Category Archives: General

What’s Your Flavor?

This post comes from my office at the “other” job. :-) Needed my prop, and I was out of stock at the house, so I arrived early for a quick video.

Hey, everyone! It\’s Ben with UpstartHR, and today I\’d like to talk to you about flavor.  You want to hear something interesting? You have thousands tastebuds on your tongue. Your tongue can recognize hundreds of unique flavors. Taste is a very powerful sensory experience.

Bloggers use flavor to make their blogs unique. All it takes is a little spice to stand out from the countless others. Frank at KnowHR is known for pointing out things that should be obvious to everyone, but people are still surprised. Chris at Renegade HR is known for his opinions on inspiring and motivating people. Venting HR Guy is known for saying very funny and irreverent things that we all have experienced at one time or another.  All of the great ones have a style and a flavor that is their very own.

So, as I was ruminating over a drink the other day, I realized that I wasn\’t quite sure what mine was. What the heck are people listening to me for? What\’s my flavor? I shot out a quick question on Twitter, and I quickly received a few responses. People know me for my humor and my insights on things. People know me for being enthusiastic and inspiring. And do you know what? I was thrilled. Sure, some people see me and wonder which zoo lost their favorite monkey, but most of you like hearing what I have to say.

And let me just tell you… I truly enjoy the experience. I write. I tweet. I interact with others. I provide solutions to problems. I make people laugh. And that\’s all part of my flavor. The way I do that makes me different from everyone else, and I couldn\’t be happier.

So, while I savor the flavor just a bit longer, I\’d like you to ask yourself what your flavor is. Think about it. Ruminate. Ponder. Drop a comment below and we’ll discuss it!

If you enjoyed the post and you’re not getting free updates via email, it’s easy! Just click here and you’ll never miss anything from UpstartHR.

Bridging the HR Curriculum Gap


flickr-joeshlabotnik

flickr-joeshlabotnik

In one of my most popular posts ever, I described the divide between what students are taught and what the workplace is actually like. It\’s obviously not an isolated issue, because many people have contacted me through comments and email to talk about the problem. The community is an amazing thing, and I truly believe we can get past this obstacle through a group effort. If the HR curriculum is not preparing people for the actual work to be performed, then there is obviously a disconnect between the business side and the education side of HR. How then can we bridge that gap?

To build the effectiveness of the HR curriculum-Business needs to get involved with education.

  • Tell us what we need to know to be successful. If anyone knows what the HR curriculum should be, it\’s the people who are working in the industry. Don\’t expect a professor who hasn\’t worked in the private sector in twenty years to know what skills are needed.
  • Set up an internship program. Get free workers for your business. Sounds appealing, right? But here\’s the catch—you actually have to do something with them. They\’re not there for coffee. They\’re there to learn. They will be running the company when enough years pass by, and you need to keep that in mind when you\’re giving them projects to complete.
  • Let us be flexible when we get there. Encourage creativity and innovation in your HR department. If you want to be great, you\’ll at least listen to what the younger generation has to say. Even if every single thing the person makes you tear up from the stupidity (you\’re the one who hired him/her!), there may be one golden idea that makes the rest worthwhile.

To build the usefulness of the HR curriculum-Education needs to get involved with business.

  • Build the HR curriculum around business needs. Go to the business community. Be involved with networking events outside the university. Find out what problems businesses are having and teach your students to solve those problems. And even if you don\’t know how to solve them, using the classroom to brainstorm solutions could lead to some amazing things.
  • Provide college credits for internships. If a student goes out there to work in a position that\’s related to what they\’re studying, then the learning outside the classroom could outweigh the learning inside the classroom in some cases. Why not allow them to get a little closer to graduation with some internship credits?
  • Assign more project work as opposed to only memorization. The first time I had an assignment at work, I memorized a page of facts and took a test. Wait a minute; that\’s not how it went at all. I had a project to complete, and I was “graded” on multiple factors. Let people be responsible for their own work and let the results speak for themselves.

