Office Etiquette and Facebook as a Hiring Tool

We start off here on our Thursday with an article from Yahoo! and Forbes on Office Etiquette Essentials (H/T Wendy). This is not good news:

Christine Pearson, professor of management at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz. and coauthor of The Cost of Bad Behavior, says 96% of Americans report experiencing rudeness at work, and 48% say they are treated uncivilly at least once a week.

This kind of manners meltdown can have a direct effect on the bottom line. According to surveys conducted by Pearson and her colleagues, 48% of poorly treated employees have intentionally decreased their productivity and 12% say the boorish behavior compelled them to quit. Workplace rudeness costs employers an average of $50,000 per worker. "There are very high costs associated with even seemingly inconsequential inconsiderate words and actions," adds Pearson.

Ouch

Next comes from itWorldCanada and says that using social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook as talent sourcing tools may open up a company to potential legal repercussions.

Lastly, from Business Insurance, a court ruling from Florida that says that illegal immigrants are due workers comp benefits (H/T Jennifer)

Astronology - The Rising Cost of Healthcare..Can Small Business Keep Up?

Astronology Volume X Issue 24   January 26, 2009 Dear Andrew, Astron Solutions provides high-quality, low-cost, innovative human resources consulting services to organizations like yours. Call us for advice, innovative program design, and user-friendly Web/PC based software.   The Astron Road Show   It's 2010 and the Astron Road Show is back in full swing! On January 27th, National Director Jennifer Loftus will present to the New York City Chapter of ABWA on "Human Resources...Not Your Organization's Police Officer Anymore!" When you think Human Resources, do you think strategic business partner? Or, does your mind flash to Toby from NBC's "The Office"? Today's HR function has evolved. Whether you are in the interviewing seat or on the other side of the table doing the hiring, you need to understand the new approaches to HR. With these insights, you'll position yourself more strongly against your competition. Following Jennifer's presentation, several recruiters will share insights from the staffing world. Admission is free. If you'd like to attend, please RSVP at www.abwanyc.org under the events tab. The meeting's location is MetLife's Offices at 260 Madison Avenue (between 38th & 39th streets), 11th floor conference room. Registration begins at 5:45pm. We hope to see you there!   Fact or Fiction Last Thursday (1/21/10) was Squirrel Appreciation Day. FACT Who knew there was a holiday dedicated to squirrels? Astron's blogmaster, Andrew Katz, recently blogged on the topic, along with using the "Common App" in the workplace. If you haven't visited Astron's blog lately, you can visit Welcome to the World of HR and subscribe to our feeds at http://astronsolutionsworldofhr.blogspot.com.   The Rising Cost of Healthcare...Can Small Business Keep Up? Three words. Health Care Reform. Combined, they have become a hot topic in recent months. Although the thought of any reform on America's health care will affect all Americans, a special group of interest is small business. As Capitol Hill struggles to create a bill that will satisfy all, small businesses face a critical turning point in regards to keeping up with healthcare changes....more   Have a Question? If you have a topic you would like addressed in Astronology, or some feedback on a past article, don't hesitate to tell us!  Simply reply to this e-mail.  See your question answered, or comments addressed, in an upcoming issue of Astronology. Looking for a top-notch presenter for your human resource organization's meeting?  Both Jennifer Loftus and Michael Maciekowich present highly-rated sessions on a variety of compensation and employee retention issues.  For more information, send an e-mail to info@astronsolutions.com.   The Fine Print We hold your e-mail address in trust.  Astron Solutions promises never to share or rent your personal information.  We also promise never to send you frivolous e-mails and will allow you to leave our list, at your option, at any time. To remove yourself from this list, please follow your personalized subscriber link at the bottom of your Astronology alert e-mail. Copyright 2010, Astron Solutions, LLC ISSN Number 1549-0467 Quick Links Client List Meet the Astron Team Contact Us   World of HR Blog Bringing you Human Resource news from around the globe...compliments of Astron Solutions. More

 

Real Unemployment and the Future of HR

We start you off on this Monday morning with a link from the Huffington Post which says that the real unemployment number is at a dismal 19% and we're 22.4 million jobs short of having a full unemployment rate of 5%. Ouch.

Speaking of the unemployed, The 405 Club (a great blog name) has a post about what really bothers the author about not having a full-time, steady, paying job.

