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If Your Business Jargon is Awful, Unsuck It
Aug 28
Unsuck It cracks me up. (It sounds like something The Cynical Girl would say.) Enter your corporate crap phrase and get simple English back. I’m thinking of creating an entire translator for HR communication jargon. It’s fun.
Hat tip to Swiss Miss for this one!
HR Should Create “Ahhh” Moments
Aug 27
That’s the view from my desk. It’s the Ben Franklin Bridge on the Philadelphia side spanning the Delaware River. The building that’s on the right is pretty, too. It’s the old Sugar Factory. You can see lots of pictures inside our office here.
Working in a great environment influences moods. You can’t get creativity in a cubicle farm. How about another role for HR — to create “ahhs”?
Germany to Outlaw Facebook Stalking Employees
Aug 26I would have thought it would have been the Swiss. They’re very private people. But the Germans get a big Hurrah! from me for being on the verge of outlawing companies from spying on their employees with Facebook. Or by reading their emails.
Via the New Statesman:
Employers are allowed to run a search on the web on their applicants, but befriending the employee on a social networking site such as Facebook in order to check out private details would be illegal, de Maiziere said.
Checking out anything in public is allowed and so are postings on professional networks such as LinkedIn, he said.
A job applicant who proves he or she was rejected based on violation of the new law could take the company to court and claim damages, added the minister.
I’d like to see a law like that enacted here in the U.S. As far as I’m concerned, Facebook is none of HR’s business. What’s your take?
A Piece of Eating Advice
Aug 25Don’t eat anything that has a label.
I read that in UltraMetabolism. Wanna get your employees to eat better? Just tell them that.
Waiting and Wondering
Aug 24
Years ago I was standing at that train station in Berwyn, PA, waiting on a young colleague. The train she was supposed to be on came and went. Then a SEPTA worker yelled across the tracks.
“Are you Frank?’
I nodded.
“H____ left you a message. She’s at Bryn Mawr. She got off at the wrong stop.”
I had been waiting for her at Berwyn. She was coming out there so that we could go to an important first client meeting. If you’ve been on the R5 you know that “Bryn Mawr” and “Berywn” sound a lot alike when said over a train loudspeaker. H____i got off at the wrong stop. As a result, she was going to miss her first client meeting because I didn’t have enough time to drive to the other station to get her and get to the client meeting on time.
She was resourceful, though. Somehow got the Bryn Mawr station manager to call the Berwyn station manager to relay a message. That took moxie and perseverance. And told me a lot about the kind of person she is. It would have been so easy to make up something. Say she was sick. Anything. Nope, she just got off the train at the wrong stop.
She ended up being one of my favorite colleagues of all time. We worked on lots and lots of bigtime projects together. And she went on to have a stellar career in HR and operations.
I was waiting and wondering today about that moment years ago. The power grid for trains on the Amtrak system went down this morning for the entire East Coast. I could have been frustrated, but instead I got a smile about a nice moment.
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