Some of My Favorite Posts from Recent Weeks

The HR industry is blessed with so many talented bloggers with groundbreaking ideas that they are willing to share. I read a lot of blog posts in the average week, and the quality and insightfulness of so many of these bloggers will never cease to amaze me. Here are a couple of my favorite posts from the past few weeks:

Lisa Rosenthal over at Simply Lisa, had a great post, Your HR Career, where she shared what she would tell HR students if she were to speak at the SHRM Student Conference this June:

HR is a profession in the midst of change. Once a very transactional and administrative role, HR professionals can now play influential and transformational roles, impacting and delivering on business objectives.

If you watch and listen carefully, you will see and hear the struggle between the old and new; between compliance and innovation, and between complacency and progress. Progress and innovation are winning out as the HR profession changes to provide the services and expertise organizations need to succeed.

Lisa goes on to discuss fitting in and standing out as an HR pro, and sums up by telling them “it’s your career, own it.” This resonated with me, because really, if an HR pro doesn’t “own” it; can they reasonably expect anyone else in their organization to? Well said, Lisa.

Another post worth a read is from Paul Hebert over at Fistful of Talent , The Cowell Corollary – American Idol and Performance Reviews. Maybe I enjoyed the piece because I secretly love the dastardly Simon Cowell, and have been known to watch Idol now and then.

The Cowell Collary is explained by Hebert:

The value and the importance of the negative review provided by Simon Cowell increases relative to the few number of previous positive reviews offered by Cowell and the total number of average reviews by the other judges.

What this means is that if a performer receives a great number of positive reviews from the other judges prior to a negative review by Cowell – the negative review seems to have more value and is seen as more important than the previous positive reviews. And, Cowell’s own positive reviews carry more weight due to how few of them there are relative to the other judges’ reviews.

In the case of Idol, I completely agree with Hebert, since really, do we truly value the feedback from anyone but Simon? When Simon gives a positive review, everyone pays attention and that contestant is seen as a contender. But enough about Idol, Hebert points out the value of feedback as a practice in the corporate world. We are told to give out praise often, but there’s a danger in that, as we may devalue the praise because if there’s no negative, do we actually value the positive?

Definitely something to consider from an HR point of view, especially when it comes to ensuring your managers provide the complete picture of employee performance at appraisal time. If they are only giving out positive feedback, there’s likely a problem, because no employee is going to focus on development and growth if they are pretty much told they are perfect. While I don’t recommend Simon-style reviews, there should be some constructive feedback to help that employee continue to grow in their role.