Sidneyeve Matrix, a Queen’s University professor, professional speaker, blogger, and social media expert, spoke at the HRPA Halton event on April 10, 2012 about “Socializing HR – Why HR should embrace social media and mobile technology.” Even her name sounds futuristic and socializing HR is the future – in fact it is already here.
I first heard about Sidneyeve through my son who took one of her courses at Queen’s University. He suggested that I follow her on Twitter (@sidneyeve) because I would probably find her tweets interesting. Later, when I attended an orientation session at the same university with my daughter, I heard Sidneyeve speak. I actually got choked up thinking – “Wow. I want to go to Queen’s if all the professors are like Ms. Matrix.” As an executive board member of HRPA Halton, I currently fufill the role of Director – Programing and Mentoring, so I was very happy when Sidneyeve Matrix accepted an invitation to speak at our HRPA Halton Chapter event on April 10, 2012.
Sidneyeve’s presentation was a fast paced tour of trends from companies and organizations successfully socializing recruitment programs, expanding workplace training online, and incentivizing and recognizing staff performance on social channels. It was packed full of examples and was W-O-W. What made the presentation impactful to me, was that her L-O-V-E of her GenY students and all they have to offer, came shining through.
It was great to look at HR from a social media perspective and to learn more about trends and the needs and expectations of GenY. She noted that the impact of social media will be felt most by companies in the future with:
employer branding
collaboration & communication
talent recruiting
assessing candidates before hiring
professional development of employees
employee engagement.
She highlighted that if organizations want to attract and retain GenY workers, they need to adapt and build initiatives that respond to GenY preferences, needs, and expectations which she summarized as:
instantaneity -60% of GenY want realtime response
mobility - mobile technology is a life line, the way GenY connect with the world; 70% of students believe being in an office regularly is unnecessary.
frictionless sharing - (Love this term – frictionless sharing) GenY like to share easily and often (photosharing, RSS Feeds, Twitter, Facebook)
personalization - GenY are creative and embrace technology that allows personalization (Pinterest, infographic resumes, web resumes, blogs)
social recognition – GenY respond to meaningful, frequent, and social recognition. Catch them doing some good and tell them. (Twitter, visability and a chance to stand out)
Are you interested in learning more about these concepts and Sidneyeve’s presentation? I used Storify to capture my tweets and those of my colleagues, during the presentation, and added my thoughts preceding each tweet (italicized). Please please share your thoughts on Socializing HR in the comments section of this blog.
People are often stuck in jobs that are not their dream job. I get my fair share of calls from people I know wanting to make a change. I do what I can to offer some tips and in some cases, have been able to connect them with people in my network who end up hiring them. Some of the tips come from my coaching program for outplacement and in transition clients.
Getting Your Job Search Started
Look at your LinkedIn (LI) profile. Is it complete? Does it give a clear picture of your work history, education, professional development and volunteer activities? Do you need to expand it and add to it? Have you described your awesome experience and your accomplishments from past positions?
Post a professional looking photo. Look at your picture with a critical eye. What’s in the background? Does it give the right impression? Ask a senior colleague for their opinion.
Ask people who worked with you and know you well, to provide comments or testimonials of your work. Ask for your direct supervisors, colleagues, and co-workers to add testimonials. Don’t ask people who don’t know you well or weren’t directly involved with your work. It will put them in an awkward position of having to say “No,” or worse, ignoring your request. If they haven’t worked directly with you it would be difficult providing the testimonial you require.
Do some research. Search and look at other LI profiles of people in roles you would like. Sign up for some of the groups that people in the career you aspire to secure, have joined. Search on LI for all those people you know and have worked with and send them an invite to connect.
Look at the job postings and see who you know in the industry and start connecting that way. If a job is posted at XYZ company, you can do a quick search to see if any of your connections have contact with someone in that company.
If you see someone who might be able to help you and they you aren’t connected with them, look them up and call them. If you send them a LinkedIn request, tell them why you are asking to connect. Do not send them a invitation asking to connect because you are in the same “group” when, in fact, you are looking for help finding a job. People appreciate honesty and they will help you if they can. If they don’t accept your invitation they wouldn’t be much help anyway. Do not send them an invite that states you are a friend when you haven’t even met. That is just plain irritating.
