Blog

Do I really need HR???

6/7/2016

I get asked this question a lot. I have potential clients call me and demand to know exactly what I do, and why do they even need HR? I am still trying to come up with a witty response to such inquiries.
I don’t know if you need HR. Chances are that you are calling me because you know something is not working, you are just not sure what it is that is not working. 9.5 times out of 10, I also will not know what is wrong just by answering your phone call. This is why we need to talk.

Sadly, there is still a perception of HR being paper creators and pushers. Personnel Department, if you will. When an owner of an organization is hearing from the staff or management team that HR is needed, it is unlikely your people are telling you that they want more paper. Something has broken down along the way, and no one can quite put a finger on it, so HR might be the answer. And it might be, but it might not be.

In an organization that has never had HR before, the needs are going to be different than if there has been a focused attempt at providing the Human Resource function. It is seldom I go into a client that has done NOTHING HR”y”. It might not be anything the Harvard Business Journal is writing about, but for the most part, there are some ad hoc processes and programs in place. Culture has organically been created, there are some attempts at policies, performance management is happening at some level…it just might not be up to our exacting HR standards.

So I don’t know if you need HR…but I would sure like to talk to you about it!

Good to know

9/29/2015

As you may have heard by now, there is an election coming up! And despite your weariness with the phone calls, the idiotic ads and the door to door campaigning, as an employer, you have one more thing to handle. Yes, you do have to let your employees go and vote. And no, you cannot dock their pay. However, as an employer, your obligation is to provide all your employees with 3 consecutive hours off to vote. Given most polls are open at least 12 hours on election day, it is certainly possible to work around this.

Don't risk the $2,000 fine by failing to provide this 3 hour window to your employees. In fact, the $2,000 fine might be preferable to the 3 months of jail time that could be a consequence of interfering with the Canada Elections Act.

And finally...go out and vote yourself...exercise your Constitutional right!

The Ultimate Oops

9/3/2015

This won't be a long blog, but this is too funny to not share...

Read all about here...and remember, do not send nude selfies to ...well, anyone really...and it is probably a good idea to double check, then triple check who you are texting.

Of course, this could have been a very ill advised attempt to woo the poor HR Manager.

The End of the Dreaded Performance Appraisal?

8/26/2015

This has been brewing for awhile and there has been talk for several years among the HR Community as to whether or not the formal Performance Appraisal process is outdated and ineffective. The recent news that GE has done away with a formal process brings this topic back to the surface. HRMOnline has a poll that asks if it is time to scrap Performance Appraisals. I am following the results of that poll closely because I am interested in what HR professionals are thinking. I encourage anyone reading this to click through to the poll and answer the question.

Here is what I think...it depends. Having a formal process tends to force managers into providing feedback on a somewhat regular basis. However, how relevant is the feedback if it is provided 6 months after the fact? Not to mention the administrative burden that comes along with trying to manage this process. Most managers are not excited to stay on top of the review process and need rather a lot of nagging to get it done. Some employees love the process, some dread it, some think it is a waste of time. However, it DOES provide a structured way of providing feedback, and creating documentation for all sorts of go forward action - compensation, advancement, terminations.

Can managers provide timely and relevant feedback outside of a formal review process? Of course they can. Can employees ask for timely and relevant feedback when it is important for them? Of course they can. But this will represent a major shift in traditional thinking for the average organization. For some reason, and I do count myself in this group, I get quite a lot of bizarre comfort in having a paper trail, even if that trail had to be beaten out of the manager, and may not be relevant anymore.

I once heard the best performance review form was a blank piece of paper. And I agree, I love the concept that a manager can sit down with an employee on a regular basis and just talk. Of course, loving my paper as much as I do (I am still a bit old school that way) I would hope that the manager writes something on that paper. Then I would like the employee to write something on that paper. And it needs to be done on regular basis.

Personally, with my clients, I am moving them towards a less formal review process. I still recommend a process of sorts, but I have moved away from the traditional approach. Not all the way, I am not quite GE forward thinking...but I do suspect a number of organizations are getting there when it comes to the review process.

Here is the link again to participate in the poll.

Musings on Recruiting Sources

6/9/2015

Over the years, and it has been years, I have used a number of recruiting sources. I think I may have even posted a job in the newspaper in the late 1990s, early 2000’s. I have definitely made use of most of the online recruiting tools with varying degrees of success. It has always fascinated me how the effectiveness of online tools changes. I remember when Monster.com was the go to recruiting tool, today I had to check to see if it was even being used anymore.

