With the qualified talent pool shrinking across the globe, the pressure on businesses to retain talent grows. In hopes of retention, companies across most industries are accommodating for generation X and Y’s desires by building a flexible, fun, informal environment that includes summer Fridays, remote work days, casual attire, and more. Start-ups are going to great lengths to mimic the Google and Facebook environments that attract and retain talent across the globe. I benefit from, and am a proponent of these environments. Some companies, however, particularly start-ups, must be mindful of, and guard against allowing informality to result in a lack of accountability, misalignment, and ambiguity. Now more than ever, it is critical to keep talent aligned with a clear company mission and hold them accountable. The flexible, fun, informal environment can only keep talent interested for so long. There must be something deeper for talent to identify with.

Talent must first identify with a company’s mission and core values. It is critical that veterans of the organization all understand, communicate, and embody the same message. Remember, Millennials look for guidance from those above them and as we know, businesses are constantly evolving to remain competitive. It is imperative that managers and executives keep these messages consistent. We cannot expect talent to feel secure and have the desire to commit to an environment that has a mission that continually changes, or a list of core values that is adhered to only when convenient.

Secondly, there must be a “fit to role.” When talking about a fit to role, most people will identify with qualified talent fitting the role; however, the fit to role actually starts with the role being appropriate for the department, division and company. Does the role benefit the company, and can it be successful within the current confines of the environment? With the ever-changing business environment, talent acquisition should ensure that an assessment of true business needs occurs or has occurred with each and every job requisition. It would be extremely challenging, if not impossible, for someone to remain engaged in a role that doesn’t make sense for the organization and is not aligned with its mission.

After identifying the appropriate role for the company, the appropriate candidate should be determined for the role. Many companies focus on the technical skills of the candidate and hope for a plug and play that will ensure the business doesn’t miss a beat. However, hiring managers cannot omit the importance of assuring alignment and engagement with the role by determining what the potential hire enjoys, doesn’t enjoy, and what drives her to achieve. This can be accomplished through conducting a personal assessment (such as the Harrison Assessment), as well as through technical assessments that assess her technical skill sets for the role.

Hiring the candidate is just the beginning of ensuring engagement and alignment exists throughout the talent’s tenure. There must be a clear relationship among the talent’s job description, career path and development. As soon as talent does not have clarity and understanding around their job descriptions and career paths, one can expect highly desired talent will begin their search for the next step in their career elsewhere. Generation X and Y have had information at their fingertips that allows them to learn; however, simply learning is not enough. It must have a purpose. Aligning short-term, tangible goals to reach the mission at hand will help ensure long-term engagement. Managers should anticipate the need for feedback and the desire to know how this newly acquired knowledge helps talent get from here to there in a career path.

In this fast-paced, ever-changing world, it is more important than ever to keep your talent aligned with your business and working for a greater purpose. Increased retention rates will be accomplished by creating an aligned environment that is buttressed by accountability across the organization. In addition to the fun, flexible environment that is permeating business places across the globe, leadership must establish and maintain a clear path and hold the talent accountable for accomplishing the plan. After all, how can they be recognized for their accomplishments if their objectives aren’t being established and tracked?

Photo credit iStockphoto

About the author: Amanda Papini, Recruiting Director at Response Mine Interactive started her career in recruiting at Medical Staffing Network in 2005, and moved over to a corporate recruiting role at BKV and Response Mine Interactive in 2007, where she built an internal recruiting practice for both companies. Amanda has since staffed over 250 full-time employees within both companies; an average of 50 hires per year. After assisting with RMI and BKV’s growth over the last 5 years, Amanda decided to move over to focus solely on RMI’s talent acquisition and take on a role more dedicated to employee development.

With social media, what you don’t know can seriously hurt your organization. One 2010 survey found that employees estimate spending roughly four hours every day checking multiple email accounts, with up to two hours spent on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. A 2012 Salary.com survey found that 64 percent of employees visit non-work related websites daily. And don’t think blocking employee access to social media on company networks is the answer; personal smartphones and tablets are ubiquitous, and easily fill the gap.