Lastly, UpstartHR has a look at the future of HR and asks "is it you?" Some keys they give are:

• Know what impact you want to have
• Ask smart questions
• Identify a potential path
• Take charge of your professional development
• Stay flexible

 Some good advice, indeed! 

Jobs You Want and Jobs To Stay Away From

That's the theme of our Friday links as we get you ready for the weekend on the day a decade-old age discrimination suit was settled by the TV networks and studios according to The Wrap

Fortune and CNNMoney have the 100 best companies to work for--which may be an even more important list than the Fortune 500.

Glassdoor.com has their list of the best 50 places to work for (I wonder how many of those overlap...?)

Media Bistro (the website where I actually found this job and why I'm blogging to you right now) has a list of the most desired media jobs of 2009

Complain about your job? FoundValue Blog has 10 jobs they promise are worse than yours (though I know a LOT of people who would want #10).

The Springfield News-Leader has 10 steps to workplace happiness from some great professionals in the field.

Have a great weekend!

"A Common App" for Job Applications

Happy Squirrel Appreciation Day!

When I applied to college, I was happy to find out a school I was applying to used the "Common App". For those unfamiliar with it, this is basically a general college application that you could fill out once and then submit to all schools that would accept it. It saved me time and energy and focused me on finding the schools I was really interested in rather than worrying about what their application requirements were.

The other day I got to wondering: why can't we do this for job searches? Maybe we can call it the "Professional App". Really, why can't there be one generic job application that someone could fill out and submit to any companies that accepted it? Every job application a person fills out has the same information: Name, Address, Past Employment, Education. But for every job one applies to, they need to fill out a separate job application, manually inputting all the same information. Why can't this be standardized into one form? For each company you want to apply to, you can submit this form but still can personalize your cover letter and attached resume. And like the college-bound Common App, the Professional App could have specific answers for specific jobs as well, but keep the common information the same (in college apps these are essays, but in the Professional App, it could be specific questions for the job one would need to do). 

For a company receiving applications, there could be benefits as well. They wouldn't have to spend as much money to host their own job application site. The companies would be able to receive applications in an easy-to-use format and would be able to differentiate between candidates easily. And companies should receive more candidates to choose from because of the ease of applying. They may get a few more "lazy" applicants, but with a cover letter still to write and interviews still to do, the talent pool would certainly grow.

Thoughts? Do you think this would work? Would your company use it?

Avoiding Your Own Conan Situation

The late night airways have broken down into Jay Leno fans or "I'm With CoCo". NBC has decided to ditch Conan on The Tonight Show and move Jay Leno back to that time slot. This has caused a lot of animosity and bad public relations for NBC including an open airing of grievances by Conan towards his network and bosses.. But could this have all been avoided? The answer is probably "yes".

Harvard Business Review has some tips on how to avoid the Conan mistake. Although their comparison of the situation to Hideki Matsui's with the Yankees is totally off (Matsui was a free agent without a contract without any promises of future employment or promotion), the advice they give in the middle of the article is good for Human Resources professionals to take with them. The three main points of advice in the article are "avoid defensive talent strategies, place big talent bets, and diversify succession risk". Some pretty great advice there.

Gruntled Employee (a great name for a blog) talks about the situation further and said that Conan's statement put him ahead of his employer and it's shown to be true throughout the whole situation.

And, lastly, the rest of the late night hosts take aim at NBC, including, most amazingly, that second clip with Jimmy Kimmel taking down Jay Leno.

This is not a good situation for NBC, but the whole thing could have been avoided with some patience and smart PR.

