Recently I had the pleasure of joining Troy Vermillion on Eight Hour Grind, a show that looks at work trends.
The topic? Performance management.
After sharing with Troy some of the best ideas from our research, he sprung a surprise on me: my very own performance review! If you click to watch the video below, it will auto-jump to the time where the performance review begins.
How would you rate me based on my responses? Exceeds expectations or needs improvement?
Nearly 11 years ago I started writing this blog as a way to capture my learning moments in a new HR job. Today, I still write a good bit but it comes in the form of reports, research, and case studies. I still create plenty of content, but the podcast has become an increasingly fun and interesting way to gather information and share it with the world.
I made a new year’s resolution a few years ago to listen to more podcasts when I had downtime (washing dishes, folding clothes, etc.) or in the car, and I have learned so much and have been thoroughly inspired from that otherwise “wasted” time.
It’s a great tool, especially for those that are “too busy” for professional development. For instance, I recently met an HR director who drives an hour each way to work and home daily. She can’t go to lunch and learn meetings or other development sessions because she doesn’t have time. She normally listens to talk radio but felt like it wasn’t really preparing her mentally for the day and was stressing her out. I told her to take a week and listen to the podcast in the mornings and whatever she wanted in the afternoons. She reported back a week later: not only did she learn a few new concepts that she was already planning to incorporate into her HR strategy but she had reached out personally to connect with a guest with a similar background to her. Score! :-)
I’d encourage you to check out the podcast and try to listen during your commute in the mornings on your way to work to give yourself new ideas and inspiration for your role. Even if you listen to something else in the afternoons, you can feel better knowing you’re educating yourself while you’re in the car, on the train, etc. every day. Also, if you are certified and want recertification credits for that listening time, our team has pulled together some free sets of podcasts just for that purpose.
With that in mind, here is a starting point if you don’t listen to the show yet. If you do, this might be a good opportunity to revisit a few episodes that were most impactful in 2019.
If you have an idea, a question, or a piece of advice you’d like to see covered on the We’re Only Human podcast, please don’t hesitate to reach out! Also, if you learn something new or are inspired by a particular episode, please let me know! Love hearing those comments from listeners.
Sponsors: We also have openings for sponsors on the show if you want to get your message in front of thousands of HR professionals as well. Ping me for a media kit and details!
Did you know that you can now hear the HR Happy Hour show on your Alexa? Simply enable the HR Happy Hour skill and you can hear flash briefings a few times a week. These 3-5 minute episodes cover all kinds of topics that will help you keep your HR skills sharp and stay on top of the latest news. I am recording shows every week or so in addition to the other hosts, and I also am still running We’re Only Human for full episodes.
In a recent episode of the HR Happy Hour Alexa show, I talked about unlimited paid leave plans (episode embedded below; subscribers click through to listen to the 4-minute discussion).
Then last week I spoke with a firm that mentioned the accrued vacation leave liability on their books (millions of dollars!) If you work in HR, you are trying to give your workforce the best benefits you can afford, and that includes paid leave. We want to give them something that shows them we appreciate their efforts, but what happens when employees don’t use that leave? That’s right–it starts to build up a huge liability on the books.
Additionally, it can impact your firm in other ways as well. Taking vacation time has been associated with reduced stress, improved mental/physical health, and more.
Ready for a strategic moment? Sit down with your CFO to talk about how you can reduce that aggregated vacation leave balance (and the associated liability on the balance sheet). Below are four ideas for how to approach it from the HR side. Continue reading
Talent management technology has come a long way in recent years. I can still remember seeing a demo for a technology solution back in 2014 and the salesperson was so proud of the fact that I could copy and paste data into the system. By the way:
There was no way to actually USE the data in there, but I could put it in if I wanted. Sigh.
Anyway, today I am sharing a really fun podcast interview with you, featuring a recent conversation with Carsten Busch, CEO of the Talent Management Business Unit, and Laura Fuller, Country Sales Manager US for Lumesse. In the conversation we not only talked about how technology has become incredibly user friendly and more employee-focused, but about some of the age-old talent questions that companies face every day, such as why managers are willing to hire an external candidate even when there are perfectly qualified internal candidates available to take the job. Carsten’s answer to the question was phenomenal and I was taking notes because it will be my new default answer to that common issue.
Additionally, Carsten and Laura talk about the shift in technology from the static, administrative-focused versions mentioned above to the talent-focused systems that Lumesse and other companies are developing today.
Also, at the tail end I mention how you can get one of my upcoming pieces of research entirely for free by signing up here for a webinar I’m doing with the team at Lumesse. Here’s the gist of what the webinar will be about:
The June edition of HR Magazine has a feature that focused on how some companies like Gap and Siemens are trying to create development opportunities that connect candidates and employees to the firms for a long period of time. The double benefit of this kind of development is that if businesses can drive retention, then they get the value of a more productive workforce for a longer period of time. This is the incredible value of talent mobility, and that’s the focus of the webinar and this upcoming piece of research.
I hope you’ll join us for that session, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the podcast as well. It was a really fun conversation.
Note: If you’re looking for a good app to access We’re Only Human and other podcasts, I personally use Stitcher on my Android device.Â
Did you know that your employees aren’t innovative or creative enough?
That’s the latest from a research study performed by University of Phoenix on workplace innovation. In an interesting mix of data, the organization asked employees to identify whether their employers were innovative or not, and hiring managers were asked to identify the level of innovation exhibited by employees. The results were intriguing, and I covered some of the key topics of the research in a recent podcast interview with Ruth Veloria, Executive Dean of the School of Business at University of Phoenix. Continue reading
[Email subscribers click through to listen to the episode]
Sourcing isn’t a new activity in the talent acquisition world. There have always been hard to fill jobs, but we’re seeing more of this kind of issue than ever before. In fact, a recent CareerBuilder study puts the cost of open positions at nearly $800,000 annually, tallying up costs that ultimately hurt business performance. Organizational leaders say these are the top problems caused by jobs they can’t fill:
In addition, our Lighthouse Research study of talent acquisition priorities pegs sourcing as a top area that business leaders plan to focus on in the coming year (just 1% behind onboarding, which was the highest priority).
In this episode of We’re Only Human, host Ben Eubanks is joined by the amazing Madeline Laurano, co-founder of Aptitude Research and co-host of Research on the Rocks, another HR Happy Hour network show. She and Ben discuss some of the key aspects of sourcing, such as employment branding, recruitment marketing, and technology’s role in the process. Madeline shares some great insights in this episode, and she stumps me at the end with a question that shouldn’t have been that hard to answer!
In addition, they examine the impact of AI, machines, and algorithms on the sourcing world, breaking down some of the hype and illuminating an amazing competition that pits recruiters against robots to see who is the best at sourcing great candidates. Not to spoil the surprise, but the real story here exemplifies that to get the best results, we need humans and machines working together. Get all this and more in the latest episode of We’re Only Human on the HR Happy Hour podcast network.
*Please note, if you like the show topic and want more in-depth discussion of sourcing and recruiting in a future episode, please feel free to comment below or email me!
Check out our other episodes in the We’re Only Human podcast archive.
Innovation is often discussed as an activity available only to a select few people or companies. but it is an incredibly powerful tool for companies, especially when we seek ways to use our HR influence to drive a culture of innovation.
[Click here to listen to “8 Ways HR Can Drive Enterprise Innovation“]
In this episode of the We’re Only Human podcast, we point out 8 key ways that HR leaders can create, reinforce, and drive innovative behaviors in the business. In addition, we cover two common ways that companies kill motivation and innovation with their human resources practices. Continue reading