If this gap in the HR curriculum is going to be bridged, then both parties need to be vigilant. Paying for an education that provides little long-term value is a waste of valuable time and money. HR professionals, push your company to work toward these goals. Students, push your university to work toward these goals. Together, we can transform HR education into a platform to launch people into stellar careers in the human resources field.

Read more in the HR education series.

2009 Alabama State SHRM Conference

Me!

Proof that I'm really me!

With all of the talk in recent weeks about SHRM09, I have been trying my best to put together a post to talk about my own very first HR conference. In case you didn\’t realize it from the title, that would be the 2009 Alabama State SHRM Conference.

Below you will find a few selections (twenty five out of forty five, to be exact!) from my Twitter stream during the Alabama State SHRM Conference. Note that the day started amazingly well with the 1st tweet letting everyone know I took a wrong turn.

25.  Our brave but incompetent hero takes a wrong turn. Crap.7:50 AM May 20th from txt

24.  What keeps your CEO awake at night? What does he/she worry about most? #HR #ALSHRM9:08 AM May 20th from txt

23.  Table discussion shows virtually no strategic HR being done in people’s companies. Mortified by that fact. #ALSHRM #HR9:30 AM May 20th from txt

22.  Financial literacy in the workplace session is beginning. Should be good. #ALSHRM rocks so far!9:56 AM May 20th from txt

21.  Financial struggles cost employers an avg of $15k per struggling employee #ALSHRM10:16 AM May 20th from txt

20.  Stomach and watch telling me it’s lunchtime. Almost too excited to eat. (almost) :-) #ALSHRM10:50 AM May 20th from txt

19.  Picked out of the crowd and shook hands with event organizer. Is my face THAT recognizable? #ALSHRM11:20 AM May 20th from txt

18.  @hrbartender abandoned me and @adowling for more lively drinking companions. Must have been my staring. :-) #ALSHRM11:28 AM May 20th from txt

17.  Lunch was fast and delicious. Listened to EEOC talk. Unappetizing. #ALSHRM11:41 AM May 20th from txt

16.  Morning speaker was Dorothy Hill, SPHR. Forgot to mention! Presented on HR competencies. Thought-provoking & wonderful. #ALSHRM11:53 AM May 20th from txt

15.  Heard a story about a company using female mud wrestlers as an employee selection method. How do you think that went? #ALSHRM11:56 AM May 20th from txt

14.  Hmmm. Didn’t realize TitleVII applied to noncitizens. EEOC speaker is pretty interesting. Needs pictures to keep my attention. #ALSHRM12:12 PM May 20th from txt

13.  Next up-integrating business intelligence into HR by Erin Watkins SPHR. #ALSHRM12:36 PM May 20th from txt

12.  With a group of statistics-loving dorks. Nerds of #HR unite! #ALSHRM1:00 PM May 20th from txt

11.  This is the coolest session ever. Exactly what I have been trying to do at work. Statistics rock. #ALSHRM1:05 PM May 20th from txt

10.  Does your company use inferential statistics? If so, what for? If not, why not? It’s a huge way to drive #HR & business strategy. #ALSHRM1:16 PM May 20th from txt

9.      Conference goal for me-get ideas to take back and make my company better. Idea part accomplished. Implementation? We’ll see. #ALSHRM1:45 PM May 20th from txt

8.      FOOD! Pecan pie and a cheesecake-like substance. Awesome. #ALSHRM1:50 PM May 20th from txt

7.      Talking with @adowling and @hrbartender about #SHRM and its fantastic twitter people. And about @lruettimann. What a hoot. #ALSHRM2:15 PM May 20th from txt

6.      Time for more ‘learning’. HR and Washington-legislative outlook for the Obama administration. Final session of a great conference. #ALSHRM2:17 PM May 20th from txt

