Sabrina Baker, PHR is the owner of Acacia HR Solutions a human resource consulting and recruiting firm. She specializes in the four main developmental stages of the employee life cycle: recruiting, training, succession and outplacement. You can connect with her on Twitter and Linkedin.
When leaders need to hire, they first look at a resume. When leaders need to assign work, they do so based on skill set and past performance. When leaders promote, they consider potential leadership skills.
In each of these situations, leaders forget one very important thing.
Of course, we had to start the year with a goals/resolution type post. Are you even a blogger if you don’t?
There are several different classifications of employees and identifying an employee incorrectly can have major repercussions. Seasonal employees and temporary employees may seem as one in the same, but in fact, there are differences.
Clearly, I am a bit proponent of training and development. Particularly when it comes to leadership development. I fully believe the more leaders are given development opportunities, the better the organization overall.
I will fight anyone to the death who feels differently.
The new year brings many people beginning their search for a new career. The field of HR is not immune to that. I receive more networking requests from HR practitioners at the start of a new year than any other time. Most of them reach out because they are on the hunt for something new and wonder if I can help.
As sometimes does, life has happened to me over the last few weeks and I had to back out of attending SHRM17. Personal and work commitments combined with a pretty brutal travel schedule over the last few months have made it clear that I need to slow down a bit. Unfortunately, SHRM was one of those things that had to take a back seat this year. It was a tough decision, but the right one for me in the is moment.
“We spend so much time and talent finding the right person, why not spend as much effort on keeping them?” This is the line that stuck with me the most during my interview with Amy Hirsh Robinson. Her session, The First 90 Days Will Make Or Break Your New Hire, will be presented at the SHRM Annual Conference in New Orleans.
I could not agree more.
If you have followed this blog for any amount of time you know that one topic I am passionate about is communication. I’ve written about it on numerous occasions, my most popular post being this one all about communication. I speak on it and even did my first DisruptHR talk about it.
Below is an actual conversation held with a business leader. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Me (answering phone): Hi Dave,
Dave: Hey I was wondering if you knew what Jerry (another leader) had decided to do about Tom (matrix employee who is having disciplinary issues).
I’ve been using this tag line of “small business who think big” for just under a year now. I took some time last year to really understand my target audience and focus my work and thought that best defines the clients I want to work with. It seems to be resonating because when potential clients reach out, they often mention how they really like that line and thought it fit them well.
And then they ask me what it means.
Since officially starting my business in 2011, I set out to be a voice for small business HR. When I say small business HR, I’m not necessarily talking about HR Departments of One. I do include them in this group; but, primarily, I’m focusing even smaller, as in 125 employees or less. Often these businesses do not have one dedicated HR person. They have an Office Manager or CFO handling their HR along with many other tasks.
I’m doing something I never do. Seriously. In nearly 10 years of attending the annual SHRM conference pretty regularly, I have never done this before.
Never.
As of the writing of this post, I have actually taken a little time to review the session descriptions for SHRM16 and have earmarked a few I want to attend.
I’m planning ahead.
In January, I participated in the first DisruptHR Orange County event. If you aren’t familiar with DisruptHR, it is a Ted-esque style event with speakers in the HR/Recruiting world speaking for five minutes with 20 slides that automatically advance every 15 seconds. For even the most seasoned of speakers it’s a bit nerve-racking. After much shuffling of speakers, I was asked to close out the night.
If you think about things that are easier said than done, accepting failure has to be towards the top of that list. We all do it. In our hearts and minds we know it isn’t the end of the world. We know that some of the best things have been born out of repeated failures.
And yet…
When it happens to us we want to crawl in bed, hide under the covers and never come out again.
Failure can be so defeating.
Many years ago when I was the Director of HR for a global company, I inherited a Human Resource Manager who was, to put it mildly, the oddest person I had ever met. I’m not sure I can even describe her. She would say strange things, write even stranger emails and literally made every person she ever encountered scratch their heads as they walked away.