The rub for today’s organizations is that while social media use at work has definite risks, it also is one of the best ways to empower and engage employees. Increasingly, in our connected 24/7 businesses, the line between work and personal time is blurring. This is especially true for Generation Y employees; as long as they meet deadlines and deliver, these employees don’t feel that it’s particularly useful to distinguish between time spent updating Twitter or engaged in team meetings. Organizations may beg to differ, especially when an offensive or inappropriate blog post or tweet can damage their brand, lower employee morale, and even lead to workplace lawsuits.

Yet, most organizations don’t really know how their employees are using social media, either personally or professionally, let alone what impact it’s having on employees’ overall levels of productivity.

That’s why it’s so important, before you set policy, to know how your managers currently handle social media use at work, as well as how its use by employees is effecting their management. Get at these fundamental issues by asking managers five key questions:

1. Have your employees’ use of social media ever triggered a workplace lawsuit or regulatory investigation?
2. What impact have your employees’ personal use of social media during work hours had, if any, on their productivity?
3. How do you use social media, if at all, to help manage your projects and employees?
4. Have you reviewed all applicable federal and state laws governing electronic data content, usage, monitoring, privacy, e-discovery, data encryption, business records and other legal issues in all jurisdictions in which you operate, have employees or serve customers?
5. Could you comply with a court-ordered “social media audit”, by producing legally compliant business blog posts, email messages, text messages and other electronically stored information (ESI) within 990 days?

Social media can speed innovation and collaboration, but ONLY if your employees know how to both use it as well as steer clear of its many pitfalls. Start by asking managers these simple questions; they often surface extremely important information that, especially in larger organizations, you may not have been aware of. Finally, remember that for reasons of both confidentiality and fear, getting access to this sort of information is not always easy. It’s therefore important that organizations create mechanisms by which examples of social media use (and abuse!) can be regularly shared with the broader employee base.

Photo credit iStockphoto

About the author: Steve Miranda is Managing Director of Cornell University’s Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies (CAHRS), a leading partnership between industry and academia devoted to the field of global human resource management. He is also a faculty author of the new eCornell certificate program,Social Media in HR: From Policy to Practice. Prior to CAHRS, Miranda was Chief Human Resource and Strategic Planning Officer for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the world’s largest professional HR association, serving over 260,000 members in over 100 countries.

It happens to all of us in HR at some point in our lives.  We find ourselves caught in an awkward position at work and we ask ourselves, “What is the best response here?”

I am talking about situations where compassion is needed, but with extenuating circumstances.  You’ve encountered the scenario before.  An employee confides something deeply personal:

• A health issue
• A break-up
• Bankruptcy
• An unexpected pregnancy

She is coming to you not really as a friend, but as someone who she thinks can help her.  She wants:

• Advice
• A break
• Support
• Shelter

She doesn’t know or understand the awkward position this possibly puts you in.  The information she provides may or may not be true.  You know that:

• Her supervisor is at his wits end because her performance is so poor
• She was late again three times this week
• The organization doesn’t have a warm and fuzzy culture with flexibility
• There are impending layoffs and her employment is at risk

What are your responsibilities in this situation?  How involved should you be?  How do you protect company interests while being a human being?

Human resources practitioners are not registered psychologists or social workers.  We are not “Mother Theresa”.  For most of us, our employers do not want or expect us to be advocates for the downtrodden, but we are expected to be kind, helpful and looking for the win-win.  We do not have a magic wand.  Therefore suffice to say that there are no clear cut answers about the level of compassion we need to provide in these tough situations, only possible approaches.

