Another Day in the HR Field

I ran across this post written by my good friend and fellow HR professional Kevin Epley, SHRM-SCP, SPHR and thought it would be an excellent guest post because I have ran into this problem in the past myself. As a Human Resources professional have you ever found yourself doing battle with the problem of profanity in your workplace? In my industry, Automotive Retail Sales and Service, there seems to be a “good old boy” and “that’s the way it’s always been” culture that has allowed for profanity. It goes against our goals of culture change, continued diversity and renewed customer service strategies. Besides, it’s simply unpleasant. And, what does “profanity in the workplace” have to do legislative news? I’ll get to that. Short of becoming the “profanity Nazi” (Seinfeld Soup Nazi episode) or HR as overly parental, I wrestle with the prevalence and the problems of profanity in our workplace. In researching for support, I’ve discovered it’s more common a problem than first thought.

I admit, adding #Blogger to any of my online profiles looks like an untruth especially, if you look at the gaps this past couple years with my blogging efforts.  However, I plan to do better going forward starting with this blog I intended to write in August just before I spoke to the Women Entrepreneurs of Central Illinois (WE-CE) at Engrained Brewery Company on Lincolnshire Boulevard here in Springfield, IL.  While it was a fantastic turnout and I delivered my top five HOT HR issues list, I have since had the opportunity to learn more from the following work prep and attendance at various events: HR Management Development meeting with a client in and his team; The start of my fall class line up with two Managing Organizational Behavior (1 Online & 1 Face2Face) and two Human Resources Management (1 Online & 1 Face2Face) courses; HR Audit conducted at a clients client location in Southern IL; Full Day HR Training for another clients client (yes, I sub contract); A speak

The DOL has published the long awaited overtime rule and it's effective date is December 1st of this year.  Read more here: https://www.dol.gov/featured/overtime

In honor of the GFWC ILLINOIS annual conference at the President Lincoln Hotel here in Springfield, IL today and tomorrow, I thought I would put my suggestions in writing for future reference. I am honored to be asked to speak on Conflict although like most it's not my favorite subject. Nor am I an expert as I have my own unresolved conflict currently brewing that I should take my own advice on. However, in human resources you often have to be a mediator of conflict between coworkers and manager/employee disagreements.  So unless you are the king of conflict denial or the queen of pushing conflict under the rug, you may have a desire to fix your conflict situation at the earliest possible time. If not you should. Life is too short to live with conflict. If you don't have a desire to resolve, then get ready for the big explosion that is bound to happen sooner or later. You can be sure someone will get hurt post explosion because things are almost always said that is not

Well, it's time once again for reflection, documentation, and most importantly improvement.  I have personally had quite a hectic year.  Actually, it's been a couple hectic years with the loss of three of my four family members of origin (dad, brother, and now mom).  My second brother and I are the only one's who are left in the family and we have certainly taken a big hit as the last two were sudden and unexpected.  As a result, my available time for blogging has really taken a hit going from an average of 28 posts since my first full year of blogging in 2011 to 15 and 12 the last two years.  I don't expect this coming year to be any better because my brothers trial should be coming up soon depending on grand jury decision in March.  He was pushed off the road by what we suspect to be a drunk driver.  Later this month on February 27th will be one year since the incident and the person has yet to be arrested or charged. So getting back to business the first post was a