Perfect Labor Storm 2.0

Stop, Look, & Listen...Before You Write That Social Media Policy

If you have no idea what Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn is, how can you expect to write a social media policy that will properly embrace ...or limit its use?  Before you can write a social media policy, stop, look, and listen - take a tour around the social "mediasphere." What you don't know about social media can hurt you. 

To write a good policy that protects the company but doesn't suffocate, stakeholders need to spend time exploring each site. Management, IT, and Human Resources (HR) must invest time to understand that social media is much more than just Facebook. 

Social media is not just a bunch of  idle chatter and noise.  Social media is a new mode of communication, just as the telephone was just 100 years ago. The technology includes applications and software such as blogging, video, podcasts, wikis, and even review sites such as Amazon and Yelp. If a site allows a visitor to share their experience and leave comments, it falls under the sweeping umbrella called social media...and customers and job candidates are spending a lot of time using social media to make buying and career decisions. 

Writing a policy that can be enforced without stifling productivity and morale requires that you understand it, as well as the type of culture that embraces it. For example, to the non-user, Facebook and Linkedin appear quite similar.  Aside from getting invitations to friend and connect from people you don't know, both sites allow you to post status updates, develop a network, and interact in groups.  But once you begin to engage with your connections and peruse the site, you get a very different feel for its capabilities and possibilities.  

Facebook to date is a great place for socializing.  However when planned and executed correctly, it's an even better place to build a community of raving fans.  Linkedin, on the other hand, is a professional networking site which allows business people to expand their networks, to generate leads, to recruit candidates, and to engage in professional development. Strategically both sites offer significant possibilities but the choice isn't as simple as either-or.  For some companies, one site or the other might be the right choice. For others, the right decision will be embracing both. 

Once you have toured each site, it is important to sit down with decision makers and stakeholders to define what it is that you want the policy to accomplish. Management , IT, and HR must put aside their personal biases and agendas.  The question on the table should be "how can we make social media work for us," not "what can we do to crush it."  Stakeholders at the table might also include customers, vendors, and suppliers.  Explore how you might be able to utilize employees and other partners' personal accounts in order to gain a larger following...and set up the policy accordingly.  If you decide to separate what happens at work from what happens on personal accounts, your policy needs to express that too. But be careful - you might be able to control what happens at work; but what happens off-the-click is a different story. 

You also want to find how many and what kind of policies you want to put into place. Internal employee policies only cover one aspect of good social media guidelines that will protect an organization. To complete the puzzle, there are 3 more pieces: (1) internal organization,(2) external audience, and (3)safety, security, and regulations.  Ignoring one piece without addressing the others will only lead to breaches in your efforts to minimize the risks. Though it would be easier to have one all-encompassing policy, it is much more helpful to isolate what is acceptable for each network.   

Each of these social media aspects has its own set of pros and cons. Ultimately what you decide to do - embrace it or limit it - must consider the impact it might have on your business strategy and how it might represent your organizational culture. 

Disclosure: The information provided in these guidelines is not legal advice. I am NOT an attorney (although my wife says I argue like one!) An employer should seek legal advice from an experienced employment law attorney before finalizing its guidelines to make sure the guidelines express the employer's intent and don't run afoul of any employment laws.

72 Percent of Employers Struggle to Fill Jobs

A weekly poll posted on SmartPulse asked: Do you have openings at your company that you struggle to fill? 

• Yes, 72%
• No, 28%

Employers....do you agree?  What positions are you finding the hardest to fill? What are the biggest skill gaps?

More Articles about:

The New Odd Couple: Skilled Worker Shortages and High Unemployment

Read more: http://hrblog.typepad.com/perfect_labor_storm/2011/03/the-new-odd-couple-skilled-worker-shortages-and-high-unemployment.html#ixzz1IUC3MGPq
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Every Employee Social Media Use Policy Needs These 7 Things

While there is no social media and Internet use formula that will fit every organization, these seven factors should be included in every employee handbook.

 

Accountability. Employees must aware that they are responsible for what they put online.  Although they may be protected under the first amendment, Federal Stored Communications Act, and fair labor practices, that only goes so far.  If an employee posts something slanderous, defamatory or violates confidentiality or privacy, both the company and the employee may be liable for legal ramifications...and the charges can be civil as well as criminal.