5.      I shall die of dessert poisoning. Tally-2 pcs pecan pie & 1 of cheesecake. My epitaph will prob be ‘died fat and happy’. ;-) #ALSHRM2:32 PM May 20th from txt

4.      Listening to presentation warning of congressional shenanigans. (isn’t that redundant?) #ALSHRM2:54 PM May 20th from txt

3.      Healthy families act gives me chills. It’s overbearing. And dumb. Blah. #ALSHRM3:00 PM May 20th from txt

2.      #SHRM is promoting voluntary flexible workplace policies as a proactive measure against government actions. 2 thumbs up on that! #ALSHRM3:05 PM May 20th from txt

1.      Fantastic day. Will post on it soon. #ALSHRM3:41 PM May 20th

Also, I learned that I really need Internet access on my phone. I\’m sporting a sweet BlackBerry Pearl, but I was doing my tweeting via SMS, and that meant that I couldn\’t see any responses from anyone! The HRBartender and ‘lil miss PseudoHR had a leg up on me with their connections. I can only hope that I was entertaining enough to make up for that!

Introducing the HR Education Series


HR education

HR education

I\’m going to be starting a new series here on upstartHR. Everyone knows by now that I have a few topics that I\’m truly passionate about. One of those is what we’re learning in college. I have talked before about the holes in the HR curriculum where students are being done a disservice. This topic continues to rise to the surface in conversations I\’m having on a weekly basis. This series will cover the potential and pitfalls of HR education.

HR education isn\’t all it\’s cracked up to be. The colleges and universities are living in a different age. And although some of them are trying to upgrade with technology, they\’re still using textbooks as the major instructional material. And who writes those textbooks? Well, I\’m sure they\’re smart people, but for the most part, they are not involved with the day-to-day business world. For some students in technology-rich fields, their college education may be obsolete by the time they graduate. This scathing comment from a study performed by Quintessential Careers:

“College was a total waste of time and money. Computer courses are bordering on obsolete by graduation. There were not nearly enough computer courses in my degree program. I gained no skills to get me a job.”
— 2003 computer information systems grad

While HR education may not be moving quite as fast as that, it\’s still light years ahead of what some schools are teaching. I read recently that SHRM  has a curriculum that it pushes for schools to offer. I don\’t know exactly what that may entail, but being the largest HR organization in the world means that it\’s naturally going to move slower than other, smaller organizations. Maybe it\’s time for someone to offer something revolutionary in terms of HR education?

Here\’s a novel idea. Why don\’t we take some measure (not all, mind you) of education from the HR blogs that already exist? There are dozens (hundreds?) of wonderful people pouring their hearts and efforts into maintaining a blog that describes the ins and outs of human resources. What if schools had some sort of HR education curriculum that required—or at the very least suggested—its students study from those actively participating in the field? How revolutionary would that be?

I only found out about the prevalence of the blogosphere when I was nearly finished with college. And that was only through my own personal research on topics that are unrelated to human resources. I stumbled across a few blogs and loved the community-like aura and the availability of information. And it wasn\’t until the end of last year that I started engaging in the HR blogosphere by reading and commenting.

During the recent SHRM blogger panel, there seemed to be a fair amount of interest from people interested in starting their own HR blogs. With so many remarkable and talented individuals in our field, it\’s going to be fascinating to see where the HR blogosphere moves in the future. I hope you enjoy the HR education series and that it helps to open your thinking to new creativity and innovation.

Read more in the HR education series.

Creativity and Innovation in HR

Maintaining creativity Flick-laffy4k

In the past few days, I’ve had conversations with several friends in the HR field about creativity. I have spent an inordinate amount of time lately just thinking of ideas. That’s all. Just thinking. Pondering. Brainstorming. Plumbing the depths of my cranium for some idea that’s just out of reach. And the reason that I started all of the creative thinking? I enjoy it.

