I felt like a double agent at last week’s HR Technology Conference & Exposition. My first assignment was to attend (fortunately!) as a member of the HR Tech Insider crew. I was there to tweet, blog, Instagram (Is that even a verb? It should be), talk, listen, evangelize, and stay up way too late each evening. I accomplished most every one of those items.
Robin.Schooling
An HR Executive and strategist, Robin Schooling, SPHR, SHRM-SCP has worked in a variety of industries including gaming, health care, manufacturing and banking. She’s a member of the Advisory Board for BlackbookHR, and has served on advisory boards for Smartbrief on Workforce, Geaux Veterans, and the Louisiana Business Leadership Network, which focuses on providing positive employment outcomes for people with disabilities. Robin is a Past President of Greater Baton Rouge SHRM, a former board member with ATD Baton Rouge, an active member of the Baton Rouge Social Media Association, and served on the Louisiana SHRM State Council for 10 years. In 2011, GBR SHRM awarded Robin its “HR Professional of the Year Award.”
She’s on a mission to make organizations better by making HR better and spends her free time cheering on the New Orleans Saints and corralling her four dogs. Check out her blog, follow her on Twitter @RobinSchooling or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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Articles by Robin Schooling
I recently read The Evolving Workplace: Expert Insights, part of a global project commissioned by Dell and Intel. For the study, TNS Global is exploring key future trends and themes pertaining to the workplace and workforce, with a specific focus on understanding the role that technology has played in its evolution
Much like scientists who classify living and fossil organisms into domain, kingdom, class, family, genus and species, we in HR often do the same:
When contemplating a course of action or implementing a new procedure/policy HR practitioners stand at a metaphorical crossroads.
In general the process begins with the question “can we do X?” which is a perfectly acceptable, and appropriate, place to start. After all, as much as we may take umbrage at the relentless HR stereotype that we’re rule-enforcing bureaucrats who take great delight in policing every action there’s no denying that ensuring compliance and mitigating potential risk is an important part of what we do.
The 2014 SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition kicked off this afternoon with opening keynote speaker Robin Roberts. Anchor of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” in 2007 Robin was diagnosed with breast cancer and then, in 2012, she underwent a life-saving bone marrow transplant for myelodysplastis syndrome.
I’m looking forward to next week’s big SHRM show which officially kicks off on Sunday; I’ll be arriving on Saturday in order to spend some time at the SHRM Annual Student Conference before the majority of the hordes descend upon the Orange Country Convention Center.
It’s almost upon us; that wild-frenzied time when HR professionals from across the US (and the world) travel to a VENUE that can accommodate 15,000+ attendees to get their HR groove on. The Expo Hall is chock-full of swag and the booze flows freely during the Sunday night opening. The SHRM bookstore is loaded with thousands (thousands!) of titles for review, immediate purchase or shipment.
Most organizations realize the importance of an effective onboarding experience for new employees. They’ve moved past the ages-old idea that onboarding merely means a day of new employee orientation accompanied by checklists and realize that onboarding is a seamless experience that begins at the time of the accepted offer and continues well past the employee’s first day, week or even month.
On the reality TV series “The Amazing Race” teams of of two people compete in a race around the world as they battle to arrive first at specific destinations and hope to avoid elimination from the competition by completing tasks that test their strength logic, courage and ability to negotiate.
There’s a heightened focus in the HR and Recruiting sphere on the effective use of employee referrals in order to make effective hires and we see numerous reports informing us that referrals tend to get hired faster, are often a better fit with the organization culture and are less likely to quit their jobs.
The research, literature and advice available for employers around the issue of workplace wellness initiatives is massive. Not only can one access reams of data that supports the benefits of implementing such programs but there are also a number of HR vendors (technology, service, and consultative) that can assist in management should your organization choose to focus on employee wellness.
Alison Green (@AskAManager) ran a post the other day called "Resume Paper is Obsolete."
It got me to thinking about some of the interesting ways that resumes have been presented/submitted to me:
Just as each organization has its own operational philosophy, culture and strategic goals, so too must its HR team have a well-defined philosophy that outlines how they will carry out their responsibilities in alignment. Sadly, a number of HR departments have taken this to mean that they should develop buzzword -filled pieces of marketing collateral that can be blessed by their PR departments and placed on company websites.
Who among us hasn’t dealt with the need to implement and manage change? Whether focusing on a large-scale organizational change or a small-scale “in my department” adjustment, every leader is faced with the responsibility to execute and manage change.
Quite often, we get stuck in quicksand in the human resources profession while we endlessly gaze at our navels and debate whether we are in the Strategic vs. Tactical, or the Traditional or Cutting-Edge camps. We read, we discuss, we talk…but at the end of the day it becomes the ACTION we take, as individual practitioners and leaders, that can define HR for now and the future.