 

Transparency. If an employee posts something that is related to your organization or competitors, then it is important to disclose that he or she is part of the organization including his or her job title. 

 

Degree of Separation.  What degree of separation means is that employees must include something along the lines that "The opinions expressed are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of (Insert Organization name here)." By doing so, the employee is protecting the organization based upon what he or she posts on a personal blog or social media profile.

 

Respect for Copyright/Trademark.  Companies and individuals should also include a statement that items protected under copyright and trademark laws cannot be used without proper attribution.  When unsure, ASK before posting content online.

 

Usage at work. A statement referencing whether or not you will tolerate employees visiting and using social media sites while at work must be included.  If you block certain sites block from company computers, then you should reference the sites that are blocked. It is always best to have a written and signed record to avoid any questions and ambiguity later.

 

Confidentiality. It seems obvious but employees must be reminded to avoid publishing any confidential or proprietary information; and that social media sites are not a substitute for previously established intra-organization communication. Even if the information was posted privately, it could be copied and transferred to a public profile. Employees need to know that any sensitive information, anything that involves a dollar sign and the inclusion of people's names, photos, and videos without their prior approval are not allowed.

 

Monitoring.  If you are going to monitor your employees' social media and Internet use, you need to let them know. If you are going to check on them daily and see what activities they engaged in, tell them. Whatever monitoring process you use, make sure you include a statement that you reserve the right to check their profile at anytime and see what they have posted. But be careful - the line between a personal profile that requires the employer to acquire an employee's user name and password verses information the employee makes public is becoming very distinct based on a few recent rulings.

 

Many of these guidelines may be covered in your existing handbook. If that is the case, you may not need separate social media policies.  Conversely don't assume that your current guidelines for privacy and codes of conduct address the new digital world.  Employers have policies that address what is and is not appropriate use of social-networking sites such as Facebook.

 

It's also not enough to simply have a policy-employees, managers, and management need to be trained on the policy. All employees right up to the CEO should be well informed of the potential problems that poor online judgment can cause. It's a new world out there and a simple IT mandate to block social networking sites does little if anything to protect an employer anymore.

 

In coming weeks, I'll be posting more articles about writing effective and common sense social media guidelines.  I will be highlighting specific cases where employers crossed the line and invaded an employee's privacy and protections offered for off-the-job conduct.  I'll address potential legal issues regarding employee use of social media in the workplace. 

 

 

Let me know what questions would you like me to address.  And what is working or not working in your workplace? 

How Far Have We Fallen If Punctuality and Personal Hygiene Are Job Training Achievements?

Last month's gain of 192,000 net new jobs indicated that job creation might finally be on the uptick. The unemployment rate -down to 8.9 percent - has now declined nearly a full percentage point since November 2010, the steepest drop over a three-month span since 1983.

While that's good news, Elaine Chao, former Secretary of Labor, reminded participants attending the 2011 Human Capital Institute Summit, that we actually need 200,000 net new jobs per month just to keep up with our growing population. (That's not so bad compared to China, where they need 25 million net new jobs per year just to keep up with their growing population.) 

New jobs and a falling unemployment rate, despite what the press and political pundits might have you beleive, aren't the only things that matters when we look toward an economic recovery.

The labor participation is still quite low. According to Chao, we're only at 62.4 percent, the lowest it has been in 25 years. Chao describes the reason for the low participation as a general lack of confidence that people currently have around their ability to find new jobs.

Chao also confirmed her belief that American workers still have high education levels and strong skills sets. It's just that we don't have enough of these skilled, educated workers to fill jobs in the fastest growth areas - Nanotechnology, Geospacial Technology, Life Sciences, and Healthcare - that will plague employers for years to come.

Up until this point in her presentation, there wasn't much to argue with - facts are facts.

Then the tide turned for me. It was her example of "one of the few great remaining training grounds" - the fast food industry. I'm not disputing that the industry isn't doing a good job. But I find it depressing that she felt their efforts warranted such attention because the fast food training curriculum must cover these basics:

• Punctuality is important.
• Personal hygiene is important.
• Anger management/conflict resolution.
• When the boss tells you something, it isn't a suggestion!

