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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!

“You really ought to be on Facebook.”

My daughter, Amy Elliott, spoke those words to me in early 2009.  I don’t recall my exact response, although I am sure it was something like, “you’re nuts”, or “what for?”, or “isn’t that for kids like you?”  I probably said all three.  She knows me well, though, so I took her advice and signed up anyway.  I enjoyed it immediately, and I remember becoming SO excited when I actually had a dozen Facebook friends.

Two months later she persuaded me to sign up for Twitter.  I again did as she suggested, but like many people,  I didn’t understand Twitter at first.  Then I read an article in HR Magazine, published by the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), about using Twitter.  It included some links and people I could follow.  One of those people had a Twitter instructional video, which included other links and ideas, which led me to  . . . well, you get the picture.  I was hooked.  Addicted.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was climbing  Forrester’s The Social Technographics Ladder.

Starting out on the very bottom as an inactive non-user, I went to the top, as a blogger, in less than a year.  I may not be doing everything well yet, but I am doing it.  All it took was intellectual curiosity, patience, and the willingness to step outside of my comfort zone.

I began writing this blog with the idea that I was going to encourage everyone to start climbing their own social media ladder.  To quit lurking or listening on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter and to start commenting and interacting.  But I realized that not everyone wants to climb a social media ladder.  People have different levels of contentment for different things; who am I to push my passions on someone else?

So instead of encouraging you to climb a social media ladder, I am going to encourage you to find some ladder that you are passionate about – whether it revolves around work, family, friends, hobbies, or charities – and start climbing.  Get better, or smarter, or more involved, or more interactive, but START CLIMBING.

Need an incentive?  I’ll give you one, as suggested by the songwriting team of  John Kander and Fred Ebb:  “boost me up my ladder, kid, and I’ll boost you up yours.”*

I am offering a cash prize of $100, and the book “Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon” to a lucky reader who boosts me up my (or my daughter’s) social media ladder by commenting, tweeting, adding to a blogroll, following through Networked Blogs, etc.  Details in the video below.

Don’t understand what bacon has to do with social media and HR?  Look here.

The Social Media Ladder VIDEO

*I’ll put your name in the raffle drum an extra time if you can tell me (in your comment) the name of the song and the show it is from without looking it up.  Be fair.

(This blog first appeared as a guest post at Creative Chaos Consultant.  Thanks to VM for giving me the opportunity to post it there and inviting me to cross-post it here.)

Everyone who is a human resources practitioner in the United States has their professional life impacted by employment law.  In fact, the smaller your HR department and company, the larger your direct role in legal compliance probably is. Even VPs of HR, whose entire job may be to determine strategic initiatives, don’t move without considering if those initiatives are legal.

So how does HR learn the law and become the company employment law guru? How can HR use existing employment law – often seen as a liability – as a leveraging tool for positive change?

Each one of those questions require a lot of words to discuss and answer in any meaningful way, so there will be a full blog devoted to each topic.

HR and LAW – Part 1

People just don’t play together nicely sometimes. That’s why laws exist.  Think of your company’s internal “laws” – the rules, policies, and procedures.  Why do you even have them?  You have them because the long history of the human race shows us that people, as a species, can’t always be trusted to behave the way they should.  Laws and rules are based on evidence of bad behavior.  Back in the Industrial Age, when the USA was moving from an agrarian society into an industrial/commercial giant, employers were not playing fair. So state and federal legislators began requiring or prohibiting certain behavior from the employer.  And that legislative push is not stopping anytime soon, because people – and the companies they run – are still not always good sandbox buddies.  So my first rule for the HR practitioner who wants to be legally compliant (and keep their company out of expensive employment law trouble) is:

• PLAY NICELY AND BEHAVE

Change your behavior if you need to; don’t force lawyers to make you treat your employees fairly.

It’s too late to make that your total strategy, though, because there are already tons and tons of laws on the books that you have to adhere to, no matter how nicely you are playing today.  This means that you actually have to KNOW some law, as much as it may hurt.  But how do you get that legal knowledge?

