Dear friends,
Before I launch into the 17th HR Carnival I just wanted to use this opportunity to introduce myself. I'm a journalist for Personnel Today, and officially launched the Work Clinic beginning of July 2007.
Although I've been a journalist for 10 years, now more than ever, our roles, whether as communicators, industry experts, entrepreneurs, HR professionals, managers etc are increasingly changing as the way employees, consumers, clients, readers and audiences continuously change the way they want to source their information, either through interacting with us directly through forums, blogging and social networking, or through using the net to search company information/absorb and/or digest news to keep up with industry trends. As such our news team have just launched their own editors' blog.
Three months on and I have to admit I've become a bit of an addict to blogging. It's an exciting time for us all. Although I'm fairly new to the blogosphere world, I love the buzz of blogging as it's given me access to a whole new international cyber community - I've found a new gateway to exchange and share opinions, views and thoughts with you all on workplace culture and human resources issues - whether you're a blogger or a commentator.
So, in future I look forward to working with you all and collaborating on some exciting projects, should you wish to get involved. Just to make it absolutely clear how seriously I am in doing what I can to push the blogging revolution, I have managed to turn the Work Clinic into a two-page weekly column within Personnel Today where I am now featuring my favourite blog of the week (I've already showcased XpertHR, Evil HR Lady, Flipchart Fairytales and HR Wench) as well as showcasing the Work Clinic posting of the week along with your comments.
If you would like to be featured for the "my favourite blog" section, please email me and in 50 words, describe the essence of your blog. A screen grab of your blog home page, along with 50 words copy will be featured in a future issue.
Please also keep a check on my postings where I will be asking your opinions on various topics which I can then collate and feature back into the magazine. For example, we're currently trialling to see if we can put together a feature in print entirely based on user generated content from this blog based on your stories. Please do contribute: corporate hospitality disaster stories.
If you have any other feature ideas, suggestions and want me to keep you as a contact on file should I need to interview someone at short notice, drop me your details. I also welcome guest experts to appear on this blog.
So it's with real honour I open up the 17th HR Carnival...
To kick off debate, The Career Encouragement Blog discusses the issue of work/life balance: What's your timeline for building a career and a family? However, be warned though, if your a citizen of Pennsylvania, USA, Pennsylvania Employment Law Blog points out that gender stereotyping is in existence with a piece on disparate treatment of workers with caregiver responsibilities If you think your safe though and live in Connecticut, then you better do your research on the laws surrounding lactation in the workplace over at Connecticut Employment Law Blog sharpish!
That got heavy going for a while - back to some light relief, check out Sharp Brains: Brain Teasers with a neuroscience angle
, we're offered some teasers to test our mental vitality and flexibility. I admit having to proof-read for part of my living, I wasn't caught out, but are you going to be?
Here's another teaser. What do Toyota and the Roman Army have in common? They both rely on systems instead of heroes and talented geniuses to produce results. They both created systems that enabled ordinary people to produce world-conquering results. To find out how I suggest you go to Three Star Leadership now.
Something of interest to us all is how to retain good employees. Employer Ease has compiled a slideshare presentation and believes other employers and HR professionals will benefit from seeing it. On the flipside, Ask a Manager argues if an employee isn't working out though, don't resort to firing, instead opening up the channels for communication can really help both parties. Or what if it's a just simply a time management issue? The Best Recruiters Have A Sense Of Humor, offers some enlightening simple tips to help us cope with our daily workloads.
While HR Thoughts raised the importance of evaluating pay grades through a salary survey , Evil HR Lady certainly sounds like she needs a pay rise for having to sit in on some labourious meetings. In fact, Evil HR Lady even wrote to me telling me she hates meetings. Do you think the reason people call meetings is because they're too lonely? I was recently sent a picture through e-mail
which stated that meetings were in fact the practical alternative to work!
So on that note, I just wanted to say thanks to Evil HR Lady for allowing me to host this carnival. As you read this I am now actually probably sitting on a beach in Cyprus, sunning myself. The British summer this year has been appalling and I need to catch some sun...so, for the next HR Carnival dose, please do email your suggestions to HR Capitalist - over to you Kris.
For the full list of forthcoming HR Carnivals go to Evil HR Lady carnival reminder
Comments (2)
Posted by Ask a Manager | October 3, 2007 2:39 PM
Just noticed the link to my post isn't working. It's http://askamanager.blogspot.com/2007/09/alternatives-to-firing.html .
Posted on October 3, 2007 14:39
Posted by Daniel Schwartz | October 3, 2007 3:16 PM
Natalie: Thanks for the shout-out. I've been surprised by how many new mothers did not know their rights in Connecticut about this. And certainly many other states don't go nearly this far in covering new moms. But perhaps with other bloggers pointing this out, it can become routine, instead of the exception.
Keep up the good work.
Posted on October 3, 2007 15:16