Category Archives: General

What are your “big” ideas?

big ideasOne of our core values at work is “provide innovative solutions that exceed expectations.” That might seem like a standard/blah kind of idea, but it plays out in a way that I haven’t encountered anywhere else I’ve worked. We have a “big ideas” database that allows employees to share ideas on anything they think might be valuable to the organization. We’ve had everything possible posted, from lucrative new product lines to a request for larger garbage bags in the kitchen (seriously!).

Recently the Operations team set up our own database to capture ideas that we might like to implement for our workforce. A few things in our database right now:

  • Paid volunteer time-Employees at some large companies get paid for volunteer time. I pitched the idea that we could pay for as little as 4 hours for someone to go out, volunteer in some capacity, and do good in the world without breaking the bank on an expensive program.
  • Adding core values to informal peer recognition-while we already rate people within our formal performance management system based on how they uphold our core values on a daily basis, this would allow the day-to-day recognition on a peer level to also reflect on the handful of tenets that we operate the business by. It’s the little things that matter! Continue reading →

HR Brand-Words vs Actions

Your HR brand is what you do, not what you say

As part of our rebranding of HR we were asked to come up with a new name for our Human Resources department. Can you guys help me with your suggestions to rename our department?

I don’t want to pick on the person who posted this, so I won’t name them, but I had to laugh when I read it. Call it the Pit of Despair. Call it the Confluence of People and Happiness. It doesn’t really matter as much as what you do. Continue reading →

Employee HR Portal-How to Build One

human resources portalI’ve had “create an employee HR portal” on my To Do list for a while now, and this week is the one where I check that little item off as complete. When it first appeared on the list, I honestly wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Besides walking around and asking people what they would like to see on there (which isn’t a poor option, but it didn’t seem very productive on my part), I wasn’t sure what to cover.

Information to include in an HR portal

My fabulous manager reminded me to treat it like a “first line of defense” for repetitive questions. Kind of like a “FAQ” to help people find what they need quickly instead of having to ask me repeatedly for the information. With that in mind, I made a short list to start from so I didn’t get overwhelmed: Continue reading →

Managing retention on the front lines

I’m a firm believer in managers and their role as an intermediary between the business and its staff. I have seen that relationship play out with both positive and negative results, but there’s no disputing the relationship between good managers and good employees.

On a related note, I did a video a while back on the proper care and feeding of employees. It notes the (amazing) statistic that providing fair/accurate feedback to employees has a 39% impact on their performance. Wow!

In a recent post on retention management, I talked about 11 ways managers can influence their company’s retention rate. I’d love for you to check it out, leave a comment, and share your own thoughts on how managers can help (or hurt!) the retention of great employees.

Catch me today on DriveThruHR!

I’ll be talking on DriveThruHR today, and I’d love for you to call in or listen online. The show is at noon central time and runs for a (fairly quick!) thirty minutes. If you miss the show, you can listen to the archive afterward.

I have had a busy week, and I honestly am not sure yet what I’ll be talking about when I get the famous “What is keeping you up at night?” question. Here are a handful of things I’ve been working on in the past few weeks:

  1. Worked to determine how to compensate a team for delivering an amazingly complex project on time and on budget
  2. Looking at potential performance issues and how to deal with them through the eyes of one of our new managers
  3. Working with our events team on living out our “create an enjoyable work environment” value through fun, exciting events throughout the year (paper airplane contest, tailgating, and more!)
  4. Completed the local wage/benefits surveys and had to hand deliver paper printouts of several spreadsheets; no electronic copies of the Excel file that you had to add data to could be submitted
  5. Prepared for the quarterly all hands briefing
  6. Set up our team trivia practice for an upcoming fundraiser (IMPACT Alabama)
  7. Dealt with email flame wars that seemed to go on indefinitely
  8. Developed flow charts to illustrate our processes with regard to recruiting, performance management, etc.

Those are just a few of the things that have kept me busy in the past week! Outside that maybe we can talk about events, HRevolution, and other fun stuff.