Many HR departments are totally dependent on counsel, either outside or in-house.  I’m not against that strategy (I am, after all, a lawyer), but I don’t recommend an attorney as your exclusive source of legal knowledge unless your company is large enough to have in-house employment/labor counsel. (More on this subject in a minute.) For most HR practitioners, and for those HR Generalists working in a solo environment, I say:

• GET A MANUAL

You heard me.  Get a comprehensive manual that is written (1) by lawyers in your state, (2) for an organization that represents businesses, (3) is updated at least every two years, and (4) covers both state and federal laws.  Yes, they are usually a little pricey, but they are far cheaper than calling outside counsel every time you have a question. If you have in-house employment counsel, go borrow theirs, because I guarantee you they have one.

I can’t recommend a specific manual because you need one that covers your own state as well as federal law.  I’m located in Michigan, and I prefer the manuals published by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce (The Employment Law Handbook), and the Institute for Continuing Legal Education (Employment Law in Michigan, An Employer’s Guide). No one paid me to say that.

I don’t recommend doing legal research on the web, because the information is far flung and often informal, and you need to ask a really pointed, specific question to gain anything valuable. It also takes a long time to sift through all of the noise.  Use the manual first, and then supplement the details on the web if you need to. If you insist on using the web, try the official government site for the bureau that monitors the specific law, like the federal Department of Labor.

Unfortunately, a manual is only going to go so far.  It will give you some sound guidelines for your company behavior and requirements, but there may be issues or specific problems that need a more knowledgeable take, because I know you are not going to memorize that entire manual.  So dealing with an attorney is not only inevitable, but often desirable. I have words of caution on this subject, though:

• GET AN ATTORNEY WHOSE WORK YOU LOVE

Most people and companies spend far more time agonizing over what type of computer to buy than what type of legal services to buy.   If you have actually used your manual and have some knowledge of the law, buying your legal service will become an easier task.  Repeat that:  YOU are the buyer. Your company pays the attorney, and they provide service to you. If you are not happy with that service – CHANGE IT. It’s a lot easier than changing your HRIS.

Here are some of my feelings about the type of lawyer to hire (both in-house and outside counsel):

• Find an employment/labor law specialist.  Don’t hire or use your cousin just because they are cheap and available.

• Find a “can do” attorney.  One of the biggest complaints of HR pros is that the attorney always tells them what they CAN’T do, instead of helping them DO it properly.  It’s an entirely valid complaint.  Yes, there are attorneys who help companies find a solution, instead of always telling them “don’t”, or “you can’t”.  They’re out there – look harder.

• Have a voice in hiring your labor/employment attorney. This may be the most critical component of all.  If you need someone to help YOU with your human resources legal compliance, why would YOU let someone else decide who that person is going to be? You would not let someone else take away your decision on other HR resources to purchase or use.  Don’t do it with this most valuable of all your resources.

I live in the metro Detroit area of Michigan at Point A (the northern point) on this map.  Point B is where I used to live.  It’s a 30 minute/15 mile drive between the two, give or take a few miles and minutes. The metro Detroit area is the 11th largest in the country, densely packed, and almost any consumer service is nearby no matter where you live.  I can get to a CVS pharmacy in less than a minute. On foot.

But I still use businesses located in Point B to provide me services – specifically my hairdresser and my dentist – even though I haven’t lived there in over 20 years.

It was during a visit to the dentist a couple of weeks ago when the subject somehow got around to the frequency of my visits to Point B.  My dentist thought it was ludicrous that I go to Point B at least once a month to get my hair cut.

Him: “How many hairdressers do you think you pass before you get here?”

Me: “About the same number of dentists I pass.”

Him: “Yes, but they aren’t GOOD dentists.”

His point was, of course, that hairdressers are minor, unskilled functionaries who deserve no loyalty, and that he was in a different class.  In my book, though, both provide excellent service at a fair price, know me and my needs very well, and are friendly guys that I can talk to while they are performing their magic.  I’ve been using their services for over 20 years and I am loyal to both. Given those advantages, a longer-than-necessary drive seems a  minor inconvenience.

