HR University

Archive for January, 2010

As 2009 disappeared into 2010, Bill Boorman called for a special Carnival of HR. He asked HR and recruiting pros from all over the world to create a Vlog (video blog if you are unaware or extra-tired) with their predictions for the New Year. As sometimes happens, I chose not to follow directions too carefully.  My video was actually a PLEA, not a prediction:

I wanted – and still want – the HR/Recruiting community to reach out and help others within the community.  Don’t wait to be asked for help – offer it first.

Now that we have come to the end of the first 2010 month, I would like to recognize and shout out to a member of the HR/recruiting community for doing exactly what I asked for in that video: Laurie Ruettimann.

Laurie is a heavy hitter, and highly influential,  in the HR/Rec world, enjoying a demand for her services as a writer, facilitator, panelist, and commentator.  Her PunkRockHR blog is followed and read by a large and diverse population. Consequently, there is a certain amount of prestige in being included in her blogroll. So I was a bit surprised – but very delighted – when she REACHED OUT and asked people to furnish their blog information so she could include them on her updated blogroll.

Many bloggers are very particular about their blogroll – and understandably so.  After all, it is essentially a recommendation by you that may impact your own credibility as a blogger. The fact that Laurie just brushed those concerns aside and invited everyone who blogs to be included makes her the recipient of my first Reach Out and Touch award of 2010.  I think I’ll send her some bacon.

Who will be the recipient in February?  You?

The rules are simple:

1. Select a charity that is soliciting donations for aid in Haiti.
2. Apply your HR and social media skills by doing a “back­ground check” on that orga­ni­za­tion.
3. Write up your find­ings, pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, and post them on your blog no later than Jan­u­ary 26^th.

So asked Mike VanDervort, friend and fellow HR blogger, in his blog The Human Racehorses.

Sometimes, though, it is okay to color outside of the lines.  So I changed the rules.  I changed them because I didn’t want to pick a charity and research it.  I wanted needed to find a charity that I could be comfortable sending more than a $10 text message to – and I wanted the best.  The new rules?

1. Pretend you are creating a new job position called Haitian charity.
2. Undertake a needs assessment; determine the knowledge, skills, and abilities the charity must have to be successful and worthy of “hiring”.
3. Research charities until you determine the perfect candidate.
4. Hire the candidate charity by writing your findings in a blog and sending them the most sizable donation you can muster.

NEEDS ASSESSMENT

Experience is the usually the best teacher, so I looked back at the Indian Ocean tsunamis of 2004.  I studied white papers, blogs, and news articles to see what I could learn about the effectiveness of charitable organizations in dealing with that disaster, and what types of problems all charitable organizations faced (examples here and here ).

After that research, it became clear to me that those non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that already had operations running in the affected area were the most efficient and effective performers. These NGOs already have committed people on the ground, have overcome language and culture barriers,  have established contacts and connections with local vendors, and will remain engaged with the country on a long term basis. This became my main requirement for my charity: Long term commitment to Haiti that preceded the January 12 earthquake, evidenced by established operations.

The next skill is pretty basic: how much money goes to actual operational support, as opposed to administrative and fund-raising expenses? Research showed me that an organization that spends 80% of the donations it receives on charitable programs is considered efficient, while 90% is considered highly efficient.  I always want the best I can get, so my additional requirement became: Program spending of 90% or greater.

FINDING THE CANDIDATE

One of the most important tools I used to research and find the ideal charity candidate was Charity Navigator.  Itself an independent, non-profit that helps evaluate and promote charitable giving, they were so helpful that I found myself donating to them after finishing my research.  There were many four-star rated charities with long-term Haitian ground operations, including Save the Children and Medecins Sans Frontieres (the international parent of  Doctors without Borders).  In the end, I decided  on Partners In Health/Stand With Haiti.

Partners In Health(PIH) has been working on the ground in Haiti since 1985.  Their Zanmi Lasante (“partners in health”) project in Cange, Haiti is a community based health project that has grown to include 8 facilities in central Haiti.  They are devoted to providing medical services to Haitian poor.  PIH believes that health care is a right that should be available to everyone. Their vision is “whatever it takes”:

Almost 95% of their funds go to program expenses.  If you go to Charity Navigator and look at the salaries of their top executives, you will understand why they are able to devote so much funding to their programs.

