HumanMarkets

    Recently I posted about the bungled, should-not-have-happened firing of Shirley Sherrod.  Along with others, we prompted ourselves to “Count The HR Mistakes“.  Among the mistakes in this particular example, one mistake-theme is worth pulling out for more general exposition.

In a digital world, images, video (moving pictures), and sound clips can be adulterated with evil elegance. If you are in a position to be making serious HR decisions on the basis of digital evidence, you should at least step back during the process to ask, “am I sure that this evidence is an accurate rendering of what occurred” Who is presenting the evidence? Are there controls on the production of the digital representations? Is there a reasonable expectation that this recording is captured in the ordinary course of business or is the presentation of the recording being proffered to me as the product of some purported stroke or luck?

I don’t think you need to audition for the cast of “CSI HR” (Coming to CBS Thursdays this fall!), but at least allow yourself to recognize that what you are looking at might not be the real, full truth.  Surely; “don’t call me Shirley”; surely, this was a political attack.  However, people do mean things in the work place all the time.  Think about where the evidence you are reviewing came from.

In: Multiple Markets | | #