HR whY?

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Last week I got an email from the HR Minion herself, Shauna Moerke asking for some help in getting the next edition of the Carnival of HR out.  It was to be hosted by my friend Paul Smith of the awesome blog, Welcome to the Occupation (one of my favorite names of a blog, by the way) but due to some unforeseen circumstances he was unable to host.  Enter Mr. guy who can’t say “no” – that’s me by the way.  All kidding aside I am very happy to help Shauna and Paul out.

When I first heard of the theme Paul was running with – Worst of HR – I instantly loved it.  Far too often you hear “best practice this” and “best practice that.”  Very infrequently do you hear of mistakes or the worst things in HR that people eventually learned from and grew both personally and professionally.  In addition, this is one of my favorite topics to chat with my buddy Ben Eubanks about.  We are constantly trading ridiculous stories.  With that said, I give you the Worst of HR in all of its glory…

Worst of HR Practices

Does the espresso maker in the break room get more peer nominations for Employee of the Month than anyone else at your company? Ouch.  Check out Choose a recognition program that will inspire, not backfire from Baudville’s Allison.  Love it.

Dan McCarthy of Great Leadership shares an interesting study that describes how most new managers are blind-sided by the job and fail to produce.  They just don’t get how to succeed in their new role.  Why? Read to find out!

The HR Introvert makes reference to social etiquette in The Phone Call I Screwed Up.  Not everyone can be a bubbly socialite like Kim Kardashian.

Shauna Moerke, the HR Minion gives us Worst of Me in which she actually admits a mistake she personally made, unlike most of you other cautious HR folks.  From her mistake, she learned that inaction is still a choice, and a fear of being wrong cannot stop you from doing your job, not when you work in HR. HR can’t be passive and still function.

Here’s one from Mark Stelzner.  In 6 Ways To Destroy Your New Hire, Mark literally describes six ways to destroy your new hire.  I love how he begins the list…”Congratulations – you’re about to ruin someone’s life.”  I’ve experienced more than one of these situations myself. Ridiculous!

In Interview #fail, Mervyn Dinnen describes one of the worst interview experiences he has dealt with in his career.  I’m not sure how I would have reacted to this one!

You can’t handle the truth !! by Steve Browne made me cringe.  Steve discusses a past experience in which he learned the real power of confidentiality.  Yikes, there’s no way I would have wanted to be attending this meeting!

Amy Wilson of Wilson Insight discusses being a hoarder of cats, err, knowledge in Are you a knowledge hoarder? The fact is, intentional or not, knowledge hoarding isn’t going to get you anywhere.

“Incentives Gone Bad” – sounds like the title of an episode of The Office. Classic.  In An Incentive Fairy Tale (sort of), Lisa Rosendahl describes the major failures of a company’s incentive program.  She likens it to blackmail. Read it.

Worst of HR Posts

Trish McFarlane of the HR Ringleader shares this gem, HR – It’s Not “One Coat” Paint, in which she compares human resource professionals to you’ve guessed it…paint.  As she shared, “this one seems pretty trivial and I have no idea why I wrote it!”

The Working Girl, Laura Schroeder shares some “dreadful poetry” (her words…mine too) about Tiny Budgets.  Very funny!

Random Worst

Ben Eubanks shared How to set an ATM on fire as his worst HR, err, wait a minute, this has nothing to do with HR.  However, it is pretty hilarious and I felt like including, so enjoy!

So that’s that. Read on, laugh, learn, and grow.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of the Carnival of HR, brought to you today by the letter W…as in Worst.  Props to Paul for coming up with an entertaining theme!

Image by purpleslog