SHRM Blog

Rousing the Remarkable: 9 Ways to Influence Extraordinary Actions (Even in Your Absence)

Sheila from the Radisson Indianapolis Airport Hotel

It was 3 a.m. when I called the front desk at the Radisson Indianapolis Hotel to beg for ointment for a wound. Sheila answered the phone but had nothing to offer, “I’m sorry sweetie. We only have Band-Aids down here.” Petulantly, I declared that I would have to find a 24-hour pharmacy.

Quickly recognizing my excruciating pain, Sheila said, “Let me call the hotel across the street and see if they have anything.” She phoned me right back and said, “Good news! They have ointment. I’m going to get it...

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Hold People Accountable -- Start With You

I was winding down our event. Sales Training with a team of quality sellers working for an organization that is profitable, growing and stealing market share from their competition. This team was Switched On and pushing toward the next level of breakthrough performance.

I believe the most important part of a training event is what happens next. A TAN Plan helps. TAN is an acronym that stands for Take Action Now.

The assignment: Write down 3 things you will take action on in the next 100 days that will have high impact post meeting....

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SHRM: April LINE Report

According to the SHRM Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) Report for April 2012, the rate of job growth will fall short of levels reached last year, yet hiring in the manufacturing and service sectors will continue in April.  

                April will be another strong month for manufacturing hiring in April. While 43.3 percent of manufacturers will add positions in April, only 20.1 percent of service sector companies will hire employees. Although both industries are hiring, compared to April 2011, the hiring index will fall in April...

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#NEXTCHAT RECAP: Is HR Ready for the C-Suite?

The time has come for HR to occupy a seat at the C-Suite table. Who better to advise and influence the CEO on corporate culture? Who better to recommend solutions regarding organizational health and workforce issues? Who better to identify talent from both a functional and cultural perspective? Who better to promote the CEO's vision and credo?

But is HR ready?

On April 4, #NextChat invited John Bell (@JohnRichardBell), former CEO of coffee/confectioner Jacobs Suchard, (now a part of Kraft) to lead the discussion. As a strategy consultant, he has counseled some of the world's most...

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In Strategic Workforce Planning, Questions More Important than Answers

Relax. You don’t have to have all the answers. You just need to know the right questions to ask. And, sometimes, that’s where the real challenge lies.

When it comes to working with senior business leaders on strategic workforce planning, what matters most is the conversation, not the HR professional’s ability to quote data, reports and metrics, said experts on a recent Conference Board webinar.

Mary Young, principal researcher, human capital, and Stacy Chapman, senior fellow in human capital management, told webinar listeners that HR’s role in the strategic workforce planning process is to ask the questions...

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How to Drop Dead at the Office

Work habits of leaders tend to filter down through the troops. That is why it is important for leaders to develop a productive and positive work style. Motivated to please their boss, employees may unconsciously emulate their leader’s positive and negative work styles. Unfortunately, I have met leaders who make you think they would rather work, work, work and eventually drop dead at their desk rather than in the loving arms of their spouse or close family member.

To save your life and break the allure of the Type A Alpha work style, I have compiled a list of...

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Could the CFO Get HR A Seat at the Table?

There was a lot of great conversation happening at TLNT Transform in its inaugural year. There was one conversation, however, which stood out to me as being of particular importance. In a breakout session moderated by John Hollon, Nick Araco--co-founder and CEO of The CFO Alliance--discussed a very interesting trend. In the post-recession C-suite, an increasing number of HR chiefs are now reporting directly to the CFO rather than the CEO.

While the rationale for this may be sound--aligning people processes with the company’s financial strategy is never a bad idea--it is meeting resistance from HR. The idea...

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IS HR READY FOR THE C-SUITE?

Back in the fall, We Know Next published my blog, Why HR and the CEO should be joined at the Hip. According to SHRM, the blog struck a chord within the HR community. Conventional wisdom suggests the CEO’s most valued C-suite confidant should be the CFO. I’m not arguing that. During my CEO days, I was fortunate to work with two outstanding financial executives. I’m simply pointing out that a CEO has more than one hip, and with culture finally getting its credit as a key success factor, the time has come for HR to occupy a seat at...

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HR Hoarders

I have recently been on the road at conferences and client visits and I have observed a recurring theme: there are a lot of HR Hoarders out there, both physical and intellectual. Take a few minutes and look around your workspace. Do you still have binders, folders and files full of old data? Maybe you’ve modernized, and they are digitized and in the cloud. More importantly, are these just iterations of a process your company (or you) has been doing for the last few years (or decades) that sits proudly on your bookshelf as a testament to your HR...

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Top Five Ways to Think Beyond Employer Branding

It's called many things: employer or employment branding, recruitment marketing, talent attraction, talent marketing, etc. It's a largely misunderstood thing that is really just about what your company looks like as a prospective employer to job seekers.

Wikipedia describes Employer Branding like this:

That sounds like messaging and image management. I got a similar feel from a nice post I read today on ERE.net, Unearthing Employment Brand by Matt Lowney. In it, Matt said that, after years of wondering what all the fuss was about with employer branding,...

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