Many people advocate that you put a catchy statement that you are looking for a position in your “headline.” Take a look at what others are doing on LI and let people know how they can reach you.
Make sure that people in your network know that you are looking for work. All your past colleagues, supervisors, favourite customers, suppliers, friends, and relatives will want to help you find a job. I received a lovely message from a former colleague who was looking for a job. He sent a very well written email to everyone telling us what he’s been up to, the credentials he had added to his professional development, and what type of job he was looking for. And he ended by asking us to be on the lookout for him. That was very helpful. People can and will assist you with your job search if they know you are looking AND what you are looking for.
Then there is Twitter - but that’s another blog.
I hope these few tips will help you get started. Good luck.
Best regards, Joanne Royce
P.S. If you are a company and need outplacement services, contact us. We can help your departing employees with our coaching program – Getting your Job Search Started. Here’s what one former outplacement client had to say after completing the program (part of a 2-page thank you letter) .
“Thank you so very, very much, Joanne. Your course, your genuine friendly helpfulness, and your ability to improve my resume, LinkedIn profile, and interview performance, without a doubt gave me the confidence and self assurance I needed for a successful career search.”
Why are some people so effective in communicating with others?
How can improving communication skills build long term relationship?
Why doesn’t my team talk to me?
I facilitated A Royce & Associates Workshop on Effective Interpersonal Communication with a group of managers who wanted answers to these questions. The two day program was held over a Friday and Saturday. I was a bit concerned that the participants might want to be somewhere else, especially on the weekend. There was no need to worry as this great group of managers jumped right into the workshop including participating in all the activities I had planned to reinforce learning.
One of the most popular activities was The Experiential Listening Game. The key learning from this activity was that through active listening the listener is helping the talker feel valued. When the talker feels valued communication opens up and flows freely, which is vital to solving issues and building relationships. No one wants to make another person feel undervalued and not important, but that is what we do everytime we check our Smart Phone, PDA, change the subject, appear distracted, or interrupt. When we don’t use active listening skills,we are sending the message to the other person – YOU ARE NOT IMPORTANT. I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU. Not a great way to build a relationship or to work collaboratively with another person.
If you and your team want to learn how to improve your communications skills to reduce conflict, and increase collaboraton and customer service, contact us now to book our Effective Communications Workshop. Our workshop can be customized to your workplace, your time frame, and your budget!
Here is what participants had to say:
On a sunny Saturday, I can’t think of a better trainer to be stuck inside with for the day.
I enjoyed the adjective game and acting out the phrases.
The listening game made me realize how important it is to really listen.
The variety of activities and switching it up, kept us thinking outside the box.
I was able to relate the activities and learning to my work and life.
Best regards, Joanne Royce
Founder of Royce & Associates
a Human Resources and Training Solutions company
Creating Happy, Healthy and Productive Workplaces
Impact99 is like a fresh new breeze in the HR community. The focus of the event is HR and Social Media, two topics I’m pretty pumped up about. When looking at social media within an HR context, it is often focused on parameters, guidelines, and policies around the use (or abuse) of social media in the workplace. And this conference is focused on looking at social media as something to be embraced by HR and business and as a tool for engaging employees. It is interesting to note that several of the speakers, sponsors, and guest panelists are colleagues I had already connected with on Twitter, so it will also be very nice to meet them and network IRL (in real life)!
There is a fantastic speaker lineup and an impactful and participative day planned including “HR Trailblazer Speed Learning Pods.“ The key note speaker is Sidneyeve Matrix. Besides having a pretty awesome name, Sidneyeve is a Queen’s University professor and eCommunications strategy and design consultant at MatrixMediaFX! I first heard about Sidneyeve frommy son who had taken one of her courses. Knowing my involvement with Twitter he recommended that I “follow” her. Then this summer, I went to an orientation session at the university withmy daughter, where I had the opportunity to hear Sidneyeve speak. After her motivating address to the students, I had a huge lump in my throat and goosebumps thinking about the wonderful journey my youngest child was about to experience and the knowledge she would gain.
It’s never too late to continue to grow and learn. Whether you are new to social media or not, continue the learning journey by attending Impact99! The event organizers, Christine McLeod and Jeff Waldman, say that Impact99 is for HR Trailblazers. I like the sound of that, don’t you? If you are interested, register soon. I hope to see fellow HR colleagues and business leaders there and I’m looking forward to meeting some of my fellow Twitterers at the event which, by the way, is being held at the beautiful Evergreen Brick Works location in Toronto!
