How social media keeps me out of trouble at HREvolution

I am now batting .500 on HREvolution events.  So far, I have missed all the events held in cities that start with L. That simply sucks, but it’s life.  Since assuming my glamorous new duties as a social media community manager, I simply can’t travel like I used to.  I have to pick the timing of attending events since I am working on the schedule of a seven person team.  I also have to track a lot more data, document more processes, do more research, and generally act a lot more like a manager than I did in my previous labor relations role.  The good and bad news of all this is I missed all the partying with HR rock stars that is going on in Vegas and I have all my money in my pocket, not in storage at a casino.

Now that I have the whining out-of-the-way, let’s get on to the real post topic and talk about some things that I have learned in my first three months as an HR practitioner turned social media professional.  I hope that this article will form the basis of what I want to talk about at the NEXT HREvolution.

The job is still all about communication.  It is just a different audience that is more external to the organization than your typical employee audience.    You are talking to everyone now in this role:  competitors, customers, raving fans, disgruntled employees, your workforce, and anyone else who may have a specific ax to grind with you.

The conversation is always on, including those times when your team is not covering your dedicated platforms, and especially in places where you may not have a footprint now.  Brand conversation is extensive and raw sometimes.

The time commitment for a large brand to do social media right is greater than you have ever imagined.  Make your best estimate and add at least 30% to that.  You will probably still be low.

You need a listening strategy.    The graph below will give you some idea why.  This random 30 day snapshot of brand voice shows how the conversation breaks down into buckets.  Micromedia includes stuff like Twitter and Foursquare.  The rest is self-explanatory.   Assuming that you have a multi-platform social media presence of your own, you are still only catching a small part of your complete conversation.

This means you need tools to help you with your listening strategy.  Something like Radian6, Looxi, Trackur, SproutSocial or StepRep.

You need to understand what you are listening for, and how you actively you plan to engage with the conversation that is taking place around your brand before you engage.  Take advantage of the free trials that each of these vendors offers.  Make them explain the metrics to you and discuss different strategy approaches before you buy.  It doesn’t make any sense to spend a ton of money with a monitoring service if you are just going to listen and not engage in some way.  You can listen for free to most of the conversation for free with Twitter, Facebook, and Google alerts.  By doing this however, you will be giving up a lot of analysis and reporting capabilities.   If you don’t need to know what people are saying about your brands on blogs, and wouldn’t respond there anyway, you may not want to pay for that functionality.  You should understand what that means though.

On Friday, a customer sent me an email after I contacted her on our Facebook wall and shared this with rather shocking comment with me:

“I can’t believe that Publix actually reads their Facebook wall.  Another reason why I love you guys.”

In reviewing the pages of many other brands, it is very  clear that the young woman quoted above has good cause for her surprise that there are live people behind a corporate Facebook wall or other social media platforms.   Don’t make this mistake!   Remember that social media is about communication, you have to listen and talk back.  (duh, right?)

See all you people living the HR Rock Star life at the next HREvolution or somewhere down the road!

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Via Scoop.it – Labor and employee Relations

Oliver Bell, Inc. Warns Employers that Non-compliance with proposed reporting changes in the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) could carry stiff penalties, including prison time for your top executives (CEO/CFO).
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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Short review of the 2011 Illinois SHRM state conference

I have attended this conference for the last two years.  The 2010 conference experience was a good one.  I can’t say the same for 2011.  The reason I can’t say it was a good conference experience is pretty simple.   This conference wasn’t just good, it was great.

Here’s what made it great:

• Conference team leadership clearly upped the bar on everything they touched.
• Selection of speakers for concurrent sessions was terrific, and aimed at heart of today’s HR by offering meaty, relevant topics currently impacting the workplace.   This was excellent
• Networking opportunities abounded, and people were taking advantage to make connections.
• All three of the keynote speakers kicked ass. I don’t remember who spoke at the 2010 conference.  I will remember all these people all year long.
• Great social media boot camp pre-con session by my friend Jessica
• They invited me to speak on social media, HR and brand.   The one point from my presentation that was retweeted most often:  “HR needs to manage social media proactively.   It is not a fad, and it is not going away.”

Kudos to all the leadership at Illinois SHRM, and thanks for inviting me again this year!

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Image via Wikipedia

HR social technology team profiled on HR Florida blog

Head over to the excellent blog from the HR Florida state chapter, HR Mouth of the South and check out the profiles for members of the HR Florida social technology team.   Check out the featured profiles and 5 questions for Bryan Wempen and Victorio Milian, and their answers.   You will be able to hear from Franny Oxford, Kris Dunn, Joni Doolin, and Ben Eubanks in the coming weeks.

Be sure to follow the tweets of the entire social tech team from HR Florida by using the #HRFL11 hashtag.

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My latest on Talent Culture

I am currently in the midst of a significant career shift.   Even though I report to an SVP of HR, I am now assigned as the social media community manager for the Fortune 100 company where I work.  My primary responsibility involves using social media tools and platforms to create a community with our customers.  As you might imagine, this is taking me in a number of new directions career wise.