Here are some things you can do:

1. To the extent possible, help her find professional help.  Does your benefit plan offer an EAP?  Are there help lines or government services available?  Is counseling a covered benefit?  Keep abreast of the resources available to a person in need and share them freely.  Short lists are better than single resources.  Encourage her to make the call.  That way, you don’t have to give advice or get overly involved.
2. Are there small things you can do?  Can she borrow your office for 20 minutes to get her composure or to make a private call?  Is there some small token you have that you can give to her to show her that you and the Company care?
3. Be clear about what you can and can’t keep confidential and your channel of communication within the organization.  For most employees, the role of HR is unclear, which in many cases leads to the risk that an employee won’t come and see us out of fear or mistrust, even when it is prudent that they do so.
4. Encourage her to be discrete about whom she confides in about the circumstances.  The workplace is full of people who are your frenemies.  Your Company has policies regarding fair treatment but you can’t control everything.   While it has become commonplace for stars to rise out of their personal meltdowns, it is more difficult for the rest of us to do so.   Also a privately-managed issue will likely result in less workplace disruption.
5. Be clear about the conundrum created when personal information like this is shared with someone in HR.  Ask for clarity on the reasons she came to you and what she expects your involvement to be. Be clear about what you can and can’t do for her.
6. With regards to how the personal situation impacts her job, encourage her to speak with her Supervisor and to be open to possible solutions.  Offer to open the discussion with the Supervisor if you feel there may be a risk that the Supervisor may not handle the situation in a manner appropriate to the circumstances.  If it is possible, try to create clarity about the continuing performance expectations and work through strategies to address them.  Try to keep to as much of a third-party approach as possible.
7. Get legal advice as needed.  There are a myriad of potential challenges that could present themselves if down the line she is terminated. It could be construed that you used the knowledge gained in the circumstances inappropriately with undesirable consequences.

Above all, be genuine.  The success of the outcome is in direct relation to your ability to:

• Be compassionate
• Think on your feet
• Keep your head
• See it through

Good luck!

Photo credit iStockphoto

The other day I happened upon the Fast Company article 12 Trends That Will Rule Products In 2013. The article was focused on consumer goods like phones and washing machines, but you know what? The trends listed made sense in the context of the workplace too and here’s why: your employees are consumers. It’s inevitable that their consumer purchasing behavior will shape their attitudes at work as well.

Here are four trends Fast Company listed that have implications for those of us in the human resources and management functions of our companies. These trends are driving employee expectations; a wise organizational leader pays attention to these inclinations and responds accordingly.

Customer-facing employees are your brain and your backbone.  The article states, “The crucial element in any customer experience is still people, no matter how much technology has transformed the landscape.” Do not be seduced by what your company’s latest technology can do. The “gee whiz!” factor gets old fast – for both employees and your organization’s external customers.

Worth is determined by philosophy, not price. Can you say “intense, endless salary negotiations?”  The Fast Company authors ask, “How do you determine a product’s intrinsic worth?” They say that rather than focusing on price, focus on alignment in values. Seems like a no-brainer, right? Then why is it that when the “product” is a talented job candidate, we often get mired in “nickel-and-diming” during the negotiation process? Either an employee will bring a talent set and corresponding values alignment, or s/he won’t. Are you willing to pay for that? If not, quit wasting your time and theirs.

Narrative is a delivery vehicle to make information stick. The Heath brothers made this point with Made to Stick many years ago, but it bears repeating, because, some of us still haven’t figured it out. For example, company policies and procedures are D.U.L.L. but they’re important to efficient business operation. Where’s the “story” behind why you must implement the new policy? If there’s no compelling narrative, maybe you don’t need that policy after all.

Human interaction has never been more precious. “Look for places to act more human.” We’re all fatigued with automated everything. Sure, we love the convenience, but sometimes we just crave an interactive experience with a real person. Like the Discover TV ad that features a customer who is surprised when an actual human answers her call, as leaders and HR managers, we must remember to value the power of a conversation.

Everyone is a specialist. The other day a colleague told me that they were consolidating job functions in the sales division; their sales reps would move from selling three lines of very complex business to eight. That’s insanity. The Fast Company article states “trying to be everything to everyone is a losing proposition.” I agree. People love to “show what they know” and that’s pretty tough when they must “know” everything.

Taking a seemingly unrelated topic like consumer behavior and applying it to workplace issues can help offer insights we might otherwise overlook. As leaders in our respective functions we can glean new insights on bringing out the best in our employees with a slight tweak in perspective.

