Tag Archives: Free Resources

strongerHR ebook

Supporting Our HR Friends #LookingforWork (#strongerHR: Volume One)

As I posted a few weeks ago, we have been working on some resources to help those of you in the community that are looking for work right now. I’ve been talking to many of you in one on one conversations and while I am really hurting for each of you, I am also thankful to have so many passionate, committed professionals in our space. To Paula, Jermaine, Nina, Joseph, and so many more, we see you, and we want to support you.

Earlier this summer you all know that I was thrilled to host HR Summer School. We have quietly had the replay of that available for sale for the last few weeks to help us start funding some resources to help those who are out of work and trying to reconnect with employers. We appreciate those speakers who gave their time in June–their efforts are still helping to support the community and I am getting messages daily from people who are appreciative of the education and inspiration that HR Summer School offered.

Announcing #strongerHR

I don’t believe in coincidences, but I happened to run across Molly Shelton in the midst of this mission to serve the unemployed community in our space and she was already working to help those looking for work. We partnered up on the #strongerHR eBook, and I’m so excited to announce Volume One is now available.

Shout out to Molly Shelton for helping to pull this together and Jacki Gil for her amazing design work on this!

strongerHR ebook

This eBook is meant to serve a few purposes.

  • First, it helps us highlight the strength, diversity, and value that exist in the HR community right now.
  • Second, it gives each of the participants a resource, an asset, that they can leverage when they are talking with employers that may help them stand out.
  • Third, it gives each participant a chance to really focus and hone their message and perspective around a topic that matters to HR leaders today. This can help them to be more polished in the interview process.

To each of you that read it, there’s a benefit too! It gives you a set of unique perspectives on the work we’re doing in the HR space and may encourage you to think differently, consider a new idea, or push a boundary that you didn’t realize was there. I was really thrilled to read the ideas put together by this list of HR leaders.

As far as what’s next, we’re working on other eBooks and have enough submissions for several more already. We are doing this as a volunteer effort so we are hoping to get Volume Two out in the next month or so.

Stay tuned. Share this with your friends. And let’s keep helping those that are trying to get back into an active employment role. We’re all better for it.

#HRSummerSchool: Time for Extra Credit!

Two weeks ago we ran a live, virtual event that has already been seen by tens of thousands of HR professionals, talent leaders, students, and more. One of the sessions gave us technical issues, so we are running what we are lovingly calling an “extra credit” session and I would love to have you attend!

If you didn’t attend HR Summer School, you missed an epic experience. I haven’t published a formal update based on the event, but suffice to say it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. We had thousands of comments, new connections, and interaction beyond any other HR webcast or webinar you have ever experienced.

FYI: many of our attendees were interested in the books written by the speakers. You can get those here on Amazon. If you want your #HRSummerSchool commemorative shirt or other gear, that’s found here.

Just check out the map below to see where attendees participated from around the world. It probably wouldn’t surprise you after seeing this map to hear that over ONE MILLION minutes of HR Summer School have been watched on LinkedIn already since the event. 😮

Screenshot_20200606-100958~2

Before I get to the extra credit session, let me share with you a few of the many comments from those that participated in HR Summer School live, in no particular order. Click through the images below to see some of the amazing feedback.

One participant told me that she was about to get out of HR because it wasn’t exciting anymore. After two days of participating in the event, she said her passion had been rekindled and that she was excited to look for a new employer that actually values the input from HR in the business. If she had been the only participant, I would have called this event worthwhile, but thankfully (as you can see below) we had so many more amazing participants.  Continue reading →

Bringing HR Together: Announcing HR Summer School #hrsummerschool

HR Summer School
In the middle of the strange state we are in right now, one thing is certain: HR conferences are out. Of the 10 speaking events at spring conferences, internal training events, and workshops I was scheduled to attend, four of them were canceled, four of them “postponed,” and the other two were moved to virtual. Our family is definitely feeling this challenging time along with the rest of you.

If you were planning on getting recertification credits or building your professional network at an event this month, you may be out of luck.

To compound that issue, I’ve seen posts from friends (and even a new Slack community sprouting up) that have been furloughed, laid off, or outright terminated because of the current economic standstill.

So I decided to reach out to some friends and colleagues in the industry to do something about it. I’d like to introduce you to HR Summer School. This is a free, virtual HR event designed to bring us closer together while improving our skills as talent leaders.

HR Summer School: The Details

This event is something I’ve been thinking about for some time, but the issues facing our various communities right now have pushed it urgently to the forefront. The goal is to not only drop a bunch of content on you, but recreate the opportunity to connect with and engage with both speakers and other attendees throughout the event.

Tickets are free! Anyone can come, whether it be an HR pro, a small business owner looking for HR help, or even students that need some practical understanding of HR in the real world.

This event will be livestreamed the week of June 1st daily from 10a-2:30p central time. That’s a lot of content, but if you register for the main event you can attend any session you want during the conference at your leisure. Simply come and go for the sessions that matter most to you. More details on sessions and speakers will be shared in the next few days.

