Shutdown …but never shutout

This week hundreds of government facilities will begin to come back online following the 35-day partial closure.  It was nice to see an end, even if only temporarily, to the government shutdown.  More than 800,000 people affected (plus all the government contractors, small businesses, extended families, etc.).  Let’s hope the hundreds of thousands of furloughed employees awaiting back pay (the administration promised) will see their lost wages arrive by the end of the week (and thankfully, the rash of delays at airports from understaffed security checkpoints and reported holes in the air traffic control system on the east coast subsided over the weekend).

I am proud of our Gannett team, especially our journalists, who came to us with the idea to offer a pay advance for our employees with spouses, partners and significant others who were currently on furlough or who are/were working without pay. 

We were not the only company trying to help. REI urged people to help restore national parks after the shutdown ends. The North Face suggested donating to the National Park Foundation.  Last week, the restaurant chain Sweetgreen tweeted an offer of a free salad to anyone showing a government ID, and Kraft foods opened an outlet in Washington, D.C., stocked with free food for federal workers. USAA, the insurance provider to military service members, said it would donate $15 million in interest-free loans of up to $1,000 to Coast Guard workers with dependents and $750 to single members.  Provident Bank announced it would cancel mortgage and credit card late fees for federal workers and allow them to break their certificates of deposit early without any penalties.  Fazoli’s Italian restaurant offered free pizza and baked spaghetti to Federal employees during the shutdown.  The restaurant &Pie offered a free pizza daily (3-5pm) for government employees.  Carmine’s, The Meatball Shop, and others followed suit.  Alamo Drafthouse (a movie chain) offered free movies.  AT&T offered flexible payment plans, BOA/Chase/Citibank/Discover and others were all open to help with payments.  There were so many local DC based retailers and food establishments that also opened their doors to assist.   When the Navy-Air Force game was about to be canceled due to the shutdown, United Airlines stepped up, offering to fly the Air Force team to the game for free. The team wanted to honor their contract to fly with Delta. In the end, United Services Automobile Association (USAA) picked up the $230,000 tab for the team to fly with Delta. Due to these outside organizations stepping up, the game was not canceled.  It was great to see.

Additionally, people helped people.  Amid all the news of this bad thing and that bad thing – we have great people in this country.  Chris Cox, a chainsaw sculptor from South Carolina, gathered up his lawnmower and some other supplies and headed to Washington, D.C., to clean up the memorials.  In Rowan County, an anonymous donor provided $10,000 to local charities to help out with families in need of food due to lack of government benefits.   Philanthropists John and Laura Arnold of Texas spent $10 million to keep the Head Start program open in six states, helping 7,000 kids who would have been affected.  In New Hampshire, the Rumney Climbers Association took over the maintenance of a state park when the Forest Service workers were furloughed.   Private donors in Arkansas gave donations to fund Our House, which assists unwed mothers and their children in Little Rock, AK.

And let us not overlook the many employees affected by the shutdown who proved their mettle by using their time to volunteer, giving back to their local communities – a tribute to their service and hardworking character.  You don’t need a reason to help people.  The happiness you can give to someone is the best gift you can give to yourself.  When you start giving, you get more than you ever wanted.  By purposefully giving and expecting nothing in return, we can alleviate some of the unnecessary burdens that arise when we help a fellow person{s} in need. Companies have learned this, and our friends and peers show this every day.  Giving and expecting nothing in return simply breeds better, happier results for all.

You will never be disappointed if you think this way.  Karma will have your back.  Trust me. Do good things and you will be on the receiving end in the future.  Kindness IS currency.

Connect people. Refer people. Forward that interesting article.  Share the job opening.  Send a simple note.  Drop an unexpected gift (truly listen to people and you will know what they value).  And, more importantly, when others do these things for you – please let them know you appreciate it. It both closes the circle and starts the circle anew again.  I will leave you with this great quote I read:  “Give.  Share.  Do.  Expect Nothing in Return. This is Future Economics.”

Together.  We.  Win.

Dave Harmon
People Division
“Kindness is Currency”
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidharmonhr

Look for us on: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, The Muse, Glassdoor and USA TODAY NETWORK Careers

The rest of the story…

This week, like just about every other week over the last few years, events happen where social media gets out in front of stories before all the facts come to light.  Many times social media helps to right wrongs by pressuring the right people to make decisions quickly, think Maryland football coach, Michigan gymnastics consultant, etc.  The public was part of the “rest of the story”.

Sometimes, social media gets ahead of the story and takes one side or the other too quickly.  In his devastating account of online entrepreneurs and their values, Move Fast and Break Things, Jonathan Taplin talks of social media’s “colosseum culture” of throwing people to the lions. “Punishing strangers ought to be a risky endeavor,” he writes. “But the anonymity of the internet shields the person who punishes the stranger.”  The public did not wait for the “rest of the story”.

And sometimes social media just misses.  For example, the day after the Boston Marathon bombing, a cooking site posted a scone recipe as a way to help its 480,000 Twitter followers cope with the tragedy OR when Kenneth Cole sent the following tweet during height of the Syrian civil war: "Boots on the ground" or not, let’s not forget about sandals, pumps and loafers. #Footwear.  The businesses just plain missed “the story”.