Is training workers to be punctual and clean something so compelling that a former Secretary of Labor feels it's worthy of commendation? Has our education and training systems fallen so far that timeliness and cleanliness are significant achievements? When we're talking about finding a way to ramp up the skills of workers so that we can compete effectively in a changing global marketplace, shouldn't we be recognizing companies or industries that excel at training workers to think creativity, solve complex problems, manage virtual teams, or deliver outstanding customer service?

The state of our workforce may be improving but if training punctuality and personal hygiene is the best example of good job training we can offer, we will be seriously outmanned in our efforts to compete in a global economy.

Interviewing Tips for Hiring the RIght CFO

The economy is picking up steam and opportunities for CFOs to hire, as well be recruited by others, seems more likely.  An article posted last week in PC World and CIO offered interviewing tips for and from CFOs to help hire the right person the first time.

Nearly all the CFOs interviewed agreed: they wanted “a highly motivated self-starter not afraid to make an occasional mistake, with a strong commitment to collaboration and being a team player, a willingness to take responsibility for failures and successes, and the ability to keep focused on goals while maintaining passion about their work and the company.”

But wanting, finding, and then confirming those traits and skills requires more skill than ever before on the part of the interviewer. The hiring insights included interviewing tips from quite a few CFOs, recruiters and management experts.  Thanks to Focus, a business research site, I had the opportunity to participate and contribute to this article.  You can read the full article at “Hiring Insights From, and For, CFOs” or continue here to read the highlights.

One of the biggest challenges confronting managers hiring for any position, not only CFO, is that out of work candidates have plenty of time to prepare for the interview, often more than the managers doing the interviewing.  And at the C-Level and senior management levels, nearly every out-of-work exec has had some outplacement counseling which includes … yes, that’s right – interviewing skills training.  Little if any time is invested by hiring manager to update their hiring skills. When it does happen, it’s generally a few minutes here or there or one bullet on the long list of annual HR training updates. That puts many human resource professionals and especially the senior managers interviewing for the new  CFO at a distinct advantage.

In addition, many interviewers tend to do most of the talking.  “A good rule of thumb is that a good interview is 70 percent listening and observing,” was a point I made for the article.  Vibrant Mobile CFO Jeff Babka agreed and offered his own interviewing tip: “I first make sure that they understand the job, the company, our culture and my style. Then, I say, 'Look, tell me what you think I should know about you that would make me want to hire you. Start wherever you want in your life, end up wherever you want….”

Another common mistake is that managers use recommended interview questions as a checklist.  They ask one question and evaluate the candidate’s response. Then they move on to question 2 and repeat the process.  Then comes question 3. When the run out of questions or the candidate stops talking, the interview is over.

But an interview isn’t a test.  It can’t be scripted.  An effective interview should be dynamic.  It’s a conversation where the candidate should be doing most of the talking. “Interviewers have to keep probing….Interviewers tend to stop when they hear the right answer…[when] I'm looking for is to have someone tell me what some of the challenges were during that process, were you able to repeat that, did other departments repeat that success? I can go into an interview with one question and keep asking more questions about that question."

Hiring the right CFO is part science, part art.  Interviewing remains a critical component of hiring for open position. The uptick in hiring is a good sign for our economy but it will put undue pressure on the managers who are doing the hiring. In many situations, the candidate is a much better storyteller than the manager is a listener.  The article on hiring insights for CFOs offers several additional recommendations.  Read the full article here.

Lack of Employee Mobility Puts Kink In Skilled Worker Pipeline

Modest growth in the economy has employers seeking skilled workers to stress out. Not only is finding candidates with the experience and/or skills to do the job comparable to finding the proverbial needle in the haystack in many industries, but a lack of employee mobility has slapped handcuffs on the few available skilled workers.

Posting jobs to online job boards such as Monster and CareerBuilder is a popular technique to reach a large number of potential employees quickly.  Starting a career page on the company website requires little cost or effort.  Getting the word out about a job opening is no longer a big deal for most businesses.

Online career sites also make it easier for the jobseeker to find a job that fits his skill set just about anywhere whether it is local or hundreds of miles away.  Getting candidates to apply for a job, especially with high unemployment, using online recruiting seems like a marriage made in heaven.

