Strategic Human Resource Management - Linking People to Your Plan

Here's the announcement for one of my future speaking engagements:

The AMIT Business Education Network (Garrett Kowalewski) brings you:

“Strategic Human Resource Management - Linking People to Your Plan”

Jay C. Langdon, Certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR)
Strategic Human Resource Partner

Date June 5th
Location Pima Community College
401 N. Bonita Road
Rooms A109 and A112
Time 3:00pm – 5:30pm

Please RSVP for this event by emailing ief@amit-az.net

Strategic Human Resource Management - "Linking People to Your Plan"

Today, the Human Resources Management profession is not what you might think it is. No more is the Personnel Department of thirty years ago. Gone are the file clerks. They've been replaced by Human Resource Information Systems. Today, great HR is about optimizing your people and people related processes to help meet your business objectives, helping your company become an employer of choice, overcoming recruiting and retention obstacles and more. It is about being a Strategic Business Partner; not just achieving legal compliance, but thriving on it. It is about knowing your business and driving cultural change, knowing your needs and managing performance, and it is certainly about transformational leadership and developing a plan for success through the right people and right actions.

Jay C. Langdon, SPHR is a Strategic HR Practitioner and wants you to be one too. Simply put, he helps organizations use people to their best ability to accomplish business objectives. Jay says, he "helps businesses do better, however they define better." Depending upon your specific needs this can mean different things: From large scale downsizing and layoffs or restructuring, to a recruiting and staffing blitz, from very fine tuned adjustments in your Total Rewards Plans, to major redesigns of Employment Branding and Organizational Development.

Our focus is on long term planning and immediate actions that "Set you up for success". We utilize a vast network of resources, people and technology to calibrate HR activities to your strategic initiatives then "Link People to Your Plan". Some folks need a boot out the door, others need a handshake. We deal with perception and upset and turn it into improved business performance.

Please RSVP for this event by emailing ief@amit-az.net

Organized by the following AMIT Business Education Network Committee Co-Chair:

· Garrett Kowalewski, Adecco Technical Recruiting

Please direct questions about this event to:
Garrett Kowalewski, 520-322-5149

What people want in a CEO

I recently posed a question on LinkedIn and my network came back with some very interesting answers. What makes a good chief executive?

The most popular responses fell into the communications category. This is fascinating to me. Perhaps it is only anecdotal, but my recollection is that we've seen dozens of surveys about how employees want more communication. So, no real surprise there, other than some execs still aren't getting it. Communicate with your people, people.

I also look at this from an organizational behavior perspective. How does your organization function if you're not communicating? Answer is, you are communicating, but perhaps not what you want. Many companies have long term goals or strategic plans - excellent! But do all their employees know their fit into that plan? I believe that every employee from the CEO to the janitor has a vial (literally life giving) role to play in that organization. With out them what would have happened? Would their work have been done by another, would the company have lost money, what? Each person has value. If they don't, then why are they there. If they don't know their value and their place in the strategic plan then chances are they are not performing optimally. Read, not meeting strategic targets, or making money.

So, as I see it, it is up to a chief executive to arrange for adequate communications plans so that all employees know their role in an organization. What's the mission, vision, values... Often times these are covered in a new hire orientation. Other times, their just understood, or are they. A wise man once said, "If common sense were common, why don't they teach a class in it?" We need to be careful about assumptions. Good to Great author Jim Collins speaks about a Hedgehog concept and I couldn't agree more, though I've used different words to describe decision making. In my language, what happens in a struck by lightening or hit by a bus scenario? Are employees, all employees sufficiently aware of the direction they should take, without asking? This is after all the basic definition of organization, being able to accomplish more as a group than an individual could by themselves. But too often, we see ego, not values, common cause or direction leading. Cross purposes define silos and infighting, all to the competitive disadvantage of not just an organization but to an economy.

Sure people want job stability, good livable wages, benefits, but they also want to contribute to something larger than themselves, to know that they belong to something better, something bigger than they are alone. A good CEO challenges every employee to stretch, to do just a bit more, to grow, to reach, to strive, to belong. A good CEO communicates and is a role model, forgives and learns, makes the hard decisions, and listens.