Some of us remember Paul Harvey from his ubiquitous “The Rest of the Story” pieces, which broadcast to more than 24 million listeners a week at the show’s peak. Premiering on May 10, 1976, the series ran six days a week until Harvey’s death in 2009, and was written by Paul Harvey, Jr.   I remember listening to him while watching the news show, 60 Minutes, with my grandmother when I was growing up. Though well-received and memorable, claims by the broadcaster that every piece was entirely true have been long debated by urban legend and history experts. But, he did challenge you to think and understand all the facts.  Paul Harvey was also a “coiner of words” - Reaganomics, guesstimate, and skyjacker to name a few.  He also had a lasting influence on many of us about … “the rest of the story”.

Kurt Vonnegut said: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be.” This seems especially true now we have reached a new stage where we are not just consumers, but also the thing consumed.  If you have friends you only ever talk to on Facebook or Instagram, your operating in a kind of friend economy, an emotional stock market where the stock is ourselves and where we are encouraged to weigh our worth against others.

Before social media, bullying was something only done face-to-face. Now, someone can be bullied online anonymously. Today everyone knows what cyber-bullying is, and most of us have seen what it can do to a person.  While social media made making friends easier, it also made it easier for predators to attack and condemn – often without knowing all the facts.   The anonymity that social networks provide can be used by the keyboard bullies to terrorize just about anyone.  I think many of these people do not realize the impact of these attacks.  These online attacks often leave deep mental scars and even drive people to suicide in some cases. You’ll be surprised to find out that cyber-bullying isn’t just affecting kids, but also full grown adults.

I was hired by Gannett in 2015. The online comments about me joining the company were unbelievable. People I had never met were making statements about me personally, not my qualifications, or my education, nor my experience – but personal attacks using “Emm Eff Err”, “A$$bag”, “Di#$wad”, the list goes on.  I had not worked one day at Gannett.  Makes a person really feel good…….not.

Social media bullying and understanding “The Rest of the Story” run parallel.

From my friends at Wordstream: approximately 30% of Americans receive their news from Facebook.  Think about that.  Almost a third of all American teens consider Instagram to be the most important social media site.  Twitter has approximately 320 million monthly users, LinkedIn over 400 million. 

Early this year, NBC did a story on fake news.  Their research reported that fake news “spread like wildfire on social media, getting quicker and longer-lasting pickup than the truth.”  A deep dive into Twitter shows that false news was re-tweeted more often than true news was, and carried further. 

“Falsehood diffused farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news…”, Sinan Aral of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in the Journal of Science. “It took the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1,500 people.” False news stories were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories were.  Untrue stories also had more staying power, carrying onto more "cascades", or unbroken re-tweet chains, they found.

Social media has revolutionized how we communicate.  The popularity of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat have truly transformed the way we understand and experience perceived unjust actions.  Previously, it has been thought that people form their opinions about crime from what they see or read in the media. But with social media taking over as our preferred news source,  how do these new platforms impact our understanding of crime?  How did they impact our thoughts on people?

Social media is here to stay.  It has amplified the Court of Public Opinion.  “In the Court of Public Opinion there are no rules of evidence, no burdens of proof, no cross-examinations, and no standards of admissibility. There are no questions and also no answers. Also, please be aware that in the Court of Public Opinion, choosing silence or doubt is itself a prosecutable offense…the Court of Public Opinion is what we used to call villagers with flaming torches. It has no rules, no arbiter, no mechanism at all for separating truth from lies. It allows everything into evidence and has no mechanism to separate facts about the case from the experiences and political leanings of the millions of us who are all acting as witnesses, judges, and jurors.” (Dahlia Lithwick).

Gore Vidal said it best, “At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.”  Social media has brought us many good things, but we must be careful in rushing to judgment without knowing all the facts.  We need to keep each other in check when these social media wildfires ignite. 

Now you know the rest of the story.

Together.  We.  Win.

Dave Harmon
People Division
“Kindness is Currency”
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidharmonhr

Look for us on: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, The Muse, Glassdoor and USA TODAY NETWORK Careers

What keeps me awake in 2019?

As we dive into 2019 there is a lot to think about in the HR world. 

Some of the trends within the HR function that have caught my attention lately (and by no means any science here) are: personalization of everything, building the employee experience, TRUST, manager ownership, simplify (as my co-worker reminds me daily), focus on people, inclusion and equity matter, analytics and data are value drivers, remote work is the new norm. 

