2010′s Most Influential Person Online

Posted on | July 28, 2010 | View Comments

Fast Company is looking for 2010′s most influential person online and I was wondering if you might be interested in supporting me. Of course I’m not the most influential person online (probably not even in my own house!) but I thought it might be an interesting project to participate in.

There have been a lot of lists going around the HR Community about online influence in various areas and while it’s all a bit of fun and games, it is pretty intriguing to think about how we interact with people online and then what happens when those connections are asked to take action.

According to Mark Borden from Fast Company, “What the Influence Project aims to do is remove some of the mystery behind the inherent passivity of social network numbers. This experiment will show what happens when an individual takes an audience at rest and applies an unbalanced force–through suggestion, advice or direction–that converts it into an army of action. That’s power that can be quantified and lead to an understanding that can be applied to both the largest and smallest of networks.”

Sounds pretty wicked.

If you would like to help me out, all you need to do is click on the my link http://fcinf.com/v/afd8 – that’s all!

I would also like to throw a very special shout out to the very glamourous Sarah White who is Chief Strategy Officer at HRMDirect and Talent Management Software Blogger at ImSoCorporate.com all the way from the U.S.

She actually got me onto this via LinkedIn- so if you would like to support her as well- it only takes one click- http://fcinf.com/v/ahjx

The only definition of a leader, is someone who has followers

Posted on | July 26, 2010 | View Comments

In creating HR Club Sydney, I’ve been very fortunate to be able to meet a number of very amazing and passionate individuals. I also regularly get invited to events that are happening in Sydney, and am free to write my thoughts on these topics. After all, I don’t make any money from HR Club Sydney, I’m not reliant on boosting traffic to my site and I don’t get paid to say certain things. It’s great because I feel that gives me the ok to say when I think something or someone has done or is doing something cool.

With that said, the week before last I was invited to the Proteus Leadership Networking Breakfast where HR Club Sydney was fortunate enough to be given a table.

I got the opportunity to sit with some of my favourite HR Club Sydney people and it was fantastic to see so many cards being swapped and potential career opportunities being discussed.

I also wanted to write about the presentation because well I thought it was fantastic, and apologies it’s a wee bit later than I would have liked but I wanted to do it justice.

I attended this seminar at a time where I was thinking very much about leadership and what it means to be one. Within HR we know the difference between leadership and management, but it’s important to remember our friends in the business don’t always see it our way. This presentation hit the nail right on the head and I’m hoping many of us can use some of these ideas to create change in our organisations.

These are some of my key take outs (and you’ll probably be nodding your head or shouting hallelujah with me lol!).

Richard started off by talking about how people normally fall into management roles, rather than being selected for their people management skills. Familiar story particularly in areas of technical skills or ability. What happens then is that people with bad managers either leave or try to wait for them to leave. We all know about how employee engagement impacts upon people and the business- so why is it still happening?

I love the Peter Drucker quote that was used, “The only definition of a leader, is someone who has followers”.

It’s so true. Being Gen Y, I have often got the attitude from Managers that I should do exactly what they say because they are the Manager/Senior Executive/Partner/Director/Been here a really long time etc. And that’s not to say that being young means you can walk around doing what you like or thinking you know everything- but it begs the question: without people actually wholeheartedly following what you are doing, how effective are you as a leader anyway?

Richard also mentioned the work of Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones who are Europe’s leading experts on organisational culture, leadership and change.

They are past winners of the prestigious McKinsey Award for the best article in the Harvard Business Review, entitled, “Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?” The huge interest the article generated led to a five-year journey exploring authentic leadership and their book is the culmination of that research.

Just because you have the title or “authority” it doesn’t mean you will have people onboard. It’s not an entitlement- it’s a privilege to be a manager or a leader but some people these days just don’t get it. Some even believe that that is the way people should be treated because “they were treated that way” or “that’s how it is in X industry”.

4 words.

Doesn’t make it right.

Source

Richard talked about how autocratic leadership may have worked in the past, but that Gen Y just simply won’t put up with it. Will they complain? Probably not. They’ll just vote with their feet.

In looking at a definition of an autocratic leader, the wikipedia machine says that:

Under the autocratic leadership style, all decision-making powers are centralized in the leader, as with dictator leaders.
They do not entertain any suggestions or initiatives from subordinates. The autocratic management has been successful as it provides strong motivation to the manager. It permits quick decision-making, as only one person decides for the whole group and keeps each decision to himself until he feels it is needed to be shared with the rest of the group.

In the great words of Dr Phil “How’s that workin for ya?”