In my volunteer role as Programs and Mentoring Director with the HRPA Halton Chapter, I was fortunate to book Rob Catalano, from Achievers (formerly iloverewards) to speak to our dedicated group of HR professionals this week. He spoke about 2012 Trends in Recognition: Using Recognition to Drive Employee Engagement. His presentation was impactful, inspiring and engaging. Here are a few highlights:
Make sure recognition is specific, meaningful, and timely.
What gets recognized gets repeated.
Make it quick, easy, and fun to recognize performers.
Recognize results not presence.
Three Trends in Recognition
1. Peer recognition: People want recognition not just from their managers, but from their peers, especially Gen X and Gen Y. Recognition that is top-down only is not the best process to engage employees.
2. Results based recognition – Don’t fund recognition programs based only on years of service when the average tenure of employees is now 1.8 years. People will leave before they reach years of service milestones, especially if results are not recognized. Design recognition programs based on results.
3. Social recognition™ - This concept means the ability to take company recognition and share it easily on social networks like Facebook & LinkedIn. Rather than be afraid that a company’s top talent will be “raided” HR needs to embrace this concept because it helps build individual and COMPANY brand as a great place to work.
Features of the NEW recognition program
Give me feedback – people are actively seeking feedback so build a program that makes it easy to give and receive feedback based on what it takes to succeed.
Gamification – employees (especially Gen X and Gen Y) enjoy earning points or badges, like in on-line games, or Scouts and Brownies, as recognition for specific performance results and behaviour. It makes it fun to achieve.
Portability – company recognition is portable so it can streamed to personal profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and personal profile websites, helping build individual and company brand.
Employee predictability – recognition highlights the top performers and is an early warning sign for low performers. Low performers may ultimately leave because it becomes obvious they are under performing.
How to build a recognition culture and program
1. Ask employees – “Are you engaged?”
2. Involve employees in the development of the program.
3. Get executive buy in by using data, such as employee engagement surveys, and stats on employee engagement and the bottom line.
4. Identify the core competencies and behaviours that are critical success indicators for the company.
5. Just do it. Build a recognition rhythm based on results.
6. Train everyone on the competencies, desired results and behaviour based on performance (not popularity) and how to give and receive recognition that is meaningful, specific, and timely.
7. Make the program simple, instantaneous, fun, and flexible with choice.
So what kind of recognition program do you have in place at your organization? Are you recognizing employees for showing up on the job, or are you recognizing your top performers based on results and behaviours that result in success? If you need help building a results based recognition culture that engages the hearts and minds of employees contact us now.
Best regards, Joanne Royce
P.S. What do you think about trends in recognition? Provide your insight and thoughts in the comments sections.
Last week’s blog post was about “What not to do when looking for a job.” But on the other side of the coin, many candidates have told me stories about bad recruiting practices. They also tell their friends and families and they tell others, ultimately damaging the corporate brand. If you are looking to be an employer of choice, then make sure your recruiters and hiring managers are enhancing the company image rather than tearing it down.
What not to do when recruiting talent
Do Not …
1. Tell a candidate that you will call them on a specific day and then not call them.
2. Reject all candidates because your expectations are unreasonable or the candidate is not a clone of you.
3. Make judgements and assumptions because a candidate went to a specific university or looks like a person from the past that did or didn’t work out.
4. Keep a candidate waiting in the reception area when you’ve set a time for an interview or waiting for an offer once you’ve made your hiring decision.
5. Make the candidate travel back and forth for multiple individual interviews instead of a panel interview or SKYPE interviews especially when the candidate has a distance to travel.
6. Bully or lecture a candidate by criticizing his/her resume, answers and appearance, or talk about all your achievements instead of letting the candidate reveal his/her achievements, strengths, and interests.
7. Sugar coat and “oversell” the job or exaggerate the culture of the organization.
8. Tweet that you are about to extend a job offer to “Name the candidate.”
9. Ask a candidate, “Why are you stuttering?”
10. Look at only the skills and knowledge, and forget to screen the candidate on fit with the team and culture so they are set up for failure from the start.
