Social Media – Page 6

Dear Email,

You have gotten a bad rap. You get destroyed and end a political career. You get tweeted in an effort to be transparent but instead potentially put a “there” in a “there’s no there, there” narrative. You can drown some in notifications or serve as a diary for others. While many hope your death is imminent, I remain devoted. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

You always know when. You have a handy-dandy date and time stamp that helps shed light on what the drafter was thinking at that precise moment in time. This stamp is used to create the all-important timeline of events.
You’re easy. With just a few clicks and pounds of my keyboard, you are put in a file that I can search and retrieve later when I need you again.
You’re findable. Even when you are used to document something – as sent only to the drafter – you appear in both an inbox and a sent file folder. This means you exist at least twice. When an email is sent or forwarded to numerous people, you exist in even more file folders. Even when you’re deleted, you go to a deleted file where someone has to take yet another step to truly delete you. This means it is really hard to completely lose you and completely destroy you. If I can figure out who got you, I can most likely find you using fancy forensics.
You’re nearly everywhere. Fifty-four percent of the world has at least one email account. (I have three.) Think about that. Half of the planet has email. This means that most understand and use email regularly. We email our accountants, doctors, lawyers, and friends seeking advice and support.
You’re important. Sometimes, you’re are silly. Sometimes, you’re dumb. A lot of the time, you’re amazing evidence. Just like the stuff people say, the stuff that makes it into email is stunning. This includes that time that someone quoted Sir Mix-A-Lot in an email to a co-worker, remarking that his “Anaconda don’t want none…” Uff da, indeed. (Note, great song, poor context.)
You’re the best. When done right – without opinion or superfluous adjectives – you can save a case. People believe you, and sometimes, they believe you more than they believe live testimony.

For all of these reasons, I just can’t quit you, email. You remain one of my top recommendations for documenting performance, discipline, outlandish behavior, awkward conversations, and whatever else befalls HR departments. I just hope you are done right and don’t need a lot of explaining.

Love, Kate

Featured image available at vecteezy.com

This year, I was given a great opportunity – attend my first SHRM national conference in New Orleans. I got to spend three days with 17,000 of my HR friends, meet the people I have been following and listening to, and learn from some smart speakers and attendees. It was amazing and downright exhausting.

Here are some of the things I took from the conference:

The worst loss to deal with is the loss of life and love, followed closely with trust. Kat Cole got everyone craving Cinnabon and thinking about how we build trust with the right doses of humility, curiosity, courage, and confidence. We fail when we’re too far away from the front lines of our business, are unwilling to do the right thing, and don’t change policies to keep up with the organization’s needs. We need to consider whether individuals can trust us, how we rebuild trust when we do something to harm it, and put integrity at the center of our organization.

Some healthy skepticism is important. Much of Laszlo Bock’s keynote was super – give your work meaning, trust your people, hire people better than you, etc. But when he discussed paying people “unfairly,” there was a healthy dose of skepticism from the audience and twitterers. Mr. Bock believes that you should pay people based on how well they perform and how much they are “all in.” These disparities can be up to double the amount you may pay someone else in the same role in Mr. Bock’s opinion. This is really something given Mr. Bock recently left Google where his pay practices are now subject to a significant lawsuit that The Guardian headlined as “extreme” gender discrimination. While I agree that paying people based on their performance is good in theory, when the discrepancies appear to include a dose of discrimination, we have a problem.

Be disruptive. Jennifer McClure‘s presentation about DisruptHR included some nuggets from these events, including my personal favorite, “Respect the data, but make human decisions.” Jennifer encouraged her audience to be disruptive, but that doesn’t mean that they need to revolutionize. Small changes can be disruptive too.

If you have a brain, you’re biased. Yes, I knew this before, but David Rock’s discussion on the neuroscience behind unconscious bias was great. Mr. Rock started out talking about how to sell diversity initiatives – it’s not just about improving the bottom line, it’s also about making better decisions. He spoke about how it is very difficult to work against individual biases, so work on the bias at work as a team. I was both fascinated and challenged by his presentation.

My favorite HR tweeple are super. I love Twitter. I’ve met some great people online, who I had not met in real life who I could call up to ask questions or ask for a smidge of reassurance. I got to meet these people IRL at SHRM, and they are just as cool, friendly, and smart in person. It was so great! John Friend is right, “SHRM is HR Christmas.”

I can’t wait to go again next year!