So now that we are all nodding our heads in unison, the real challenge is to get this message across to the decision makers of the business. Would love to get some discussion happening in this, and let’s keep it on topic. It’s not Gen Y versus Baby Boomers/Gen X etc.

It’s about leadership and what’s going to be effective.

Also- Richard was a fantastic speaker so check out his presentation here
Breakfast Followrship NSW

Are we being too PC these days?

Posted on | July 15, 2010 | View Comments

As you might already know, my partner works in the media industry and I like to hear about what he does when he comes home just as he listens to me and my HR adventures for that particular day. He’s accompanied me to HR events and I like to go along to some of his events. I like to do this because I am interested in social media (not that that is all he does by the way!) and also because it reminds me to step out of that HR mindset at work i.e. I remember not everyone thinks like us.

Yesterday on Mumbrella, there was an article posted on Crust, (Gourmet Pizza Bar) because they tweeted this comment “Need a laugh? Hilarious compilation of female driver madness” and provided this link to a video showing bad female drivers.

There was a bit of a reaction on twitter about it being offensive and a few hours later they tweeted “Sorry guys, we apologise for the video and meant no offense to drivers, female or otherwise. Lesson learned and thanks for the feedback.”

People then started commenting on Mumbrella with both sides of the argument being represented. I posted the following comment:

Basically what I was saying is, that even in the workplace there are times when this sort of thing happens and its no scandal or major issue because we are all human and diverse individuals. In a working environment there is bound to be times when someone makes a comment like this which in hindsight they might later regret. My point though was that this was clearly a one-off that they have already apologised for and not something that needs to be made into a huge deal. It was a “silly” comment, and even when bullying and harassment complaints are considered in the courts, they take into account how affected the individual was, what a reasonable person would consider to be offensive etc. I just thought people should lighten up a bit, as there are many more serious incidents which need to be represented.

Someone anonymously replied to my comment with this:

While I find this person’s language towards me offensive (lol), I would like to reply and invite your comments as well- as the Sydney Human Resources Community.

Let’s treat this as a real workplace scenario. Someone in the workplace makes a comment about females being bad drivers in a clear attempt to be humorous and make others laugh.

Workplace bullying or harassment involves the persistent ill treatment of a person (get NSW info here). In other words:

It is repeated or persistent over a period of time
It is offensive, intimidating, humiliating, or degrading and ridicules or insults the person at work.

The tweet concerned was not repeated or a persistent message over a period of time so you would be hard pressed getting this one across the line as bullying and harassment. Not to say it should be ignored, it should be addressed if the individual wishes to, but it’s important to note that it isn’t bullying or harassment generally until it is repeated (serious breaches would be handled differently). Now I acknowledge that some may have found it offensive or even degrading towards women- so let’s run with that line i.e. you have someone that comes to you at work saying that they feel that way.

As a HR professional, the steps that I would normally recommend to someone who is being bullying would be listed as following:

Keep detailed records about the incidents- this could be jotting down something in an email or on paper
Talk about it with someone who can provide assistance such as your manager, HR staff or an Equity and Diversity Officer.
If you feel comfortable let the bully know that their behaviour makes you feel uncomfortable
Do not retaliate- and walk away from the situation if it becomes out of control
Seek resolution – informal or formal process

So in the workplace, the person who was offended would have come to me and as per the above, I would recommend that they speak with Crust Pizza and let them know that it makes them uncomfortable (which the twitter community did). What was the outcome?

Crust Pizza apologised and reiterated that it “meant no offense to drivers, female or otherwise”. They then articulated that they had learned their lesson and then thanked the community for the feedback.

You couldn’t ask for this to have gone any better in the workplace.

My personal opinion was that it wasn’t a big deal and I personally wasn’t offended by it. I am able to have a laugh at myself and acknowledge that I will make mistakes. Coming from a sport background it’s important to remember that Babe Ruth is remembered as the home run king even though he still holds the record for the greatest number of strikeouts!

So keen to hear your thoughts. Did I deserve the bashing from @HR Infraction for voicing my personal opinion?

Is 50 hours per week too much?

Posted on | July 15, 2010 | View Comments

Although I’ve recently started in a new role about three months ago, I was feeling the other day like I probably needed short break because I realised it was going to be pedal to the metal at least until Christmas when lots of staff take leave in late December and January. I haven’t taken leave since my trip to Thailand in November last year so I’m thinking about going to Fiji in August (any hotel recommendations are welcome!).