For years, the HR function has been about centralization and standardization.  It was, to be honest, a highly efficient and effective way to ensure consistency.  Well… the world is changing.  People expect personalization.  We need to reverse engineer HR as we know it. Things to consider:

• Instead of designing for the organization, or top-down approaches We need to learn from our employees and design around the movable workforce.  
• The “new employee” could only work for us for 3-5 years (and may even return).  Statistics say 10% attrition is the norm but is it really? With “boomerang” employees, job hopping, and shorter attention spans, are we designing to reality? 
• How are we looking at benefits, recruiting, onboarding, analytics, and well-worn HR paradigms that  exists in benefits?  Should we 401(k) match or should we have college debt match? 
• When onboarding, do we ask about the employee or only talk about the company?
• When training, are we still designing programs for groups – high potentials – or personalizing to the individual?
• When reviewing office space, we must consider introverts and extroverts, needing more people or concentrate, innovation discussions or attention to detail – does your office have options for this?

The employee experience matters.  Start with this premise in mind.  Are you designing an employee experience and culture for everyone or for individuals?  Are you inclusive and fair in your approach to the individual needs?  Or are you designing what the boss wants?  Are we designing an experience to get the most out of individuals?  What can each new employee teach us?

Trust matters.  Simple and clear. Trust is the gold of currency, maybe even above kindness.   The very breakable commodity is priceless. It also can be lost in the blink of an eye.  How do we build a world of trust?  Be vigilant, be introspective, and be honest.  Be as diligent and purposeful about building trust. Be consistent. Don’t be fooled. Be prepared and keep a sharp eye out for trouble, no matter how small it may seem. Your reputation will be built and sustained over time built on trust.

Manager ownership.  As companies downsize, we all take on more.  Where this becomes the focal point is with our people managers.  The days of paternalistic hand-holding are over (at least at work, helicopter parents are another story…). Managers have to take ownership – there is no opt out of leading and learning.  Every day we need to evaluate what are we doing for ourselves, our business, and our team.  The sad reality is that many managers are not good coaches.  How do we adapt and provide systems and tools to allow easy to understand approaches, no formal classes or week-long seminars, but digestible chunks of learning in real time and continuous conversations around learning and development with our teams?

Simplify. As an HR function, we simplify our own internal processes and procedures, simplify the usability and mobility of our platforms, simplify the thinking of the organization. How do we help eliminate unnecessary work, distractions, sunk costs, competing priorities, etc.?  How do we break long-standing traditions, re-design performance management, succession planning, compliance, training to fit the workforce of today? When expectations are to provide a mobile experience, communicate in 90 seconds or less, and be transparent and inclusive. 

Focus on your employees.  Any great HR function leads the way with “focus on the people”, but in all great companies the executives lead the way on “focus on the people”.  What I mean by this is that “talent” focuses on ensuring we have the individual talent necessary to achieve our purpose. Certainly, this is a critically important agenda for any organization. However, by focusing primarily on individual contributions, this only succeeds in making the organizational whole equal to the sum of the parts. This overlooks the central contribution of an organization.  The focus on people must balance the needs of the individual and the needs of the greater organization and find the magic to have the whole add up to more than the sum of the parts.  We all remember those great teams we have been on that overachieved – it was greater than the sum of the talents of each individual. I didn’t delete anything but I question if his paragraph in its entirety is necessary here, it appears to be a thought independent of the direction the rest of the blog is going in.

Inclusion matters. It goes without saying that everyone wants to be included.  Success goes beyond inclusion – it requires equity and fairness.  It requires a culture where everyone feels valued and comfortable being themselves.  At Gannett, we want to educate, empower and embrace.  We speak to our story: shared experiences, diverse voices, common connections, united goals, and one network.  Think of it this way: inclusion is what you do, diversity is about who you are, and equity is about how you operate.

The use of HR analytics matter to drive our people agenda.  Our function needs to be  data- driven and predictive in our use of data.  The ability for HR itself to collect, integrate and interpret large amounts of data and predict the business impact is vital to our future success. HR needs to integrate all the various forms of people data – from sales achievement to engagement scores, to attrition, to ER cases to labor costs, to language – the list is endless. All too often, HR attempts to draw data from a range of unconnected, non-integrated systems. However, technological advances – particularly the introduction of cloud-based HR management systems – make it increasingly easy for all people data to be housed in a single, standard format.  Easier said than done for many of us – but a goal nonetheless.  In essence, what was once considered a niche skill set within HR needs to be given a far greater degree of prominence within the function and across the organization.

The world has changed.  My final thoughts are on remote workforce.  If you are not remote capable, you are missing out on a large percentage of available talent.  Based on studies by remote.co and Gallup: remote workers are more educated, more engaged, more productive, earn more, and allow companies to keep the older workforce engaged longer.  Additionally, remote work lowers stress, traffic congestion, the carbon footprint, decreases real estate needs, and (as seen here in DC on Monday) is unaffected by inclement weather. It is the new norm.  With the use of video calling and better technology platforms like Slack and Google Hangouts – the excuses made by some leaders about why NOT to telework are not holding much water these days.

These are some of the trends that keep me awake at night (besides the growing belt size trend my belly is on).  So, with that, I will leave you with this: as you are finalizing your 2019 goals for your team, focus on where you need to be not where you can be.  Expect more and push your team harder.

Together.   We.  Win.

Dave Harmon
People Division
“Kindness is Currency”
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidharmonhr

Look for us on: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, The Muse, Glassdoor and USA TODAY NETWORK Careers