It also makes me reflect more on how I am going to stay up to date with the rapidly changing human resources field while simultaneously acquiring new knowledge related to social media.   In an interesting twist, one of the first places I have turned to is the various social media based communities that I have been a part of inside the HR community and different social media communities, such as TalentCulture.

These communities have tremendous value, not only for networking and exposure, but as a social learning resource network.   I have been spending an increasing amount of time in these communities in the last couple of weeks and I don’t see this changing in the near future.  These communities offer incredibly rich and valuable resources.  You will be a more cultured professional in regards to social media for participating in as many of these opportunities as possible. I have created a list of resources below where you can get started. Happy exploring!

Communities that keep me connected:

1. TChat – The intersection of Talent + Workplace Culture – Leadership, Recruiting, HR, Social Media, Innovation.

2. RadChat – recruiting, sourcing and social media all blend here

3. Talent Net Live -  Live Social Recruiting Chat

4. Hire Friday Chat – where jobseekers convene

5. HR Happy Hour – this weekly show focuses on HR, management, leadership, and workforce technology

6. Drive Thru HR – this daily show gives a colorful look at what keeps HR warriors up at night

7. BlogChat – is exactly what it sounds like, a weekly twitter chat about blogging

8. Speakchat -connect speakers, event planners, speaker bureaus, publicists, and clients

Here are a couple of communities I left off the Talent Culture post:   Women of HR, HREvolution

IMAGE VIA webtreats

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Career transition can be challenging

I had an interesting discussion with my buddy William Tincup earlier this week about going through a career transition.   One thing I have learned over the last year or so is that when William Tincup speaks, it is a good idea to listen.

William shared some of the learning he has experienced since he left Starr Tincup to start his own consulting firm.  The short version is that he underestimated the difficulty of transitioning from one business channel to another.  I placed a link below to the Drive Thru HR show where we talked about this if you would like to listen to the entire conversation.

I’m experiencing very much the same thing in my current job transition.

I know a bit about social media, but I am quickly finding out there are entire universes of stuff I don’t know about.  As I sit in meetings with people from creative groups and marketing agencies, listening to them talk about marketing to people using Facebook, I find they are throwing out stuff that is routine to them, but a little foreign to me.  Usually, I can get on top of what they are discussing very quickly, but it just points out what I don’t know, and need to learn.  Listening carefully helps to point me at what I need to pay attention to for future learning.

Most of these truly smartypants people are younger than me, and have done this work for a few years.  They come to meetings with their iPads.  They pull out iPhones to check email.   In other words, this is the environment they grew up operating in, and this is their world of work.

None of this make me feel like an outcast or an interloper.  it just makes me feel like I have to hustle to catch up, and get on equal footing in the game.

Upping my social media game

Here is what I am doing so far to make that happen:

1. Jumping into learning more sophisticated social media monitoring tools.
2. Asking the smartypants people I meet for their Twitter handles and blog URLs
3. Connecting with those same smartypants people on LinkedIn
4. Checking out who they follow and their LI groups, so I can spend more time in their space

I also find myself shedding some of the HR sites and people  I can add additional social media resources into my personal “bandwidth”.   This feels odd, but necessary.

Anyone besides William have tips for this type of transition?   share them in the comments.

Disclaimer:   I hope smartypants doesn’t sound snarky.   The people I have met are skilled and smart, and I am having a ton of fun so far learning new stuff  from you, whoever you are!

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Your job description is not sexy

Another view from my random series of not very sexy job descriptions.  This one is from a job posting on a large job board.

I guess it tells you what you will be doing, but it doesn’t jazz me up about applying for the job.   I especially enjoyed  the  “new employee’s induction” terminology.    Sounds like they are heading for a few years of military service instead of starting a new job.

HR Manager

Under the leadership of the CFO is responsible for the planning and execution of programs and activities in the Human Resources Department.​

· Works closely with the CFO communicating the company Strategies.​

· Designs and coordinates new employee’s induction, training, performance management and improvement programs.​

· Assures federal and multi-state laws compliance with (FLSA, OSHA, WPS, MSPA, EPA, FMLA, COBRA, EEO, ERISA, DFWP, E-Verification, DHS, H-2A and IRS among others.​)

· Participates in the safety committee and secures compliance with official and private labor regulatory, health and safety audits, PRIMUSLAB, GLOBALGAP, Disney, Sysco, Tesco, DOL, etc.​

· Administrates company benefits and manages workers compensation and unemployment claims.​

· Manages the company’s housing and maintenance budget.​

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Cover of Just Cause (Snap Case)

Employment at will and Just Cause go together

I was reading this thread on HR Toolbox the other day where someone asked,

 “If an employee has already submitted his/her two weeks notice with their supervisor/HR department, can the company legally “fire” them during that two week period to avoid paying the remainder of that person’s salary?”