When LinkedIn first came out with their job posting capabilities, I was all over it, and it was excellent. I would inevitably end up hiring someone off of LinkedIn. But over the last year or so, I started to see the price per posting creep up and the quality of candidates creep down…really down. So far down that I had more applicants applying without a resume than those that did. I may be a bit out of touch with how kids these days are doing it, but I have to think that applying for a job with a resume is still the generally accepted practice. I did receive a lot of resumes from the Middle East and Asia so those applicants are still using the age old practice of applying to a job with a resume. And before anyone points out that people use their LinkedIn profiles as their resumes, I would counter with...If only that were the case. The average LinkedIn job searcher is not using their profile to the full advantage.

My new recruiting source is Indeed.com. I have had a lot of luck so far with this approach and I have yet to pay for a posting. I have been poking around to see what they are offering as a recruiting solution, and as of right now, I am not willing to pay for any of it. This may change.

The job seekers are likely the ones who force the change, not those of us on the recruiting or HR side of things. I hate to admit it but we are hardly on the cutting edge of technology. Believe me, that was hard for me to admit but I have teenagers who disabuse of the notion that I am in any way hip and happening when it comes to technology. I am slowly beginning to see their point, sadly.

So far, Indeed seems to have it right…post a job, receive resumes. They are keeping it simple whereas every other recruiting source has managed to overly complicate this very basic first step. Of course, I will be about 6 months behind when the next effective source kicks in…but I am interested to see if this keep it simple approach will hold for Indeed.

And the Ignorant Buffoons Continue To Abound

5/20/2015

Here is another example of how people just don't get it.

I will sum up for those who do not want to read the whole thing…a female comedian was hired for a corporate gig, a BUSINESS event. She was heckled with sexual remarks from some ignorant pig in the audience. As she put it, if she had been in a comedy club, it may have been different and she would have handled it differently. However, this was a corporate gig, and her instructions were no dirty, or sex laden jokes. Yet, somehow, this cement head in the audience decided it was okay to go on about having sex with her in front of her audience.

Sigh…seriously…how can we still be dealing with this in this day and age?

There is a wide spread media campaign going on about sexual harassment and it is helping highlight the issue. This can only be a good thing, but sometimes it feels like an uphill battle. I think there are more women who are not saying anything than those who are brave enough to come forward. Because I will tell you, it takes guts to do what this comedian, Jen Grant ,did. There will be those people saying she gets up and makes jokes for a living so it comes with the territory…it does NOT come with the territory. Explain to me how choosing to make people laugh for a living should result in people shouting out to you about how they are going to have their way with you, have sex with you - and by the way, unwanted sex...yeah that is rape - so let's think again about what transpired here. There will be other people saying she should have been stronger, less “sensitive” to what happened, like she should just suck it up, put on her big girl panties and let some jackass shout at her about what he would like to do to her.

My faith in the human race shatters a little bit more when I see or hear comments like that. So bravo to Jen Grant, and Shauna Hunt and the untold numbers of other women and men who have come forward and shed the light on this. And to the other members of the audience who stood up to this ignoramus at the event, bravo to you too…every time someone has the courage to stand up to sexual harassment in any of its insidious forms, we take a tiny step closer to making all workplaces a safer place to work.

The Bigger Issue behind the HydroOne Firing...

5/13/2015

The WWW is aflame with the recent firing of a HydroOne employee who showed himself to be a complete ass while on camera. For those of you who have not already seen or heard about the story, here is the link.

I have watched the video and read a few opinion pieces regarding this incident. Some are claiming that HydroOne got themselves a bunch of positive free publicity for firing this individual. Some feel that the punishment was too severe, others feel it was just about perfect.

I am not going to talk about whether or not this act of extremely poor judgement warranted public shaming and loss of a job but I am doing a deep dive into the issue of sexual harassment. How is it even possible in this day and age that women are going into their place of work, in this case a soccer game to do a legitimate job of reporting, and get harassed to this extent? It is vile. I actually am (almost) at a loss for words.

All employers have a duty to ensure that their employees are safe from harassment, sexual or otherwise. So my question is what the hell were CityTV and other networks doing about this issue? Clearly it is not a new phenomenon and these women reporters have been dealing with this for rather too long (well, dealing with it at ALL is entirely unacceptable). When did management know about this level of harassment and what did they do to protect their employees?

And what are all of these employers going to do about this now?

It is my blog and I will rant if I want to...