Unions and the Era of Warm Bodies

Pretty close to 100 out of 100 Human Resources professionals will likely tell you that on the battle lines of Union vs. Management they (the HR person) are on the side of the table of management. But for educational purposes, I like to look at things from a different perspective, and frequently try to take the side of the opposition or a third party, to add perspective, knowledge and hopefully some additional leverage to my views and ultimately improve my outcome. It seems to me that the classical battle lines need a serious revamping and that this form of adversarial relationship has severely sub-optimized the employment market in many cases.

Please don't get the idea that I am taking a side here. Let's think of this particular blog as a blog for all seasons, from an outside perspective, in an attempt to create a bigger game; a better opportunity for all.

When I think about the many safety related issues that spawned excellent and needless to say legitimate concerns and unions over the years I think business owners and Management should simply be ashamed. The era of treating employees like so much chattel, like a commodity, like they are not even people is rapidly drawing to a close.

For too many years in too many different industries I've heard a simply grotesque phrase tossed about lightly "warm bodies". Before anyone gets too excited warm bodies have nothing to do with the adult entertainment industry. Warm bodies are more closely aligned to zombies than porn stars. For example, some manager might say, "we need to get somebody in that position yesterday; so get me some 'warm body' to do the job". Tragic! But, I'll blog more about strategic HR management and hiring practices soon.

So, how do we get to warm bodies and away from human beings, and employees? I think this is a much more complex issue than I can cover in one article, but lets begin. When People (employee side first here) accept a suboptimal position as acceptable rather than as interim, you begin to perpetuate that suboptimal situation. From the Employer's point of view, when we fail to look at bigger pictures, and are fine with robots (we should really be thinking about technical automation) we lose sight of the people. So, this is something of a classical Game Theory problem highly reminiscent of the Prisoner's Dilemma with each side seeking to maximize their own outcome. But what if both parties cooperated, and the outcome of the cooperation was that the nature of business, the nature of the game, changed from zero sum to non-zero sum? In other words, by working together we can each get more, not just for ourself, but for the other as well. There are some wonderful books out there like Getting to Yes, that speak to topics like this.

But lets talk about people. Let's face it, the number one problem facing most employers and Human Resource professionals today and for the foreseeable future is the recruiting and retention of qualified talent. If you need warm bodies, you're basically out of the ballgame already, and need to think about writing your business's obituary or consider a personal exit strategy and go sailing somewhere.

I've frequently come across the situation where employers are wondering about an appropriate recognition, reward for their employees. And this too will be a future topic, but let me simplify a complex discussion and suggest just asking people what they want. Too often my research has indicated that employees are seeking, and are motivated by something simple, easy and relatively inexpensive especially when compared to alternatives the employer was currently considering.

Just talk with your people. Ask them what it is that they want, what would make them stay, what would make them thrive and do great things for your organization.

Ethical Standards

For many years I've tried to live my life by a fairly simple rule, "be as honest as you can, especially with yourself". This seems to be a pretty solid value - Honesty, that is well recognized around the globe.

When I'm going into an organization an assessing their culture some of the first things that I look at formally include their mission and vision statements and their values. Honesty, may not be explicitly listed, but in my experience, the great companies all include it inherently. Some might include a value of Open Communications and you can take it to the bank that management intends this to include honest communication.

So in the theme of being true to oneself how are we relating a company's values to our own. I've often heard and given the 'follow your passion' speech. If you follow your passion and your passion really doesn't touch that particular organization are you being honest with yourself? I submit to you that you can in fact do better. But realize this, we do not have perfect markets. There are barriers to entry and exit in the workforce that may make being underemployed superior to being unemployed for an extended period of time. Nevertheless, even when unemployed are you actively working to improve your condition all the while realizing that the current situation is only temporary, that this too shall pass?

When you see that position, and accept it knowing that you'll likely have another position in a few weeks that better suits you? Eek, how terrible for the employer and you! You've now created a bubble in your resume, you've cost that employer extra expense in training, since you probably never hit their ROI for your recruiting, hiring and orientation expense.

The interview process is two way. Use it both ways, for the company to interview you and for you to interview the company. How good of a match are you to one another? Is this a win-win situation. If it isn't perfect, but you still see the advantage, do you feel that it would be to your mutual best interests to 'be as honest as you can' and share with your prospective employer the reality of the situation. Thank about it.

Resuem Gripes

See an earlier blog hosting on jobing.com that covers all sorts of resume blunders.

http://tucson.jobing.com/blog_post.asp?post=8046