I can’t say I have afforded the same loyalty to business vendors.  In almost 10 years, I changed every vendor I had the power to change, and tried to change at least one other (and was overruled by my business partner).  I will argue that I had good reasons to do so (lower cost, more efficient, better product, etc.) and, after all (shades of Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail”), it’s not PERSONAL, it’s BUSINESS.

But that comment by my dentist made me wonder if that is the right approach.  Would I have received better service and a better product from a vendor if I had showed more loyalty? Is there any reason to be loyal to a business vendor?  What’s your experience?

Saturday afternoon the gloves came off.

The last session of the HRevolution un-conference, introduced in my previous blog, was called “The Future of HR”.  It was facilitated by the incomparable Mark Stelzner, whose admitted purpose was “to be provocative and shake the room up a bit.”  His mission was well accomplished, and the passionate discussion was described by @KristaFrancis on Twitter: Great minds *don’t* think alike and that’s a good thing.  Mark summed up the discussion on his blog, but I want to focus on this particular statement:

There was a great discussion on how people need to quit their HR jobs if they are that miserable. In other words, stop complaining and lamenting your non-strategic role and instead find a company that values your contribution.

That “call to action” has been repeated since on blogs (here ), and the HR Happy Hour blog talk radio show.

Ouch.

Why does it pain me to hear and read that people who want to make a difference should just quit their jobs and go elsewhere? Because it’s a strategy that’s far too over-simplified, and the consequences of failure are too dangerous for that simplification.  I speak from personal experience.

My Personal History

I come from a small (less than 50 employees) food processing/manufacturing plant.  My husband and his partner own the business.  When I began working there, no one knew exactly what my role was going to be.  I fell into an HR function almost immediately, because there was NO HR function there at all.  I started learning, and I made myself a HR Manager/Generalist.  I had a seat at that strategic table, usually at the head.  I made those P&Ls sing.

So why did I leave in June 2008?  Because I had a nagging feeling that there was more evolving to be done, and I couldn’t do it where I was.  There is only so far you can go in a really small company before some of the work becomes redundant, and some becomes impossible. So I quit (read: no unemployment benefits) and went looking for a company that would “value my contributions”.

It’s now November 2009 and I have yet to find that company.  Telling a recruiter or a hiring manager that I left my job because “I needed new challenges” makes them hang up on me.  Layoffs and downsizings create sympathy, self-indulgence does not.

I’m lucky – my husband still owns the company and has a job, so I still have sufficient funds to go to un-conferences and listen to people tell me to do what I’ve already done.  But suppose I was a sole breadwinner with kids to support and a mortgage to meet?  That strategy would have placed a lot of other people in jeopardy.  Is Laurie Ruettiman’s philosophy is the better one? She says, ” You get a paycheck. Be happy.”

Going Forward

By sharing that with you, I want to emphasize a point that was touched on at HRevolution but not sufficiently embraced: the enlightened HR group that we are a part of is a very tiny minority of the entire HR population.  The solutions and suggestions we propose inside of our “HR echo chamber”  will not be embraced by them  and will often be actively resisted.  We need to help others examine themselves and their roles to see how they can evolve and revolutionize, even if circumstances and paychecks keep them in their positions.  A large majority of HR pros don’t even know that people and technology exist to help them make this journey.  In other words, they don’t read our blogs.  Until a very short time ago, I was one of those people.

When Alicia Arenas asked us in a video to leave HRevolution with a commitment to spread the message, she mentioned college students and local SHRM chapters as examples of avenues to spread our enlightenment. Let’s collectively think of more, and start an outreach program, because we will not succeed without  converting others. With that in mind, I am picking up the flag of  HRevolution and making this commitment:

I will use social media, personal connections, and any other soapbox that is available to me to encourage, aid, and advise HR Pros and other business professionals to embark on a course of personal development that will expand their knowledge and engage and enlighten others.

By doing this, I hope to move past the idea that HR people should just be happy to get a paycheck.  The people I will try to reach may not be able to leave their companies, but they may be able to avoid doing everything “The Company Way.”  Viva la revolution!

The Company Way