Wednesday, August 27, 2014

If You’re Building Your Brand, You Can’t Escape Your Capabilities

“She said that she remembered me from my last job. I remembered her but did not think she even knew who I was since she was very senior to me.”

As I listened to this conversation the other day, it just confirmed what I always tell everyone. It’s this: someone is always watching your work. By watching, they are creating a vision for you and the brand of you — how you work, what you deliver, your attitude, and the list go on.

Regardless of how you feel about your work, even if you know you are no longer going to be there, always do top-notch work.

We all grow in different directions

As our career expands, you notice that people you worked with over the years have expanded their roles into other companies like tentacles.

Your cube mate today could someday become VP at another firm. Your prior manager could now be heading up a great project at another strong brand. The goofy guy down the hall could be heading a startup.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The Top 75 HR Post


You know the blogs to look out for. Now, you need the posts to read. Below, we compiled the top five posts from each of our most popular sites. We ranked each post by Popularity Score, and included more information on each site, author and editor.

1.TLNT

Twitter: @TLNT_com
Site owner/editor: John Hollon (@JohnHollon)

About: TLNT covers news, insights and analysis related to human resources and talent management.
Rank
Article
Author
Popularity
1
10,326
2
4,085
3
2,795
4
2,500
5
1,394
Data wrangled with by Software Providers

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Building Business Relationships through meetings

“I heard you had a tough time getting back to the airport after the HR Leaders Conference in Lagos.”

That was followed by at least a half-hour of further discussion concerning our recent travels. There was no rush to get to the “meat” of the meeting or what it was about.

The next time we got together, the discussion centered around housing and where to live in Dubai, which was followed by a conversation about tuition payments and our past experience working together on an HR panel.

It took a half-hour to actually get to get to the crux of this meeting.

Relax — it’s just a meeting

Doing business in the Middle East is so much different — and relaxing. Meetings are designed for people to

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Would One of Your Former Employees Really Want to Come Back?

Would you want to go back?
I was just asked for references, so it looks good — right?” read the text message. This young lady was in the throes of interviewing, and yes, I told her this is a good sign.
However what happened next caused both of us to do some thinking. As she reached out to her old boss and another former team member, the trajectory changed. Sure they would give her a reference, but more importantly, would she consider coming back?
Wow-Wow-Wow” was her first text to me after that conversation. In essence, they told her they really saw how valuable she was after she left and wanted to know whether she would come back with a higher title and, of course, more money?
Would you go back?
We all have had jobs that we could not wait to get out of. We also may have had jobs that we were let go from through no fault of our own. The question is — would you go back to a prior job if you were asked?
When I was at Martha Stewart during its heyday, she had to go to jail and we laid off the entire TV division. Around 200 of our people lost their jobs the day after the verdict because CBS cancelled Martha’s show.
We kept in touch with everyone and tried to find them jobs as best we could. Because of that enduring contact, we stayed connected with everyone during the entire time that Martha was “away.”
The day after she was released, it was announced that Martha would be returning to TV. One email went out to get the status of everyone in the TV division who had left, and for the most part, everyone came back on board.
But that was then. It may be different now that the culture has changed, but the lesson learned was that all these good people that quit their jobs decided to come back.
The culture that you left
After the euphoria of the conversation with this young lady wore down, I gave her a call to find out her thoughts. She was flattered by the offer to return and just could not believe it. However, she would not go back she said, regardless of the title and offer.
Her decision was based on the work culture — 10-12 hour days, five days a week, being on call on weekends. Plus, having to constantly monitor emails throughout the night, last-minute business trips, and temper tantrums with yelling and screaming as a way of life.
Yes, it is good to be wanted but I do not want to ever get in that situation again,” was her reply. She added: “They could not offer me enough money to get back into that culture.”
Lots of companies today, especially in technology, gladly welcome back departing employees, and there are alumni groups all over LinkedIn and Facebook. That should be part of any organization’s talent management strategy, but the key is the corporate culture that employees remember from when they left.
That will always be the key. If the culture was toxic when they left, what is the value proposition for them if they return? If you are thinking money, forget about it. Even if they do come back, they will eventually get frustrated and leave again.
When reality about a return sets in
When I think about this, my first thought is that there is not a job in my past that I would want to return to. There’s no amount of money to get me to do it, because although at the time a job seemed ideal, it loses something as you grow and experience other challenges.
While the notion of going back to what once was may sound romantic (like riding back in on the white horse to save the day), for me, returning would simply be a bad imitation of the former job.
Organizations today should think through how they treat departing employees. This goes back to getting it right from Day 1.
Build your organization so that people will not want to leave. Set the bar so high that if they do leave your organization, it becomes the gold standard that all departing employees will gauge their future by.
If you are not the gold standard, everything else will look great.
An offer they can’t refuse?
Think for a second; if you were to go back to your departed employees and ask them to come back, would they do it?
If there answer is no, you may have a lot to do in polishing up your culture to make it inviting for re-entry.