#HRevolution 2012: You know you need to be there

The fifth, and I am sure the best ever, installment of the HRevolution (Un)conference for Human Resources and Recruiting leaders and professionals is set for Sunday, October 7, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois.

We will shortly be releasing the HRevolution 2012 agenda which can be found here, and once you have a peek at the stellar line-up of stars that have graciously agreed to present and facilitate at the event, you can rush over to the registration page and reserve your place here.

I am sure you will agree with me in that with the incredible list of presenters, and the amazing opportunity for interaction and networking that the much-less-formal format of HRevolution provides, and finally the amazing value that the HRevolution event offers compared to the typical HR conference, that you simply must, as a smart and savvy HR professional, make time in your Fall calendar to join us in Chicago.

With A-list session presenters like Gerry Crispin, John Sumser, Kris Dunn, Laurie Ruettimann, Lance Haun, Elaine Orler, Jason Seiden, William Tincup, Tim Sackett and more, the HRevolution 2012 event promises to be truly a can't miss date this year.

I am really honored and proud to be a member for the fifth time of the HRevolution organizing team, and I can say truly and honestly that this year's event will be the best we have ever produced.

Also, and in an incredible value, everyone who registers for HRevolution will be provided a discount code good for $600 off the published conference rate for the 15th Annual HR Technology Conference, which commences immediately after HRevolution ends. So truly, you can come to HRevolution on Sunday, October 7th, then stay for HR Technology from October 8-10, while enjoying the largest discount available for HR Tech.

Look, don't take my word for how fantastic HRevolution will be. If you are not sure, or need more convincing, I challenge you to log on to Twitter today and tweet:

'I'm thinking of going to #HRevolution in October. Is it worth my time?'

I promise you'll be convinced after you see the responses.

I hope to see you in Chicago on October 7th!

A Tale of Two Job Actions

Two different labor negotiations caught my attention recently and the differences in how they were resolved, (or have not been resolved), paint a nice contrast in how tipping the balance of power in any negotiation continues to be a function of scarcity and ability to add unique, distinct, and not easily replaceable without significant switching costs value.

Exhibit A - The three-month long strike at Caterpillar by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Points of Contention (simplified and abbreviated) - The company wants the union to accept a new six-year labor agreement, with wages essentially frozen for the duration of the contract, and with workers contributing an increasing percentage of pay towards healthcare costs. The union is countering that in a time of record corporate profits, that the company should not be demanding concessions from the union, and should consider the union and the workers as partners in success, and share more equitably the fruits of a great run of results.

(Likely) Outcome - hard to say for sure, but the recent history of labor actions in the industrial US suggests that Caterpillar management will emerge with all or most of the concessions they are seeking.

Exhibit B - Adult cast of the ABC TV comedy 'Modern Family' form a united front and stage essentially what amounts to a strike to achieve a significant pay rise for the coming and subsequent seasons.

Points of Contention - The cast, realizing the success of the show, and the strong bargaining position they held, basically wanted to maximize their earnings.  The show's producers, also understanding the success of the show, wanted to continue to ride what is often elusive popularity in the entertainment world, while of course, keeping production costs as low as possible so as to maximize the show's profits.

Outcome - The Modern Family cast all won hefty wage raises, although not fully what they were originally seeking. They also won a small stake in 'back-end' money, essentially a form of profit sharing, and agreed to one more year on the contract length than they originally wanted.

The moral to all this?

No, not the completely obvious conclusion that it is better to be a highly paid entertainer than a industrial factory worker, although in many ways that seems true.

No, I think the real story is that no matter what you do your negotiating power, leverage, and ability to extract the absolute best deal in any situation is almost completely a function of how easily replaceable you are.  And the corollary is that we now live in a climate with a persistent and stubborn economic slowdown, and where the basic math doesn't seem to make sense.

A world where finding about 800 new and cheaper machinists seems like a more realistic possibility than finding 6 different funny actors.

Whatever you decide to do, better make sure there aren't 800 more just like you waiting for you to slip up or make a tactical negotiating blunder.

Happy Monday!

Off Topic - A Better Way to Share Your Bio?

Grinding to the end of a long week and was close to bailing on the Friday post, (Shock!), and then late last night I caught this piece on Mashable, 'Turn Your Personal Data Into an Interactive Infographic', and clicked through to Vizifiy, a new service that takes your social footprint, (at least the parts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Foursquare), and turns it into a neat, interactive, multi-page infographic.

Here is the summary page of my Vizify bio: (click for a larger image)

I've seen a few of these kinds of dynamic, graphical profile builders before, but I think I like Vizify the most of what I have seen so far because it's multi-page design sort of takes the viewer through a bit of a story - from a clickable summary, to professional history, to a set of keywords used frequently on Twitter, and even to a view of the places most frequented as interpreted from Foursquare check-ins.

Most of the individual pages can be edited by the user, as well as the display order and some of the content of the auto-generated pages, that again are pulled from existing information on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. But even with that limited capability to shape or personailze the Vizify infographic, it still does present personal, social network information in a cool and interesting way.