The conversation about taking leave between myself and my partner actually started by talking about how many hours we were working in our jobs. My partner works in media and I work in the legal industry- both industries where there’s a huge expectation to just get things done and do whatever it takes. This norm is largely irrelevant of what salary you are on- the same expectation is placed upon juniors/coordinators who are on low salaries up to those earning over 100K.

In the media industry you are working to extremely tight deadlines and are frequently asked to do the impossible by working late, over weekends and even during the christmas/new year break. For lawyers, they must meet certain billable hours per day (ranging from around 5.5-to 7) depending on the firm and seniority. On top of this they are also expected to complete non-billable work such as marketing, personal development and spending time with clients. It may take an efficient lawyer 9-10 hours in the office to make 7 billable hours per day.

The AHRI people@work/2020 white paper states the following:

“there is little doubt work is becoming more demanding with approximately 20% of workers who report working in excess of 50 hours per week”

Is working 50 plus hours per week becoming the excepted norm? Will those who refuse to continually work the extra hours be left disadvantaged when promotions and salary reviews are conducted?

Considering that we are essentially paid for up to 38 hours per week- is 12 hours of unpaid overtime too much every week?
That’s 624 hours per year, which is of incredible benefit to the employer.

Where do you draw the line and should the employer be monitoring this for the health and safety of it’s employees?

I think from a HR standpoint we know the obvious answer here about running staff into the ground and the risk of burnout- but with businesses ultimately concerned with productivity and profitability in the wake of the GFC- will businesses push people too far?

How many hats do you wear and how do you decide which one’s the most important?

Posted on | July 13, 2010 | View Comments

If you follow me on twitter you might have noticed that I’ve been doing Dry July. This means that I have had much more time in the day over the weekend so I thought I might spend some time catching up on some reading and one I have been meaning to spend some time on is the AHRI people@work 2020 White Paper.

It come’s as no surprise that the report articulates that “the issue of talent attraction, development and retention remains the number one priority in Australia, and projections of skills shortages through to 2020 by Skills Australia (2010) confirms this is still likely to be the top issue for HR professionals in business and government over the next decade”.

Later it then states that “Skills Australia reports that by 2025, 45% of the workforce will change employer every three years”.

In a HR generalist role there is often the competing pressures around what you should focus your time on, because lord knows there certainly is not enough time in the day for the average HR Generalist/Business Partner/Manager etc.

Do you do all the small, urgent requests or requests made by senior management/partners in the business? Or do you put these behind the more strategic things, knowing that things like talent attraction, development and retention will continue to be a high priority for the better part of the next decade?

Do you commit to long term planning because you think it will pay off for the business overall, or do you jump in and get the quick wins under your belt knowing that you’ll probably only stay 2-3 years and move onto a better opportunity if it comes your way?

It’s a delicate balancing act, and a debate in which many in the profession would probably argue differently.

Something to consider in terms of where to focus your efforts to be as effective as you can be, is the CLC research which talks about the four roles of the HR business partner:

The Strategic Partner collaborates with the line leader to create HR solutions for business unit needs. In this role, you might need to help your business leader surface talent gaps or identify important HR metrics.

The Operations Manager focuses mostly on basic measurement and communication of HR policies to employees.

The Emergency Responder fixes acute problems when they arise and, finally, the Employee Mediator helps to manage through conflicts and politics that arise in the organization.

They all seem important right? Which ones do you normally place as your first responsibility though?

The interesting thing about the research is that although most of us probably find ourselves in the Emergency Responder and Employee Mediator a great deal of the time and while we may be able to get quick wins or impress senior management in the short term, it’s actually not the place that we can be the most beneficial.

The CLC research proves that the Strategic Role provides the greatest impact to HR-Line support effectiveness. In fact, strategic partner activities, such as developing the next generation of leaders, understanding your business unit’s talent needs, and identifying HR metrics, have an average impact of 33%. This is three times higher than the next largest category, the Operations Manager.

What this means is that while you can’t completely ignore any one of these four parts of your role, it does put things into perspective when you think about where most of your time and effort should go in order to maximize your effectiveness.

Which roles do you mostly work in and does the fact that you might be moving on in 2-3 years impact your thinking around this?

FOLLOWSHIP- Leaders are nothing without Followers!

Posted on | July 6, 2010 | View Comments

2010 Leadership Breakfast Series

Proteus is a leadership and management training organisation which holds regular networking breakfasts which also includes a seminar. A lot of their work is around creating great leaders and positive work cultures.