While reading through the list, did anything shock you! Unfortunately, there are bad practices and downright rudeness evident in some recruiting practices today. If you are wanting to be an employer of choice make sure you have best practice recruiting in place.
Call us if you to need to train and develop your recruiting and management team so they can Hire the Best and build company brand and a great place to work at the same time. And if you have any good or bad recruiter stories, please share them.
Best regards, Joanne Royce
P.S. The person who asked a candidate the question in #9, also needs AODA training!
With my daughter going off to her first year of university and my son finishing his last year at university, I wanted to share the concept of “balance” with them. In any setting, whether it is at work, at school, or at life we need to achieve balance to be mentally and physically healthy. When we are in balance, we are happy and successful. To be in balance we need equal doses of three spheres or circles of influence – self-care, leisure and productivity.
So what does each circle mean?
Self-Care includes taking care of our physical and mental wellbeing. It consists of activities such as exercising, meditating, and eating well. Everything in moderation helps balance.
Leisure involves socializing with friends, family, and new acquaintances. It means participating in activities that bring us joy. It might include going to the movies or social functions with friends. It doesn’t include becoming a “couch potato” watching hours of mindless television or obsessively playing video games.
Productivity means “doing” things like working at paid jobs, completing school work, studying for exams, volunteering, doing housework, and maintaining our homes. When we do this, we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves and it provides a sense of accomplishment.
When all three circles are in balance, we are happy, healthy, and productive individuals. It’s natural at various times to be out of balance, when one of the circles is larger than the rest (i.e. exam time, budget time), but if this situation continues too long, not so nice things start to happen. When we spend too much time in one circle while neglecting the others, we suffer.
During the first year of university, sometimes too much time might be spent on leisure activities, such as socializing and partying, and not enough time spent on self-care and productivity. This could result in what is called the “Freshman 15″ (plus 15 pounds and minus 15 percent)! But sometimes too much time might be spent on studying. In The Happiness Advantage, author Shawn Achor tells the story of two students who entered university with the same overall average. One balanced her school work with socializing and taking care of herself. The other student spent all her time studying and completing school work. The student with balance became more vibrant and happier as the school year progressed, and the other one became so depressed and sad she didn’t return.
To ensure we are happy, healthy, and productive,
we need to be in balance with equal doses of
self-care, leisure, and productivity.
Are you in balance, or do you spend too much time in one circle? What can you do today to make sure you have work-life balance? Please share this blog post with anyone you feel might benefit from it.
“Probably my best qualities as a coach is that I ask a lot of challenging questions and let the person come up with the answer.” ~Phil Dixon
Do you have an employee with performance issues? If you do, you might want to consider using the T.A.L.K. method to develop a solution collaboratively with your employee. Remember that a coaching meeting is not a disciplinary meeting, it is a “helping” meeting. Use the following acronym to help you remember the process:
Tell it like it is
Ask for feedback
Lead the discussion
Keep at it
It goes like this …
Tell is like it is
“I’ve noticed you have been coming in late and leaving early the past two weeks.”
Describe the problem behaviour or situation in an impartial and factual manner.
Don’t judge or accuse the person
Use non-judgemental words
Leave your assumptions at the door
Keep your tone of voice approachable and calm
Ask for feedback
“What’s up?”
Ask the employee to share their thoughts about the situation and let them explain
Listen patiently to the employee without judging and accusing
Look beyond words for clues to what the employee is saying
Don’t interrupt
Using paraphrasing to clarify the message
Lead the discussion
“When you come in late and leave early, what’s the impact on our customers – your team – your career?”
Ask open ended questions to help the employee understand the impact of his behaviour
Use logical consequence questioning and reframing to guide thinking
Don’t give advice, instead give information and offer appropriate assistance
Refrain from criticizing or offering advice
Keep at it
“So we’ve agree to do, (then summarize agreed upon action) …….. and we’ll meet in two weeks.
Encourage and express confidence in employee willingness and ability to help himself or herself
Summarize and clarify expectations, agree, and document an action plan
Set a follow up meeting with a specific date
Keep at it until the issues are resolved
So there you have it. A simple and effective way to T.A.L.K. it out to improve performance. Try it. It works!
Best regards, Joanne Royce
P.S. I first heard the acronym T.A.L.K. many years ago and it stuck with me. Not sure who the source or orginator is, but it’s catchy and easy to remember!
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