At Motorola, Inc., designers, engineers, and manufacturing experts are linked in a single production function that spans Chicago, Frankfurt, Singapore, and Beijing. This work takes advantage of the most qualified talent in the world and continues literally around the clock. In terms of innovation and accelerated speed-to-market, the old ways of working simply cannot compete.
Archive
November 2011
1. A strategy from Hemingway
The Hemingway Bridge
In order to avoid starting a new day with a cold, blank piece of paper, Ernest Hemingway ended his day by writing the first paragraph of a new chapter. During the evening, he considered where the paragraph might go. In the morning, he was ready to go.
Tomorrow’s great start begins today. End today by starting tomorrow.
2. Sleep on it
Practices by award-winning companies influenced by recession and aided by technology; special focus on meeting military families' needs
Fueled by technology and the recession, leading companies are focusing on their employees' measurable work results rather than face time in the office, according to the newly released 2012 Guide to Bold New Ideas for Making Work Work.
If you have read anything about leadership in the last 10 years, the case for leadership at all levels of an organization is clear. Executives, managers, and employees must all use personal leadership skills in their various functions and departments to accomplish goals and build relationships along the way. Curiously, though, we are hesitant to widely embrace the notion of global leadership.
Research finds ties between workplace flexibility and positive business results
Workplace flexibility programs benefit employers of all sizes and industries, resulting in increased employee job satisfaction, lower turnover and lower insurance costs, according to a new report, Workplace Flexibility in the United States: A Status Report.
The growth of mobile technology is simply staggering. According to mobiThinking, there are 5.3 billion mobile subscribers (that translates to 77% of the world's population.) By 2014, it's expected that mobile will overtake the PC as the most popular way to access the web. People are using mobile technologies for commerce, entertainment, and productivity.

How would you like to keep track of trending topics within your distributed workforce at any given moment in time? This valuable tool would give the chief human resource officer the ability to apprise the CEO of internal workforce trends. Important workforce and operational decisions could be made quickly by taking advantage of this Internet technology.
The Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) anomalous and vague requirements are forcing employers to impose precautionary workplace policies that are overly restrictive and out of step with modern work habits, according to a Nov. 3, 2011, report based on a survey conducted by the HR Policy Association.
The survey, to which 155 HR chiefs responded, found that companies implemented a number of restrictions on nonexempt employees because of the law, such as restrictions on:
The workplace lunch break isn’t much of a break for more than one-third of workers, according to a new survey that suggests that performance and productivity pressures are prompting those employees to eat at their desk.
The findings are from an online poll from Right Management, a subsidiary of Manpower Group, of 750 North American workers conducted in July and August 2011.
I work very hard at what I do with every client, presentation, and article I write. Some may call me an overachiever. I work long hours, solve complex problems and do it all with a passion and smile most days. I love what I d0, but not everyone loves me back.
Hate is a very strong word. It’s an emotion, a feeling. Tied very closely to love and lust. So why do organizations, leaders, and co-workers hate overachievers?
An HR Bartender reader has asked this question:
As an HR professional, I have the opportunity for a promotion to HR Manager. In your opinion, would going for a Master’s degree or getting PHR certified be more beneficial for my career?
As a loud and proud advocate for diversity and inclusion, I am supposed to be all about harmony right? Well, I am not. Harmony scares me.
At the core of the definition of harmony is:
a consistent, orderly, or pleasing arrangement of parts; congruity
This is part one of a series of SHRM Poll findings on how the economic recession is impacting employers in the U.S. In the current labor market, over one-half (52%) of employers reported difficulty recruiting for specific jobs that are open in their organization. This research examines what types of basic knowledge and applied skill gaps employers are experiencing with job applicants, as well as which job categories have been difficult to fill.
Like most developed countries, the U.S. faces a major demographic challenge. This year, the oldest of nearly 80 million baby boomers turn 65. According to the Pew Research Center, about 10,000 Americans reach that milestone every day.
Most organizations can’t afford to suddenly lose such a reservoir of work experience and seasoned judgment. And that maturity and judgment is of particular value in forging collaborative teams within a workforce that now includes four and soon five generations.
Flexible work policies are an economic imperative for American families as well as companies, said Tina Tchen, executive director of the White House Council on Women and Girls.
“It’s not a perk. It’s not a corporate giveaway. It’s a hard-core economic, competitive, bottom-line issue that’s important for all workers up and down the wage scale,” Tchen told several hundred HR professionals gathered in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 9, 2011, for the Work-Life Focus: 2012 and Beyond conference, sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management and the Families and Work Institute.
As the global economy recovers from the worst recession in decades, low employee engagement has hit epidemic proportions, according to Kevin Kruse, president and founder of Krū Research and co-author of the book We: How to Increase Performance and Profits Through Full Engagement (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2011).
During a July 20, 2011, webcast sponsored by Human Capital Media, Kruse told the audience that most employers “face an employee engagement crisis” and that the challenge of re-engaging workers is falling squarely on the shoulders of HR professionals.
Note: This series is based on the paper My Generation.
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. - George Orwell
“When you are the top person in your profession, even if you do everything right, you can have a bad day that brings it all down,” said Dr. Jack Stark, a psychologist who has counseled professional athletes and worked with Fortune 500 company leaders.
Employers need to step up and rally around the nation’s military community by enhancing efforts to attract, recruit, support and retain veterans and their families in a proactive manner so all can better meet their responsibilities at home and at work.
Employers want to tap into the technical and communication skills and leadership abilities of returning veterans, according to a survey conducted for CareerBuilder and released on the eve of Veterans Day 2011.
