Sponsored Post from CIPHR- All about People

User big brother 1984 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During a time when more and more investment is being heaped onto ‘social networking’, it is getting around to the point where the definition of the term itself is becoming construed, redeveloped ever more ambiguous as time goes on. Where once we logged onto Facebook, Myspace and Twitter to share photographs, keeping contact with people we don’t really talk to and read each other’s personal news, we are now getting to a time of age where our accounts are having a more significant impact upon our everyday lives.

With Foursquare checking where we are, Facebook eyeing up who we’re with and Twitter listening to what we’re saying; it is time that we start taking care about what we do, who we are and keep into perspective just how we represent ourselves to the electronic and hyperreal Joe Public.

For those of us out there who are searching for jobs, the impact of what we put on our social networking sites could be more than just the cause of a laugh; depending who is viewing your page. A recent study that spoke to three hundred randomly selected employers found that 91% of them had screened a candidate through one of their social networking sites. This is significant news to anyone that is searching for a job and could have a factor-changing role in the way that we use our social networks. Out of the 91% that had viewed candidates, it was found that almost half, at 47%, had viewed the social sites of prospective employees only moments after reading an application. Another 27% screened an applicant after an initial conversation. More interestingly and crucial is the amount of employers that viewed a person’s social networking page only moments before making an offer. Although the figure is relatively low at 4%, this could have catastrophic consequences for anyone caught within the niche.

We can however, save anyone from that 4% by looking into just what employers thought when they looked upon the social networking page of a potential employee.

Out of the three hundred employers, it was found that 61% of them reported that they had rejected a candidate on the basis of what they had found on their personal social networking pages. Although there are a large amount of variants, it is possible to find out just exactly why these employers rejected people after viewing their Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

The highest statistic that was found in the survey was that 13% of employers had rejected their candidates because that they had found that they had lied about their qualifications through viewing their social networking pages. Another 11% of employers rejected candidates because of inappropriate photographs, 10% for illegal drug references and 9% because of references to alcohol. Although we all like putting our party pictures up on Facebook , through the eyes of a stranger, the image that you portray could translate vastly different ideals; it is always best to have your tagged pictures on a private setting that is only available to your friends or selected people.

The news however, isn’t all doom and gloom; in fact a higher percentage of employers had actually hired employees after social networking screening than those who had rejected. With a figure of 68% it just goes to show that presenting yourself aptly and taking care of your social networking pages can have alluring consequences. It was found that 39% of employers had hired because they found that the individual that they were viewing had an attractive personality, 36% because the candidate showed creativity and interestingly, 24% because the candidate had other qualifications and awards that were viewable on their pages.

If anything, this one study by Computers in Personnel  just goes to show how integral social networking, the pursuit of employment and the development of HR software has become in the 21^st century, whether the people who own pages, are aware of it or not.

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This was originally written in December 2008.  It’s still worth a read and some consideration as a company business strategy.

Employee Owned Companies

In my career, I’ve worked for two employee-owned companies. Both were excellent employers.

Being employed by a company  you own a stake in makes a huge difference in the company culture. My mantra for 2009 is that company culture is ultimately the one reason that drives a business to excellence, superseding talent, compensation, visions, missions, innovation and any other reason you may throw out. Without a strong vibrant encouraging culture, none of these other factors can flourish.

Employee ownership is the single strongest differentiators in business, and is sorely under-utilized. I am not talking about employee stock purchase plans. I am talking about actually owning shares that you receive as part of your annual compensation.

This would do far more to help rebuild economies than a piece of adversarial legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act ever could. Business and employees don’t need 3rd party interveners and relationships based on adversarial negotiation. They are mutually engaged in seeking the best outcome for business success, in a way that serves the interest of all stakeholders.

Employee Stock Ownership Plans are one way of achieving this. I saw a really great story about such an example of this in a story from the Naples New this weekend.

In their own hands: Employees run the business at Florida Company

In a rare move to save his company, a dying man initiated a complex process
to put his 30-year venture into his employees’ hands.

Larry Bill had battled cancer for years and needed to address Pelican
Wire Co.’s future without himself at the helm.

There were potential buyers, including a Chinese company, said Ted
Bill, his son and company president.

Instead, the Bill family embarked on a nearly nine-month process of
transferring ownership to Pelican’s 48 employees in an employee stock ownership
plan, or ESOP, which Ted Bill referred to as expensive, although no figures were
disclosed.

The transaction was completed this fall, about six months after Larry
Bill died.

“He always had a passion for the employees,” Ted Bill said. “He wanted
them to come to work feeling like they had an ownership stake.

See the rest of the story here

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Who can keep track?

I know this is problem getting tedious and boring, but here is the latest update in the ongoing back and forth efforts involving the National Labor Relations Board and their efforts to change the rules governing union election rules in the United States. 

NLRB suspends implementation of representation case amendments based on court ruling

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How to Organize Your Small Business Information

apps (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

(Cross-posted on Sanera Camp on 5/15/2012)

One of the toughest things for a small business owner to manage is the flow of information, whether it is business or personal.  If you aren’t careful, you can swiftly get lost in a swamp of personal contacts,  vendor payment information, IRS forms, and human resources transactional information like home addresses, number of dependents, and more.  Throw in all the calls from everyone about getting your business on social media platforms, and things can suddenly look really overwhelming.

The good news is that most business people also carry a very powerful resource around in their pocket. This would be your mobile phone – which you can transform into a powerful information management tool by simply downloading some simple low cost  programs.

10 Must-Have, Small Business Apps

Here’s a list of  ten very powerful, mostly free tools that will help you keep your life and business information properly sorted . The apps on this excellent  list , as well as one of the apps listed here were gathered by my friends at Projections, an Atlanta-based company specializing in creating employee communications programs.