What say you? How do you see consumer behavior outside the office influencing the way employees act in the workplace?

About the author: For 20+ years, Jennifer V. Miller has been helping professionals “master the people equation” to maximize their personal influence. A former HR generalist and training manager, she now advises executives on how to create positive, productive workplace environments. She is the founder and Managing Partner of SkillSource and blogs at The People Equation. You can connect with Jennifer on Twitter as @JenniferVMiller.

Image credit: leolintang / 123RF Stock Photo

We are all guilty of it at one point or another. We mislabel it as hand holding, coaching, giving directions, leading, etc. In reality there is a world of difference between what we are really doing and all these labels we mask it under. I’m talking about nothing but that hideous spoon-feeding we all do.

Everyday we hear of stories from managers complaining about how over-reliant their employees have become on their managers to solve the tiniest of problems; how no one bothers to research an answer, and worse, as one manager put it, how this ’laziness’ as he termed it, is catching up with whom he thought were the stars on his team. The managers’ agonies are genuine and we do sympathise with them (by we I mean the HR community. After all, of all functions, HR suffers most from this spoon-feeding habit: as an employee, I don’t have to research what benefits I’m entitled for, I will call HR and they will read me that clause in the policy which by the way, is a click of a button away from me on the company portal!).

But being genuine doesn’t take away our responsibility as leaders for allowing this to fester. Let’s admit it, spoon-feeding is our own hands wrong doing. We do it with all the good intentions in the world but a time must come when we must push back if we want to institute a performance culture in our organisations.

For the one or two of you who want to know what sparked the idea of me writing this short posting about this topic, well the HR team literally spent the past 2 weeks answering employees calls and responding to emails of how to complete the employee engagement survey launched earlier last month. Despite the fact that the communication employees received was so clear, and contained a detailed step by step guide, yet no one seemed interested in reading and instead, the easy way out, ring HR, they will read for us!!

So yes, back to my point, for everyone’s sake, let’s please stop the spoon-feeding. And here’s why:

1. As a leader, you want to encourage your employees to find solutions to problems they are facing. You expect them to have explored all possible solutions before knocking on your door with a problem. After all they are fully competent to do so. One leader I know constantly pushes back by asking his team two questions when they come to him with a problem: a- what in your opinion is the solution to this problem? And b- if you were me how would you solve this problem?
2. Embedding the above within the culture of your organization is a perquisite of innovation. One effective approach is to challenge assumptions and stay in question mode. You want to ensure that your employees are exhausting all possibilities, and they are doing this on their own. Your role as a leader on the other hand is to trust and provide them with the right environment and resources. Do that and a new idea is inevitable. You start unearthing the potential in your team, which leads me to the third reason.
3. Stopping the spoon-feeding is an effective approach to identify future leaders. Combined with the right level of empowerment, the stars on the team have an opportunity to discover new ways of doing things, do away with ‘that’s how things were done in the past’ syndrome, and outperform.  Spoon-feeding keeps employees stuck in a rut and breeds mediocrity.
4. Spoon-feeding erodes accountability. There is no ownership, period. You, the leader, get sucked up into solving day-to-day problems. Productivity and performance suffer.

Moral of my posting today is to say ”No” to spoon-feeding if you want an engaged population and you able to add the value a leader should be bringing to the table.

About the author: Hanadi El Sayyed is a Senior Human Resources Business Partner working for Majid Al Futtaim Properties, the market leader in development and management of shopping malls in the Middle East. Based in Dubai she  specialises in strategic workforce planning and development with an emphasis on corporate sustainability and sustainable development. You can reach her on Linkedin or on Twitter as@Hana_ElSayyed.

When I contracted a new EAP vendor, I manufactured a reason to schedule several counseling appointments. Okay, so I admit it. With my crazy life,  it wasn't that hard to find an excuse. When we started our first Health Reimbursement Account, I enrolled even though my husband's plan was cheaper.

Why?