I’ve been given 6 free tickets (at a value of $49 per person) to share with HR Club Sydney for the next seminar on 14th July in Sydney, at the Hilton. So if you’d like to join my table on the 14th, please leave a comment via this blog and tell me in 25 words or less why you would like to come

You can find more information on the Leadership Breakfast Series here, and it operates in various states- not just Sydney.

Hope to see you there!

Human Resources Staffing Ratios- what’s the norm?

Posted on | July 6, 2010 | View Comments

About three months ago I started in a new role, which was quite different to everything that I’ve been used to. I started out as a HR & Training Coordinator in FMCG, I then worked in the Culture & Capability team in a telco, I worked as a learning & development coach for a manufacturer and then as a Senior HR Advisor in the public sector.

Since my early experiences in HR I never wanted to be a true HR generalist because the every day activities to do with compliance weren’t something I was ever passionate about. I’ve learned a lot since then, and even though those types of activities still aren’t my favourite thing in the world- it’s good to be able to slant a HR generalist role so much towards things that you are passionate about like learning and development, culture, performance management and succession planning. Depends on how your brain thinks- some people find this challenging to interpret legislation etc and others find it confusing and scary. I like to be creative and see projects come to fruition. It’s a bit fluffy but I have my analytical side as well.

Anyway, I digress.

The other day I caught up with a friend that I worked with while I was at University. We both ended up studying the same course at uni (B Bus HRM &IR) and we were talking about the new roles we were in. She was saying that she would now be looking after the operational management for around 3000 people. I was thinking, oh my goodness- that is crazy. How could you possibly be effective for that many people- but it really does depend on the HR model in the business and what the ‘generalist’ role involves.

For instance, in my last role as a Senior HR Advisor I looked after around 130 people in Sydney. Although I was involved in all the day to day activities of the division, there was so much support through the corporate teams, it allowed me to really be hands on in coaching managers and the performance management of employees. For instance I was able to seek assistance from Learning & Development, Recruitment and the Workplace Relations Team handled all the bargaining with the unions regarding our Enterprise Agreement. This gave me more time to add value to the business in the way a HR Business Partner probably should.

In my new role which is pretty green in terms of HR (which has it’s good and bad sides mind you!), I’m now doing everything, but only looking after around 100 people. I’m sure that once I get a few of the staples in place things will settle down somewhat, however it did get me thinking about what the norm ratios of HR to employees is, and how the varying models that operate in businesses impact upon this ratio.

In researching this (and by researching I mean asking the Google machine), there are quite a few answers floating around, with general comments often saying 1:100.

In April 2007, Human Resources Magazine (I add this because it’s pre-GFC) said that “there was a significant difference in the ratio of HR practitioners to the remainder of the workforce in some companies. This usually depends on the structure of HR within the companies. We found that the average ratio of HR practitioners to employees was 1:128. The highest ratio was 1:500, while the lowest was 1:25. There was also some difference in ratios of HR practitioners to employees if a company’s HR operations were centralised (1:153), decentralised (1:183) or a hybrid model (1:93).”

According to a research paper produced by the Corporate Leadership Council in November 2009, there is quite a bit of variance depending on what industry you belong to and how much revenue the company makes. See the graph below:

I’d be keen to start some discussion on this- what HR Model do you work in and what is your ratio like?

Cool networking app on iphone

Posted on | July 1, 2010 | View Comments

My better half introduced me to a cool new app on the iphone, and I’m interested to see how it will pick up at networking events, conferences etc.

Have you ever been out somewhere and for some reason had no business cards on you? Or would you like to remove the hassle of having to input someone else details in contacts- or worse entering in the info and then forgetting who they are or where you met them?

I’ve admitted before, I’m pretty hopeless at remembering people’s names and faces particularly if I meet a lot of people at the one time. So I am pretty excited about this.

Basically you can go in and set up your profile. You can add a photo, website, the company you work for, contact phone numbers, email addresses, and your job title. It only takes a few minutes.

When you meet with someone that you’d like to trade contact information with, you just open the app and literally bump the phones together. This then tranfers all that persons details into your contacts.

It is so quick, easy and really cool.

Here’s a short video that explains the process although the way it looks might be slightly different now as the video was from last year.

Shall we “bump” at the next HR Club Sydney event?

I am woman hear me rawr!!

Posted on | June 28, 2010 | View Comments

Yes well it feels like there is a lot of focus on women and leadership at the moment. Julia Gillard became Australia’s first female prime minister Thursday after Kevin Rudd lost favor over mining disputes and his shelving of climate change initiatives.

