"We are not opposing the Cool Biz itself. Dressing cool is fine," said Tetsuo Yamada, a spokesman for the Federation of Japanese Necktie Unions. The problem is the slogan that discriminates against neckties."Are Are neck ties a protected class MORE

An enlightening article for C-level execs in Harvard Business Review that makes quantum leaps in underscoring the value of Human Resources to the organization. The article, entitled The Surprising Economics of a "People Business" might do for HR professionals what the dotcom boom did for IT. The exciting thing about this article is that it quantifies the economic value of human resource MORE

Research on the "Future of the First Amendment" found that of nearly 100,000 students surveyed, only 51% of students agreed that newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories. Also, 83% of students compared with 98% of teachers and principals agree that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions. One can only guess at what the other 17% think MORE

I was excited to read about a national Workforce Readiness Credential (WRC) that is being developed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This credential, created in partnership with business, government and labor, is designed to validate entry level workers'' readiness to enter or re-enter the workforce. The idea stems from the concern of many hiring professionals that entry level workers today often MORE

A quick tribute to Shirley Chisholm the first African American congresswoman. I can remember being back in elementary school when Congresswoman Chisholm ran for President. The first woman ever to seek the Democratic nomination. It didn''t seem far fetched when I was at that age that a woman could become President. Shirley Chisholm was a woman who gave dreams to both women and minorities MORE

Take note - health benefits are top on the list of enticements that new college grads are seeking according to recent MBA Gina Passarella. Passarella, who lives in a Philadelphia suburb, says that she and her friends are willing to work for salaries in the $25,000 - $30,000 range if they include comprehensive medical plans. They also plan to live at home with parents for several years before MORE

As a followup to a previous post on forced ranking, I thought you’d like to see this article at workforce.com. It reprints an appendix from Dick Grote’s new book called Forced Ranking: Making Performance Management Work. It’s a memo from a CEO to his company explaining the benefits of an upcoming forced ranking process and […]. Talent Management Employee Performance Management performance management Performance Reviews Workforce Performance Management MORE

Popular blog Boing Boing posted a link to a funny cartoon animation about procrastination. It''s called Get My Stuff Done. But we''re all too busy in HR to procrastinate, right? Enjoy. Beth C MORE

Don''t miss the article about online exit interviews in Sunday''s Boston Globe BostonWorks section. The article discusses whether or not employees are more open and honest in online exit interviews than in face to face exit meetings MORE

An employment related lawsuit is brewing between Microsoft and Google regarding the breaching of an employee non-compete agreement. Microsoft is suing both employee Kai-Fu Lee and new employer Google for "intentionally assisting" Lee in violating the non-compete clause of his employment agreement. The clause requires Lee to refrain from working for a competitor for 1 year.Lee gave his notice to MORE

A fun reminder from A.J. Vasaris of Value Management Partners to always ask questions and never assume:The owner of a large factory decided to make a surprise visit and check up on his staff. Walking though the plant, he noticed a young man leaning lazily against a post."Just Just how much are you being paid a week?" said the owner angrily."Three Three hundred bucks," replied the young man.Taking out a fold MORE

A quick follow up to yesterday''s post about Onboarding. It looks like someone reached the HR buzzword czar before me. The new word for the termination process has already been selected. And you really have to like the word Onboarding in order to appreciate this new word. In fact if Onboarding ever changes then we will find ourselves in a bit of a buzzword crisis. Any guesses for those of you like MORE

I recently spoke at a conference where I was asked the question, “What did Workday see in the market that made you think there was any opportunity for a new enterprise player?” Time constraints and the element of surprise conspired to make my answer sub-optimal at the moment. MORE

How often in HR have you had to smooth over some ruffled feathers with an employee who is upset about his or her pay increase?You You might want to share with them an article on HRWhatnot called How to Maximize Your Pay Raise. This article explains to the layperson how he can improve his increase and provides information on grading systems including a simple explanation of compa ratios. How the MORE

increased 115% between 2005 and 2015. . million in 2005 (a 115 % increase since 2005). The post 115% Increase in Telecommuting since 2005, Says Report appeared first on HR Daily Advisor. The 2017 State of Telecommuting in the U.S. MORE

And back in 2004 or 2005, a cell phone (and network), that could not be counted on to reliably carry good quality voice calls was, well, pretty much worthless. Blah, blah, blah and suddenly we are back in 2005. But at least we are now ready to compete with Verizon in 2005. MORE

Anyone have any idea who is in charge of creating HR industry buzzwords? I really want to have a talk with him or her. The word I''m thinking about today is "Onboarding." What is employee onboarding? It''s what we used to call the hiring and orientation process. I''m not sure exactly why we need a new word to describe this but I bet it will make it easier to sell products and services related to MORE

This from a Letter to the Editor in the August 15th CIO magazine:I believe the most important metric to a successful organization might in fact be the "laugh metric." Pause and count the number of times you hear laughter - jolly, heartfelt laughter - in your organizations during the course of the day. I would bet my salary that the financial performance of any given company is directly MORE

A pretty good article in the San Francisco Chronicle on Christmas day about On-Demand software. More or less a primer on On-Demand, it profiles a number of SaaS (Software as a Service) companies including RightNow, Salesforce.com and NetSuite. Here’s a snippet from the article in which On-Demand is explained. My favorite part is at the […]. Uncategorized SaaS Small/Medium Sized Companies Software as a Service MORE

