There is a case to be heard by the Supreme Court involving a police officer and his use of a pager for personal messages. The pager was issued to him by his employer, a police department. This officer was terminated for sending explicit texts on the pager, but the case isn’t about [...]]]>

Courtesy of http://riskman.typepad.com/peerflow/privacy/

There is a case to be heard by the Supreme Court involving a police officer and his use of a pager for personal messages. The pager was issued to him by his employer, a police department. This officer was terminated for sending explicit texts on the pager, but the case isn’t about the explicity of the texts, its about a reasonable expectation of privacy, because he was only found out when the texts went over the allowed limit. See the legal details here.

The true legal issue will rest on the idea that as work and personal time blurs, so blurs the idea that the company controls all data that is sent or received from its equipment – if you carry a blackberry, you may be like me, and receive email from the boss at 11pm on a Saturday night, needing an answer, or requiring some of your time. As companies encroach on their employees personal time, it makes sense that some of those personal communications will encroach on the company equipment.

I actually carry two phones in order to keep my personal and business life as separate as possible, but I know that I am an exception to this rule. While the prevailing law has maintained that companies do in fact own the data, more recent legal opinions are shifting the wind toward some level of privacy for employees.

Another recent case is a lawsuit filed by parents of a Pennsylvania student where the School District supplied laptops and then activated the websam on the laptop remotely – for monitoring purposes. Webcam screenshots were being taken of students, under the age of 18, in whatever location the laptop happens to be. (bedrooms, living quarters, other people’s houses?) The student at the heart of the lawsuit was accused of “improper behavior in his home” (The specific behavior hasn’t been made public) at which time his parents were made aware that the webcam had remote functionality. See more details here and here.

If I discovered my home was being monitored by the school district simply because the school had issued my child (or another child, not my own) a computer, I think I’d be filing a lawsuit as well. My company issued me a laptop for use in the course of my work – I’m a consenting adult – what right would they have to monitor my behavior via webcam while not on company premises?

Technology is presenting privacy challenges. Just because we have the ability to do something, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Fire an employee for sending sexually explicit texts, fine. But fire him for sending any sort of personal text? Not so much. Track locations of laptops with full disclosure to students, parents or employees, and prior notification before actual tracking takes place, sure. Monitor an individual through remote access of webcams with no notification that its even possible that this could happen, or in the privacy of one’s own home? That borders on voyeuristic (I’m being generous here) and I’ll wager will be upheld as a 4th amendment violation, not to mention an Electronic Communications Privacy Act violation.

Lawsuits like these are going to have far reaching implications on work, work/life balance, and how intrusive employers and government entities have the right to be in our lives. Its time for the tide to turn on technology law to protect our privacy. My employer, my child’s school district and the government do not own my life. And those who give up essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither. (to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin)

What say you? Does the employer have the right to monitor all communications, and terminate for personal use? What if that personal use happens at 10pm on a Thursday night, when you aren’t usually working, but you just happen to be finishing that big project due next week? Should webcams on laptops be able to be remotely accessed for monitoring purposes? Where should we draw the line?

Sometimes even when you love your job, you have to make a decision between doing what you have been asked to do, and doing the right thing.

Going back to the Avatar movie, there one character who is a fighter pilot, she’s a rock hard chick who is VERY good at what she [...]]]>

Career Ending Choices

Sometimes even when you love your job, you have to make a decision between doing what you have been asked to do, and doing the right thing.

Going back to the Avatar movie, there one character who is a fighter pilot, she’s a rock hard chick who is VERY good at what she does. Most people, at some point in their lives, have encountered a moment where you do/say/agree with things because you will be perceived as weak for not doing so. And at that moment, or perhaps later, you regret the decision to cave to the pressure.

This pilot character, after participating in a brutal bombing of the native inhabitants of the planet, changes her mind about which side of this war she’s on. She knows this military maneuver wasn’t the right thing to do. She abandons the corporate militia to assist the Na’vi in their battle. She makes a career ending decision because it is exactly the right thing to do.

Over the years I’ve worked in environments where bullying and peer pressure were not uncommon leadership strategies. One of the things I learned along the way is that it is never right to go along with something your gut tells you is wrong. If a management decision requires those types of tactics to get everyone “on the same page” – something is fishy.

It might end a job, or even a career – but I’d much rather be able to look myself in the mirror in the morning, than hide behind the excuse that someone “made me” violate my principles, because frankly, no one can make me do anything of the sort.

Its a choice.
So toss the excuse in the junkyard.
And just do the right thing.

Jake Sully: Former Marine, twin brother to a scientist trained in the Na’vi language, and hired to go to Pandora for the Avatar mission. The corporation has grown an avatar specifically for the brother, at the cost of millions of dollars and months of time.

Jake Sully has buried his brother, and becomes [...]]]>

Looking beyond the Resume

Jake Sully: Former Marine, twin brother to a scientist trained in the Na’vi language, and hired to go to Pandora for the Avatar mission. The corporation has grown an avatar specifically for the brother, at the cost of millions of dollars and months of time.

Jake Sully has buried his brother, and becomes his replacement on the mission. Why?

Because they share the same DNA, and he’ll “fit” in the Avatar. And he’s a trained Marine, so at least there’s that bonus. Another warrior. With no training, no real knowledge of what he’s about to do… he heads to Pandora.