I know, before you get all up in my grill, I know the traditional resume is a long way from being rendered irrelevant by fancy infographic tools like Vizify, or even the more pedestrian and accepted LinkedIn profile.  But one day, eventually, and maybe because this is just me wanting this to be true so I don't ever have to help my 11-year old son write a ridiculous two-page summary of his life one day, I hope that tools like Vizify, and whatever comes next, will eventually serve as a suitable and more complete personal history/bio/reflection and then all the resume coaches can finally find something better to do with their time.

Vizify is still in beta, you can sign up for an invite here, let me know if you get a chance to play with the tool and what you think about the dynamic, infographic profile replacing the traditional resume?

Have a Great Weekend!

It's still a mad, mad, mad, world

Fresh off yesterday's take showing how one local automotive dealership, not really the kind of business that pops to mind when thinking about diversity and inclusion, is bucking that trend and embracing the important role women employees have in their business, comes an interesting and eye-opening tale from the world of advertising, that paints quite a different, and damning picture on that industry's hiring practices and climate.

I call your attention to what is an absolute must-read, particularly in light of the recent re-kindling of the 'Can Women Have it All?' debate, is a piece called 'Confessions of a Female Ad Exec',  (Note : there is some definite Adult content in the piece, if you are easily offended, then don't bother clicking through), published on the Digiday site. Originally published as an anonymous, (and edited) piece, and later re-issued under the byline of Colleen DeCourcy, CEO of Socialistic, a social media technology, content, and design studio, the piece contains some really honest and raw reflections of Ms. DeCourcy's experience climbing the ranks of the Advertising industry. 

Why are the upper echelons of the Ad industry still so the same, still not reflecting the changing world and workplace overall? From the Digiday piece:

The sacred question agency execs are answering with their hires is, “Are you like us?” The affirmative answer if they hire is, yes. It might not even be done consciously, but hires and promotions are often done on this basis. (By the way, that can apply beyond women to black/Jewish/gay/handicapped/patently JNF — Just Not Funny.)

But beyond arcane, foolish, and either subtly or overtly discriminatory hiring and promotion practices, Ms. DeCourcy also offers up an admission of sorts, that perhaps she too had some kind of role to play as well, as both victim and unlikely participant. Again from the piece:

An issue that’s rarely addressed is how many women in advertising don’t help each other out. What is it that drives a select group of women to actively not support other women? I have been a victim of it, and subsequently I resist working with “those kinds” of women. Sadly, since it’s impossible to see through a smart woman’s tightly controlled veil of camaraderie, I’ve grown irrationally afraid of all women at work, and I’ve missed the opportunity to work with the great ones.

But maybe it’s not the women who are at fault here. Maybe the fact that there are so few of us in the boardrooms leads us to assume there’s only room for a certain number.

But more truthfully, the reality for women my age is that you had to sever the sisterhood ties so hard and so early in order to run with the boys that you just don’t know how to get back home again. I’m just a tourist in the land of women now. I’m not fully of the culture.

There's more to the piece than I grabbed to use here, and I hope you read it all, (and again, only if you are not going to be offended by some language and frank descriptions of inappropriate workplace talk), and let it sink in a little bit.

For me, the takeaways are many, but one that stands out is that employees, even C-suite execs, are real people too. Their stories are always unique, often complex, and almost never what you, as the person wondering 'Why?' or 'Why not?', would expect.

It's still a mad, mad world out there. And while yesterday's post about the 'We are all happy together' auto dealer paints a really bright and positive picture, today's piece reminds us that we really don't and often can't know what lies beneath that surface.

No, girls allowed

Super quick observation today, I just saw an old-fashioned, print, and on the back cover of a Free weekly lifestyle-type tabloid paper, the kind you pick up while waiting for you oil to be changed or hanging around at the Dunkin' Donuts employer ad that I wanted to share, as it sends out one of the most solid, Employer Branding, Employer Value Proposition (EVP) messages I've seen lately.

Here is a (lousy) image of the ad, then comments after the (metaphorical) jump:

The ad is for a local auto dealership group, Van Bortel, that obviously has committed to and attempted to communicate that they have a welcoming and inclusive workplace, one that probably runs against the tide of typical auto dealerships, (or at least what we think of auto dealerships).

What I like about the ad, aside from the message itself, is it's simplicity. No big complicated marketing spin, no slickly composed background or graphic elements, actual real people in a kind of hastily put together group pose - but adding it all up it makes for a powerful message.

We're different here. This might be a place you want to consider as a female who might typically see the auto industry as unavailable or simply 'not right' for you. Take a look and you'll can see we're not just 'claiming' to be inclusive, just look at all these people, and look at the job titles, ranging from entry level-type roles, all the way up the management chain.

A really cool, low-budget, no way an expensive brarding company came up with this, but outstanding nonetheless.

P.S. - I will leave it to my friend Meredith Soleau to do two things after checking out this post. One, to let me know if gender diversity is truly an issue in the world of auto dealerships; and two, let me know of what she thinks of a potential competitor posting a whole bunch of employee names and titles in a newspaper!