I wanted the best, and I think I found it.

This post really begins at a different blog:  Laurie Ruettiman’s  Punk Rock HR.  On January 15, 2010, on her weekly F@%k It Friday series. she posted a blog called Pat Robertson, Haiti, and The Devil. Her blog contained this video.

This blog and video generated a lively response of comments, including one from me:

Pat Robertson is entitled to his opinion in America, and he is even entitled to express his opinion without unnecessary government intervention, a la the First Amendment. Put a video out on You Tube? Go for it, Pat.

What he is NOT entitled to under our governmental system is to have anyone give a crap about what he says. The fact that he has a video being played over and over again on the news programs (at least I presume it is – I don’t watch television and I first saw this video on this blog) is the fault of news media decision makers who have decided that what Pat Robertson says is important.

I have several videos on YouTube and no one cares. (Well, maybe @BillBoorman does. A little.) I could stand on my street corner all day long and yell the same ridiculous things about Haiti as Pat Robertson, but I doubt that even my local news media would show up.

So I don’t hate Pat Robertson. I hate the CEO of any ersatz news program that has replayed that drivel and called it news, because the decisions of their company is their responsibility, and those decisions are why I even know who Pat Robertson is.

Now Laurie is always generous and thoughtful, responding to all comments on her blog.  This is what she said about my comment:

@JoanGinsberg – yup, you’re exactly right, the media have a huge part to play in people like PR consistently having a soapbox from which to shout stupid, stupid things. However, you’ve also got to put some of the accountability on audiences – PR gets on the news because when he’s on the news, ratings (and revenue) go up. For whatever reason, people listen PR – either because they think he’s a tool and want to hear what kind of tool-like thing he’s going to say next or because they *shudder* agree with him. Either way, he’s on TV because people demand that he be on tv (i.e., implicitly, by watching whenever he’s on), not just because network execs want to force him on us.

After all, TV networks and producers (of news or entertainment, etc.) are not in the business of providing audiences with content, they’re in the business of selling audiences to advertisers. TV shows aren’t their product, you are.

I hope I still have your attention after all of this back story, because what I really want to do right now is discuss Laurie’s reply.

While I don’t dispute the idea that television viewers/consumers are accountable for the content that is created, I maintain that consumers are far less responsible for NEWS content than entertainment content. I will lay ALL of the blame at the feet of consumers when it comes to entertainment, but I’m a lot less sure of audience responsibility when it comes to news content.

Let’s face it, every person in the United States could have called MSNBC on January 2 and said, “Hey, we want you to cover a natural disaster that causes massive destruction and death.  Maybe an earthquake in Haiti.  Within 10 days, please.”  That quake in Haiti, and the resultant news coverage, didn’t happen because audiences asked for it.  No matter how great the consumer demand, and the resultant high viewer percentages to sell to advertisers, the news content has to come first.  Without that content, the news media can’t produce any product.

Al-Qaeda and other extremist terrorist organizations know this all too well.  Their opinions don’t get any airplay from new organizations until they bomb buildings or blow up airplanes.  So they create the content for the TV executives and producers to put on their newscasts. Without that content, the viewers neither know or care about Al-Qaeda’s message.  That content is chosen by the TV and other media executives, and then the audience responds.

Yes, the public, or some degree of it, cares about what Pat Robertson thinks about Haiti, even if it is just to hiss and boo his message.  But the public only cares because – as the children say when they have been caught misbehaving – the other guy ( news organizations) started it.

There was a great movie made while back that satirized this very problem.   “Wag the Dog” is about White House spin doctors hiring a Hollywood director to create a war.  In the movie, news content was CREATED  to control the public demand for certain news.   The movie may have been fiction, but I think it was based, as great satires are, on fact.  That, in my book, is the essence of corporate irresponsibility.

What do you think?  Who should bear the responsibility for inane or irrelevant news content?

In all of my lengthy professional life, I had never been to a conference. I had been to plenty of trade shows and training seminars, but a conference – where people actually talked to each other and exchanged ideas – was outside of my experience.  Now that I am unemployed, why am I preparing to sign up for two very expensive HR conferences, spending a fortune in travel, lodging, and meals on top of the registration costs, and considering several more?