But as many companies have learned the hard way, posting a job online can inundate a company with dozens, if not hundreds, of applicants - many of them unqualified, an effect I've called the resu-mess.   Many employers are shifting away from job boards and putting more effort in working connections on networking sites such as LinkedIN.  More aggressive recruiters – both internal and external – are even seeking out employed workers and poaching these passive, but talented, candidates from competitors.

Unfortunately regardless of the recruiting source, mobility – or the lack of it – is putting a significant crimp into the talent pipeline.  

The current housing market is one factor putting a hitch in sourcing talented candidates to fill skilled jobs.  In order to relocate, a potential employee may need to sell or arrange to rent their home if they accept the new job.  With so many potential workers owning “underwater” mortgages, loans that are worth less than the property is worth, a company’s candidate might be qualified but unavailable.  Renting too might not be a option. Finding tenants who can afford the rent to cover the mortgage are few and far between these days.

There is second potential hurdle facing employers seeking hard-to-find skilled workers.  It’s the “blended” family.  Remember the Brady Bunch?  Just a few decades ago, the step-family was an exception. Today over four out of every ten American adults have at least one step relative in their household. There are all sorts of combinations that might fit the modern family, but the most typical is the couple who each have children from previous relationships.  Moving the family to another area may mean getting the blessing of not one but two former spouses or family members with whom they share parenting responsibilities.  Changing schools, sometimes even just a few miles away, and the status of state specific college savings funds, precludes relocation.  In addition, many households today rely on dual incomes. The relocation of one spouse for a job means the other spouse may be left hunting for a job. 

The third hurdle facing employers is the increasing number of workers that find themselves caring for parents.   With people living longer, it is possible that a qualified candidate might be the caregiver for four aging parents.  That is certainly the case for many working Baby Boomers. Perhaps these aging parents live in the same town or just up the street and depend on their adult children just for occasional help with groceries, snow removal, or lawn care.  But time marches on and many candidates may not be comfortable shirking what they feel is an obligation to be nearby when their parent(s) might need them.   If the parents are already in an elder care facility, and the children have confidence in the facility or other siblings in the area, this concern is reduced.  Of course, it is possible the candidate could move the parents with them, but that too can be troublesome and expensive.  Step-parents also can hinder employees from relocating.   According to the Pew Research Center study, 56 percent of adults feel very obligated to help out a stepparent.  That means if all the parents are alive, a step-couple could have 8 aging parents to care for.

The Perfect Labor Storm has many facets converging on the workplace.  A shortage of skilled workers is just one of them.  Finding qualified candidates who have the experience, skills, and mobility is becoming increasingly more difficult.  Thanks to a widespread shortage of qualified candidates in many industries, recruiting employees has its inherent challenges. Other factors like mortgages, step families, child custody and elder care hinder many candidates from accepting jobs in new places. With the economy heating up, finding qualified candidates is only the beginning of the challenge facing employers.  Unlocking the many handcuffs that might be holding a limited supply of skilled workers hostage will make recruitment even more difficult in the coming months.

Great Minds Thinking Alike Doesn't Foster Innovation

"Great minds think alike" - I don't know how many times I've heard that in my life. In fact, I probably spoke those very words dozens of times.  But new research is questioning how effective sameness is as a competitive strategy.  One recent study suggests that similar minds might make management easier, but it doesn't breed innovation.   

 

IBM learned that lesson over a decade ago. In the 1980s they had an ad that said "Great minds think alike." IBM changed their ways.  They eventually changed the ad to "Great minds think unalike."   

 

Unfortunately many other organizations, and especially the managers within them, still see the same light. They still tend to hire people who think like them.  They build teams of people who agree with them too.  Individuals who challenge them or the status quo are hushed and encouraged to give up their personal identity for the good of the team.  Diversity is rhetorically supported at hiring but in practice it is often just an effort to meet quotas.   

 

An article published in Inc. magazine highlights a recent study, which set out to discover how employee diversity within workgroups affects the group's overall performance.  According to Bill Swann, a professor of psychology at University of Texas at Austin where the study was completed, groups with members who "externalized their personal identities" (i.e. students who expressed individuality) were more successful than groups with members who tended to downplay their personalities. 

