Are you going to the SHRM Conference?

It is a bit late but if you have the time (unfortunately I do not this year), get to San Diego starting Saturday for this year's SHRM Conference.

It is the best use of time to find out what is happening in the HR world -- to have such a concentration of speakers in one place! then there is the bookstore -- again to have a concentration of HR and HR-related books all in one place for you to peruse and buy AND this conference is again the best place to get such a concentration of vendors providing HR services and finally it is the best place to network with colleagues in the profession and find out what they are doing to confirm that what you are doing is a best practice and what you can attempt to do without reinventing the wheel.

The worst thing is if you don't go (and have never gone) you do not know what you are missing. You owe it to yourself and your organization to take time out to get there.

If not this year, definitely plan on going next.

The state conferences are okay and effective too but the scale and mass that the national conference has in its favor is truly unique.

And whether you agree or disagree with my comments, please share them.

Let's not forget that we do have a lot of fun in HR

For another side of HR take a look at this clip I was asked to do for a showing on YouTube. This bunch of very bright people also had a real feel for recent graduates in the job hunt.

Here is the URL: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3716546/the_crucial_man_landing_a_job/

Is the HR Function Becoming a Commodity?

What is a commodity? The opposite of a brand. Some would say computer chips are a commoditized product. Intel wisely fought the concept with its clever saying, "Intel inside." Everyone would agree farm products are considered commodities. I don't know what farm is responsible, for example, for the string beans I bought yesterday and did not give a thought to comparing string beans from different farms before making my purchase.

Recently I have seen is several instances that some working folks consider HR a commodity (think one size fits all). That perception presents a lot of risk.

A recruiter told an HR professional the other day, "You have all the experience but it is not as recent as the client expects, when they are paying us to fill the position. There are a lot of people just like you out there and the client could get them without our help."

To me one of the exciting things about the world of work is that every organization is truly unique since organizations cannot yet clone people. HR is uniquely positioned to maximize the effectiveness of that competitive advantage. If the unique aspects of human capital are ignored, organizations will do so at their own risk.

Graef Crystal -- where are you?

These are exciting times for compensation topics -- lower level employees continue to fail to keep pace with the even low rate of inflation while CEO's keep getting increases that far exceed the inflation rate while the organizations they are leading flounder. I am sure that CEO's complain that the $40 million or so that some of them pulled down in 2009 pale by comparison with the $1.3 billion average that the top twenty five money managers made, according to a recent front page article in The Wall Street Journal. What ever happened to the maxim proposed by the legend JP Morgan and revisited by Peter Drucker that the distance between the highest and lowest paid employees, including CEO, should not be greater than a multiple of 20 (Drucker) or 21 (Morgan).

When Fortune journalist Carol Loomis reported last fall that the evidence indicates that, with inflation taken into account, CEO pay of $40 million is no higher than it was during the depths of the Great Depression. She, like just about everyone else, ignored the CEO-to-lowest-employee spread. Needless to day it has not kept up. In fact a multiple exceeding 200 times has been mentioned recently by the Financial Times.

So what does Greaef Crystal have to do with all this? First, if you do not know who he is, I hope that you lose sleep until you find out who he is. Let me just say that with all the discussions about what is the appropriate pay level for CEO's we are all at a loss by not inviting him to participate in the discussion more.


The other day I happened to witness a Hay-sponsored panel in midtown Manhattan that included WSJ reporter, Joanne Lubin -- an expert herself on CEO pay. She mentioned he is not included since he is a columnist -- while that is true, his real profession continues to be executive compensation. Let me mention that Mr. Crystal was fired by the CEO of Time Warner when, one year in preparing his annual executive compensation survey for Fortune magazine, he named the CEO of Time Warner (publisher of Fortune) as the most overpaid CEO based on his metrics. As sooon as the magazine hit the newstand and Steve Ross saw it, Mr. Crystal was fired and his influence has been missing from major discussions on thsi important topic ever since.


Check him out on his website: http://graefcrystal.com/ and read his great book, "In Search of Excess."

GSI Commerce could really use some HR expertise.

Last Sunday night the show, Undercover Boss, featured an exciting thirty-something year old entrepreneur, CEO Michael Rubin. He obviously is very good at what he does -- namely starts companies -- and this is something that he has done since he was a child.

Like all mortals though he also has weaknesses and what is really disappointing to see is that he does not see that although he is a great entrepreneur, form his actions and words during the TV show it is glaringly apparent that he needs some major training in basic management theory and practice.

