Archive for August, 2008

Puzzling HR

Aug 29

HumanMarkets has a really great HR puzzle today. Head on over and see how many you can fill out before you have to hit “Reveal Word.”

Hey, maybe Bill’s puzzle could be a screening device for the SPHR test — can’t pass the puzzle? Can’t pass the test.

The Boys of Summer Are Gone

Aug 29

Summer’s over. In the U.S., we have a 3-day weekend. Then it’s back to work.

What are you doing in HR to prepare the next five months? Sure summer’s over, but nearly half the year is left. How about really rocking the second half? Oh, and enjoy your weekend.

HR Advice: Show, Don't Tell

Aug 28

People have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.
–Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 27, 2008

Former President Bill Clinton said that last night during his speech at the Democratic convention. I thought it was a clever turn of a phrase that applies to nations, leaders, and HR. If we want to be great in human resources, let’s show people the way and not just get them to bend under our will.

HR Has a Huge Role to Play in Global Warming

Aug 27


[Photo credit: Maia C]

I’m coming back around to this topic: HR has a huge role to play in global warming.

I’m not saying that HR is full of hot air. (You thought it, right?) Nope, I’m talking about implementing green strategies that will work. I was reading No Impact Man’s “40 Steps on the Personal Path to Green,” which prodded me with ideas. Here are a few that author Colin Beaven lists that I think HR has a huge role in:

  • Drive less.
  • Fly less.
  • Avoid bottled water.
  • Stop your junk mail.
  • Organize your community to lobby state and local officials to pass a suite of laws increasing energy efficiency, clean-tech funding, and public education campaigns.

They all seem so easy and obvious. But wouldn’t it be a much better use of HR’s time to write policies that can save the world instead of ones that punish the single knucklehead who overspent his per diem? This is a place for HR leaders to step up and be counted in business and in the world. Imagine…

Imagine the impact on your company if you changed work hours so that people could leave their cars behind and use public transportation. Four day work weeks, or jobs that let people work from home, use a lot less gas. Every gallon you save is another gallon we don’t have to extract from the earth.

Imagine the impact on your company if you reduced the number of flights your employees take by 10%. Heck, it’d be easy to imagine that 25% of flights could be cut. What’s the use of a one-hour meeting that you have to fly to?

Imagine a campaign to have people drink from the drinking fountains in your building. Honestly, can you imagine what you would have said 20 years ago if you had been told that people would buy water that’s packaged in plastic bottles? Ever wonder how much energy it takes to make that bottle? Or dispose of it?

Imagine the impact on your company if you refused junk mail in all forms — both paper and email. The paper part is about the environment; the email part is about your company environment. Perhaps if employees weren’t spending their time moving from “crisis” to “crisis” they would have time to think bigger thoughts. (That might even make you more money.)

Imagine the impact you, as HR, have on legislation for the environment. It’s easy to get worked up about pay fairness legislation, or Sarbanes-Oxley. How about applying that energy to our planet?

I can imagine, and so can you. Hey, SHRM, if you want to spend some of that ad money touting “Human Resource Professionals” during the political convention, maybe you could invest in “HR Professionals — Helping to Save the Planet.”

Jack Kerouac Defined High Perfomers in 1957

Aug 26

Jack Kerouac went on the road and wrote down what he saw. On The Road wouldn’t have been the literary sensation it was if Kerouac just sat in a room and imagined the characters he wrote about. He lived it.

And that’s our HR Lesson for the Day: Live it, don’t imagine it. Don’t hang out in your office; get out there and talk to people. Real people. Great HR isn’t theoretical, it’s experiential. Think about how Kerouac described what we’d call “high performers.”

The only people for me are the mad ones,
the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved,
desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or
say a commonplace thing,
but burn, burn, burn,
like fabulous yellow roman candles
exploding like spiders across the stars
and in the middle you see the
blue centerlight pop and
everybody goes “Awww!”

–Jack Kerouac, On The Road, 1957

Kudos to brickgrrl, who reminded me of this quote a while ago. She lives it.

[Photo credit: The Velvet Goldmine]

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