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Carnival of HR – June 2020

Picture of John Baldino

After a break, the Carnival of HR returns to provide you with the best in timely blogs covering a variety of topics in the human resources and organizational development world. If you find some new minds you enjoy, please feel free to connect with these professionals on Twitter! Please enjoy this selection from the buffet (socially distant, of course!):

Organizational Improvement

“The choices we make matter. Failure to improve as much as we could is often largely a matter of not devoting time to allow people to improve how the organization works.”

“In general, wisdom is much more difficult to communicate as compared to information. Also, without going through the corresponding life experience, this wisdom, even though it is 'true', might not make sense to the receiver.”

“Employees want to have a sense of connection and belonging in the workplace. Data showed that the strength of networks in each Meijer store location had increased since the introduction of mteam. In an effort to improve each team member’s sense of belonging, the program has been able to bring team members together and increase connections.”

“Most organizations tend to deprioritize HR technology when allocating resources, which means making the existing systems or manual processes work “for now,” while the HR team continues to build countless workarounds outside the system to compensate.”

 

Mental Health

“Working from home, combined with social isolation and the added anxiety around coronavirus can lead to burnout, so open communication between managers and employees is crucial.”

“The current crisis has been a great equalizer. Regardless where one might fall on Maslow’s hierarchy, we were all brought back to basics as we collectively scrambled to find toilet paper. It’s hard to progress up the pyramid while facing job insecurity, grocery shortages and caring for children and others.”

“When the pandemic hit (and it’s still happening to some extent), people longed for normalcy and a return to the life and patterns of what we’d been accustomed to doing. Now, the civil unrest, protests and call for social justice has moved us in a new direction emphasizing that we should not return to how things ‘have been.’ People are frustrated, angry, anxious and uncertain as to what lies ahead for our society and for each of us personally.”

 

COVID-19

“Over the past few months, working from home has quickly become the norm. Gallup reports that nearly two-thirds of Americans are working remotely. But it’s not just current employees who have been affected by these changes. There’s a wave of 2020 college graduates and students who were about to enter the workforce as interns. How are they faring?”

“Whether you are an employer or an employee, this unprecedented set of circumstances has raised a lot of difficult questions.”

 

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity

“Unfortunately, there are far too many HR practitioners who themselves exhibit a profound lack of either understanding or care and who, to put it bluntly, are racists themselves.”

“I’ve been extremely anxious and really do not know how to respond.  Let me point out that I am a privileged white male who is anxious and upset so I can’t imagine how a black person feels right now.  Hence, #BlackLivesMatter.”

“Let’s assume the organization wants to be antiracist.  A message from the CEO must happen and happen quickly.  Open forums (even over video) should take place so you can hear from employees, and employees should be encouraged to bring up concerns in any format they choose.”

“Our organizations need us to forge new or expanded paths for hiring, promotion, learning management and skill development, but we may need to start at home. Within our own HR sphere, how do we expect those systemically kept out to be allowed in if we’re not deliberate?”

“This list was born of a passion for Equity and Inclusion.”

 

Recruitment

“It was not that long ago that talent leaders started encouraging people to bring their true selves to work. Well, be careful about what you wish for, because here it is. And we do not have all the tools to deal with it.”