It seems I always learn something new whenever I read an article from organizational performance expert Francisco Dao. Once again Francisco has written a brilliant article published in Across the Board magazine, a Conference Board publication. This article, Strength in Numbers, discusses how companies can benefit from harnessing group thinking and how most corporate cultures, be they team MORE

This one really strikes my funnybone: RPO. No longer does RPO stand for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Today RPO has a grander meaning Recruitment Process Outsourcing. We used to have a simple name - Recruiting - but okay, that term was getting stale and goodness knows recruiters have always had a reputation equal to that of used car salesmen. A new name could give us all a fresh, clean MORE

Sometimes all the high-level talk about performance management can leave you – how should I put this? – wanting more. Today I sat through a 45 minute webinar that left me thinking – "alright, I know you CAN do it, and it SHOULD work – but can you show me HOW TO do it, and […]. Strategic HR Talent Management Employee Performance Management performance management Small/Medium Sized Companies Succession Planning Workforce Performance Management MORE

Interesting report from AMI Research showing that On-demand HR applications are taking off among small and medium sized businesses. There’s a very strong case to be made for software as a service (SaaS) use among SMBs – low upfront costs, easy implementations, high configurability, super-quick time to real value and so forth. We released a […]. MORE

The seeds of an interesting conversation are planting themselves here with this post called "So that’s why my peformance reviews sound like they were written by a robot" and here at systematicHR (especially in the notes by our good friend regina.) The topic, in regina’s words: "technology can be an enabler of creating an engaged […]. MORE

In the We''re All Still Kids Pretending To Be Grown Ups department -- Have you seen The Cubes yet? The Cubes are a clever "playset for adults" with miniature office workers and cubicles plus mini file cabinets, computers, phones and cube decor. The website also has a Job Title Generator so you can assign titles to your workers. You push the button to get three word combos such as: Domestic MORE

Over the weekend, Newsday – a NY newspaper – published an article called "Hey, boss, improve those performance reviews" that quoted some of the stories that have been submitted to our Worst Review contest. The article is about some of the reasons reviews are often so poorly given and poorly received and talks about some […]. MORE

Greg Gianforte from RightNow Technologies published a piece in BusinessWeek Online today about the validity of the software "platform" concept. In his mind, a platform (like Oracle’s upcoming Fusion) is something customers don’t need or want and that doesn’t solve any real customer problems. In his parlance, it’s "marketecture," a marketing creation that does no […]. Uncategorized Software as a Service MORE

When is the academic community going to learn that HR has no intention of using what you say in an exit interview against you? In an article in the Washington post, an Associate Professor from the University of Maryland warns departing employees that if they say negative things in an exit interview then the company might in turn say bad things about them in a reference or bar them from future MORE

One of my favorite 80’s TV shows was Sledge Hammer. Hammer was an offbeat cop in the Get Smart/Monk tradition who had a great tagline: “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.” ” This was the ultimate ironic statement because his wacky, unconventional methods didn’t exactly reinforce to the viewer that he knew what he was […]. Talent Management performance management MORE

CIOs and HR Directors have a lot in common. They are both continually struggling for and talking about getting "a seat at the table." When I read CIO magazines, I''m always surprised at how I can pick any article at random and replace IT department with HR and the story still rings true. This is the case with an article in the August 1st issue of CIO magazine titled How to Build a Business-Savvy MORE

An article in Salon looks at the Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston breakup as an example of how women are still chided for putting their career ahead of motherhood. Jennifer Aniston failed to reproduce with her husband, Brad Pitt. But her failure -- as reported between the lines of every story we''re reading -- wasn''t simply a fertility issue. It was an unfathomable -- though possibly temporary, at MORE

Jason Corsello asks the question about SAP after attending the company’s Industry Analyst Conference in Las Vegas. Apparently, not much time was spent on it – Jason says 15 minutes out of two days. Then, DubDubs wonders about Oracle – saying that the HR track at OracleWorld was left until the last day – resulting […]. Talent Management Employee Performance Management Software as a Service Workforce Performance Management MORE

Frank "The Proposalnator" Lynn (author of this recent post) points me to an article in Fortune called "For Happier Customers, Call HR." " It echoes something I heard recently at a talk given by the legendary Jac Fitz-Enz – namely that unless marketing backs up its taglines with some customer service people who drink the kool-aid, […]. Talent Management Employee Performance Management performance management Workforce Performance Management MORE

Shelly Lazarus, the CEO of advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather was given this great advice from her legendary boss David Ogilvy "No matter how much time you spend thinking about, focusing on, questioning the value of, and evaluating people, it won''t be enough. People are the only thing that matters, and the only thing you should think about, because when that part is right, everthing else works MORE

Last year I wrote about corporate prank email and the hoax that was successfully perpetrated on a Starbuck''s Human Resources assistant. The prankster, Shizzy Joyce, pretended to be the President of Starbucks and asked the HR assistant to do a number of unusual tasks such as spying on the head of HR and firing the "fat girl." As bad as this was, it pales in comparison to the trick (crime) that has MORE

There has been a lot of hubbub around Harvard University President Lawrence Summers'' recent ponderings on why there are so few women in the sciences. One of his speculations was that maybe men and women have "innate differences" in science and math aptitude. To his credit, Summers wasn''t stating this as fact or as his personal belief but suggested it as a possibility worthy of further study MORE

I came across an exit interview recently that said, "Please have someone from corporate come to this office and really listen to the employees. I do not mean HR. HR has made it very clear that they are friends with the managers here and are not willing to listen to our concerns."Another Another one said, "This relationship between workers and company would benefit from a liaison that should act as an MORE