Another Day in the HR Field

Rebecca, Donna, Paula, Deb, Kristine As we approach the 5th annual SHRM Regional Leadership Summit to commence this week at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort in Phoenix, AZ , I am reminded of the most common question I heard muttered about during the last SHRM Leadership conference in November.  I think the reason I heard it more so this year than any other was because I was attending MAC (membership advisory committee) meetings as was my four peers whom are pictured to the left.  So when we explained where we were heading, we heard the same question: "What is the MAC?" The question does not surprise me at all because when I was a chapter leader, I had no idea what the state council was let alone the MAC.  Of course, back in those days it was called the Area Council or something like that.  Anyway, it's been a few months since I promised to write a blog post answering that very question so here it is.  Honestly, SHRM does a good job of explaining what and who th

Recently on Fox News I was watching a segment on the current status of Marriage in the US and was a bit shocked. I knew more people were getting divorces than they had in past years but didn't realize how staggering the numbers actually were. Since 1970 the marriage rate has dropped from over 80% to just over 50%. The guest also indicated that when children are reared in a home where parents are married to each other they are 80% less likely to be in poverty as an adult and abuse drugs and alcohol. The most staggering statistic was that over 40% of babies are now brought into this world by a single mother. As I listened to this segment I could not help but think how this possibly has and will continue to impact the workforce. The biggest impact I could think of only based on my own experience with marriage now going on for almost 25 years is communication and teamwork.  Funny thing (well not really) is the communication and teamwork are also a primary problem working the workplac

Sometimes, time goes right into the trash quite frankly especially when there is so much going on. I didn't have a chance to blog at all last month. So I'm sitting here now reading all my students reviews of other bloggers thinking about where the time went. I know in addition to work, I have had a few personal challenges to overcome. This got me to thinking about how much time is lost when companies are going through a rough patch. Regardless of the reason being economy, management, financial, employees, if they don't manage the communications, whispers and gossip their productive work hours is typically cut in half and sometimes worse. So a typical eight (8) hour workday can be reduced to two (2) to four (4) hours of actual return on you're investment. Imagine a workforce of 100 people working for $14 an hour and the "rough patch" extends for a month. The company would lose at least $5,600 a day in lost wages and that's not even considering possible los