Astronology - Retaining Talented and High Performing Management Staff

Astronology Volume X Issue 23   January 12, 2009 Dear Andrew, Astron Solutions provides high-quality, low-cost, innovative human resources consulting services to organizations like yours. Call us for advice, innovative program design, and user-friendly Web/PC based software.   Happy New Year   From all of us here at Astron Solutions, we wish you, your family and friends, a Happy and Healthy 2010!   Fact or Fiction Most people will fail to adhere to their new years resolution. FACT Unfortunately, according to an article by Richard Koestner, many people do fail to adhere to their new years resolution. Specifically, 22% will fail after 1 week, 40% after one month, 50% after 3 months, 60% after 6 months, and 81% after 2 years. Let's try not to be part of these facts!   World Disney World Photo Contest   In a recent issue of Astronology, we asked our readers to submit their favorite photos of special Walt Disney World memories. Thank you for participating! Our contest winner is Andrew Miller of Salary.com. Based on his photo, it looks like there were some fun times at a character breakfast! Do you have a funny or clever caption for this photo? Please send them to us and we'll feature the best in our next issue of Astronology!     Retaining Talented and High Performing Management Staff With the economy starting to pick up, proactive HR professionals want to make sure their key talent doesn't walk out the door. But what are the most effective ways to ensure employee retention? With all the motivational tools out there, it's hard to know which is the "right" one to use. In this issue of Astronology we examine research results prepared by the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement....more   Have a Question? If you have a topic you would like addressed in Astronology, or some feedback on a past article, don't hesitate to tell us!  Simply reply to this e-mail.  See your question answered, or comments addressed, in an upcoming issue of Astronology. Looking for a top-notch presenter for your human resource organization's meeting?  Both Jennifer Loftus and Michael Maciekowich present highly-rated sessions on a variety of compensation and employee retention issues.  For more information, send an e-mail to info@astronsolutions.com.   The Fine Print We hold your e-mail address in trust.  Astron Solutions promises never to share or rent your personal information.  We also promise never to send you frivolous e-mails and will allow you to leave our list, at your option, at any time. To remove yourself from this list, please follow your personalized subscriber link at the bottom of your Astronology alert e-mail. Copyright 2010, Astron Solutions, LLC ISSN Number 1549-0467 Quick Links Client List Meet the Astron Team Contact Us   World of HR Blog Bringing you Human Resource news from around the globe...compliments of Astron Solutions. More

 

Be Careful How Much Data Your Employees Can Access

Gawker today has an account of why you shouldn't trust Facebook with your data. The post talks about how employees, equipped with too much access and loose internal controls on private data, have sometimes abused that data at the social media giant. One section of the post certainly resonated with me:

Sensitive data hoards inevitably attract attempts at unauthorized access. Whether it's hospital employees peaking at celebrity medical records or federal workers abusing their wiretap access 100 times in two tears (dubiously claiming it was an "accident"), people confronted with a pile of information feel compelled to start digging.

Sometimes it's important to trust employees with massive amounts of data but the key is to place strict controls over personal data and limit access to only select individuals with terms of use of that data. Facebook is lucky that this problem seems to be handled in house, but lax controls on employees like Facebook seems to employ leaves the company way to vulnerable for lawsuits should this information be abused in a way which harms the user. Tempting employees with unrestricted access leaves the company in this position.

Sarcastic Praise

In my company, we're currently undergoing our annual Personal Development Review process. Within this process, we review our accomplishments from the past year, receive praise and criticism from our managers, and have a chance to respond to the manager comments. As we go through this process, it reminds me of a report that the Onion News Network did on sarcastic praise copied below. Although The Onion report is a joke, sometimes praise given to employees can come off as sarcastic or unconvincing. Make sure you give praise only when deserved. If you feel like you're being sarcastic, maybe the praise is unwarranted.


Report: 70 Percent Of All Praise Sarcastic

How To Get Fired and How To Fire Someone Else

Two interesting articles for your Thursday:

-The first is from Career Solvers and gives a lesson on how to get fired. Although the author is talking about firing her phone company, many of these same principles apply to the workplace. They are:

1. Not showing up for work
2. Coming to work unprepared
3. Blaming others for the team's errors
4. Not communicating with others
5. Telling the boss (me) you couldn’t get a project done because it was understaffed.
6. Asking for a raise before you have proved your value. 

The post ends with this bit of advice on why to eliminate these practices from your repotoire:

According to CareerBuilder’s 2010 Jobs Forecast a trend for 2010 may very well be replacing lower performing employees and taking advantage of the large percentage of top talent in the labor force to strengthen their work force. Because in this economy, employers have choices…and there are plenty of job seekers out there that would love to be employed by them.

-On the flip side, Easy Small Business HR has Do's and Don'ts (or is it "don't's"?) when firing employees. Some of those:

Don't: 

• Leave the task to someone who does not have direct supervision of the worker being fired.
  
• Fire an employee on the spot unless the actions are so egregious that it requires immediate removal from the workplace.

Do:

• Fire workers who have crossed the line of what is considered egregious inappropriate behavior if you are absolutely certain based on the facts that the employee is guilty of misconduct.
• Respect the privacy and confidentiality of everyone involved by meeting with your employee(s) in a private area
• Tell your employee the reason for the termination.

Some good advice from those two sources...though you should only be following the latter!