So for the Women of NSW we now have a female Premier, Kristina Keneally (@kkeneally), a female Governor-General her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce AC and now Julia Gillard is our first female PM.

This comes at a time when there is a lot of talk about the level of women in senior leadership roles in Australia, calls for mandatory quotas for women on boards, paid maternity leave for all and again pay equity.

Are we at the point where things are starting to truly shift? Keen to hear your thoughts. I’m not sure to be honest. Sometimes it is hard to differentiate whether people are doing things because they feel obliged or because it looks good, as opposed to believing it is actually important. I think if all these conversations continue to gain momentum, we’ll get there.

On that note, I’d like to share a few things that you might be interested in.

Women, Management and Work Conference

Macquarie University’s Women, Management and Work Conference, on 29-30 July 2010, will be a place to canvas solutions to increasing the number of women elected to parliament, appointed to boards and senior management positions and achieving salary equity.

Leading women speakers will be discussing equal opportunity in the workplace and strategies to achieve higher levels of women in leadership roles throughout Australia. It will encourage and inspire women to succeed in the workforce.

Conference co-chair Melanie O’Connor says, “The conference has been running for 22 years, yet 22 years later we are still looking for solutions to these intractable issues. Although many Australians do not want to hear it, gender continues to act as an insidious barrier.”

“Research by Associate Professor McGraw published in The 2008 Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency Census highlights some alarming statistics which show that women do not form the majority in any category of senior job position in any industry in Australia.”

“Not surprisingly, not a single industry in Australia pays women more than they do men and most pay them less.”

“In 2008, there were four female CEOs in the top ASX200 companies in Australia or two percent, down from three per cent in 2006. 106 companies in the top ASX200 do not have a single woman on their boards,” said Ms O’Connor.

The conference will include presentations, round table discussions and workshops encouraging audience participation run by influential Australian leaders.

Topics discussed over the two days include: how to get on a board, how to get on an executive team, coaching and mentoring, promotion and development in your job, balancing the risks and rewards as well as inspiring leadership success stories. This year also includes topics on starting your own business.

There are over 20 inspiring and leading speakers including:
· The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP, Minister for Housing; Minister for the Status of Women

· Brigadier Simone Wilkie AM, Director General Training, Headquarters Forces Command

· Heather Ridout, Chief Executive, Australian Industry Group

· Andrea Grant, Group Managing Director Human Resources, Telstra

· Mia Freedman, Journalist, columnist, author and media consultant

The Conference Directors are Associate Professor Peter McGraw, high profile management consultant Melanie O’Connor and Pam Morpeth.
Date: 29 and 30 July 2010, 9am – 5:30pm
Where: Sofitel Sydney Wentworth, 61-101 Phillip St, Sydney
For more information and program details visit: http://www.lmsf.mq.edu.au/wmwc
To register visit: http://www.lmsf.mq.edu.au/wmwc/register_now

You might also like to follow them online:

Web: http://www.lmsf.mq.edu.au/wmwc
Facebook: Women at Work Australia
Twitter: @womenatworkoz
Posterous: http://womenatworkoz.posterous.com/

New Blog- Coping with Jane

Jane Coupland has started her own blog which aims to share the “boom chicka wah wah of fabulous women”.

Jane says “Imagine if we all had access to what makes female innovators and the most influential women of present day, tick. Who would these individuals be, and is there something they could share with us that we could take away and use?”

She will be working towards providing lifestyle and career insights of modern day heroines from the community.

She is also interested in being a megaphone for fabulous 30+ women!

I encourage you to check it out and provide suggestions to Jane if you know any fabulous women with stories worth sharing.

Women in Business Blog

I recently came across the women in business website (I think on twitter or LinkedIn) and thought that there might be a lot of people interested in this. It’s a pretty cool little community where you can engage by signing up as a member on the blog, you can participate in the discussions on LinkedIn, start chatting with people on twitter or become a fan on facebook.

To give you a better idea of what the site is about, the manifesto below pretty much sums it up:

Embrace doing business online
Connect to a likeminded community
Promote your business by sharing value

Clare Lancaster also runs a five week online training course which teaches you the principles of online marketing strategy, SEO, social media and email marketing and how you can apply them to your business.

Finally, one of my favourite females Christina Aguilera has just launched her new album Bionic and I would like to share one of her songs. It’s just beautiful and she often sings about the strength of being a woman.

Have a fantastic week everyone!

Pix from HR Club Sydney Event: Learning Roadmaps

Posted on | June 10, 2010 | View Comments

Some quick photos from the HR Club Sydney Event the other night. Thanks to everyone who came along!

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