My first day on the job (involves numerous beers)

It's the weekend, and I don't have the focus to craft a detailed, thoughtful post on HR Technology, so I thought I would tell the story of my first day on my first 'professional' job that I got after graduating college.

I was a recent Business/Finance graduate and after graduating landed a job at AT&T as one of what seemed like at least 5,000 folks trying to keep track of the giant corporations finances.

I'd rather not say the exact year, let's just say we were all still trying to get used to it being 'the 90s'.

So on the first day, I turned up to the offices of the division that I was to be supporting in beautiful downtown Newark, NJ.  The offices were fairly modern for the time, all the necessary amenities were present, and it was altogether a normal and sort of boring corporate office environment.

After a few hours of being introduced around the office, learning where the bathrooms and cafeteria were, it was about noon, and I was thinking about grabbing some lunch. Right about that time, two of the mid-level managers came by my desk to invite me to go to lunch with them. Ron and Frank were two 50 or so year old guys, with probably 25 years apiece in the company.  As I was brand new on the job, I did not hesitate to accept the offer and gladly went along.

We exited the building and hit the streets of Newark for the short two or three block walk to the place these two guys liked to regularly have lunch. The place was called Murphy's Tavern.

It was about as dive as dive bars could be.  Sort of tired looking, small, dimly lit, and with a nice, fragrant scent of about five million Marlboros and Lucky Strikes that had been smoked in there over the years.

But I was just out of college, and had spent more time that I should admit in similar looking bars while in school, so at first, the place did not phase me at all. I was feeling pretty good to get invited out to lunch by the leaders in the department on my first day.

As I said, this was a dive bar, not a restaurant, so the three of us took seats at the bar and were greeted by the bartender, a 60ish year old man named Jim. Jim greeted Ron and Frank (not much of a greeting really, the kind of hello that indicates it had not been a long time since they had last been in the bar), was introduced to me, and then immediately placed a bottle of Budweiser in front of all three of us.

That's ok I thought, it was summer, it was pretty hot that day, a cold Bud seemed like a good idea.  Besides, the two managers who brought me to lunch were having one as well, so I better to go along, try to fit in and all that.

After about five minutes of small talk and a few sips of the Bud, Jim the bartender puts a second Bud in front of each of us.  I had finished maybe half of my first beer, and number two was already there, queued up and waiting. Man, I thought, these guys aren't fooling around.  But I was ok with it, I was fresh out of school, and I did not have any problem tossing back a few beers, so I wasn't stressed. Ron and Frank seemed to make nothing of the fact that no actual 'ordering' had been done, the beers just simply appeared with not a word exchanged between us and Jim the bartender.

So 10 or so minutes pass, I am now working on beer number two, when Jim puts a third beer down in front of all three of us.  To this point no one has seen or asked for a menu (I was actually wondering if the place even served food), and I thought to myself, 'Dang, these guys don't even eat, they just go to lunch and get bombed'. Finally, a minute later Jim comes back over with a pad to take our lunch orders.  I don't remember what I ordered, but I imagine it was the same thing as Ron or Frank had, as I had never been in the place before and apparently there were no menus. While we were waiting for our food, I excused myself to use the restroom, and on the way to the back of the bar where the restrooms were, I finally got a chance to look around a bit more.

The walls of the bar were covered in large poster-size photographs, all black and white, of various celebrities and athletes.  James Dean, Joe DiMaggio, Robert DeNiro, Clark Gable, (Clark Gable?, that's pretty random), were some that I remember. Again, nothing too strange, just an old, dingy dive bar where these two old-timers seemed to eat lunch in all the time.

The lunch finally came, along with beer number four, and three of us finished up, paid the bill (the guys, or Jim or some combination paid for my tab), and we headed back to the office. After four beers and a greasy lunch, I was pretty much ready for a nap, and I don't really recall anything else about the afternoon.  At about 4:00, Ron and Frank came by my desk to let me know they were stopping for a 'quick one' before heading home, and that a few of the higher-ups in the finance department were planning on meeting them, and I should probably come along and get introduced to these 'important' colleagues.

So we headed back over to Murphy's, which was at this point pretty empty. Jim the bartender was still there, we had more Bud (I was fairly confident at this point Bud was the only beer served there), and made some small talk.  I was feeling really glad to be commuting via public transportation at this point as well, as were Ron and Frank.

