Author: Todd Raphael

You’re a CEO, and you just got a resume for a Chief Workforce Officer position. You’re licking your chops because that resume has just what you’re looking for. What’s on that piece of paper? Here’s a possibility. No copying!

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HELEN ROSE NEWBREED
45 Better Business Lane
Real Impact, ME 04473

OBJECTIVE
Employment in an organization where I can leverage the talents of employees to create a more prosperous business or nonprofit.

SPECIAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS
As HR Director of a Fortune 1000 service corporation:

• Led committee of five executives that evaluated merger and acquisition candidates based on similarities in corporate culture, ease of integrating technologies as well as benefit and compensation plans, profit potential, and other factors
• Created work-at-home (up to two days per week) and other flexible work options based on employee input, achieving turnover 25 percent below industry average
• Worked with marketing and public relations departments to develop and execute an integrated recruitment and advertising strategy
• Renegotiated health-plan relationship to achieve 5 percent cost savings and improved employee satisfaction 15 percent
• Moved 50 percent of company recruiting online, achieving cost savings of $15 million annually and increasing candidate pool 30 percent and offer-acceptance rate 25 percent

As HR Manager of a furniture-leasing business:

• Instituted training program to upgrade managers’ skills. Retention of managers increased, and company was cited in The Boston Herald as one of “100 Hot Companies to Work For”
• Revamped company safety program and increased employee safety training. Before taking position, company was penalized twice in four years for OSHA violations (there have been none since)

SKILLS

• Underwent eight-hour media training to hone presentation skills
• Proficient at writing government grants
• Understand how to influence legislative process, both state and federal, as well as the regulatory process

EDUCATION
MBA, UCLA, May 1986

• Concentration on Human Resource Management
• Special focus on statistics

BA, Ohio Wesleyan University, May 1980

• Concentration in economics
• Cum Laude
• As head of resident assistants on campus, created system of student/resident assistant committees to better solicit student feedback

Workforce, May 2000, Vol. 79, No. 5, p. 123.

When an employee leaves, is how you treat them a retention issue? A recruitment issue? They’re already leaving, right?

Wrong! Word spreads quickly to job candidates. And job candidates judge prospective employers by everything they experience about a company, from job description to interview to employment to departure. And they hear a lot about those things from rumors originating from current employees.

When applicants hear that resigning from the company means they’ll never be welcome back — whether as a visitor to the company or as a boomerang employee — they lose interest in ever starting a job. Perhaps most importantly, it also makes them less likely to refer future candidates to the company.

Remember the lunch you bought your new hire when he/she started the job? Buy it again when he/she resigns to work elsewhere. In the long run, the goodwill will pay off.

 

When a job candidate comes to interview, you’ve probably thought about how you’ll conduct the interview.

But how the rest of the organization acts is just as important. Think about the signals employees give off when a candidate arrives.

For example:

When current employees conduct themselves: Like the candidate is a “stranger” who just walked in the door and should be ignored.
Message the candidate receives: This is kind of a club. You don’t fit in yet. You haven’t proven you’re one of us.

When current employees conduct themselves: In a friendly way, and chat with a candidate while he/she is awaiting the manager’s arrival.
Message the candidate receives: Anyone’s welcome here. We like to meet new people and new customers.

At the same time, think about the messages current employees give out when a job candidate calls to follow up on a resume they sent:

When current employees conduct themselves: Like the job candidate is just one of 400 callers who mailed in a resume, a resume which may or not be found anywhere in the office at this point.
Message the candidate receives: We’re an impersonal company. We would have called you if you were a good candidate for this job. Since we don’t need you right now, we don’t need you in the future as an employee, or even as a customer of our products.

When current employees conduct themselves: Like they’re happy to receive the call and while they don’t at the moment know where the resume is, they’re happy it was sent, and they’d be happy to find it and call back.
Message the candidate receives: We treat every employee, customer and candidate like they matter, because they do.

 

From the politically incorrect to the outrageously illegal, here are ten we don’t recommend.

10. Put an item on the company intranet honoring the employee who got the most use out of the EAP this year.

9. Announce a mandatory company meeting for late in the day April 19, the first night of Passover.

8. Require all applicants to retake the SAT.

7. Start charging per flush.

6. Tell the CEO you’ve scheduled a fact-finding trip for the two of you to evaluate a merger candidate in Chechnya.

5. Add health benefit: a scale in the copier room.

4. Borrow a border-control car from the INS and park in the company lot.

3. Announce to employees that three years ago you invested everyone’s pension money in Yahoo and then later tell them you were just kidding.