Twitter.

Jim Mitchem, whose Twitter name is @smashadv, said it best: The best part of Twitter is the humility that comes with realizing that you’re *never* the smartest person in the room.

When I got really involved in Twitter late last summer, I learned that there was a whole group of highly intelligent HR and recruiting pros online that were willing to share their knowledge and insights.   When some of those pros hosted an “unconference” called HRevolution, with the idea that the exchange and engagement from Twitter would come alive, I knew I had to go.

HRevolution was electrifying for me. It was a non-stop exchange of ideas about a profession amongst highly intelligent practitioners, and I was instantly addicted. Now I crave more, because

There are BRILLIANT people that speak at these events—and even MORE brilliant people that are present and networking. MANY of these people have not joined the dialog in our beloved Social Media—but that means NOTHING about the level of knowledge and expertise they have to offer.

That quote, from Monster.com’s Eric Weingardner (@ewmonster on Twitter), says it all for me.  I’m going to start out with the Employment Law &  Legislative Update given by SHRM, then attend HRevolution in May.  I’m taking advantage of early registration for SHRM 2010, their June annual conference.  I’m sure there will be more along the way, and I am happy to take suggestions.

How about you?  Want to plug your HR Conference or talk about your conference plans?

If you haven’t had enough law related information this week, head on over to Creative Chaos Consultant.  I am happy and humbled to be part of the “HR101″ series, where guests explore different aspects of HR management.  The focus of the entire series is the small and medium- sized business owner.  This week I offered HR and the Law-Part 2, which discusses some laws that affect HR and why compliance with those laws is good business.

I have only been a blogger for a couple of months, but most of these things have irked me for a long time. When I jumped into social media in 2009, I found these myths or misunderstandings were more pervasive and common than I expected, particularly among bloggers.

Myth #1: It’s spelled copywrite.

Okay, a misspelling is not a myth, but it bugs me.  Looking up the proper spelling would take about 15 seconds.

The reason it is called (and spelled) copyright is because the law gives the creator of certain “works of authorship” the exclusive right to reproduce (“copy”) that content.  It is not about writing, per se, because even though certain writings are protected creative content, so are such diverse creations as musical works, dramatic works, pantomimes, graphic works, and architectural works.

MYTH #2: You can’t copy my idea.

The foremost purpose of copyright law is to encourage individual effort as a way to advance public knowledge and culture.  By limiting copyright protection to the author’s method of expressing an idea, and not to the idea itself, others can create and disseminate more work and information.  If I have a great new idea for HR practice, and I blog about it, that idea is not protected and others may use it, even if they took the idea from my blog.  The only thing copyright law protects is the particular words I used to express the idea.  Some ideas are protected by other laws, such as patent law, but the requirements for protection are usually very stringent.

MYTH #3: I wrote that title and you can’t use it.

Names, titles, slogans, and short phrases are not copyrightable.  This is true even if it is unique or novel.

MYTH #4: I can copy your work because I don’t make money with it.

This is probably a simplification of the “fair use” defense, but it is dangerous and inaccurate.  Under the fair use defense, the purpose and use of the infringing work, and whether that use is “commercial in nature”, is only one of four factors that a court might look at to determine whether there is actionable infringement.  Not making money with the copy is not definitive.  I don’t make money with this blog, but I certainly don’t have the right to copy someone else’s and paste it here.

Determining if a copy is an infringement or is fairly used is actually very difficult.  There is purposefully no specific number of words, lines, or percentages.  Each complaint is determined on a case-by-case basis.  The best way to avoid any complaint from a copyright holder is to get permission.  Acknowledging the source of your copy does not legally replace permission.

MYTH #5: I can copy your work because it does not say or show ©.

Under current law, neither notice (©) or registration is required for a copyright to attach to a given work.  A copyright is attached to original expression the moment it is fixed in a tangible form.  Registration of your copyright, while not required for your rights to attach, is desirable for a number of reasons.

The U.S. Copyright Office has an excellent website with a great FAQ section.  It will even tell you how to protect your Elvis sighting.  Other questions (and comments) welcomed!

Thanks to everyone who entered and played!