Oh, did I mention Jake is a disabled Marine, not the sharpest tool in the shed, in a wheelchair, with absolutely no use of his legs and carrying a rather heavy chip on his shoulder? He’s now least likely to succeed on a hostile alien planet in a highly scientific environment, right?

Jake may have been picked for this mission solely because he shared his brother’s DNA, and because the corporation really didn’t want to grow another Avatar on short notice, but he becomes an integral part of the program. He is the guiding force behind the plot, because once he reaches Pandora, his superiors are able to look past his resume. Some to exploit, but others because they recognized skills. He becomes a leader.

In HR, as talent managers, we’ve all had rough resumes cross our desks, or met someone, immediately sized them up, and pigeonholed them into a job because this is what their background was… and we’ve all had to change our minds, because people are more than their resumes, more than our initial assumptions.

In my career I’ve met several people like this, People whom I initially put in a box because I’d seen their file, because I listened to their supervisors, or because somehow there’d been a bad first impression. Once I got to know these people, once I saw their talents, and a few of them, wow, did they have some talent, I had to change my mind, I had to look beyond the resume.

Skill, expertise, leadership, motivation. All of these traits can be masked by communication problems, leadership failures, or a lack of proper job fit. And all of them can be resolved if we, as astute HR practitioners, look at employees or candidates for who they are, if we have honest conversations with them, and their leaders, and at least for me, if I listen to my gut.

Do you have examples of people for whom you looked past the resume?
Or maybe a failure for the Junkyard?

This was one of the many phrases I came across recently while dissecting job descriptions, and after the fifth or sixth time I found a similarly vague and buzzword laden line item, the only thing I could think was “someone has too much time on their hands”.

The individual who sits around combining phrases [...]]]>

“Synergistic Implementation Abilities”

This was one of the many phrases I came across recently while dissecting job descriptions, and after the fifth or sixth time I found a similarly vague and buzzword laden line item, the only thing I could think was “someone has too much time on their hands”.

The individual who sits around combining phrases to make the job seem more complicated than it actually is has done no one a favor, including the Human Resources and Recruiting folks that have to fill those positions.  Give me real skill sets. I speak engineering, programming, retail management, training, OD and all facets of human resources and I couldn’t translate this one into anything reasonable.

So I suppose that meant they should be looking for someone who speaks “buzzword” as their second language.

Let’s drill down:

Synergism: the interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements, contributions, etc. (synergistic: pertaining to, characteristic of, or resembling synergism) – there are also medical related and theological definitions, which have no bearing on the industry or position in question.

So we want candidates who possess the ability to implement programs where the total outcome is greater than the sum of its parts. What we have here is a buzzword to cloak a cliché.

No kidding.

Instead of recycling the words from the medical, theological  or legal industries to support the needs of some business professionals to sound more intelligent, lets recycle the mindset that we need fifty cent words to communicate. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t intend to bifurcate the conversation, nor is it my goal to be disingenuous in my critique of this confounding obfuscation of organizational development.  (Hattip to Laurie, I couldn’t resist)

Perhaps with unlimited space in our website job listings, we’ve gotten “wordy”.

However, that line item simply had no business in the skill set. It didn’t mean anything. Someone needed a third for their list.

Common Sense can kill the buzzword. It doesn’t need to be fancy, it needs to be real.

Share your examples of nightmare wording, or buzzwords you‘d like to see tossed in the bin.

I hadn’t been in the room 15 minutes, listening to introductions when someone tagged me as “Junkyard HR” based [...]]]>

I attended HRevolution in Louisville, KY on November 6-7. 50 great minds from the Human Resources, Business Leadership and Recruiting spheres joined together for an Unconference to discuss blogging, social media and the Future of Human Resources.

I hadn’t been in the room 15 minutes, listening to introductions when someone tagged me as “Junkyard HR” based on my “elevator speech” about what I do. That someone is Trish McFarlane (@trishmcfarlane) who writes over at HRringleader.

So, what’s a savvy HR pro going to do with a new moniker? Buy the domain and start a blog, of course.

HRevolution’s big topic was a put up or shut up session on the future of HR, lead by the inestimable Mark Stelzner, who blogs over at InflexionAdvisors. (@stelzner on Twitter, if you don’t already follow him) My point in this discussion was that the future of HR was Talent Management – and my definition of that was MUCH different from others in the room.

I want to talk about Talent Management, The Future of HR, and revolutionizing small business Human Resources in the 21^st century.

Why start now? Because as a wise blogger said not too long ago “There’s plenty of room for more voices.”

I build Human Resources and Safety departments for companies. Most of my career I’ve either worked with troubled management teams, or companies that were in a growth stage and simply had never had formal programs in place. Much of what I work on is adapting, altering, changing or junking the broken processes and guiding the management teams into best practices that will help their company reach their next tier of growth. I throw out a lot of junk in that process. I’ve been doing what I do a long time, from full life cycle recruiting to sole practitioner generalist, and on to multiple locations and a full staff.

So I’ve opened the HR Junkyard. Let’s discuss all the HR ideas, processes, theories and ideas that need to die. I’d like to share my viewpoint, and my straight shooting way of putting it out there. Let’s have an honest conversation.