The Philadelphia School District is looking for a new head of HR. Ours got fired. Accused of malfeasance. Philly.com writes:
The school district’s chief talent development officer was escorted from district headquarters yesterday after an investigation found that her son was hired for two jobs he was unqualified for and she took it upon herself to give a group of workers raises, sources told the Daily News.
Here’s a couple of notes to the next head of HR at the District: 1) Don’t hire unqualified relatives, and 2) Don’t give out bonuses to your friends while firing a bunch of other teachers. Other than that, please feel free to be as corrupt as other administrators in the Philadelphia School District.
Come to think of it…I think I might like to have that job for a couple of years. My slogan: Kick ass, not kickbacks.
Think your employees want to hear that? Is that really what you want to say to them in your wellness messaging? Maybe you should read Hello, I Am Fat to find out the effect it has on people. Writer Lindy West says:
I get that you think you’re actually helping people and society by contributing to the fucking Alp of shame that crushes every fat person every day of their lives—the same shame that makes it a radical act for me to post a picture of my body and tell you how much it weighs. But you’re not helping. Shame doesn’t work. Diets don’t work. Shame is a tool of oppression, not change.
And she points out that maybe, just for a second, we might want to step back and think about how that You’re Too Fat message is going over with your employees. She pokes a hole in the fake altruism:
You are not concerned about my health. Because if you were concerned about my health, you would also be concerned about my mental health, which has spent the past 28 years being slowly eroded by statements like the above. Also, you don’t know anything about my health. You do happen to be the boss of me, but you are not the doctor of me. You have no idea what I eat, how much I exercise, what my blood pressure is, or whether or not I’m going to get diabetes. Not that any of that matters, because it is entirely none of your business.
“But but but my insurance premiums!!!” Bullshit. You live in a society with other people. I don’t have kids, but I pay taxes that fund schools. The idea that we can somehow escape affecting each other is deeply conservative. Barbarous, even. Is that really what you’re going for? Good old-fashioned American individualism? Please.
Something to think about when you’re writing your wellness messages. Want diversity? Get a fat person and a smoker together and have them write your wellness messages. My guess is that they’d think more about root causes. And they’d focus on underlying elements of poor health, like the accumulation of stress over a lifetime.
You’re living in Greenville, South Carolina — the Buckle of the Bible Belt. You like your morning coffee. And the sports page.
You turn to page C3…and spit your coffee on your short-sleeved dress shirt. The ultimate swear word has turned up in your local newspaper. You’re agog. You’re aghast. You…and the entire online community have seen a swear word accidentally printed in your newspaper.
I made a snapshot of it below. (If you’re offended by that word, don’t see Goodfellas, where it gets used 2.06 times per minute on average. There are worse ones.) Looks like someone put a slug in there and was waiting for additional copy that didn’t get inserted. Never a good idea if you’re in the writing business.
The Bad Word in the Greenville News
What interested me was how long it took the Greenville News to get out there in front of this story. They didn’t. This silly story went viral. It blew up on Facebook, Twitter, and online news outlets. What did they do at the Greenville News? Wait until 4:41 in the afternoon to post an apology on their website.
Too late.
Stories move fast. Faster than most companies are capable of responding to if they’re using a 1991 mentality in a 2011 world.
You know when people tell you that you need a social media policy? It’s not the technology. It’s opening a channel of communication and a way of thinking about communication BEFORE someone accidentally writes f^*k in one of your communication pieces.
Will you wait an entire day to respond? If you don’t have a social media channel open right now…well, you know the answer.
When I saw this neon sign today, I thought, “There’s a sign for the times.” It says, The true artist makes useless shit for rich people to buy.
You know how much crappy HR software gets sold to gullible HR people because it’s sold as art? As pretty pictures with no flexibility for it to work with the company’s system without lots and lots of money being poured on it? That’s true artistry.
You know how many fakirs there are out there begging for alms and touting themselves as social media experts? And how many tragically unhip HR people buy what they’re selling without ever asking the questions, “What do I want to get out of this and where have you gotten results before?” That’s true artistry.
You know how many HR consultants there are out there cobbling together a report that was written for another client and just doing a company names Search-and-Replace for a new client? Who sell vulnerable HR types the newest flavor of Kool-Aid while obscuring the fact that The Next Big Thing they touted last year is in the dust heap? That’s true artistry.
Dear HR: You’re not art collectors. Don’t buy a neon sign that advertises it for the world to see.
