HR West – An “Altered” State

Showtime’s popular program The United States of Tara tracks a seemingly normal American mom who suffers from multiple personality disorder. In the show, her alternate personalities (or “alters”) take complete control of Tara and she often transitions without warning, living in her fully altered state until a final return to normalcy. The alters each have amazingly distinct points of view and awareness of each other, yet sometimes find themselves in conflict.

This is the best analogy I can attribute to this week’s annual HR West conference in South San Francisco. We are experiencing a very interesting time in our profession and unfortunately for you, all the HR alters show up at different times. Join me on a quick review and let me know which sounds most like you or your HR team. (Given HR’s current state, it may be all of them.)

Alter #1 – The Big Thinker

There were two presenters that truly caught my attention. The first is SVP of Human Resources for Safeway, Inc., Russ Jackson. Russ was one of three panelists opining on the future of HR for the conference’s opening session. In my opinion, he’s a pragmatic no-nonsense leader who appreciates the legacy of HR but doesn’t hide behind the trappings of how HR has historically operated. Russ threw out a number of gems, not the least of which included:

• Engagement: He cited the critical importance of “working now to address employee engagement post-recession. You have to understand that employees will once again have a choice.” Amen to that.
• Technology: Russ culled upon HR to embrace technology given the ever-increasing pace of change.
• Critical Thinking: HR needs to bolster their skills in this area as the rest of the enterprise doesn’t value a PHR certification. Keep in mind that this MBA holder just recently checked the SPHR box himself (peer pressure must be terrible).
• Reinvention: “Stay in HR but reinvent yourself. If your manager doesn’t support you, get a new manager.” He added that good HR managers need to scare their subordinates and encourage HR to “get outside of [their] comfort zone”.

I contrast Russ’ comments from those of a fellow panelist from WalMart who offered trite and predictable responses, including the age-old “seat at the table” discussion. It took all of twenty-one minutes for the cringe-worthy phrase to enter the dialogue.

Speaking of seat at the table, buzzword bingo cardholders would have been disappointed by Teri Eyre‘s session. Teri is VP of HR for HP’s Personal Systems Group. Her organization is in the midst of a strategic transformation that began in 2004 and continues to this day, the journey triggered by HP’s realization that they needed to start benchmarking themselves against their peer groups on cost and effectiveness. Although effectiveness seemed alright, costs were way out of whack and thus began the transformational journey. A few things HP can share that are relevant include:

• Global perspective: HP shook up the HR team by ensuring more than half of their new members have worked on 2+ continents.
• Applied efficiency: As amazing as this sounds, HP’s efficiency gains allowed them to absorb EDS (adding >150,000 employees) without increasing the size of the HR team.
• Optimization: HP’s model emphasizes performance productivity, cost management, quality and engagement.
• ..and regarding growth…: they realized the desire for people to “win” within their roles at HP and management may be a hinderance. So, they began to measure executive effectiveness by having a search firm assess whether current executives would be hired for their role today. Love it.

HP’s model likely warrants its own post, but if you get a chance, try and see Teri speak at one of the industry events she’s attending. She strongly embodies her projected strategy that the “best talent is a competitive advantage”. Good stuff.

Alter #2 – The Vacuous Cheerleader

Although this wasn’t a systemic problem (so far as I can tell), I attended one particular session that made me want to scream. I’ll spare the presenter the humiliation but his topic was about HR being “HIP”. Still with me? Yeah, I know. In his mind, HIP means “Honest, Innovative and Persuasive”. When he bastardized this into his own multi-colored version of the Gartner Magic Quadrant, people started to walk out. This included definitions such as “The Docile Doers”, “The Why Bothers?”, “The Big Sticks” and the “Hipsters” themselves. He had tons of enthusiasm and gave out buttons to attendees who drank the rah-rah Kool-Aid. Those who remained gave him a big round of applause (while I threw up just a little into my coffee cup). The woman sitting next to me couldn’t stop laughing and shaking her head at the absurdity of his presentation.

These cheerleader sessions represent everything that is sad about our profession and I’m always shocked that they qualify for certification credits. The main issue is that there is not one clear actionable step for attendees to grab hold of and make their own. And without action this is just noise.