Now, with all of the responsibilities we have on a daily basis, doing something simply for the enjoyment is is a rarity. But it’s a wonderful process to let your mind wander around an ironclad problem, knocking here and there until a weak point is found in the rationale and the idea starts to take form. I truly enjoy the process of coming up with ideas.  One of the reasons why is because I know that I’ll never have enough time to complete all of them. I often wondered why people would give perfectly good ideas to others instead of taking advantage of them. Now I realize that giving away ideas has multiple benefits. It helps you to see new answers for your own issues, it helps someone else solve a problem, and it builds goodwill between you and the recipient.

Back to the conversations–I have been accused of being bold and innovative. I really am just being myself! I’m still young in the profession, and I take advantage of my enthusiasm at every opportunity. However, I never, ever want to lose the fire in my belly. So, how can you keep from losing that spark?  What can keep you from falling into the drudgery of daily life and help you rise above the grinding dullness that some of us face?  There are a lot of new HR professionals who read this blog, and they would all like to know how to stay on top of their game.

And if you haven’t subscribed for free updates yet, it’s as simple as clicking the little orange button on the top right of the page. Thanks for supporting UpstartHR!

On Blog Taglines and Boldness

Be bold. Change the world. Flickr-hamedmasoumi

Be bold. Change the world. Flickr-hamedmasoumi

If you’ve been redirected here from a participant in the UpstartHR Guest Post Blitz, then I appreciate you stopping by! I hope you enjoy what you see. Want to stay on top of things? Click here to get free updates!

UpstartHR is relatively young in terms of a blog. It seems like only yesterday that I created the first post. Today, I decided on my blog tagline. It was tough to settle on one, but the term “Be BOLD” is appropriate in so many ways. I bet most people have never even thought about how important the blog tagline really is, but it\’s one of the first things people see when they arrive, and it needs to say something to them. It needs to draw them in as much as the other aspects of the blog. Here\’s the thought process for how I arrived at my own blog tagline choice.

The new generation of HR is already versed in the need to think strategically. We\’ve been told that from day one, and we know already that it\’s the only way we\’ll ever make a difference in our organizations. But that isn\’t going to happen if we\’re too frightened of failure or rejection to ever even try. We have to be bold. We have to take a stand. HR isn\’t the party-planner. It\’s just one of the strategic functions of the overall organization. Boldness has to be involved in the process, or HR will be swept under the rug like it has so many times before.

Maybe it also has something to do with my own selfishness. When I decided on the “upstart” moniker, I wasn\’t 100% sure what I meant, but it felt right to me. Now I think I\’m getting the idea. Trying things. Taking chances. Making things happen. These are all aspects of a great organization. Even if some of the projects/idea fall through, the others should be good enough to carry the day. Courage, ingenuity, and innovation are three of the most powerful tools that an organization has at its disposal at any given time.

Someone somewhere has a great idea that they want and need to share, but either that person lacks the courage to speak up or the management discourages that type of behavior. Whatever the reason, they are shooting themselves in the foot by muzzling their greatest assets.

Take a chance. Be bold. It might change the world around you.

Guest Post Blitz

I'm everywhere! Flickr-umsizzle

Want to know where my energy comes from? I'm really a bunch of clones. Â Â Flickr-umsizzle

I know what you’re thinking. I don’t write nearly enough. Well, I’m going to settle that soon enough. The first UpstartHR Guest Post Blitz is going to be occurring on Monday, June 22. Five HR bloggers have graciously allowed me to grace their front page, and I appreciate them very much for giving me the opportunity. You can find me on Monday (hopefully!) at the following blogs…

HR Ringleader

HR Thoughts

Steve’s HR Technology

HR Minion

Creative Chaos Consultant

Go. Read. Rejoice. (You know you want to!)

Also, just as a teaser, I’m working behind the scenes with a handful of HR bloggers on various projects that are going to be huge. Yeah, I’m a big thinker, but I’m also a big doer. Me-Making waves since 1985.