I happened to watch him in action Sunday night as he failed at job after job in GSI's distribution centers -- he was even fired for his poor performance sealing boxes in preparation for shipment. Then he moved on to the call center to take escalation calls. Here he was entrusted to Danielle who seemed a bit prissy but very structured (a positive trait for that job I would think) and knows that she needs to execute company policy even when it does not make sense and here is where another form of escalation occurred during an escalation phone call. What makes this matter particularly annoying is that Danielle actually tried to bail her CEO out when he lost control of the call due to his company's policy. Yet for her efforts he wanted to fire her. Now in case you missed the show the cause for the altercation was a customer whose order for a Garmin device was incorrectly processed by GSI. All at GSI admitted GSI was at fault and so everyone agreed that they needed to correct the situation. The problem was that the price had increased from $99.99 to 149.99 since the order was first submitted. The policy at GSI is that the customer needs to pay the new price and the difference would be credited at some later date. The customer was adamant that she did not want to deal with a credit (why should she) but wanted only to be charged the original price. When Mr. Rubin was unable to convince her to convert to his policy, Danielle very nicely offered to take over for him. She then tried to explain this ridiculous policy. The customer would not buy it and hung up.

When the show broke into a debriefing with the CEO, he shared with the home audience that he had been so angry with Danielle that he almost broke his cover since he really wanted to fire her on the spot. Not one word about questioning the effectiveness of the credit policy and no compliment to Danielle for sticking with the policy. He missed the whole point. Now that the show is over the same old policy remains untouched.

There was one more odd action by the CEO. He awarded another employee he met and liked at the call center a $10,000 check so he could get married. Now whether or not he took the money out of his own pocket, he has sent a message to all his employees that he did this once so the question in everyone's mind is how and when he will do it again?

There were peripheral issues as well. Not one of the employees seemed to have more than one year of service (do they have a turnover problem?). Also, from the lack of training the CEO received in the various jobs where he performed, this organization does not appear committed to learning organization principles.

By the end of the show my teeth hurt so much from all these inept activities. The lingering question for me is what would it take for the CEO to realize that his organization is really having a variety of people related issues that need to be addressed or the company will get buried by its inability to take a proactive stance in so many areas of the business. Additionally if the organization has grown to be so large and successful with these glaring inefficiecies, how much more successful would they be if they introduced effective work practices.

In Recruiting, the more things change...

Is it just me or are odd things going on in recruiting? Let me explain.

First, I realized as I ramp up my own job search, Linked In is definitely a website not to be ignored -- for job seekers and recruiters alike. I quickly found that even a cursory walk through the website is truly amazing -- there are levels of contacts and jobs posted and even a comment on who has looked at your profile.

Then things turned slightly bizarre. First, you are strongly encouraged to post a picture -- pressure originates from a profile score the website provides based on what you do and do include on your profile and a picture leads to a higher score. Next to improve your profile score even more you are encouraged to provide testimonials from anyone who is willing to give them.

I must admit that both the picture and the testimonials remind me of days long past where you were encouraged (if you appeared attractive) to provide a photo with your resume. At the same time "To whom it may concern" letters had been frowned upon as not worth the paper they were printed on.

If that wasn't bad enough today I witnessed a website that would not let an applicant complete the electronic application process without given college start and end dates.

Are we witnessing the dumbing down of the Human Resources profession? Pictures and college attendance dates lawyers cautioned us HR folk not too long ago were opportunities for a law suit. And “To Whom It May Concern” reference letters were though to be used only by those who were trying to hide something.

What has happened since?

Welcome to the HR Killer Skills Blog

Hello One and All!

A few years ago I had an invitation to take ownership for a column for HRO Today magazine. This was after I designed a certificate program in HR Outsourcing for the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at New York University.

After identifying and appreciating a real difference in HR outsourcing from vendor relationships, I embarked ready to design that program and loaded with energy. At the same time the Human Resources Outsourcing Association (HROA) retained me to do one day workshops on the topic.

I was having a great time discussing this topic from the perspective of a HR professional who had spent his entire career working with vendors, suppliers and outsourcing providers -- long before the term HRO came into being.

Quickly though I learned that my time in that space was extremely limited because the only paying customers were the outsouring providers and what I wanted to do was open a dialogue with the HR professionals buying their services. It was the buyers that I wanted to deal with but the sellers dominated the space.

I enjoyed writing the column and realized I valued the opportunity to have a periodic voice in the HR world.

With this blog I hope to continue that effort and welcome my fellow HR professionals (and anyone else who may have an interest) to peruse these articles and encourage you all to feel free to provide whatever positive and negative comments that you wish in an ongoing attempt to discuss issues that resonate at this time.

Regards,

Matt DeLuca