Who You Gonna Call? Your HR Physician Can Diagnose You..

Imagine going to your general practitioner, and after a few questions, you get a prescription.

HR Team

During this process, she pulls out a list of best practices to treat your symptoms and writes your prescription. You walk out after a 5-10 minute interview and you’re prescribed with this miracle cure to heal what ails you.

However, if you go to a specialist who deals with your ailment, you will be put through a battery of tests to get to the root cause. After the results come back, this specialist will evaluate your results thoroughly and begin the process of coming up with a solution.

Last week, I got a note from an HR friend who told me that they were asked to gauge employee engagement in their firm. She went to HR and HR sent her a survey with a list of questions.

When I say the questions were”sent,” they were sent back to her via email. The problem was that the list of questions did not touch on what she wanted. Her group was looking for help with the manager-employee dynamic and not the organization-employee dynamic.

We are the specialist

Can You Be Found? Why You Must Personally Invest in Social Media

Can you be found?

“Of all the millions of people on LinkedIn, we found you!”

I had never quite thought of it that way. This quote was a statement from one of our recruiters who was searching to fill my current role. Yes, that is how they found me for it.

This past Saturday with temperatures hovering around 115 degrees here in Saudi Arabia, I was ensconced in the cool of my house reading with the TV on as background noise. I was watching CNBC, which by the way, has the best business documentaries on TV. The first one was a documentary about dating websites and their industry, and immediately following that, there was one on LinkedIn.

A marriage made in social media

How to Make Better Use of the Most Overlooked Part in Our HR Toolkit

The official decree came down that the weekend had changed.

The business community was very excited by this because they had not been able to not align their interests with the rest of the world. This meant that they were having a hard time competing against the rest of the world, especially since the mandated weekend severely reduced their competitive hours across several continents.

The weekend here in Saudi Arabia had been designated as Thursday-Friday [with Friday being the religious day, the same as our Sunday in the U.S.]. The new weekend is now Friday-Saturday. 

Since this was introduced mid-week, and we all got a three (3) day weekend to make the adjustment. In crafting the announcement of this for our workforce, I framed my message with extra time for family, rest and relaxation, and most of all, how everyone should their enjoy extra day off and go do something fun. I built a memo around this announcement that spelled out the new law, why it was being changed, and more importantly, what it meant to them.

The Consequences of Leadership: Yes, Indecision IS a Decision

“My guess is that a good number of firms have been thinking about right-sizing and waiting for someone to provide them cover and we’ll see more of these moves. As difficult as layoffs are, it seems that they will be necessary for some firms to get in sync with the current market dynamics.”

This quote was in reference to the recent layoffs at a major law firm in New York. The law firm, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, is one of the nation’s most prestigious and profitable law firms. They were laying off a large number of lawyers and support staff while also reducing the pay of some of its partners.

This layoff sent shock waves through the industry and underscored the financial difficulties facing the legal profession.

Cowering is not a competency