 

A few experts offered advice how diversity within a company can be used as a strategic advantage to "create better innovation, better products, and ultimately, a better company." 

 

1. Culture. Before an organization will reap the rewards of a diverse work environment, it's essential to have an infrastructure set up that not only supports diversity, but also celebrates it. You just can't offer training and expect change.  Diversity must become part of the organization's DNA. 

 

2. Hiring.  Creating a successfully diverse work environment that fosters innovation comes down to one thing: hiring the right people. It's important to find out what that person values, and how they, as an individual, can bring a specific skill set to the organization. 

 

3. Diversity. Diversity can be a loaded term, filled with connotation about race and gender, but that's not always the case. Personality, talent, and experience are also important traits to consider when creating a diverse work group. And an increasing challange and opportunity is age or generational diversity. By integrating the experience of Baby Boomers and Generation X with young technology-savvy Millenials, process can be improved and productivity increased with diverse perspective and new skills.  

 

4. Leadership. The major challenge of achieving an effective diverse pool of employees is not filling quotas or hiring a certain amount of people from a specific demographic. The hurdle managers face is creating the environment where people feel comfortable expressing diverse opinions. The catalyst for fostering innovation falls upon the shoulders of managers and CEOs.

Can Employees Learn Using Online Games?

Educators have long known that games are good models for teaching teamwork. Employers however often view these games as ice-breakers and entertainment – in other words, a waste of time.  But MMPORGs- Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game - do a better job of teaching teamwork, problem solving, analytical thinking and collaboration skills among adults than do traditional classroom workshops because they more closely replicate the complexity of a typical office environment. 

It's easy to know what's best for the team when everyone is wearing the same color shirt, climbing a rope, and trying to kick the ball in the same direction.  But it’s much harder to be an effective team player in an environment with competing priorities, limited resources, divergent goals, and a whole slew of personalities.

MMPORGs force participants to make choices.  To be successful, the first thing a participant needs to do is select a team.  Choosing which team to join or which team members to recruit, and knowing when/if/how to leave that alliance or individual, has interesting parallels with the workplace. 

For example, consider The River City project. Recently developed at Harvard, River City has the look and feel of a multi-user video game. The idea behind River City is to create scientifically literate citizens who are able to think critically, make sense of complex data, and solve problems. The training is also designed to teach collaborative skills. Students who use River City enter a town that is beset with health problems. They then form research teams to figure out what’s making people sick. They can track clues, develop controlled experiments to test hypotheses, and make recommendations based on their lab work.

River City represents a new trend which has significant implications not only for schools but for business training as well. The trend is built around what online application developers call a MUVE, which stands for multi-user virtual environment.

In this intersection of business, education, and technology, there exists another looming trend of equal importance:  how the Web itself is going to disrupt the conventional training models. 

A whole generation of young people, the next generation of workers, has grown up with iPods, iPhones, and computers.  Many, if not most, need training on the spot.  In fact, many tenured employees need re-training today – not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, but now.  They need answers and skills when … well, when they need it.   The once a year or once a month sheep dip model of training just doesn’t work anymore.  Multi-day and even one-day trainings, what I like to call “drive-by workshops,” are costly, disruptive, and ineffective.  Companies are so lean that removing employees from the workplace for extended hours to train them literally halts business productivity dead in its tracks.  Unfortunately the alternative - not training employees - is a poison pill.

Virtual Classrooms: Panacea for Employee Training?

Up until this most recent recession, business had the luxury of time, money, and resources when developing and training employees.  From this point forward, time will be short, money will be tight, and resources will be limited.  The only thing that will change will be the need and demand for faster, better training.

“Trainers used to have six months to create a learning program,” says Bob Lee.  “Now we have 6 weeks.”  Lee, Product Marketer for GoToTraining at Citrix Online, has worked on both sides of the training fence – both as a Director of Training as well as in his role today working for a training and learning vendor.  Many of the people with whom Lee worked and trained are gone, not unlike thousands of employers across the country. “That has only increased the need for training. But with every business so lean, few organizations have the time, resources, and people to experiment and adopt new technologies. The stakes are higher and time is limited.”

