Guest Article: Free Stuff by Ben

It’s the giving season around these parts, and I wanted to take a minute to remind everyone of some of the great (free) resources that have been published here over the years.

• Building your HR department-some of the key tips and tricks for getting the HR function up and running, how to gain credibility, and how to manage it all without help!


• Employee performance management guide-great content on managing employee performance in a way that doesn’t make them run screaming from the building


• Employee retention eBook-great ideas on retaining your best and brightest


• Employee engagement eBook-this was the handbook on engagement before engagement was cool :-)


• New hire orientation and onboarding guide-If you want to shake up your new hire process (or develop one, if it doesn’t exist?), then this guide is for you. I’ve had dozens of “thank you!” comments on this over the past few years.


• HRYP guide for young professionals-this short guide for young professionals touches on some of the key aspects of a solid career development plan


• Rock your SHRM chapter-if you volunteer in the SHRM space for your chapter or state council, this guide is a phenomenal tool for helping to generate new ideas and drive engagement with your volunteers and members.


• PHR Study Series Free eBook-as always, I am helping those preparing for the PHR/SPHR exams by providing guidance and insight on the exam. This was my first guide, so the writing style is more coarse; however, it gets the job done!

I appreciate each and every one of you, and I hope you are looking forward to an exciting 2014!

The post Free Stuff appeared first on upstartHR.

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Check out more of Ben Uebanks' work at Upstart HR

Guest Article: An HR Christmas Carol by Jennifer Miller

For my friends in Human Resources, a festive little holiday ditty, courtesy of Kakushin Webinars:

Who says HR people don’t have good senses of humor?

Article source:Jennifer Miller - An HR Christmas Carol»

Guest Article: The Biggest Killer of Teams Is… by Ben

I have been studying the performance of several teams both within and outside our organization, and over time I have seen one key predictor of success or failure for team performance: community. When community is lacking, or in more common terms, when the team members don’t have care and concern for each other, failure will soon result.

Yes, having the right skills is important, but we’ve probably all worked on highly skilled, yet highly dysfunctional, teams in the past.

Video: Building Team Community

Check out the video below for how community ties into teamwork and 5 ways to develop a stronger sense of community for a team:

Email subscribers click here to view

Video Notes

5 tips to build community

1. Get away from the office.


2. Take time in meetings to talk about personal things, even if for a few minutes.


3. Have inside jokes. If they don’t exist, create them.


4. Create recurring opportunities for people to air grievances and get on the same page. And DO NOT let this become a “checklist” item. It must be meaningful or it’s not worth the effort.


5. Individual success is team success. Individual failure is team failure. If it ever gets to “well, at least it wasn’t MY project that tanked,” then you’re in trouble. Because when your focus area is in need, the rest of the team will be able to reply, “well, at least it isn’t MY job…”

Teams don’t become great by accident or just by being lucky. Consider which of the methods you could use to inject some community into your team, then make it happen.

For more info and team-related goodness, check out The Orange Revolution book review.

The post The Biggest Killer of Teams Is… appeared first on upstartHR.

Article source:Ben - The Biggest Killer of Teams Is…»



Check out more of Ben Uebanks' work at Upstart HR

Guest Article: Where in the business development process is your consultant underperforming? by Ross Clennett

The failure of our industry to enhance its reputation will continue for as long as we have a high rate of staff turnover. How seriously can we be taken if (as RCSA data suggests) we struggle with annual staff turnover that is consistently between thirty and fifty per cent? This is a topic I have often written about. One of the areas within this topic, that is often overlooked, is the....

Keep reading at the article source:Ross Clennett - Where in the business development process is your consultant underperforming?»



Check out more of Ross Clennett's work at his blog

LinkedIn – When to Use it. Best Practice.

Where Facebook is the friends network and Twitter is the quick information network, LinkedIn is the professional social network. It is where people have display profile pictures of themselves in a suit and post about articles that make them appear professionally involved and switched on. Aside from this it is an invaluable tool to network, engage in discussions and plant your professional services right where your audience are the most alert.

 

LinkedIn by the numbers

LinkedIn is the second most used social media website in Australia, rising above the likes of Twitter. Due to its professional user base and purpose, the content and interactions here are of a different nature to that of other social networks.

• LinkedIn is home to over 65 million professionals, around 4 million are Australian
• Over 50% of users have decision making authority within their business
• Over 15 thousand Australian businesses have a LinkedIn page
• When it comes to professional skills, there are 108K members with health care listings, 55K in community and social.

Courtesy of SolomoIT

When should I put my Business on LinkedIn?

The short answer – if your services are of interest to the professional world, and if your content can help them better assimilate the ideas that drive value to your business. Just like other social networks, if the effort you’re putting into providing insightful knowledge does not result in clients appreciating your offering more, there’s not much point.

Hopefully the above statistics give you a fresh perspective to the opportunities available for your business regardless of size or niche. If you don’t have oodles of time (who does?) you can still get some visible results from just an hour a week. (See our Investing in Social Media article)

Company Pages – Best Practice

Tell a brand story, then connect

Even on LinkedIn people will skim over the details. In your company description tell a story of what your business means and how it came to be. Don’t go too overboard and leave some room for people to want to find more information. Once you’ve done this and have added your logo you should be following likeminded ‘influencers’ and popular thought-leaders within your industry. Learn from their delivery, learn from their sympathetic language, and then add your own thoughts!

Scope your content and audience

Don’t be afraid to reuse sections and content that has been previously successful, several topics have seasonal interest and will be all the talk again in the near future. Scoping your audience also means sharing your LinkedIn page link on other social properties, your website, and outgoing emails. Friends, colleagues, other departments, clients, they should all have something interesting to read when they get to your page.

