HRComatrix

No, I have no Time Can you afford to listen to an emplo y er for an hour? Or the question should be: can you afford not doing it? Mary comes to see you and pours out her heart and soul and work life. You have been listening, and listening. At times your mind is drifting away: a project is waiting on your desk, you need to meet a deadline for a document, you have an appointment in an hour. Mary has been here for more than 30 minutes, and you are listening...and you wish that she would stop. In the course on the conversation, if conversation there is, you have learnt of two operational issues, one employee relations issue, one repeated managerial issue, and..one trust issue. This later being that Mary puts her trust and work life in your hands. So, could you or not afford to listen to Mary?....oh this document, this deadline, this project, this meeting.... Sometimes, if not at all times, we need to inspire trust and confidence. We need to be able to tend a good, compassionate ...

Now that elections are over, whether the  Health Care Reform within the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a gain or a loss for the common, employed US individual is yet to be seen. According to a survey conducted by the Midwest Business Group on Health (MBGH) in collaboration with The Benfield Group , a health care consultancy , quite a few adjustments will take place among benefit plans between now and 2018.  Where do Most Employers Stand? On the positive or negative side, major findings  mostly indicate that: There is little indication that  employers will drop health benefits within the coming year; Employers who plan to reduce their benefits in 2014-2016 are 31%, while 41% will do so for 2017-2018. This is an adjustment to the 40% "penalty" tax on high premium insurance - Cadillac - plans; The majority  of employers - 52% -  plan to make vision and/or dental coverage voluntary benefits in 2013. It will rise to 55% by 2018. Interesting enoug...

The other day I came across a republished article on interviewing skills from Chris Dunn in The HR Capitalist .  The Comments were just as interesting as the article itself. How many of you have gone through an interview where the interviewer - often the HR rep.- goes through a list of questions and reads them to you? They stick to the script. And at the opposite side of the desk you wonder: "now what's next?" Corporate Gives You a Script: Follow it You are HR, you are the company. Corporate gives you a script and you are to follow it. Religiously? It could give you an insight of that organization's culture: rules are to be followed without discussions. Just adhere to them or you are out.This could be your understanding as an interviewer.  But most often - if not most likely -  it is a sure indication of the inability of the interviewer to adjust to situations.Granted you are given a script. Let's figure out why. "Corporate" likes uniformity:...

So, you cross each other through the elevator, or halls of the company... This one never smiles.You wonder, people wonder... According to Holtz in Wall Street Journal  people who think that they are in a position of power would have a tendency to smile less, or not to smile back. According to a research from The University of California  in San Diego "a smile can embody workplace authority". The research used facial electromyography method. It recorded involuntary facial muscles movements. They concluded that "when people felt they were powerful themselves, they would rarely return a high-ranking person's smile" and "those who felt more powerless, however, automatically mimicked everyone else's smile, regardless of rank." There is a large bank on related research on UCSD 's site should you be interested in reading further on the subject. One thing is sure, there are intricacies between emotions, perceptions, culture and reactions wh...

So, you've got a new boss. How do you like him?  You do not know what to think of him. Let's call him Full Smith. He has been your new boss for a few weeks now. You have an open mind and you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. He sure comes across as assertive, not necessarily imposing. Just very assertive. Let's just say that lately, he has been qualified otherwise by one of his peers. We will call him assertive and aggressive at tackling his business. Assertive to the point that by his first ten days on the job he had made 80% of the women in the department cry. Crying for what? Different reasons. They were either enraged or probably "just" offended. They all said they they felt demeaned however.  And you, you are a man. Not much of a man do you think because it came to your mind that maybe you should resign. This boss never acknowledges your little accomplishments. He points out  at your failures. It is a constant reminder.  By now you feel like...

Did you ever wonder about lack of engagement, loss of morale, decline in productivity? Of course. And the more it happened, the more we pushed because we had our goals to meet. HR usually does not deal with that type of issue. At least not to the extent of line managers do. We do witness the struggles, and managers are - seriously - held accountable for their results. What about HR people?  Is the decline in productivity and lack of engagement in an organization the reflection of line managers not meeting their goals or HR not being accountable for its own? Maybe both with some intricacies.  Clinton Wingrove , HR consultant, raised questions about lack of accountability of HR people . With good reasons? I let you reflect on the issue. Granted, consultants view things slightly differently than those who are in "operations", and get "excited" about it. But that's what being a consultant is about. One point, however: HR reflects a couple of things: 1) The cult...

Oops! I can imagine eyebrows raising. The notion of fun can differ from one person to another. Some recollection of "fun HR times' could be of when incentives had different names and different forms. Maybe it was when HR derived from union formation. For the longest time, HR was to almost be a "band aid" to counteract the effects of harsh working conditions. Over time, HR had become viewed as "fun" by some: party trays, Christmas party, various forms of encouragement . And again, over time, to those who viewed HR practice as such (fun), HR had become overly complicated, "professional." Perception of HR can differ from one person to another. But I think that for the common employee, HR has too faces: the "good", caring face translating in employee incentives and nice benefits, and the "ugly", evil face translating in policies, procedures, rules and regulations, and legalities. This "two-face" HR has been omnipr...