Like most of the other experts I recently interviewed, Lee talked about changes in terms of social learning, informal learning, mobile learning, and virtual learning.   Training was done until recently for the entire company or department on a physical campus.  But now, locations are decentralized.  Many organizations don’t even exist in a brick-and-mortar world.  Employers are dispersed - working from home, remote locations or across time zones if not large bodies of water.  The cost and logistics to bring all employees together at one time in one location is expensive and daunting. Lee sees training moving from a single campus toward “individual islands of learning.”

The challenge for organizations will be to connect these islands.  Social networks, the same online communities like Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce Chatter that many employers seek to block, may be the panacea for capturing and sharing knowledge across the organization.  “The vast majority of learning comes from informal conversation when needed,” Lee reports.  Social networking and instant messaging technologies offer a solution that requires little training and minimal expense.  And with the plethora and universality of mobile devices that employees and customers carry, learning can be delivered anytime, anywhere effectively and inexpensively.

Lee sees the near-term solution as a “new blend - a witches’ brew of new training stuff.”  Training will be all about both content and interaction. Traditionally employees sat through classes lasting about 8 hours.  E-learning took the training out of a classroom and put it online.  But many e-learning initiatives failed in the past because the emphasis was on content not learning.

The “new blend” will focus on access.  It might begin with a virtual class.  The purpose of the class however won’t be a data transfusion from a trainer to an employee but a catalyst for conversation.  And the conversation won’t end with the discussion in class but continue afterwards through instant messaging, VOIP phone conversation, wikis, and social networking communities.  The metric for effective training won’t be on how many employees participated in the training but how long the conversation continued and what knowledge was captured.

Logistics isn’t the only challenge that will disrupt the traditional training and learning systems.  Virtual classrooms are not only less disruptive to the work flow, but people learn better and faster when you can “chunk” it down into training sessions that last for 2 hours or less, says Caroline Avey.  Avey is the Director of Innovative Learning Solutions at ACS Learning Services.  Avey’s current focus is developing strategies and practical applications of learning in 3-D virtual worlds.  “It’s difficult to recall all the information heard in 8 hours, no less apply it.”  At the same time, it’s too costly using traditional learning methods to bring trainers and employees together for four 2-hour sessions of face-to-face training.

The 3-D virtual world immerses an employee in the learning experience. For example, let’s say a company like Xerox was training new technicians how to diagnose and troubleshoot problems in their copiers. The technician in training could be given a tour of the inner workings of a copier right down to the circuit board.  The trainer could then present the trainee with a series of problems to solve. Traditionally, this technician might have watched a video and then selected the correct answer from a multiple choice question.  Now the technician is forced to interact with the virtual machine and deal with Murphy’s Law – what can go wrong will go wrong.  In addition to “hands-on” technical skill training, it forces people to learn how to manage their time, how to reprioritize, and how to interact with the customers.  The technicians can’t hide behind a mouse and keyboard but is forced to interact in real time. Based on gaming technologies, the software can then respond dynamically to your actions, give you feedback, and offer recommendations.

The biggest potential benefit of using virtual worlds for training will be the move from using formal courseware for performance readiness to what Avey calls “performance proficiency” – what do I need to know right now to solve this problem?

Social Media: Productivity Killer or Training Solution?

There are few topics these days that animate a CEO more than the mere mention of social media, video games, and web surfing.  To them, these activities are a waste of time, a distraction, a productivity killer. 

But what if there was a way to harness the power of technologies like Facebook, Twitter, Farmville, and Second Life to train and retrain workers faster, cheaper, and more effectively?  Would that get management to stand up and take notice? 

Well, the future is now and the timing couldn’t be better. It’s no secret that America’s businesses have a real need to educate and re-train workers quickly.  The skill levels of the current workforce and unemployed don’t match the needs of employers.  Unemployment remains high but job openings go unfilled because the skills required today have completely changed since the post-war industrial era began, when many workers were trained.  If employers fail to educate, train, and re-train workers quickly, they will miss out on the global economic recovery that is underway now, and they will fail to improve productivity, the key to future growth.  Ironically, the very technology that many employers see as a workplace distraction may be the magic bullet they seek to close a growing skill gap.