HumanMarkets

Source; newscorp

Nobody loves the high falutin’ strategic HR stuff more than me. Economics, business strategy, competitive advantage, whatever.
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Today I have been thinking about bed bugs. No doubt you have seen the reports on the news that bed bug infestation is big around the world and have particularly increased in the United States. Hotels have obviously been dealing with these things. Now, retailers and other office locations are having to exterminate them. Even the Empire State Building has them.
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We should do everything we can to protect our employees from them. If we find them we, HR, should stand up on the table, not have a seat at it, as we demand that they be eradicated quickly and effectively. (Same for any other rodents or parasites in the work place.) All of the strategy goes out the window when people are completely skeeved out at work.
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It’s not a bad idea for HR to go to facilities management and ask if anything is being done to check or prevent bed bugs. Early detection makes it easier to deal with.
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Years ago when I was the low man on the totem pole of HR in a department store in Pennsylvania, we had fruit flies in our employee lunch room.  Employee Relations was my responsibility (I was the training manager for the store.) I made it my mission in life to get this taken care of.  No one in the cleaning service or the lower level building people cared.  I needed to go the executive in charge.   The Operations Manager was the #2 person in the building and responsible for the physical plant.  He correctly indicated that the room was cleaned twice a day and that the flies were impossible to eliminate 100% and that in fact if the employees were not such slobs, the flies would be dramatically less of a nuisance.  He had no interest in doing any more here or spending any more money on this. Yep.  Not good enough.

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HR did its point with recommunicating to employees what their families and grand mothers had already taught them.  Clean up after yourself.  Put garbage in a closed bag.  Wipe the table after you eat and when you spill something.  If you need help cleaning up, ask for it. 

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The key was HR demanding better pest control. We made a nusiance of ourselves bringing fly paper covered with flies into the executive offices.  Holding meetings in the infested room that was really irritating to managers.  We eventually got some sprayers on timers, an overnight complete clean and better trash cans.  It was not sexy; it was not strategic.  Employees loved it; they appreciated it more than anything else I remember HR doing while I was in that building.  Maybe Maslow right.  HR could walk the floor of that building and talk to people about anything we wanted, whenever we wanted to talk.  We were the folks who got stuff done that mattered – we killed the flies.

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One quick thought.  management did not eat in that room.  Management ate in the restaurants in the mall.  The clerks could not afford to do that.   They had little time and little money.  They brought their lunch and ate in the infested room.  My guess is that over time and over multiple situations, when management ignores problems like this one, if HR also ignores it as beneath us or too gross to deal with – someone from the outside may well be called upon to help employees solve their problems.

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The media is telling this bed bug story loud and clear - I have to think that it draws great ratings.  Employees are sensitive to it.  You are the super star when someone asks (downstream or upstream) and you already demonstrate you were on the job.

2 Comments | In: Employee Relations, Housekeeping/Caveats, Multiple Markets | tags: Bed Bugs. | #

Human Markets just completed 100 posts.  Over a period of about a year and a half we have written about a variety of HR issues, hopefully bringing a perspective shaped by real work experience in the market.  For this blog, like any other to continue to be worth reading (and worth writing) it need to adapt and grow.  Like any competitor (there are other blogs asking for your attention) in a market, the market for your attention and time, Human Markets needs to have a crisp, accurate and longitudinal sense of its customers.

Source: Eurpoean Wood Preservative Group

What do you want to see from Human Markets? 

What themes or aspects have been helpful, which – “not so much.” 

I would really appreciate any comments about the direction for the next 100.

Bill

13 Comments | In: Housekeeping/Caveats | | #

I was a little too glib. I talked about HR people as “mechanical manipultators”. Dr. Smoot was nice enough to talk about the post on his blog (there is a link in my blog roll, or here) Dr. Smoot HR

Dr. Smoot’s comments:

“Good HR acts as a market player, not a mechanical manipulator of people.”

This was written by Bill Strahan in a new blog called HumanMarkets.
This really fits with what I have been attempting to discuss in my blog. Too much of the time over the years, I have seen HR trying to manipulate people instead of trying to really improve the business.

A comment on that Dr. Smoot posting appropriately called me on the phrase “mechanical manipulator” Andres said:

I’m curious, what kinds of situations have you experienced where HR tried to manipulate people?

I’ve seen some poor decisions, but HR as “a mechanical manipulator of people”, I’ve not seen.

So, please let me clarify what I mean. I am not using manipulator as a negative comment in the sense of a duplicitous, or dishonest means to get people to change. I am not saying manipulative as in twisting emotions or facts. I do not mean manipulator to be threatening.

Rather I mean in almost a physical way – manipulator as “changer”. In this case almost a “Newtonian” sense - if I do X; they will do Y.

Think as in, if I give them a $1 raise, they will voluntarily resign less. Cause and effect. Mechanical, predictable action.

People are not like that. People have market reactions, not mechanical reactions. I when I say be a “market player” it is understanding that the relationship to people, whether individually or as a group, is better understood a market-based relationship. I give you something, you give me something in return, or not. Most importantly, the market-based relationship exists in time.

Think about soccer versus chess. Both involve competition, strategy, and tactics. Soccer is constant, fluid, organic and interactive. No one action on the part of a team dictates the outcome, it is only part of the interplay that determines the match. Chess is periodic. Time stops between discrete moves.

Back to being a market player versus manipulator. Good HR recognizes that people are smart. They make decisions based on a vast array of diverse inputs as to what is in their best interest. We as HR professionals and managers can learn to be more astute market players, but we will never be able to be the mechanical manipulator. We get astute at being market players by doing what other people who succeed in other market places do – listen, learn, react, anticipate, caluculate and act on risks. Most importantly – good market players respect that their competitors in the market and their trading partners have the ability to act with freedom to optimize their total value – as they uniquely define it.

The most important thing that market players do however, is that they recognize they are competiting. As HR I compete for the attention of my managers, employees, labor and captial markets. I compete for their talent, for resources. I compete for the respect of my employees and for a measure of credibility in their eyes. I compete for for their trust. In fact the list goes on and on. Mechanical manipulators think that by virtue of their position, the dictate results. They are the exclusive body interacting with another. Just ain’t so. It’s not about me. It’s about the market for volition.

Thanks Andres – you helped me learn my own advice. “Don’t assume that my actions will be interpreted by others the way I mechanically intended.” It was nice to be in the market place of ideas with you.

No Comments | In: Housekeeping/Caveats, How to do HR | tags: How to do HR, markets. | #