So that I could shop my own HR programs, experience them as a consumer/employee rather than an administrator, catch issues early and speak about our benefits with more credibility. Obviously some benefits, such as short-term disability, workers' comp and life insurance can't really be mystery shopped (because doing so would be fraud) so skip them and focus on sampling your employment application process. Experts like Gerry Crispin as well as family and friends' horror stories condemn the collective candidate experience as pretty dismal.

Every time I tweak my applicant tracking system, I concoct a silly name and apply for a random  job to see how the process feels to an applicant. I encourage all HR pros (and heck, CEO's) to do the same. Just as importantly, occasionally apply for  jobs with other organizations, no matter how happy you are with your employer. It doesn't really matter what you apply for: courtesy clerk, VP of Talent Management, janitor or sales associate. The point is that you experience the different phases of the application process and notice what is awesome and what is annoying as hell. Then you go back to your own organization and  try to incorporate what you liked while eliminating as many nails-on-chalkboard moments as possible.

For example, you may encounter  a site requiring dozens of screens of application data *AND* on top of that, they want you to upload a resume … a document duplicating 90% of the information so incredibly painstakingly inputted for the last 50 minutes …  aargh! And after all that effort, good luck getting any communication at all, even a standard email receipt.

As an HR pro, you don't want top talent being faced with that. Figure out another way to get what you need without inflicting unnecessary and ungainly

processes that prompt people to put their heads through the wall, or worse, abandon the process and go apply somewhere more welcoming.

It's all a balance. This is what works for me. Applicants complete a handful of basic demographic questions. They upload their resume. Then they complete a very short application that is customized by position so that only the most relevant information is requested.  After that, they are prompted to answer several questions that delve into some critical logistics and they answer two questions that speak to the core values of my organization. Additional information, such as the criminal background check required by our licensor, can be obtained later if an interview takes place.

While I continue to struggle with communicating adequately with the scores of entry level, part-time hourly applicants–many of whom might fit a different schedule or future job,  I do make an effort to communicate with candidates, especially post-interview. We're all using technology, so it is easy to send out no thank you letters or emails explaining delays in the decision process. It's sad to say, but if I didn't shop my own ATS and didn't apply for other jobs from time to time, it's possible I might be a little more complacent about how my candidates experience my organization.

HR metrics and measures abound, but sometimes there's no substitute for what we learn from a little personal experience with the programs and processes we inflict on create for others. Thoughts, HR pros?

About the author: Krista Francis, SPHR, is nonprofit HR Director and sometimes Acting Executive Director. She lives outside of Washington DC with her soccer-crazy hubby, two active teenagers, a neurotic cat and the best dog in the world, Rocky, aka Party like a Rockstar. In her loads of free time, she tries to keep her scooter running, tests margaritas for quality control purposes and blogs at aliveHR. You can connect with her on Twitter as @kristafrancis.

photo credit: antwerp

Recently I was in a rented a car with a GPS. For whatever reason, the GPS was off (putting us at least two streets south of where we were at) and so we turned it off and I pulled out a map to figure out where we needed to go.

I hadn't held a map in my hands in a long-time.  It felt good yet slightly disconcerting.  When I was a kid, I always got the front passenger seat which made me the de facto navigator, so on trips I usually ended up with the map.  I was a good map reader, and we were rarely lost.

Being rusty with a paper map, we drove around a little bit to get to our destination.

These days, with GPS, I'm lost a lot.

I'm not blaming the GPS industry; I'm only saying it is an inexact technology that sometimes fails to appreciate certain nuances.  It's existence has caused me somehow to lose touch with my inner map-reading capability and when forced to go back to old school, it took some time to acclimate.

