Happy New Year...

...almost, anyway.

December has been an incredibly busy month for me, including a trip home to surprise my parents, which was a lot of fun, but consequently, my poor blog has been a bit neglected. Apologies to all.

It's just about the new year, which means it's time for hiring to ramp back up again (I hope) and we'll all get to see what the new year brings with it. In the meantime, I wanted to talk briefly about social media.

How many of you have a focus on social media within your company? Who looks after your social media presence? Is that a twitter feed, a facebook page, or something different, and what do you do with it?

Me, I think social media is incredibly important for any organization. I have a twitter feed that I update several times a day, and scan for interesting conversations or articles related to the practice of HR. I also have seen several complaints about customer service from various organizations, and you can clearly see who monitors social media sites for mentions of their organization and who does not. The most impressive organizations monitor and respond to queries or concerns regarding their services, and those that resolve issues that they see posted about on social media sites manage to get some devoted converts.

Other organizations who don't monitor or don't have an active presence (and sorry, a facebook page you created but never check or a twitter feed with all of 40 advertising-related tweets over the past two years doesn't really count, and may be worse than nothing) are, in my opinion, falling behind. Not just in terms of brand presence, either- social media, in one form or another, seems to be here to stay, and it is increasingly an effective method for sourcing job candidates.

So basically, if you aren't on there yet- why not?

Change and Complaining

If you've ever been in a position to spearhead or support major changes in your workplace, you'll have listened to a lot of complaints. We all know that change isn't easy, and we all know that change, even welcome change, often inspires comments and concerns. So how do you deal with those? How do you address these complaints?

First off, it is normal to complain about change. It's a truism out there in the business world that people hate change; I'm not convinced that it's true, but it's definitely normal to complain about it. It's also very important that you listen to the complaints.

Here's the thing. A complaint is one of the quickest ways to get feedback on your new changes- if you listen properly. Remember that the complaint is not necessarily telling you that your beloved new program or whatever is bad or wrong- the complaint is telling you about the problems other people are having with your changes. Don't take it personally, and don't think that you have to be right- if your first reaction to the complaint is to say, "yes, but..."make sure you stop yourself there! Look at the complaint again. What is it really about? Don't react as if the intention of the complainer is simply to be negative- he or she is trying to discuss an issue, and you need to take it seriously and react appropriately. Don't be defensive, and make sure you ask if there are any other issues you need to here about- this is the best time to get real, honest feedback about your changes! Once you have the lowdown on the issues, then you can try and come up with a solution, but if you're not listening, it ain't gonna happen.

I've been fortunate enough to see my current employer bring in some large scale changes in the past year. While I firmly believe that the changes are for the better, there has been a lot of resistance overall, and it's important to take that seriously. After all, when head office is implementing a total change in strategy and approach for jobs nobody there actually does, you have to expect that there will be some important messages in the feedback that you get from your staff who are working these positions. So bring it on, and encourage complaining.

The Job Hunt

I once again have to apologize for my lack of recent posts. Life's been fairly busy- for instance, outside of my usual work week, I had four interviews last week. It's been an interesting process. I have come into these interviews with a more critical eye, of course, after having learned so much about interviews and conducting my own. You can learn quite a bit based on the interviewer. I had the opportunity last week to interview with one of my targeted companies. They have an award-winning company culture, and working with the director of HR here in Calgary would be an exceptional opportunity.

Haven't heard back about that one yet. I think it would be a tremendous opportunity for both of us. I would be able to learn from one of the best about building excellent corporate cultures, and I could bring all of my considerable effort and abilities to support and build the success of the HR department and the company. I have a lot of knowledge, and a tremendous amount of eagerness to bring to the right role. I haven't found that right fit yet, and I know that it will be a long haul, because my experience is unconventional. So far I seem to be ending up as a lot of people's second choice, but as of yet, I haven't really missed out on an opportunity that I really wanted. I'm hoping that the best is yet to come, and I need to find that right fit, where I can bring all of my talent and abilities and really sink my teeth into a role.

Ultimately, I feel that the best approach for HR is to act in a customer service capacity. So that's been a focus of mine in my interviews, and I am looking for a role where I can fit in with the culture of HR in that way. There was one interview a while back where the interviewer, in explaining the format of the interview, explained what behavioral interviewing is and asked if I understood. While I was quick to assure the interviewer that I was familiar with the concept, it made me wonder what kind of candidates they've been seeing. Shouldn't anyone with any experience in HR and a moderately recent education be familiar with it?

The biggest problem that I am running into in the job hunt is in the area of experience. Some interviews consider me overqualified based primarily on my history of policy development, where others consider me underqualified because of my lack of experience in an HR department. So, I'm still looking for the right fit, overall. But I have hope that I will find the right fit for me soon.