The findings are from a survey conducted in August and September 2011 with 2,874 full-time U.S. hiring managers and HR professionals in the public and private sectors. Twenty percent said they are recruiting U.S. veterans to work for their organizations.
I’m captivated by infographics. They, in my mind are the preferred alternative to boring reports and bullet-filled craptastic powerpoint presentations. For me an infographic is a great way to explain a point of view or organize a group of interesting facts and data points designed to please the eye. Kind of like how social media is the new alternative to email.
Why are some employees so devoted while others seem to have “checked out”? This is a question the Accenture Institute for High Performance sought to answer in What Executives Really Need to Know About Employee Engagement, a study published in June 2011.
Accenture surveyed 1,367 employees at various large, U.S.-based organizations to define four levels of engagement:
What makes people happy? Many people, including HR professionals, spend their lives trying to find the answer.
But their brains play tricks on them when they try to imagine what the future holds, said Harvard University psychology professor Dan Gilbert, who gave the closing address Nov. 10, 2011, at the Work-Life Focus: 2012 and Beyond conference held in Washington, D.C.
Rear Admiral Mike Shatynski of the Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, discusses the future of veterans in the workforce and how their experiences, training, and leadership abilities will empower them as a generation.
Last week’s blog post bemoaned the lack of strategic discipline in today’s world of business. I posed three simple strategic questions that on the surface appear easy to answer.
Supervisors find creative ways to engage remote employees
What’s the biggest obstacle to telework? It’s not technology.
It’s management.
So some human resource professionals say they’ve begun to tie management acceptance of telework directly to managers’ performance evaluations and pay. Having managers telework has helped as well.
I have shared these ideas before. They are worth repeating.
You don’t need a title to lead. Titles don’t earn followers. You earn followership based on your own ability to contribute value to the process, people and performance.
You don’t need permission to influence. You impact others and initiate change through action.
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king punished by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. No matter what he did, Sisyphus could not get to the top of the hill.
We can all feel Sisyphus’ pain as HR and other executives. We are constantly rolling up against regulatory boulders, plaintiffs’ lawyers and labor unions marketed by the NLRB.
But Sisyphus had it easy in one respect. He did not have to worry about the FLSA.
We are in the middle of a wage and hour revolution. More specifically:
NEW ORLEANS—General Electric’s Junior Officer Leadership Program (JOLP) is a tool for attracting and integrating one of the largest overlooked sources of talent—military service professionals transitioning into civilian careers, according to Susan Schieren.
While some employers fear the challenges of hiring employees with post-traumatic stress disorder, simple accommodations can improve the chance of success.
During his combat tour in Iraq, Richard Martin was nearly killed by a rocket that exploded 20 feet away. The guy in front of him wasn’t so lucky.
“The rocket hit the ground in front of me, and it blew off both of his legs,” Martin recalls.
Whole Foods Employees Vote for New Hires
Every new hire at a Whole Foods store is subject to a peer-based selection process. The newbie is provisionally assigned to a team, for example in bakery or produce, pending a 4-week trial and a team vote. After the trial period, that team votes on the newbie’s suitability and ultimately his or her fate. A two-thirds majority vote is needed to achieve a full-time slot on the team.
Pret a Manger Employees Vote Too
By Shirley Davis and Lisa Horn, Co-Project Directors, SHRM’s Workplace Flexibility Initiative
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) was invited, along with nearly 30 private-sector companies, to Capitol Hill recently to discuss the challenges employers face in finding and hiring returning U.S. military personnel for civilian jobs.
The meeting was a three-hour Veterans Employment Summit that the House of Representatives Committee on Veterans’ Affairs hosted in September 2011.
U.S. starting salaries for white collar professionals will increase an average of 3.4 percent in 2012, according to a forecast by staffing firm Robert Half International. Technology positions are projected to see the largest gains among all fields researched, with an anticipated 4.5 percent increase in base compensation. Accounting and finance professionals can expect starting salaries to rise an average of 3.5 percent, according to the research.
SHRM’s Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) report tracks trends in the labor market on a monthly basis, including hiring projections released one month ahead of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Situation report. Exclusive metrics also include new-hire compensation trends and recruiting difficulty, as well as job vacancies in exempt and nonexempt employment.
The Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) Report expects that job growth will be limited in November, as job creation slows and job cuts rise in both the manufacturing and service sectors.
One-third of U.S. chief financial officers (CFOs) say remote work arrangements—such as telecommuting and working from satellite offices—have increased at their companies in the prior three years, according to a survey by staffing services firm Accountemps.
The 2011 survey drew on telephone interviews with 1,400 CFOs across the U.S.
Executive director of the White House Council on Women and Girls to speak; new conference by SHRM and FWI to share best practices and research on workplace flexibility
The internet age is a scary place in a lot of ways related to talent, but I'll focus on one today - employee rants that are mistakenly posted to public sources or leaked out of a company and broadcast globally.
This survey examines hiring and recruiting trends across a six-month spectrum. The results for the fourth quarter of 2011 show that while jobs are being created at some companies, the pace will slacken as the end of the year approaches, and some employers are still struggling to find workers with skills that match their available positions.
After almost 36 years, she’s still loving it.
Patricia Sowell Harris, chief global diversity officer for McDonald’s Corp., started working at the global foodservice retailer’s headquarters as an administrative assistant in the legal department. After stints as an assistant to the president of the company, as a compensation analyst and as an HR generalist, she was asked to join the company’s affirmative action department.