Since that trip, I've been thinking about the value of tactile learning in the workplace. Believe me, my life revolves around a computer and it is an important part about how I interact in the working world, however I think my skills are better because there was a time when I had to figure things out without it.  Two examples come to mind:

1. Back in the early days of my career, I wrote a lot of copy for things like newspaper articles, advertisements, brochure text, etc.  Back then, there was no such thing as Pagemaker and so my layouts were done on a lightboard, using paper strips, an Exacto knife and hot wax. Doing layouts that way was part of getting material “photo ready”.  At that time, I learned a lot about how to make things line up properly without the benefit of kerning software or the justification feature.  I would say that today I have an eye for space because I used to have to spend so much time getting space right in the first place.
2. In my first few years in human resources, I worked in the compensation arena, mostly on developing pay equity plans. This involved determining the proportional value of jobs, and the only resources I had to do “sum of least squares” calculations was graph paper, a ruler, a calculator and a pencil. Sometimes it would take a
   free wood furniture plans

   whole day to figure out calculations which now would take less than 10 seconds on Excel.  Staring at the dots on the paper though helped me to understand compensation patterns and trends. Every once in awhile when I am thinking about design, I go “old school” and do some of the work manually, just to get a better feel for the options.

There are countless articles out there focusing on the value of experiential learning for adults and the workplace. Tactile learning is of significant value to most adults and is a great form of experiential learning. In order to master something, first the learner must experience something directly, e.g. they must have concrete experience and then be able to conceptualize what it means and to look at the options or possibilities. To use my example above, I came to understand compensation trends by physically plotting them, looking at options and then creating a design. I wonder if I would be as good at compensation design today if in reality Excel had always done most of the work for me.

What else in HR has tactile learning value?  So many ideas come to mind, from operating machines on the shop floor and understanding process flow before writing job descriptions to understanding the day-in-the-life of staff before recommending policy changes. But this is just HR, and HR is a small part of most workplace operations.  Think about how much better our employees could be at their jobs if they better understood the old-fashioned concepts and grounding behind their work, which often can only be done by figuring things out manually.

My point is that I feel sometimes like we have lost skills or capabilities simply because we discourage manual learning due to the time involved, and therefore miss out on great opportunities to more broadly apply what can arguably be a deeper skill set.

Photo credit: iStockphoto

About the author: Bonni Titgemeyer is the Managing Director of The Employers’ Choice Inc. She has been in human resources for 20+ years and works in the international HR arena. She is the recipient of the 2012 Toronto Star HR Professional of the Year Award.  You can connect with Bonni on Twitter as @BonniToronto, often at the hashtag #TEPHR.

A few weeks ago, week my constant state of being over committed caught up with me and I fell ill.

My body was telling me to slow down and I fought it with everything I had, but I lost.  The result of what happened was exactly what I needed.

You see, I had an ENTIRE day to myself.  No one at home.  No one at my office door.  No electronic device tempting me to answer it for the next great blog post, tweet, DM or Facebook note.  At first, I didn’t know what to do.  Honestly, I fought an amazing pull to do SOMETHING because that’s what we wired to do. Doing nothing means being lazy, nonchalant or just slacking off.

The reality of this day to myself is that it allowed me to just empty myself out mentally and get reset.  I’ll be honest.  I don’t do this nearly enough.  Like many of my friends, we just keep adding on more and slogging through it because we have an immense capacity (or so we tell ourselves).

When I was better the next day, I was sharp, revived and ready to face things once again.  This time, however, I didn’t do the mad jump into the rush.  I sat back and thought about how the tidal wive of commitments I’ve chosen could very easily come back and jump up to attempt to drown me once again.

So, I thought it was time to get back to what works for me – feelin’ groovy!!

The phenomenal duo of Simon & Garfunkel had many memorable songs, but one of my faves was The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) because the lyrics and the feel from the song give you perspective.  Look at this:

“Slow down, you move too fast.  You got to make the mornin’ last.  Just kickin’ down the cobblestones, Lookin’ for fun and feelin’ groovy. Ba da da da da da da, feelin’ groovy.”

It may seem naive, or even a waste of time, for folks.  That’s a shame.  I know that when I woke up to head back into work and heard this song, I thought let’s try something renewed today.  So, I was kinder to my family, excited to get to work, and geeked to see my friends and co-workers.  I called some of my friends from the “social media space” just to check in and see how they were doing, etc.

The groove hasn’t left and I hope it doesn’t. As you approach your day, your work in HR and life in general, remember – HOW you approach it makes all the difference in the world.

