SHRM11: Day Two Recap: Never Stop

I was once a child actor. From the age of nine up until attending high school, I participated in almost every play that was put on by the local community theater. Happily, I received excellent reviews and accolades from my fellow thespians. I even won their equivalent of an Oscar and got my picture in the paper. When I reached high school, there was a drama department and a full fledged devoted student body and faculty. I was excited because I believed I was a shoe-in for major lead roles. However, the drama teacher was not impressed with my talents and I was consistently relegated to minor roles. To this day, I never understood how I fell from grace.

The fall was not pretty. It took several years to put it behind me. When I revisit those days, I realize the lesson I was learning was that to truly achieve success, one must taste failure.

At the time, it would have been ideal for someone to tell me what went wrong, for someone to outline where it fell apart and where and when it would come back together. However, like everything in life there is no road map for one’s life.

This lack of a life road map and the predictability of failure resonated with me during the second day of the Society for Human Resources Management 2011 Annual Conference. I kept thinking about how important it was to try to be as proactive as possible, to think about the future, and to not assume it will always go your way. I also kept thinking about the value of communication and how even the simplest of communications can be very effective to alleviate many issues.

Fascinated by what seemed to be obvious wrong behavior, the first session I attended was "Getting It Right: Understanding Current Dynamics of Religious Diversity in the Workplace." This panel discussion candidly related that the amount of hatred in the media has become more widely accepted. Yet when people are polled, the majority believe they always treat other people with other religions with respect.

Eventually it will not matter statistically because Muslims are the fastest growing religion in the world and will eventually not be the minority in this country. Currently the backlash toward discrimination is already occurring with people realizing they have a voice. This is evident by the fact that religious discrimination claims to the EEOC are the fastest growing.

Despite the early hour of the session, the panel was chalked full of great advice. Two of the best suggestions I heard was (1) stop asking employees to leave their religion and politics at the door. There needs to be more dialogue in the workplace to bridge understanding. The old method of avoidnace is causing bias and division. (2) As we get closer to the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center's destruction, there will be more anti-Muslim sentiment, in and out of the office. HR cannot do much about the constant disparaging comments Muslim-Americans hear outside the office. But inside, it would be advisable to communicate to managers and employees that what may be acceptable outside is not the case inside.

Another personal topic was captured during my second session of the day, "Communicating About Compensation with Employees and Leaders" presented by the passionate, Stacey Carroll, Director of Customer Service & Education, Payscale. What this session boiled down to was, how transparent should compensation plans be?

Packed full of interesting ideas, Carroll's session outlined leading practices for this type of disclosure. Since her session could have been a whole blog post in of itself, I mention only my takeaways:

• Be confident with your plan.
• Know your audience and what to communicate.
• Don't make your leaders feel dumb when explaining the plan.
• Know that compensation evokes strong emotional reactions with employees.
• Anticipate challenges and weak spots.

Moreover, perfection is not a factor in deciding to become transparent. Waiting for perfection is rationalizing avoidance. Considering how personal employees vision their compensation, avoiding this topic may be one of the biggest mistakes HR can make.

Also a mistake is how we envision our older work force (starting at age 50) in this country. During my third session, Peter Cappelli's presentation, "Managing the Older Worker," it was clear how we have negative stereotypes about age, but we have positive stereotypes about experience. Ironically the two are synonymous in the workplace. Sadly, we are not recognizing this.

It's sad because older workers typically quit less, are absent less, have fewer accidents, have more knowledge and better interpersonal skills, and have better job performance. Isn't this the equation that employers are seeking? Yes. But the misunderstandings and myths about older people are abound: they are unhealthy, will become unhealthy, and will cost more in health insurance. Additionally, like the Muslim-American population, there is a social acceptance to making fun of old people.

However, since we will all become old (if we live), everyone eventually joins this group. Because of this fact, convincing people to not accept the stereotypes is an easier fix than the religious stereotypes. Again it requires patience, open communication, and some adjustment to internal culture to correct this.

As much as I have encouraged proactiveness and simple, open communication in this post, in lieu of the last session, Sam Fleet's "Managing Rising Employee Benefits Costs in Light of Health Care Reform," it is damn near impossible to wrap my head around this and recommend anything. Fleet's presentation, no fault of his own, was like a runaway train with no end in sight for when this would all crash. Proactively preventing this train's crash may be impossible. But communicating it's eventual crash will at least minimize the damage.

All is not lost though. Despite today's stories of discrimination and bad communication, I feel more empowered.
I know the problems.
I know avoidance is not an option.
I know perfection is not a factor.
I know failure gets me closer to success.
I know as HR, I can be the great communicator.
I can proactively push the leading practices for my organization.

Yet there is only one way to accomplish this. I must NEVER STOP believing any of the above.

Onto Day 3...