2. Claim that it’s “retro month” and the minimum wage has been rolled back to $2.15/hour.

1. Change the hold music on the phone to Madonna repeatedly singing “American Pie.”

To:. All e-mailers

From: Todd

Subject: Forward This Article Around For Good Luck!

Apparently, in the early days of the digital age, some people in the defense department were worried about a new form of communication under development: E-mail.

Their concern decades ago was that this invention would increase productivity so much that it would make many humans largely obsolescent. We’d be A) so efficient that B) we won’t even work anymore.

Well, they got the second part right. We’re not working anymore, because all we’re doing is e-mailing. In taking a look at some the correspondence that comes into this site, as well as personal e-mails I receive at home, several observations come to mind:

• E-mail is apparently often sent while the sender is drowning in a large pool of rapidly circulating water. In many e-mails, several subjects are often combined into one breathtaking freefall, winding up something like this:

I’m merging with another company and they’re in the Netherlands and we have two different benefits plans and several hundred employees who are unhappy we need to keep them from leaving what do we do. Please respond by tomorrow if you can.

• For some reason, people will ask a question over e-mail they’d be too embarrassed to ask in person. This type of thing:

Todd, I’m the CEO of a rapidly growing Internet company in Denver. I was wondering if I should be paying the minimum wage or if there is some sort of exemption for that particular requirement.

• E-mail humor is one of the lower forms of entertainment.

Last night I received an e-mail with the ubiquitous subject line, “this one is really funny!” Messages labeled as such rarely are.

About once a month, I receive an e-mail with directions to forward it 15 other people, in order that good luck will come. Such messages are often accompanied by long lists of reasons we’re lucky to be alive, such as the ability to forward e-mail. If good luck means ticking off 15 other people, these messages function as advertised.

• E-mail is taking away our ability to converse like we once did. Marcey, a former college friend, recently e-mailed from her new apartment. The purpose of the e-mail was to tell me her new eFax number. As you may know, eFax enables me to send a fax from a fax machine, and have that fax translated into an e-mail attachment she can then read. This is an old, close friend, who I actually used to have long conversations with. Now I’m supposed to fax her? What should I fax? Documents?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no e-mail cynic. E-mail is saving companies millions of dollars in direct mail costs, and also helping them communicate more personally with their customers. E-mail is allowing people to telecommute rather than disrupt their family lives by relocating. E-mail is enabling multinational companies to receive wireless reports from areas of the world where even phone service is unavailable. We get letters from one member of this site who works in a remote part of the Aleutian Islands, off Alaska.

E-mail has enabled business people to contact other business people from around the world who share their same company size and industry, as people do through the “Member Network” database found on this site.

Yes, I’m still a big fan of e-mail. If you want to talk about it, give me a call.

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Other columns by Todd Raphael:

• On Gore and Bush
• We Wish You a Merry Winter
• Thoughts for the New Leaders of the New Dot-coms
• Let Rocker Talk
• To: All E-mailers From: Todd
• Holidays: Some Minor Revisions
• The Year HR Became Cool

The American holidays are like the city of Los Angeles–little more than a patchwork quilt, created over decades, with little strategic planning, rhyme or reason added to the mix.

We’ve tried our best to honor our great leaders, treasure our parents, and recognize those who have sacrificed for us, all without giving us too many days off of school and work.

Now that we lie squarely in the lull between President’s Day and Memorial Day, the longest work stretch of the year, I thought it was high time to revisit that holiday mix. We proceed:

BIRTHDAYS

We need to reverse the entire celebration process. You really don’t deserve any presents on your birthday, because you didn’t do a whole lot to make it happen. On birthdays, everyone should have a party for their mother, and she should receive the presents. How long do the festivities last? As long as the labor.

MOTHER’S DAY

Sorry mom. We’re not giving you two of your own. This one’s kaput.

COLUMBUS DAY

Normally, I’d say we should end this one, too. After all, Indian tribes had been here for hundreds of years, and we’re taking a day off because Columbus accidentally crashed into Haiti? Then again, Columbus is my beloved hometown, and a city so representative of all of America that much of the country’s market research is done there. If we’re not sure if Columbus Day should remain, let’s take a poll.

JULY 4TH

Watermelon, parades, baseball, hot dogs, fireworks, and high school marching bands. Don’t ever let it change.

THANKSGIVING

If we really want to appreciate how lucky we are to have food, why do we stuff incredulously unnecessary amounts of it down our throats, food which could provide meals for days to the hungry? Let’s have a national fast on Thanksgiving. Maybe then we’ll understand the pain of going to bed hungry, one that lingers on for an incredibly large percentage of people in the richest country on earth.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR DAY and ELECTION DAY

Let’s combine them. By giving everyone the day off work to vote, we’ll increase voter turnout and honor Reverend King’s greatest legacy.