New Supervisor Training

training for supervisorsI attended a new supervisor training session a few years ago, and it left me with some strong feelings about how to run a supervisor training program. I think the way it’s traditionally been done is a poor method for teaching managers what they need to know, but I haven’t decided on the right combination of teaching tools/methods that would be most effective. The one thing I know for sure is that it needs to change.

I ran across this site recently and had to laugh. It is a common theme that I’ll get a call because I’m the “computer guy” in the family. With Teach Parents Tech you have the option of sending video links directly to those who need assistance. That allows you to indirectly teach your parents/grandparents/in laws/whoever how to do computer tasks from simple (changing your computer’s clock) to advanced (changing your email address).

Why can’t we do that?

Then I started thinking about other applications. What if you could do the same for your supervisors? What if there was a neat way like this to teach them the basic principles of good management? Would you use the tool?

For instance, a new supervisor runs into a situation (giving feedback on poor performance, motivating employees in a slump, giving a presentation to senior management, etc.). They don’t have someone available to ask for help, so they pop onto the web and find the video that corresponds with that particular situation.

No, it’s not a perfect substitute for an in-person chat with someone who already knows how to do the task, but it’s better than going into the situation blind-folded. Just a little bit of preparation could go a long way in most instances.

A few situations I think would be neat to cover:

  • How to give accurate, honest feedback
  • Why documentation is essential
  • The wide world of terminations
  • Harassment, discrimination, and lawsuits, o my!
  • Safety and security in the workplace
  • How to train someone
  • Coaching and mentoring your staff
  • Building and managing teams
  • Developing and pursuing a vision
  • And tons more!

What do you think? Are there other scenarios that you think they run into on a daily basis that they could use some new supervisor training on?

Five years ago (HR Carnival)

This week’s HR carnival is going to be going up at EvilHRLady on Wednesday. The theme is “What were you doing five years ago?”, so I thought I would throw in a post to that effect. Nothing enlightening or exciting today, just a chance for me (and you) to reflect back on the amount of changes that five years can bring…

Five years ago, my life was radically different. I was still busy, but my focus was totally different from what it is today.

  • I was thinking about running my first ultramarathon.
  • I was helping to plan my wedding.
  • I was doing manual labor during the day and going to school at night.
  • I was a junior in college.
  • I had only the vaguest sense of what this “HR” thing was.
  • I had to turn down an unpaid HR internship because I needed the $$$ when I got married.
  • I was living in my first house all by lonesome.
  • I had never even read or thought about writing an HR blog.

At any point in the middle of the hustle and bustle of 2007 I could have made one or more decisions that totally changed the course of my life. And despite all of that, here I am today. Married. Kids. HR degree. Job in the HR/recruiting field. And blogging to my heart’s content.

So how did I make the leap? What was the secret ingredient?

I studied pretty hard in college, but I also did all the research I could on the people who were already working in HR. I surfed websites looking for an HR point of contact. Once I had that I would email them and ask a few questions about what it was really like working in the HR field. Some of that information helped me to write papers in my junior/senior years, but it also helped to 1) confirm my choice in professions and 2) give me as much of a realistic job preview as I possibly could get.

I’d have killed for some job shadowing opportunity, but between working 40-50 hours a week, going to school full time at night, and the rest of that list of daily tasks, I was just holding on by my fingernails.

In the latter half of 2007 I got a job for a company that ended up paying for my senior year of college in return for my indentured servitude for a year after I graduated. Working for that company was a so-so experience. Not bad, but not really great, either. I learned  a few things about good managers, poor planning/consideration for remote employees, and how team dynamics can influence the amount of work that gets accomplished.

The big takeaway

If I can give a piece of advice… Even if you’re in a position you don’t enjoy, you are learning something valuable. That might be how not to treat people or do business, but it’s still a learning opportunity. Looking back now I can see that every job I’ve held has taught me something about the right things to do. More importantly, it’s helped to teach me how to stay away from the wrong things.

All in all it is definitely tough to think about what life was like five years ago, but I can say with certainty that I am thankful for the experiences that I had leading up to this point. Each step (and misstep) has formed me into the person I am, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Enough about me! How about you? Where were you five years ago? Did you love/hate your job? Were you in college? Was there something interesting going on in your personal life? I’d love to hear about it!Â