About an hour passed, and the 'important' colleagues turned up, more middle-aged dudes who liked to drink Bud, and we proceeded to hang out for maybe another hour.  I am now about seven or eight beers in on the day, but even in that condition I was able to notice that the bar was getting more crowded, and the clientele was exclusively male.  And the folks who were coming in to the place were not the middle-aged office worker types that I was with.  No, the new crowd was much younger, more racially diverse, and not dressed in white shirts and ties like we were.  Soon, disco music started to play and some of the patrons started dancing in a small area near the back of the bar. About this point I had to make my way to the restrooms in the back and as I walked past the posters of Rock Hudson, Frank Sinatra, etc, and through and around the small crowd of guys dancing with each other, it finally hit me: Murphy's Tavern is a gay bar! I did not have a problem with that aspect really, but it is the kind of thing you typically mention to someone when taking them the first time, don't you think? I had maybe one more beer, and left, somehow making it to the train station for the train back home, still sort of amazed about the day and night.

So my very first day as a 'finance professional' was spent filling out a few forms in the morning, getting loaded at lunch with two of the managers, then returning to the bar with these same managers and some of the executives in our group, and finally realizing we were in (what I later learned) was a famous 'office worker' bar by day, and 'Newark's primary gay bar' by night.

I am not an expert on employee onboarding, but I do know this, it is probably not a good idea to take your new employee out for a four-drink lunch in a dive bar, then bring them back to the same dive bar/gay bar after work to 'network' with the execs, all the while not letting them know the 'unique' aspects of the place.

Note: If you have read this ridiculously long post, thanks for indulging me.  The story is 100% true. I changed the names of the specific individuals mentioned in the post, although I am pretty sure there is a zero chance any of them will ever see this.

The HR Blog Exchange - Guest Post from Lyn Hoyt

NOTE: This Guest Post authored by Lyn Hoyt is part of the HR Blog Exchange, a fun project that was cooked up a couple of weeks ago, details on the project are here.

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Like so many businesses today, my business continues to evolve its strategy to include technology in all aspects of business function. Not only has it played a role in marketing our framed recognition products on the web, but also in streamlining warehouse functions, customer service and of course HR. Some of these small business functions Steve has written about here. Steve’s recent interview with Beth Carvin  also does a great job talking about the benefits of “social networking” as a component of technology within business environments. We are all continuing to understand the power of technology to connect people through communication significantly impacting HR today. It is a very exciting time to be working in HR.

Does technology in HR offer the ultimate platform to fundamentally transform how we treat each other as employees and colleagues through transparent feedback of work performance? While some of this feedback opportunity already exists, are we maximizing the transparency or does it just exist in a document in a performance review file? DeliverMagazine.com terms “the 4 C’s” of connectivity, communications, creativity and collaboration. To humanize these 4 C’s by bringing real opportunity for employee content, commentary, recognition and collaboration to HR could create a real peer-to-peer platform for authentic work performance feedback and recognition. And it can bring better access to management.

There is a methodology emerging with Facebook and Twitter that cannot be ignored. Can employees build appropriate content for online communities in the workplace? Can they be trusted? While there is much to resolve with security, privacy, rules and moderation in a business environment, with the right spirit, I feel knowledge sharing and community building through HR technology can grow authentic corporate cultures that can ultimately transform the way employees perceive their own value.

Social Networking in the workplace is already moving even beyond blogs in some corporations, becoming mini news feeds, tagging search, and video uploads. Employees move from desktop to phone, posting texts, photos and video in real time that for Gen X and Gen Y is part of the energy of teamwork that enhances work performance and collaboration. Key to fostering the use of this social networking platform is recognizing and valuing there will always be content creators and content spectators, yet both are participating. One of my personal favorites that illustrates this workplace trend are Zappo’s Blogs http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/inside-zappos.

Recognition is reinforcing the power of the positive. As a discipline HR must harness technology beyond data crunching. Real people are associated with that data. Forming recognition communities through technology can ultimately strengthen teamwork and job performance that, by nature, is the purpose of recognition.

Lyn Franklin Hoyt is co-owner, designer & marketing director for Berkeley Tandem, Inc. a small manufacturer of framed recognition products located in Nashville, TN. You can see her company’s products on the web at http://www.awardcertificateframes.com and http://www.fusionframes.com . You can also follow her on twitter at designtwit and awardframes.

Employee Transfers in 1920 - Look familiar?

Chicago, Milwaukee etc. RR employee form
Originally uploaded by mod as hell

Back in the day, forms like these were the 'technology' and mechanism behind a standard Human Resources process of effecting an employee transfer.

Or as this form indicates, an 'employe' transfer. Thanks to my friend Nicole from RemoteRevolution for finding out that the 'old' spelling variant was largely out of favor by the mid-1920s.

The form, which was from the Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad, provides a nice glimpse back into the old days in HR, when simple employee transactions like transfers were processed on paper forms, and required several individuals to handle and sign the forms.

Wow, hard to remember a time when simple transactions had to be done manually, on paper, over and over again. Easy to mess those up, and HR staffs now have more time for 'strategic' activities.

What's that?

Your organization hasn't automated and streamlined these processes yet? You are still processing employee transfers just like the railroad did in the 1920s?

