November 7, 2014
I’m very fortunate to be in a role that allows me to work with HR departments around the world. I get the chance to see areas in which we, as a practice, thrive or struggle, where we are growing, where we can improve, and the shared struggle of practitioners everywhere to be effective in taking care of our service groups. And there is one common enemy, one shared scourge, one universal pain point with which my brethren wrestle daily. And that long-tendriled beast is known as email. In many ways, it is the bane of our existence. That doesn’t mean that we should do without. In fact, for anyone serving a 24/7 operation without a 24/7 HR function, email is a critical communication path. But it has become the anchor that keeps good HR pros in their office, at their…
Freeing HR from the Tyranny of Email
November 7, 2014
I’m very fortunate to be in a role that allows me to work with HR departments around the world. I get the chance to see areas in which we, as a practice, thrive or struggle, where we are growing, where we can improve, and the shared struggle of practitioners everywhere to be effective in taking care of our service groups. And there is one common enemy, one shared scourge, one universal pain point with which my brethren wrestle daily. And that long-tendriled beast is known as email. In many ways, it is the bane of our existence. That doesn’t mean that we should do without. In fact, for anyone serving a 24/7 operation without a 24/7 HR function, email is a critical communication path. But it has become the anchor that keeps good HR pros in their office, at their…
August 5, 2014
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the HRSSI Conference in Atlanta. The conference is a Human Resources (HR) Shared Services event for HR Executives and Jim Scully has done a nice job of marketing to that particular audience with content rich in information without the SALES pitch of other HR Shared Services shows. It is appropriately named the HRSSI Shared Service Institute Executive Retreat. I came away from the HRSSI retreat with a few new friends and some valuable insight on current trends, challenges and what technology solutions are prevalent in HR Shared Services today. Many of the scheduled presenters had solid metrics that they were willing to share and discuss. I left with a burning question though…why are so many of Fortune Top 500 Companies forced to use their IT Departments CRM solution/technology to manage the complex HR…
January 7, 2014
My fellow colleague Dwane Lay recently wrote a blog entry regarding Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) and how we both have slight different views on SLA’s in relation to Case Management. What does SLA actually mean? Firstly if we step back and ask ourselves “what do we actually mean by the term SLA?” I often hear people speak of an SLA as simply an amount of time a Service Provider has to respond or provide a resolution for a Customer issue; although these are components of an SLA, this is not a true definition of one. An SLA is much more than this! An SLA is an agreement between two parties, that describes the service provided, documents the Service Level Targets (what the service will be measured against, think KPI’s), and specifies the responsibilities of the Service Provider (HR in our…
January 3, 2013
The average midsize or large company (1000 employees or more) has 178 “social media assets” (Twitter handles, employee blogs, etc.) - yet only 25% of companies offer social business training to their employees. (Marketingeasy). 82% of employees say they trust a company more when the leadership team communicates via social media (eMarketer). The explosion of social networking in the last decade presents a tremendous opportunity for organizations to use social technology to communicate with employees, encourage collaboration, and build a community, yet so few HR organizations are using it for much more than recruiting. Social technology can be used for more than just attracting talent and announcing job openings. The powerful and in many cases FREE tools can transform the way HR communicates with employees. And to offer you a few tips and techniques for doing it successfully, we've asked HR…