1. Dropbox is a free service that lets you  share files, photos, documents, and videos anywhere, even across several devices.
2. Evernote is an easy-to-use, free app that helps you remember everything across all of the devices you use. Stay organized, save your ideas and improve productivity.
3. HR At Your Fingertips is must have for any small business owner or HR professional. This app contains a glossary of HR terms, Federal laws and how to create an employee handbook.
4. Jobvite Facebook App for Recruiting allows you to effortlessly publish jobs to Facebook and reach a new audience with the Work With Us app.
5. Direct Report  makes tracking and recording employee feedback easy. You can use Direct Report whenever you need to instantly keep track of and support your employees.
6. Upward Mobility creates high end professional educational content for management development and test preparation, and makes it available through mobile apps. Our goal is to keep learners engaged with a mix of wit, humor and actionable takeaways while meeting our customer’s specific educational needs.
7. Rypple Mobile  can help make your team agile. It is the first social performance management platform you can access from anywhere.
8. Labor Stats application from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)- Download this App for your Android phone or iPhone and you’ll get immediate access to the DOL’s latest published numbers. You can track certain statistics and get the news releases about the numbers. Plus, you’ll be able to open the releases in browser and PDF format.
9. Wunderlist mobile app for iPhone and iPod Touch will boost your productivity. Organize your to-do lists on the go and synchronize them with your free Wunderlist account.  Access your tasks anywhere, anytime
10. Labor Insider app from Projections allows you to get daily labor news and National Labor Relations Board petition info on-the-go.

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Smaller isn’t always better

Shoes in a shop (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Micro-breweries are great.  We have a couple of great ones here in the Tampa area that you should check out if you are ever in the area – Ybor City Brewing Company and the Dunedin Brewery.  That’s the fun part of this post.

Here’s the rest, which is not so fun.

More than a year ago, I wrote about  the possibility that  businesses would start to see the recognition of something called “Micro Unions” in the workplace.

About now, you’re probably saying  something like “What the hell’s a micro union”?”

It’s this, as excerpted from the Daily Caller:

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the mediation agency charged with interpreting and maintaining the fairness of unionizing efforts nationwide, will soon decide whether or not labor unions can break off different sections of workforces into small groups to organize five or 10 workers at a time instead of the entire workplace at once – or organize using “micro unions.”

The “micro unions” would essentially allow labor organizers to section off company employees by specific job descriptions. For example, if a union were trying to organize a restaurant staff, leaders would target servers,  dishwashers, cooks and hostesses separately.

This is happening now.  Earlier this month, the NLRB told Neiman Marcus that their argument that a sub-unit of people in one of their stores in New York would be subject to a union election.

This is the unit that he NLRB determined was right:

INCLUDED: All full-time and regular part-time women’s shoes associates in the 2nd Floor Designer Shoes Department and in the 5th Floor Contemporary Shoes Department employed in the Employer’s retail store located at 754 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York.

Not just the shoe department, but the women’s shoe department – located on the 2nd and 5th floors.  Wow.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, and it certainly won’t be the last.

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See on Scoop.it – HR

Quoting Woody Allen in the decision’s opening passage, today District Court Judge James Boasberg of the District Court for the District of Columbia gr…

See on www.laborrelationstoday.com

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I bet you don’t have a labor relations app on your mobile phone

A few weeks ago, my friends at Projections asked me to beta test a new labor relations app.  (http://www.projectionsinc.com/app.html) 

I was a little skeptical about how valuable this might be, but it turns out that it is a useful product.  I think HR professionals who deal with unions and labor relations professionals will find it fairly useful.   It also has a feature that allows you to set up and follow Google alerts and read them on your mobile phone.  This feature alone makes the app supremely useful to me.

It’s definitely worth a look.

According to Projections, the Free “Labor Insider” app allows HR and Labor Relations professionals to stay informed with NLRB petition information, daily labor news updates, Google Alerts feed, and Projections ’resources and video previews on-the-go.

Labor Insider App from Projections

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Hey Jay – Finally got a chance to respond to your last #NoFearHR post!

A view slightly askew (Photo credit: mvndrvrt)

I don’t know about you, but I have been super busy   It’s made it tough to keep our conversation going for the last couple of weeks, but I’m back.

A couple of weeks ago, you asked me about what I thought about discussing social media with the C-suite, and specifically about how the HR practitioner ought to begin the conversation about the value of social media to an executive team that still uses the term “twittering”?

My first reaction is that educating  your executive team starts with a general discussion of social media  platforms and how they might be a valuable part of an overall corporate communication strategy.   for me that conversation would start with a series of one on one meetings with the members of the leadership team.   I’d want to get their personal take on social media.

I don’t mean their take on whether Facebook is cooler than Twitter.  I’m talking about an open candid discussion with them about social, and what they think of it.  The I’d ask some pointed questions.

• What’s your biggest concern about our company using social media?
• Have you seen any that use social media that you like?  If so, what and why?
• What’s the worst thing that could happen if we go social?
• Has your department dealt with any employee issues related to social media policy matters?
• Would you be interested in seeing how our brand looks in the social media world?

This would be a great start.   Then you could start sharing relevant information and data that would help illustrate and illuminate specifically how social is already impacting your business.   This should help to build the business relationship between the C-suite and HR as it relates to social.

What questions would you ask, Jay?

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See on Scoop.it – Labor and employee Relations

After several years of deep disappointments, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said America’s largest labor organization is shifting away from blanket campaign spending on Democrats to target “friends,” including President Obama.

See on www.nationaljournal.com

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New NLRB Election Rule changes are a trap if you aren’t ready

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