I need to go kick some cobblestones now . . .

After some recent reflection, I am convinced that my childhood has had a huge impact on how I consider various circumstances thrown my way as an HR professional. I can’t help but wonder how many others feel the same way.

A few weeks ago, I was driving to pick up some books for the ILSHRM Leadership Conference at our treasurer’s office. I got the idea of taking pictures of some of the homes I grew up in because it was on my way. I thought I might use them to share with my kids one day.

While doing so, the idea of writing this blog post for Women of HR popped in my head because the memories from seeing the homes brought back visions of similar employee circumstances I have had to deal with in the workplace. Some of these circumstances impacted the employee and their co-workers’ performance while others would just come in and share to get whatever was bothering them off their chest and back to work they went.

My experience has helped me to be a better problem solver and listener with employees dealing with adversity of any kind.

Just the number of homes I took a picture of,  eight not counting the three no longer standing or out of state, tells a story. So many employees deal with instability in their life for a number of reasons. For me, I lived in 11 different homes growing up compared to the stability of my 20-year-old (2 homes) and my 11-year-old (1 home).

How many of our employees bounce from home to home? What impact does that have on their job? Psychologists typically only look at your life between the ages of 0-17 as it relates to the impact the experiences between those years makes on the rest of your life. I have a lot of empathy for instability and so much more that employees go through. For example, as I think back to my childhood, I have a much better understanding for employees dealing with:

• depression
• instability
• alcohol and drug abuse
• emotional and physical abuse
• divorce
• abandonment

All of these personal problems have a huge impact on employee performance, attendance, and quality.I think overall my background has helped me be a better more understanding human resources professional. It affects how I handle things and how I communicate with people.

It’s not just what we learn in books or on-the-job that makes us good solid human resources professionals; it’s also what we are made of. Our early beginnings, where we came from and how we grew up has a lot to do with how we work with and influence others on a day-to-day basis. It can have a significant influence on our performance and ability to connect with employees, managers, owners and other relationships related to our work.

In HR, no one situation is anything like the other and that is what makes this profession so exciting to work in. I say be proud of your humble beginnings because all in all it is who you are and who you are is an outstanding professional who can handle whatever situation that is thrown at you.

One of my favorite motivational posters states,

“If you are not riding the wave of change, you will find yourself beneath it.”

In the world we live  in, change is inevitable and, as HR professionals, we are constantly dealing with it and the effects on our workforce. In my experience I find that people have the same reaction whether the change is positive or negative. More often than not conclusions are formed, rumors are spread and morale takes a hit.

The next time you find yourself communicating change in the workplace, take the following into consideration to ensure transitions go as smoothly as possible.

Communicate the information at the right time. While working at my first job in HR the company announced there would be layoffs and affected employees would be notified right away. Fast forward one month later and nobody had heard another word on the subject. While the company was sorting through everything that comes with a layoff, employees were updating and getting their resumes out and growing more frustrated by the day. Whether they had intended to or not, the company now had a disengaged workforce on their hands.

Wait until you have all pertinent information before making an announcement of that sort, or ensure you do follow up in a time frame consistent to what was conveyed. You may think you are doing the right thing by giving people notice far in advance, but you could just be adding to the anxiety.

Hold follow up meetings as an opportunity for employees to ask questions.No matter how well you communicate the change at hand there will most likely be questions. Employees may be intimidated to ask the question individually, so consider holding a meeting so that they may pose their questions in a group setting. Also, chances are if one person has the question then others do too, and this is an excellent way to keep the workforce from jumping to their own conclusions.

Check in to ensure the changes you made are on track. The news has been communicated, you’ve put any rumors to rest, so now what? Make it a point to check in 30 days, 6 months or one year down the road. Is the change you intended happening as it should? Have employees slipped back to the old way of doing things? Make sure the change is having the desired effect.

Remember, change is inevitable and it’s up to us as HR professionals and leaders to do what we can to make it go as smoothly as possible. What have you done to stay on top of the wave?

Photo credit iStockphoto