Alter #3 – The Data Junkie

Dr. Lynn Ware of Integral Talent Systems did a terrific job in her session entitled, “Keep Them From Walking: How To Retain And Engage Your Top Talent During The Recovery“. Lynn was provided a terrible room and a lousy microphone but still managed to pull off a great session. All of her conclusions were data-driven and I applaud her analysis. A few findings you might find interesting include:

• Post-Recession Retention: After the “Dot Bomb” recession ended, the number of employees who resigned jumped 34%.
• Average Tenure: Her research shows an average of 4.1 years with a single organization, but Gen Y’s average is a measly 1.8 years.
• The Top 5 Reasons for Leaving: 1) “I was not recognized for the contribution I made in my job”; 2) “Better career opportunity – opportunity to advance”; 3) “Poor relationship with my manager”; 4) Compensation; and 5) “Better job fit – more interesting work”.
• Macro Triggers for Quitting: These range from downsizing, reorganization and stock price depreciation to senior management changes or a company-wide modification to compensation and benefits.
• Micro Triggers for Quitting: This ranges from the end of a employee’s project or the exit of of a respected manager/colleague to being passed over for a promotion. I can personally attest to all of them.

What I really liked about Lynn’s approach is that she showed how data can be put to work to analyze behaviors and effect change. She also did a wonderful job soliciting participation from attendees to improve her research process and exit interview questionnaires. Well done.

Alter #4 – The Mediator

When you see a session entitled, “Emotional Intelligence: The Key To Effective Conflict Resolution“, you think of the unspoken role that HR plays on a daily basis. Sometimes this can be very squishy, but speaker John Ford did a bang-up job addressing conflict resolution and mediation in a very engaging way. How did he accomplish that? John didn’t speak down to the audience and treat them like morons. Instead, he recognized the difficult situation HR finds itself in and chose to elevate the conversation and break down some misperceptions. Good takeaways included:

• A Seat at a Different Table: Research shows that sitting next to your beloved at a restaurant is much less confrontational (and much more romantic) than sitting across from one another. That warmed up the crowd.
• Rules of Engagement: “When emotions are strong and trust is low, you must be explicit with ground rules.” This sets expectations and tends to bind the parties to a set of understandings and boundaries.
• Playing Nice: John argued (successfully, in my opinion) that “technologically and logically we can be superb but emotionally we tend to be children in the sandbox”. Just admitting that aloud can help us settle our minds and embrace the difficult work ahead.
• Research Bias: He added that the majority of conflict resolution research has a male bias, and that although “fight or flight” is widely accepted, new female-centric research shows a tendency to “tend and befriend”. Very interesting stuff.

John also took this very large group through an improv exercise called “group count”. You can learn about how it works here, but essentially it requires you to quiet yourself and really intuit the feel of those around you. It took about four cycles to get there (which is pretty amazing given the size of our session). It sounds corny but I challenge you to try this in your department.

The Rest of the Alters…

Of course there we many others but this post is already way too long. A few last thoughts:

• The Avatar: Pierre Khawand of People | On The Go did a very cool realtime demo of Second Life and discussed the possible applications of virtual worlds to human resources. Although it’s still quite early and takes a bit too long to get people proficient (upwards of 60 minutes per user), the opportunity to increase collaboration, improve innovation and reduce cost is fascinating.
• The Socializer: HR West did a good job driving socialization at the event. One idea I really liked was to have lunchtime attendees each pass business cards all the way around their table. This helped to create eight to ten new contacts and stimulated conversation.
• The Certification Hound: I overheard more than a handful of people lament the fact that they only come to “these things” to ensure they get certification credits. My hope is that this was a vocal minority but I fear that the lack of note taking and engagement in certain sessions exposes a systemic issue.

My thanks to HR West for inviting me to attend and present. Although the number of new media representatives was conspicuously small (most times I was one of a handful of people tweeting anything about the event), directionally I’m encouraged by a shift to more engaging and actionable sessions. And despite the multiple-personalities that we all wear in HR, I’d encourage you to think about which of those I’ve listed that you truly aspire to be known for. Or, share the 100′s of alters that I’ve missed in the comments section below and we’ll keep the conversation going.