In fact, Edison never even went to school beyond age 12, and Branson wasn’t far behind that. If one of this group was applying for a non-exempt job at your company back when he was first starting out, would you hire him today? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, “No. I wouldn’t give their resume a second look.”

I wrote yesterday about what a motivated employee can do to get my business, and it made me think about how many talented people we leave out of the work mix because they never graduated from college.

Look, I’m not advocating anti-intellectualism. I have a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication that has helped me a lot. (But I was the first in my family to graduate high school. Most assuredly the first to graduate from college. And it wasn’t easy. But back then there were entry level jobs.) I’m saying there are some really great people out there, who, because of their circumstances — family, money expectations, wanderlust — didn’t go to college. And we have a chance to change their trajectory. It’s about pay and potential. The most recent Census Bureau pay statistics show a disarming disparity:

In 2002, average earnings by highest level of education were: for those with advanced degrees, $72,824; for bachelor’s degree-holders, $51,194; for high school graduates, $27,280; and for nongraduates, $18,826.

A Corporate Challenge — Give One High School Grad a Chance
What would it take for each of the Fortune 500 to let ONE high school graduate into their non-exempt ranks each year? Just one? Actively do a search and publicize it. Make it known that they really care about attitude and aptitude and willingness. That there might just be the Next American Business Idol out there, and they’re looking for that person. Just one.

Imagine what could happen: Certainly 500 lives would be changed. And the lives of 500 families would be changed. Five hundred great and talented people would get their chance to grab the brass ring.

Would it work? I don’t know. But I do know I’m going to think about what this might mean to company recruiting and the messages they send out. Is it that you have to be part of the “the club”? Or is it that we want people with talent?

[Subscribe to KnowHR Blog.]

Next Page →