Don’t oversell it

LinkedIn is not the place to constantly tout promotional details or discounts, it is an opportunity to get your professionalism out there on a more personal level. Company updates and information are fine, especially when you’re able to connect it to some interesting advice content or a hot topic, but you need to give back before you receive. Think one directly company related post for every four pieces of strong value creating content for your readers.

Guest Article: Creating a Customer/Employee Feedback Strategy – What NOT To DO! by Jason Averbook

I read a great piece yesterday entitled “Five Ways to Learn Nothing From Your Customers’ Feedback” and truly found it important and useful not just from “customers” feedback but it is beyond time to realize that our employees are our biggest customers and the learnings from this article should be applied to employees as well. Here are five takeaways from the HBR article that we need to all learn from as we shift our HR and our Workplace 2020 strategy from one that is inward facing vs. outward facing going forward.

1 .Organizations that take feedback and turn it into scores, percentages and averages – AND STOP THERE! – It is crucial to link specific feedback to specific behavior and not mask that behind a vague set of numbers. While the overall score might look good, the GOLD comes from the tying and linking specific comments to specific actions aligned with your overall Workplace 2020 strategy. We need to not get lost in a series of numbers and analysis and communicate in specifics and prescriptive actions, both positive and negative, that will help all of the organization learn from customers (yes, I am talking employees) feedback.

2. Holding, and not communicating the feedback – Time is of the essence when it comes to feedback. We live in an era where our measure should be NOW and not a measure of the PAST. Sentiment and real-time access to feedback, customer “employee” comments and the reporting in real-time without any “holding” of the feedback until it is scrubbed, analyzed and cleaned up. The time that it takes to perform those functions are the “magic moments” or “moments of truth” where something can be done to take action. If not shown and visualized in a timely, real time manner, it is nothing but watered down HISTORY.

3. Most customer feedback (as you know now by reading this,employee feedback) is delivered in a manner that eliminates the human voice. While we all agree it is easier to score and deliver results based on scoring, analytics and ratings – it completely LOSES THE HUMAN VOICE. We are asking questions that we think that we want to know but in most cases not asking the important questions that are on the employees minds. While there is room for feedback in some employee surveys, they are at the bottom of the survey and for the most part, ignored when scoring. WE CANNOT LOSE THE HUMAN VOICE even though trying to focus on numbers and metrics (see #1). Let your employees share feedback in open, honest and transparent ways and you will be guaranteed actionable items that will make a difference delivering services in the long run.

4. If there is A LOT AT STAKE BY GETTING A GOOD SCORE, more than likely you will get a good score and you might as well make up the numbers yourself. Aligning compensation to numbers will often lead to behaviors that are maniacal to reach the numbers and are not overall customer-focused. By putting too much focus on compensation, we subject ourselves to a debate about the basis of the score every time either compensation is too high or the overall scores are too low.

5. Never, Never, Never close the loop with customers (employees). Most feedback historically has been conducted in a manner that is anonymous. The data was collected in “market research mode” where no one could specifically follow up with employees to address issues directly. We did this thinking that people would not give feedback if it was not kept secret. In today’s world of transparency and sharing, people want to be heard. They want their feedback to be acknowledged. They want to know the last time they invested in sharing feedback was acted on. CLOSING THE LOOP is essential to build lasting relationships and it is an invaluable opportunity to dig deeper into details of overall customer sentiment.

A few closing comments that tie back to the top 5 mentioned above:

• Don’t follow the traditional approach to customer satisfaction measurement


• Make feedback a daily part of your daily operations


• Delivery feedback directly to employees on a real-time, transparent basis


• Focus your company’s listening efforts not on measuring more precisely, but on learning more throughout

We live in an era that Workplace 2020 will cause a need to rethink how we imagine, delivery and measure customer and employee feedback in a real-time/transparent manner. The best technology will not solve for this; your thought leadership and a changing of the lens to drive a outward in view vs a inward out strategy is a must moving into 2014. If you need help thinking through this, never be afraid to ask.

Another infusion of knowledge…

Article source:Jason Averbook - Creating a Customer/Employee Feedback Strategy – What NOT To DO!»



Check out more of Jason Averbrook's work at hisblog

Guest Article: Split Testing Internal Communications by Ben

Split testing is a marketing tool that companies use to evaluate the impact of their marketing messages. They will take a key message and test variations of it against two (or more) groups, then compare the results to see what worked best. It helps over time to define the best and most effective communication method for the target audience. So why don’t we do this internally?

In addition to my day-to-day HR work, I’m also tagged as the Communications lead at work. I get to distribute the minutiae, but I also have a hand in delivering news with a larger impact. Recently I had to share some news that I assumed would not be popular. I was given the core details and had to craft the communication around that in a way that eased the message and helped people understand why the process was changing.

If only…

If I had split tested the message, I could have sent a test to 4 or 5 people, then sent another test to another 4 or 5 people. Next I would have compared notes on which message was better received, easier to understand, etc. Then I could have sent the best and most effective message out to the masses, confident that I’d delivered the best information available.

But I didn’t. And I’ve learned my lesson.

Since then I have had to help respond to many of the questions and comments surrounding the decision. A few tweaks I had considered making before delivering the message were discarded as “too much information” or “redundant,” yet the questions I’m getting make me realize that I could have taken care of those by adding those seemingly useless elements to the original message. Lesson definitely learned.

Sometimes speed is important, but don’t sacrifice the morale of your staff because you want to rush information out the door.

Thankfully all is good now, but I have been kicking myself mentally over something I should have done. Anyone else ever done any split testing at work, whether in communications or not? I’d be curious to hear the results…

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Article source:Ben - Split Testing Internal Communications»



Check out more of Ben Uebanks' work at Upstart HR