We will have over 30 speakers sharing their insights around:

  • recruiting
  • training
  • inclusion and diversity
  • talent management
  • leadership development
  • managing teams
  • coaching and mentoring
  • wellness and wellbeing
  • resilience
  • and more!

In addition, we will be hosting daily trivia competitions to add to the “fun factor,” courtesy of our friends at Water Cooler Trivia.

We have several amazing supporters already lined up for the event, but we are accepting a few more sponsors and partners if anyone is interested in coming alongside our team for this community event.

Giving back: Can you help?

I have a request. We are doing this event for free, but our hope is that it will be the largest online HR summit ever. Now is the time to pull together and support each other.

The event link is HRSummerSchool.org

If you are an educator, share this with your students, but also share it with your peers so they can share with their students as well.

If you are an HR practitioner, share this with 2-3 friends you think could benefit from the latest thinking on the topics listed above. Or share it with all of them, we don’t mind.

If you are a SHRM chapter or association leader, share this with your members as a free resource or benefit.

Heck, even if you’re just married to someone in HR, make sure they register and share as well! :-)

At the time of this writing, we already have over 100 people registered to attend and the event hadn’t even been formally announced yet! There’s clearly a need for quality education and connection right now.

Questions? Please feel free to reach out to me at any time. I’m honored to support HR leaders like you in this time.

Free Access to HR Certification Courses and Other HR Tools

[Update 3/23 at 9:29am CST] We have already given away our first $1,000 but are doubling down and offering a total of $2,000 in courses at this time. We are hoping to bring something positive out of such a negative and worrisome time for our workforce.

[Update 3/23 at 12:20pm CST] We have provided over $3,000 in free access codes for the HR community. What an amazing response. To those of you that are seeing this now, we have created a discount code for 50% off any of our courses through the end of the month but have exhausted all of the free courses we can provide at this time. We appreciate you and the work you do for the workforce. If you use the code humanity you can get 50% off our PHR or SPHR prep courses. 

Over the last week I have had over a dozen calls with HR practitioners to check in and connect as humanly as possible while we are all quarantined in our respective areas of the world. Several of them mentioned that they were going to use this unprecedented time to think about getting certified while they have more downtime than usual in their days (once things settle down a bit from the transition).

free career bookHearing that, I realized that I could help make that a reality for many HR leaders, especially those that might be furloughed or laid off right now because of the struggles many companies are facing.  Continue reading →

Talent Mobility: How to Get Line Managers On Board

In the last few years, it seems like I’ve become the expert on internal talent mobility (the process of moving people inside the organization via promotions, transfers, etc.). I’ve published multiple pieces on the topic, written several white papers (one linked below if you want to check it out), and spoken about it to various audiences as well.  Goodness, I even developed some brand new research for a report I just finished with ATD on upskilling and reskilling your workforce (more on that in the coming weeks). I love talking about it and think there’s a ton of value in the approach.

With that in mind, someone recently reached out to ask a nuanced question: how do you get managers on board, since talent mobility is inherently disruptive to their environment? 

Talent mobility is obviously a disruption for managers that “lose” an employee that moves internally. This means the manager has to backfill the role just as if the person left the company. However, the good news is that person is still there and still accessible, which means they can offer coaching or support for the new person stepping into the role they left behind.

From the manager’s perspective, this doesn’t create any additional work, though. Research shows people will leave the company if they don’t have advancement opportunities, so the manager will lose the employee anyway. This just gives them a chance to move up internally, keeping their expertise and value within the walls of the company. That’s a win-win.

If managers want to lessen the impact, they should be open with their teams about jobs within the company and also be open to hearing the career aspirations from their staff. By keeping the lines of communication open, managers are less likely to be surprised by a sudden change by someone leaving without notice. When managers try to keep or control their people and their career progression, they end up causing them to leave the company instead of looking for other internal opportunities. Bad move.

Guide-Build-Talent-Mobility-CultureIf this interests you, I worked with the team at Salary.com to create a guide for HR leaders on how to build a talent mobility culture. A key piece of that is a one-page handout for managers on how to take practical baby steps toward better mobility-friendly practices. It’s here and totally free: check out the report. 

 

What Are the 2019 Trends in HR?

2019 hcm trends report

In terms of writing and reading content, I have always been anti-trends. Every year people recycle the same information over and over, and it never really reflects reality.

However, this year I partnered with a team to create a list of real trends for 2019 based on where capital is being invested into HR technology, what the forward-thinking employers in the market are doing, and more. It’s a true look at the trends for the coming 12 months. I hope you enjoy the report below. If you’d like to download a copy just click here.

  • If you’re a practitioner facing one of these challenges, feel free to reach out to us for an advisory call to discuss.
  • If you’re a solution provider interested in learning more, feel free to contact our team to see how we can help.