5/6/2015

Once again…as I do every year, I just finished filling out my Member Satisfaction survey for the HRPAO. For those not in the HR profession in Ontario, this is the Human Resources Professional Association of Ontario. I do not fill in this survey with happy, well done Association platitudes. Nope, every year, I complain about the same things. And yet, every year, shortly after filling out the survey and expressing my disappointment in the lack of support, the onerous professional development requirements, the lack of support for members…I reach into my wallet, grab my credit card and renew my membership for another year.

Every year, I swear…this will be the last year I will renew…I get no value out of the Association. And every year, I renew. Every.Single.Year. This year I will do so for the express purpose of saving hundreds of dollars on my Good Life membership.

Back in the day, when I was bright eyed and ambitious and eager to have letters after my name, I embraced the designation. I had the prerequisites; the university degree, the work experience, and so I studied hard, during a pre term labour scare in the hospital, I might add. After all this prep, and days before I went into labour for real, I sat in the exam room and wrote my exams. And I got my letters. I was proud. I had my employer print up new cards, it was an exciting and proud moment.

At some point, the HRPAO determined that one did not need a university degree and loosened the requirements to get the letters. This undermined the process that I and many others went through. Apparently I have different letters now…I am not entirely clear on why, but now I have to change my business cards again.

Every so often, I go on the website and think dear God, they have taken this concept of supporting HR professionals in Ontario and made it unnecessarily complicated and confusing. I think it is time to get back to basics with this Association, but I am not sure anyone knows what that is anymore.

Favoritism...A sound business decision or sheer stupidity?

4/27/2015

The CBC report on the Jian Ghomesi affair has come out. And d'uh, they have identified that they handled it incorrectly and this issue of favoritism is now front page news. Everyone is weighing in on it, and now I shall as well.

Favoritism is everywhere. And it is unlikely to go away, well, not unlikely, it is NOT going to go away. We display favoritism with most of our decisions, whether it be choosing Granny Smiths over McIntosh apples or deciding to ignore bad behavior from a favourite employee when we may have terminated a less favoured employee over the same behavior.

Some would argue that the favoritism is a business decision that CBC employed, and let’s face it, it served them well, at least until it blew up in their face, but really...how much has CBC really suffered? It is not like they are a private company, and we can show our displeasure through our spending habits. A few people have lost their jobs, so I suppose that is a good message. Ghomesi was a very popular figure for the CBC, and yes, maybe they made a conscious decision to look the other way. However, there are far better ways to reward a favoured employee without allowing the individual to circumvent common decency and break laws.

Most of us are not running high profile, national and international organizations, but we are dealing with favoritism. We are humans; we have favourites. Just because you are a manager or an executive, you do not suddenly become a blank slate with no feelings or deeply held perceptions about what you like and do not like. And what happens when someone who is a favourite becomes more of a liability than an asset?

I am not saying anything new or exciting here, just weighing in on the issue. We cannot eradicate favoritism but we can manage it.

Weighing in on PS Sick Leave debate

4/22/2015

Those who want to get a rise out of me know that they can do this with a few well placed comments about unions and the Public Service. So it will come as no surprise that I am finally compelled to weigh in on this issue.

Under Employment Standards, employees are entitled to sick leave…UNPAID sick leave. In fact, in many industries, paid sick leave is unheard of. Banked sick leave is a completely alien concept to most of us. I do suggest to my clients that they provide some form of paid sick leave, it does no good to have employees coming in and spreading illness around because they can’t afford to take a day off, but to have it banked, and treated as some sort of untouchable right is entitlement of the highest form.

The Tories have suggested a superior option to banked sick leave. They are suggesting a Short Term Disability Plan be implemented in lieu of having banked sick leave. To be clear, they are still offering the equivalent of 6 paid sick leave days, but they cannot be banked.

By offering a STD plan, every employee is eligible for the benefit should they qualify, regardless of length of service. This allows for the less senior members of the public service to have access to a fantastic benefit. This group of employees would greatly benefit from this change.

It saves money…always a good thing, given it is our tax dollars funding any of these plans.

The onus of covering the employees who are on disability presumably will be pushed to the insurance companies who are providing the disability coverage. The onus to do due diligence on the validity of any such claims would also be pushed onto the insurance company. I am making an assumption that an outside party would be administering and providing the disability benefit. Having worked in organizations where management and the union need to argue about the validity of the sick leave taken by an employee makes it crystal clear to me that neither of these parties should be involved in such discussions. And personally, as an employee, I would rather have some faceless entity at an insurance company reviewing my medical records and talking to my doctor than anyone remotely associated with the organization I am working for.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I strongly believe putting in an STD plan is the best for all involved – except maybe those long term employees who were hoping to retire a little earlier by cashing out their accumulated sick leave.