The various responses were varied, and somewhat interesting, but something else caught my attention and made me just a little crazy.   People started throwing around terms related to employment.   Terms  like “employment at will state” and “right to work state”.  

 Maybe it is just me, but I see these things getting mingled into the wrong metaphors all the damn time.   Time to set the record straight, kinda…

The concept of right to work has nothing whatsoever to do with the concept of employment at will, except that unless you work in HR, you will not usually not hear these terms anywhere except at work, your lawyer’s office, or when you are filing for unemployment.

Right to Work

 Right to work deals with whether or employees can be required to join a union and required to pay union dues or not.   Individual states have the right to enact laws stating that people do not have to join a union or be required to pay dues.  There are currently 22 states with such laws on the books.   See the map from Wikipedia below to determine if your state is one of the twenty two states.    If you live in a gray state, you are not in a Right to Work state.  If you are in a union in a gray state, you can be required to join a union, and be required to pay union dues.  This is often called working in a “closed shop“, even though technically that terms refers to an outlawed practice which was a form of union security agreement under which the employer agreed to only hire union members, and employees had to remain members of the union at all times in order to remain employed.

Employment at Will

The legal definition of Employment at will generally means either employer or employee can end the employment relationship at any time.   According to About.com, employment at will means that an employee can be terminated at any time without any reason. It also means that an employee can quit without reason. Employers are not required to provide notice when terminating an at-will employee.

Numerous factors can modify the strict definition of employment at will including such things as state and local statutes, company policy statements in handbooks, the language of an offer letter, an employment contract, or having a collective bargaining agreement in place.  It is always wise to check local laws to understand the status of the area you are doing business in before making final decisions of employment relationships.

Just Cause

Most union contracts contain a specific or implied concept of just cause when it comes to ending an employment relationship.  Just cause is a higher standard for employment whereby an employer must prove just cause, often before an arbitrator in order to justify a termination.  The burden of proof rests with the employer in such cases.

Just Cause is also a video game, and a crappy movie from the 90′s starring Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne.  Please don’t try to rent it by asking for “Right to Work” or “Employment at Will”!

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Making things personal works

I got this in the mail from SHRM today.  Maybe I am a sucker for personal “firsts” when they come my way from SHRM, but I have to say I like this personal approach.  I don’t care if everyone who attended the conference got one of these, I think it is very cool.

I first got involved with SHRM as a volunteer because China Gorman got to know me on Twitter, and suggested that we speak on the phone.  She urged me to get more involved, and I had a difficult time turning her down.

Now I am getting thank you notes.  Stop with the pressure already, SHRM!  (but keep up the good work)

A thank you note from Laurie McIntosh

Dear Michael,

I wanted to drop you a quick note of thanks for the opportunity to meet you recently at our 2011 Employment Law and Legislative Conference.

Meeting with members such as you, our most engaged members, is truly a treat for me.  I was a volunteer leader so I know the importance of the role you represent with SHRM and how you juggle your “paying job” with SHRM, family, etc.

I hope you found the event to be very informational.  There was a great lineup of speakers and initial feedback has been very positive.  The venue also provided many chances to meet your colleagues from across the United States.  Building your network of contacts is certainly one of the advantages of attending such events.

Thank you for all you do for the HR profession!  Hope to see you at the Annual Conference in Las Vegas!

Sincerely,

Laurie McIntosh, SPHR

Director, Member Engagement

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SHRM and Social Media

I was going to write a post with some detail about the #SHRMconnect task force I took part in last in Washington DC, but that has already been done in great fashion by Victorio Milian.  You should be sure to check out his thoughts on “The Rebirth of SHRM Connect“.  

Along with Victorio and myself, others in attendance at the meeting or a related event included Ben Eubanks, Jessica Merrill, Sharlyn Lauby, Bryan Wempen, John Jorgensen, Pamela J. Green,  SHRM CIO Heidi Byerly, Curtis Midkiff, Laurie McIntosh,  Gary Rubin, Steven Williams, Anne-Margaret Olsson, and several others.   I was especially pleased to see SHRM CEO Hank jackson attend a dinner for the team, and speak to us about the importance of social media to SHRM, and share with us that it is one of his goals for 2011 to figure out social media and get it done right.

This was the most important thing that I took away from the SHRM Connect task force meeting.   As our professional organization, SHRM has social media directly in their headlights.   They are working hard not just to figure out how to manage it, but also how to put it work strategically.  In this, they mirror many of our own organizations.   In essence, they are going through the same struggle many of us are, and we can all learn lessons from the experience.    I hope SHRM remembers to share the organizational knowledge they are gaining with their members.  Based on my experience with this task force, I firmly believe they will.    It would be a great experiment in real time learning.  I hope many HR professionals will pay attention and share in the learning.

I am proud of our professional organization for stepping up to meet this challenge head on.  I am grateful for a chance to be a part of the process.   Thanks, SHRM!

I also heard about HR Talk, and visited that bulletin board for the first time ever.  What an experience that turned out to be!

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