I hope at least you have updated the spelling on the form to 'employee'.

Two HR Technology Solutions - One Theme

HR Technology has become a deep and richly varied discipline.  It encompasses so many diverse technologies and processes, that trying to keep 'current' is definitely a challenge.

Last week was a busy one, and I thought it would be interesting to give a quick overview of two of the  technologies and solutions I was discussing and trying to learn more about.

Collaborative Technology

Neighborhood America - I had a great call and demonstration of the Community Platform ELAvate from Neighborhood America, a company based in Florida that provides solutions for both external, customer oriented communities, and internal, employer-oriented communities. The market for community platforms is a crowded one, with companies such as Jive, Telligent, Tomoye (my current vendor partner for my next class), and several others.

The ELAvate solution offers all the features that are becoming 'must-haves' in this market, things like rich user profiles, discussion forums, blogs, content rating and tagging, and many others. Increasingly, organizations are looking to these platform solutions in their quest to improve employee collaboration and communication, and to harness internally some of the energy and momentum that has shifted to popular external networking sites. Where Neighborhood America stands out from their competitors in this space is with their new Reveal module, an idea generation, review, and rating component that allows customers or employees to propose, comment, and vote on ideas. These idea generators are very popular in the consumer space, (Dell and Starbucks are two notable examples), and can be an effective way to harness the creativity and innovation of an organization.

I was very impressed with Neighborhood America, and want to thank Ron Duquette and Lori Burke for taking the time to show me the platform.

Recruiting/ATS

Avature - I was fortunate to get a demonstration of the Avature Recruiting CRM product from the nice folks there.  The Recruiting CRM product essentially applies classic customer relationship management concepts, (campaigns, sourcing, pipelines, and relationship building) to an organization's candidate population. This solution is a significant departure from traditional applicant tracking systems that are primarily used to create and post job requisitions, and collect specific applications for those positions.  Traditional ATS are often designed with the functional step by step process in the forefront, and not designed around the candidate and building and managing a relationship with said candidate.

The features that I saw were very impressive, things like mining social networks like LinkedIn, easy import of contacts from various source systems, and multiple candidate communication channels including integrated SMS messaging.  It was immediately clear that the Avature Recruiting CRM can't really be compared to 'traditional' ATS, as the Avature solution mostly enhances and augments the functions of the ATS.  Certainly organizations that find themselves in highly complex, competitive, and high volume recruiting situations would likely be wise to take a look at Avature. Thanks very much to Mike Johnson at Avature for the demonstration and to Susan Byrnes for arranging the introduction.

Theme

While these technology solutions support completely different business processes (employee collaboration versus candidate relationship management), they do possess a common theme.  That is, fostering connections between people for the ultimate benefit of the organization. In the case of Neighborhood America, the platform aims to enhance creativity and innovation by facilitating employees connecting to each other.  For Avature, the goal is to connect prospects and candidates to the organization for mutual benefit. 

Systems that facilitate connections and relationships, rather than simply automate transactional business processes are, I think, the most interesting developments in HR Technologies, and definitely one that I plan on researching further and incorporating into the HR Technology class.

Steve's First HR Technology Interview - Beth Carvin

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For my next HR Technology class, I thought arranging and recording some interviews with leaders and experts in the HR Technology space would be an excellent addition to the course content, and give the class a chance to learn directly from the source, which is always a great opportunity.

My first guest and interviewee is Beth N Carvin.  Beth is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Nobscot Corporation, the pioneer in exit interview management software, was founded in April 2000. Nobscot released it's flagship product, WebExit, in January of 2001. In December of that year, WebExit was crowned one of the Top 10 HR Products of the Year by HR Executive Magazine.  Nobscot also markets Mentor Scout, an application to help support company mentoring programs, and Mentor Scout Talent Networking Edition, a platform for internal corporate social networking.

Beth has over twenty years of experience in business management, strategy, human resources, sales and marketing. Ms. Carvin was previously an HR and Business Development Officer with BancWest Corporation and the managing partner of Excel Employment. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

Recently, Beth has delivered a number of talks and webcasts on the subject of 'What Every HR Professional Needs to Know About Social Networking', and is recognized as a thought leader on the subject of both external and internal social networking and the implications and issues to the HR Professional.

Beth and I discussed Social Networking in the organization, and talked on a wide range of issues, from policy, to whether organizations should 'block' access to these sites, and if today's employee has a right to expect access and the ability to use social networking in the workplace.

The interview can be heard here:

This interview, done on April 30, 2009 and future interviews can also be found on my Blog Talk Radio page.

It was a fantastic discussion, and I want to thank Beth for taking the time to share her insights on the subject, and I am sure my upcoming class will enjoy her perspectives.

Thanks again Beth!