GRANDPARENT’S DAY

The greeting-cardsmakers done right by creating this one. Our grandparents ended the depression, saved us from the Nazis, built our highways, and helped improve race relations. If you are lucky enough to have your parents’ parents still alive, count your blessings, and include in those prayers the hope you will do as much for your offspring as they did for us.

NEW YEAR’S EVE

I’m tired of people saying that they’re “not going to make a big deal out of New Year’s, because it’s just another day.” I wish it were true, but it’s not. Do Harry and Sally break up, get back together, break up again and get back together ever other day? Are cab rides always free? As long we have Dick Clark, we’ll have New Year’s, and that’s forever. Pass the Chex mix.

VALENTINE’S DAY

When you’re a little kid, this is a day when all the boys buy Valentines for the whole class, and all the girls buy Valentines for the whole class. For some reason, for adults, this has become a day where the onus is on men to buy flowers and expensive dinner for women, and if they don’t, the remote control hits the fan. Let’s keep the elementary school rule and extend it to all ages. Both men and women should buy Valentines for all their friends, regardless of gender, or buy none at all. A bag of 20 or 30 little Valentine cards costs only a few bucks, a small price to pay to tell all those important in your life how you feel about them.

CHRISTMAS

Two years ago, I received from a relative a red box with absolutely nothing in it. Inside I placed things of importance to me–compliments from a former track coach, photos of a cute niece half-buried in a sand castle, and more. Each Christmas, each of us should buy two boxes, fill them with inexpensive toys, knick-knacks, and snacks, and give them to two children, one of our own, and one we’ve never met. Once the little whippersnappers devour the Pez and lose the toys, they’ll still have a reminder that someone cares. Everyone should have a box.

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Other columns by Todd Raphael:

• On Gore and Bush
• We Wish You a Merry Winter
• Thoughts for the New Leaders of the New Dot-coms
• Let Rocker Talk
• To: All E-mailers From: Todd
• Holidays: Some Minor Revisions
• The Year HR Became Cool

A little fun with simple directions. Here are the two directions:

1) Rearrange the letters in the phrases you will see.

2) Then, using the FIRST LETTERS of each phrase, create one final phrase.

Here’s an example.

FORKCROWE

Unscramble the letters above to arrive at the leading HR/management media organization.

ARE

Unscramble the letters above to find a part of the body.

Alls you do is:

• Unscramble the first word. The answer is “Workforce.”
• Unscramble the second word. The answer is “Ear.”
• Take the first letter of the first word (“W”) and the first letter of the second word (“E”) and put them together to get the word “WE.”

Remember, all you have to do is write the correct phrase next to each word. Then, write the final answer at the bottom, using the first letters of each word.

The winner, chosen randomly among the 31 who got everything right, was Matt Chaffee of Littler Mendelson. Matt won the compact disc Songs of the Working People featuring Pete Seeger and others.

This contest was void where prohibited. Workforce employees, relatives and anyone who thinks Jeopardy is easy were ineligible.Workforce was not liable if you or anyone in your organization was injuried while trying to get your entry in on time.

 

A N N S B I T E R

Last name of 1954 British sports legend who later worked as a neurologist. (Roger Bannister, the first four-minute miler)

 

A B Y E

Employees working on this Bay help people find Pez, posters and puppets.(EBay)

 

S L O P E L N W

In 1998, union members encouraged each other to vote in this Workforce.com feature.(News Poll)

 

O K W A R T

These kind of musical men “come from a land down under.” Who Can it Be Now?(At Work. Men At Work sang “Down Under” and “Who Can it Be Now?”)

 

F L N

Employees of this popular American sports organization went on a bitter strike in 1987.(NFL)

 

D O V E

This musical group of former Kent State University art students was “Working in a Coal Mine” in 1981.(DEVO)

 

R A C E T I M R Y M J

U.S. president who worked as nuclear physicist and as a senior naval lieutenant in the ’40s; in 1953 he became a farmer and ran a Georgia seed and fertilizer business (first and last name).(Jimmy Carter)

 

A N I C E

First electronic digital computer, introduced in 1946.(Eniac–this stumped a few folk)

 

R A N A G E

Worked as a radio broadcaster; actor; union leader (last name) (Reagan).

 

A R A T S T U R N E

Workplace that comes from the French word meaning to “restore oneself.”(Restaurant)

 

T OY H U

The Associated Press refers to people 13 through 17 as this.(Youth)

 

E A R S S

They’ve been honored for excellence in HR.(Sears)

 

Now that you’ve written the correct answer next to each word, take the first letter of each word and in this space write the phrase you come up with. It’s a company that’s well-known in the workforce management world.

Ben and Jerry’s