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Posts tagged ‘Talent Vanguard’

May 18

HR, The Hulk & Sandwiches

Happy Saturday everyone! It’s a little extra happy if you’re in Canada, as it is the Victoria Day long weekend and the sun is shining. Hope you’re all enjoying it as much as I am. Things have been a bit quiet on the blog in recent weeks, but I assure you that I have several posts on the way. This week I was honoured to write a guest post over at The Buzz on HR, celebrating the anniversary of Sarah Williams’ fantastic blog by writing about What HR Means to Me. As it turns out, that has something to do with The Hulk (Incredible, not Hogan), sandwiches, and the lack of sorcery involved in HR. Sometimes I am as surprised as anyone about how these things turn out…

Anyway,  please take a minute to check it out, and stay tuned for new Talent Vanguard content soon!

Jane

May 5

13 Comments

HR’s Future: ‘People Persons’ Need Not Apply

I strongly dislike the phrase “put the human back in human resources”. In part because it has become an unimaginative cliché and also because it usually sits atop a passive-aggressive treatise pleading with HR people to stop being such heartless, paper-loving bureaucrats and realize that employees are people too.

The premise underlying these arguments is usually that doing HR well is really just a matter of caring about people. This is nonsense, and does our profession a significant disservice. To see what this belief has wrought, ask 10 HR students why they want to work in HR, and I will wager money that at least 7 of them will say “ Because I’m a real ‘people person’”. Sigh….. Read more

Apr 22

4 Comments

HR and the Hazards of Automation

As HR evolves, one of the many challenges we face as a profession is how best to deliver value to our organizations in ways that are aligned with the leaner, fast-moving nature of today’s business landscape. The wide adoption of HR technology, self-service models, and outsourcing are a few methods that the HR profession has increasingly turned to in an effort to place limits on the admin-focused work that has threatened to overwhelm our function. And yet…this kind of automation is unacknowledged as a delicate art; a balance must be sought. We need only look to the larger market for examples…

In recent years a handful of telecom and tech service companies have begun advertising the ease with which their customers can access a “real human being’ by phone as a key differentiator of their service. A real human- imagine! Read more

Apr 9

4 Comments

HR and the ‘Art of Oppression’

“It is generally the case with figures of authority that when the masses start laughing at you, you are through.”

Those in positions of authority, including HR pros, would do well to remember this quote. It comes from an article in the Economist discussing recent developments in language policy and enforcement in the Canadian province of Quebec. For those of you who are not Canadian, allow me to briefly contextualize:

Quebec, a French colony that was subsequently conquered by the English (thus being included as part of Canada’s confederation), has grown increasingly resolute in their efforts to protect the French language’s prevalence and usage within their province. Recently, an Italian restaurant owner in Montreal revealed that the office responsible for enforcing French language policy in Quebec-  l’Office québécois de la langue française – had sent him a letter demanding that he change his menu to replace Italian words like ‘pasta’ with French ones. The media has had a bit of a field day with this, and dug up a few more ‘extreme’ examples of this type of highly enthusiastic application of authority, leading the Minister in charge of this enforcement to resign. Read more

Mar 27

10 Comments

Utopia, Dystopia, and the Future of Work

I think a lot about the future.  And although I’m not that old, I’ve already learned that the future, when one gets there, differs from the idea of the future in ways that are unexpected and impossible to predict. I think it’s this ‘certain uncertainty’ that drives us to continually envision possible futures. But these visions, fed by our past experiences and current outlook, often tell us more about our present selves than they do about where we’ll actually end up.

I’ve been reading a lot of superb, thought-provoking visions of the future of work and Human Resources from others recently, and grappling with what they might mean for us as employees, managers and HR professionals. The difference between many of these possible realities is vast, but this shouldn’t surprise us- humanity’s visions of the future are often shaped by the contrasting themes of utopia and dystopia. Read more

Mar 19

9 Comments

Manatees, Tube Tops and Policies for ‘The Clueless Few’

Can I assume that you’ve heard about the recent case in Florida in which a woman was arrested for riding a manatee? When I heard about this incident my first thought was: “What kind of idiot tries to ride a manatee? Shouldn’t this lady have known better?” The answer, of course, is yes- reasonable people do not see animals drifting along a Florida waterway and think “All aboard!”

But the Florida Keys are positively blanketed in signs like the one above, and a law does in fact exist outlawing the behavior in question. I find it sad that the good people of Florida must legislate for the clueless few, but thatseems to be the world that we live in. A world where our coffee cups bear dire warnings about the hot liquids within, and my curling iron has an enormous label advising me against putting it into my eyes. Sadder still, this lunacy does not stop at the borders of our organizations- many of us will have encountered organizations that create policies for the clueless few. Read more

Mar 2

3 Comments

Why You Should Mentor

I’m a major proponent of mentorship. And in this area (unlike my support of punctuality as a concept), I actually walk the talk. At any given time, I am a mentor (both formally and informally) to a handful of HR students, recent grads or new HR folks, and I’ve benefited enormously from being mentored myself for many years. I’m a member of the volunteer committee that runs my local HR Association’s mentorship program, and I regularly encourage friends and colleagues to devote their time to this noble pursuit.

There is little (beyond overt nepotism) that can super-charge someone’s career like mentorship. If you’ve ever thought “I wish I knew then what I know now…”, then understand that being mentored is as close as someone can ever get to realizing that hope. Read more

Feb 3

4 Comments

The Superbowl of Title Inflation

Happy Superbowl Sunday! Although I much prefer to watch the other football, I can never resist tuning in for the Superbowl entertainment. This year, pop star Alicia Keys will be performing the US national anthem. One assumes that this required time away from her other role, that of newly appointed  “Global Creative Director” for Blackberry (formerly known as RIM, and formerly a Canadian technology success story).  Announced this week, Ms. Keys’ impressive new position got me thinking about a mysterious organizational phenomenon: ‘title inflation’. Read more

Jan 28

11 Comments

HR and the Myth of Best Practices

I spent three days of last week at the HRPA Annual Conference here in Toronto. As always, it was a great event to reconnect with tons of brilliant HR folks in my network, as well as make new connections, and absorb ideas and knowledge from the many session speakers and keynotes- and this year was especially fun. As in past years, a couple of those speakers brought up ‘the Z word’…no, not zombies: ‘Zappos’. If you work in HR, or have any interest in organizational culture or employee engagement, it’s virtually guaranteed that you’ve read all about Zappos’ approach to corporate culture. They’ve been referenced as a benchmark in this area for many years now, and although I have nothing against Zappos, this year the Z word gave me pause. Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about organizational culture recently, or maybe it was this recent Tim Sacket post decrying the obsession with ‘best practices’, but I just couldn’t muster my usual enthusiasm for Zappos’ legendary approach.

Read more

Jan 20

7 Comments

HR Capacity Building

I really enjoyed this recent Forbes article “Don’t Just Bash HR. Help it Succeed.” In it, Ron Ashkenas talks about the transition that HR is going through, and the fundamental shift in some organizations’ thinking about where many HR accountabilities should reside. Here’s a quote from the article:

“So HR’s evolution…does not just concern changing HR. It’s also about helping managers take more accountability for people and culture, and eventually blurring the rigid distinction between ‘HR’ and ‘management’.”

For me, this quote sparked with an idea that’s been rattling around in my head for awhile, based on one of the many things I’ve learned since I entered the non-profit sector a little more than 2 years ago: the concept of capacity-building. Read more

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