Keep calm and carry on

This may be a phrase Apple employees are muttering quite a bit after the Apple Maps debacle this past week. As chronicled all over the media, Apple is looking to overtake Google in the maps space and they are now including an Apple Maps app to replace Google Maps. Unfortunately, the transition did not go smoothly.

The new CEO Tim Cook has handled the situation as well as anyone could have. He made a public apology posted on the Apple website and offered some alternatives to customers who are not satisfied with the current app. The glitches and problems encountered in Apple Maps are the result of the complexity of launching a map application which can take years to be fully operational.

When companies decide to upset the apple cart, glitches like this can happen. The problems with Apple Maps are indicative of what can go wrong when we try to change the status quo or develop novel solutions to an existing problem. Sometimes they go right and sometimes they go wrong.

There is an important lesson to learn here and it is a lesson that HR pro’s should take to heart.

How often do we pour over every single detail of a new program or plan? How many times do we delay and stall rolling it out? How many people do we pass it around to in a desperate attempt to CYA every possible outcome?

What happens with the roll-out? My guess is 50% of the time it’s a success. 50% of the time there are problems/complaints. The problem is that all we seem to remember are the negative 50% and that holds us back. Many times the problems couldn’t be anticipated or they may have been unlikely outcomes. Please note: this is not to say that sloppy work is OK, it’s not.

Learn from the mistakes and rectify them but Keep Calm and Carry On. Do what you’ve got to do: apologize, reimburse, revise, and re-edit whatever it takes. But don’t let it knock you down.

Bottom line? The economic environment we are in is not going to get any less competitive, to obtain and retain the best people, we need to be pushing the boundaries and developing programs and solutions that fit people. Sometimes there isn’t going to be a road map, so we are going to have to create that map ourselves.

That new roadmap is going to have plenty of bumps, craters, and bruises. Mistakes are going to be made (remember even Apple makes mistakes) but keep calm and carry on folks, it’s not going to get any easier.

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Melissa Fairman in Changing HR 13 Comments

Out your passion

I love passion. People need to get more passionate more often. Steve Browne is an excellent example of someone who is loud, proud and passionate (see his excellent post from yesterday ) about HR.

I love to see this kind of passion from people. Maybe I’m biased here because I tend to run passionate myself: I’m either into it or not. Here is my question: When did it become such a bad thing to let people know how you feel?

I think people are afraid to express passion because passionate people are stereotypically portrayed as crazy…ever see Amadeus? Or any other film based on an “Artiste”?

When people are passionate, they are critical, they have a lot of opinions, and they are relentless perfectionists. And you know what? That isn’t a bad thing.

People love Apple products, why? Because they were designed by an entire company that is passionate about design and function. That means they have a whole lot of perfectionists at their company…and oh yea they create some amazing products.

So let’s out ourselves and our passions. Passionate people don’t stop at “No.” Passionate people are perfectionists. Passionate people see opportunities everywhere. Passionate people work hard. Passionate people do not stop at anything on their way to achievement.

I bet on passion any day.

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Melissa Fairman in Empowerment 33 Comments

Weekly reMix June 29, 2012

It’s getting hot in here! Well it’s actually getting hot OUTSIDE but you know what I mean. This weekend, Richmond is facing some super heat and I have to say I’m kind of okay with that: 1.) I like the heat 2.) this gives me an excuse to stay inside with the AC running and write, watch movies and (maybe) clean the house.

Well this week was all about the big SHRM 2012 conference, I didn’t get to go this week but I got a lot of great info from all the awesome bloggers and tweeters that were sending out a very steady stream of updates. Next year is my year (and it’s in Chi-town even better)!

Besides the multitude of SHRM related blogs and tweets here is a snapshot of some of the great stuff I was reading this week:

You might be running a stupid company if… via Fast Company magazine.

Apple’s Retail Army via the New York Times

Check out this interesting infographic from Mercer about Workforce readiness, what I find interesting is that many companies have a business continuity plan but do not have a plan to handle their displaced workforce, check it out below:

Infographic by Mercer Insights

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Melissa Fairman in weekly reMix Leave a comment

It won’t happen to me

I was at a party recently and managed to get cornered by “that guy.” You know the one…you are just nice enough too and now he won’t stop talking to you. So there I was cornered, trying to be polite but also scanning the room for an escape hatch. The conversation took an interesting turn when he found out I worked in HR.

Not sure about the rest of you but when I tell people I work in HR, I typically get asked every question under the sun about company policies, benefits, is something legal, etc; Maybe it’s just me but I have spent time at a gathering explaining FMLA…ugh

Anyway, ”that guy”, lets call him Peter, asked me what I thought of hiring people who were unemployed. I responded that it was a non-factor if they could do the job, pass a background check, blah, blah, blah. Peter then explained to me why he wasn’t comfortable hiring someone unemployed… Yes, folks I got to meet the “I don’t want to hire the unemployed” guy. I’ve heard about these creatures but never met one.

His reasoning was fairly typical: if someone gets laid off it’s because they were a bad performer or lackluster. A company wouldn’t lay off a superstar.

As loyal readers, you know I was recently laid off. Listening to Peter I had quite a few responses I was contemplating, some polite, some not so polite. I choose the middle road and pointed out to him that in his profession (IT) it wasn’t uncommon for people to get laid off as IT (like HR) tends to get outsourced, downsized, offshored first. He did the smile and nod thing, then discovered he was hungry and wanted an appetizer…

What struck me was his complete lack of understanding of the frailty of his own situation. Where has this guy been living and working for the last four years? Trust me it wasn’t a superstar technology firm like Apple or Google. How does he not realize that more and more jobs in fields like HR, IT, and payroll are being outsourced?

This experience coincided with a conversation I had with a friend of mine who informed me they decided not to maintain their CPA. I was disappointed to hear that because I know how much work she put into getting and maintaining that. But I was also disappointed because it is a valuable designation. I know someone who maintained their CPA and was able to find valuable part time work doing taxes when they got laid off. Is this what she wanted to do for the rest of her career? No but at least it was good stream of income besides unemployment. My friend though doesn’t foresee a situation where she will ever need her CPA.

The moral of the story here? I’m really scared about the complacency I see in people. Both of the people I’ve mentioned are relatively young and nowhere near retirement. They are intelligent, well-informed and college educated but they are thinking “it won’t happen to me.”

I’m scared when I hear people talking about not hiring the unemployed when they could one day easily be on the other side. I’m scared that people are not maintaining critical skills in their field, much less obtaining new ones.

Maybe I’ve been scarred by personal and professional experience but I don’t think so. I think there are a lot of people who don’t realize the game has changed and changed dramatically.

Get off the couch, stop Facebooking and start thinking about what you are doing to learn new skills. STOP thinking it won’t happen to you…the world is changing at a pace we can’t begin to comprehend, how are you going to adapt if you refuse to see the changes already happening around you?