What side is HR on, anyway?

As an HR professional, where do you place yourself, on the side of the employee or the employer? I know HR is mostly inclined to stay neutral, but that's not always possible. So where do you generally align yourself?

In any company, the job of the employee is to maximize value for the organization. HR is certainly no exception to that rule. However, how you go about generating that value differs. Obviously, circumstances must be judged individually, but on the whole, I would argue that the best way to add value is by generally operating on the side of the employee. I would argue that good HR errs on the side of the employee because that attitude will be perceptible to the employee, and help keep him or her engaged and productive. I would also argue that this is particularly sound policy here in Canada, where labour law as a whole tends to favour the employee anyway. This does not mean flouting policy in favour of every employee or bending the rules, but rather means navigating between the often conflicting demands of the employee and employer, and doing your best to fundamental equitable solution that works for everybody. Good policy should have some flexibility to it anyway, as unforeseen circumstances often arise.

What do you think?

Stress in the Workplace

I think most organizations these days at least pay lip service to the idea that stress at work is bad for productivity, but my question is, does that change anything?

A certain amount of stress at work is probably inevitable- one way or another, you are getting paid to perform, and there is a certain amount of stress involved in that. But what about other stressors, beyond the usual? Does your workplace walk the walk when it comes to stress reduction, and if so, what does that look like?

I've mostly experienced stress in my workplace due to staffing shortages. At one point, our normally eight person team with two managers was down to four and one. The one remaining manager was practically living on ibuprofen and tums, and the rest of us were doggedly trying to cover the basics before we burned out completely. Anyone who was working in Alberta in 2007 likely experienced something similar, but I think the worst part for everyone, and certainly for the manager, was the lack of corporate support. At a time when we were all running as hard as we could to stay in place, we were being told that our numbers were dropping and we needed to up them.

We were stressed, miserable, and being told everything we did wasn't good enough. It did nothing to improve our numbers that's for sure.

What have your experiences with stress been like?

HR And Customer Service

As I mentioned in my last post, computer time is in high demand at the moment, so this post is actually being composed via my Android smartphone's blogger app. Typos and typing speed are both an issue, and I have no idea if coding HTML works at all, so we'll see how things go.

I wanted to talk about HR and customer service. As those of you who follow this blog may know, my background is in retail and customer service. This background combined with my undergraduate work in anthropology concentrated a real interest in people. Of course, any customer service worker can tell you it ain't all it's cracked up to be, but.ultimately I enjoy helping people. It's also really obvious to the average frontline customer service employee that without them, your company goes nowhere. They represent your brand to the public everyday; good or bad, they are your branding in action. HR is as dependent on these frontline staff for our jobs as the salesperson is on his or her clients. Looking at other employees as your customers creates a service mentality on the part of HR is important. As much as the HR department is the representative of your organization's policies, doing your best to create an employee-centric environment, and provide the best service you can will increase employee satisfaction in the same way that good service increases customer satisfaction and contributes to organizational success.
I don't have any research to back this up, particularly while posting from my phone. This is just an opinion, because to me it seems like common sense. Agree? Disagree?

General Musings

First off, an apology for my lack of posting lately. Hubby is fully into his new program at school, and we are discovering the complications that come along with only owning one computer. A new laptop will be joining us shortly, and then I should have a little less competition for computer time, and will hopefully be posting a little more often again.

The job hunt continues for me, though it's been interesting in my current position as of late as well. It seems that the economy is heating back up here, and I'm interested to see what happens with corporate recruiting strategies as a result. The calgary area regional manager had scheduled six interviews for entry-level roles here yesterday, and only one candidate actually showed up to the interview, so it's starting to feel like 2007 all over again. Recessionary recruitment and compensation strategies are not going to cut it anymore, and some rethinking needs to start taking place again, I suspect.

My sister-in-law, who is 22, was talking at dinner the other day about the economy and job hunting. She grew up out here in Alberta, and the past couple of years was apparently a very new experience for her. Until about 2008, she was pretty accustomed to walking in the door with her resume and getting hired on the spot. This past summer, she was unemployed and job-hunting, and really struggled to find work for the first time in her career to date. She starting working part-time at 14, and never had any issues finding the kind of entry-level positions open to students, waitressing, etc. until recently. Apparently it was a bit of a schock to the system.

There's an economic indicator whose source escapes me at the moment that talks about the inverse correlation between the strength of the economy and the hotness of the waitresses in New York City. The Hot Waitress Index is suggested as a leading index of economic strength. Maybe I just don't eat out enough to notice it here in Calgary, but I am aware of one restaurant that uses the legally at best ill-advised hiring practice of requiring headshots from all prospective employees, and another high-end place that apparently makes it a practice of only hiring male waiters in their 30s. If the economy is really heating up here again, can we expect to see this change?