Robin Schooling

Work and Life and Everything In Between

My mother, who has dementia, has been living with us now for a week.  

A really really REALLYlong week.

Getting her to Louisiana was neither an easy task not did it occur in a particularly seamless fashion. Over the last month I made two emergency (last-minute) cross-country trips. While some of these travels took place in the friendly skies, there was also a 1,100 mile one-way road trip…

The Worst Places to Work Award

Chances are pretty good that the city in which you live has some sort of “Best Places to Work” Award.  Mine does.

Perhaps your company ponied up the $$ and applied for one of these awards; if you work in HR chances are you managed the entry including gathering reams of data and forcing (disguised as encouragement) your employees to complete surveys.  

Maybe you work for a company that has…

Employee Relations: Why Such a Bad Rap?

Once upon a time, on the heels of the Industrial Revolution, we heralded the birth of the Personnel HR profession.  Industrial Relations begat Labor Relations with its accompanying cliché: a smoke-filled room laden with labor bosses and cigar-chomping industrialists hammering out a collective bargaining agreement.

As our profession matured we began to use the phrase Employee Relations in order…

Zombie Human Resources; #DTHR Comes Back from the Dead

Podcasting is hot. It’s so hot that every person I know seems to have a podcast.

Sometimes it seems as if it’s gotten to the point where one of my dogs (I put my money on Mr. Crumples) is soon to announce that he’s starting up a podcast.

And in the HR/Talent space we’ve got our share including:

HR’s Most Dangerous Podcast | The Chad and Cheese Podcast (with Joel Cheesman and Chad Sowash)

Let’s…

I Refuse to Maintain the Status Quo

I dare say that most humans are creatures of habit and routine. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; in our hurly-burly lives it’s nice to rely on muscle-memory so we can drive the same daily route to the office or know that Friday evening will inevitably be comprised of pizza, pajamas and movies. The usual and ordinary tasks we have are pretty straightforward when we do them the way we’ve always…

Workin’ for a Livin’ – HR Style

Is work something we need to fix? Is work broken? Does work suck? Unfortunately, for far too many people, the answer is an overwhelming “yes.”

Earlier this year my friend Laurie Ruettimann launched the “Let’s Fix Work” podcast where she talks with guests about all things careers, leadership and the future of work.

A few months ago Laurie and I had a chat on “Let’s Fix Work” which you can listen…

“Wait til @jkjhr sees us, he loves us!” – #ILSHRM18

Many of us like to point to our vast social networks and talk about the friendships we have either made or deepened that are directly attributable to hanging out on social media. I, for one, can point to the early days on #HRtwitter as instrumental in bringing lots of people into my life; folks on whom I continue to rely for advice, counsel, fun and frivolity. People I admire and adore.

John…

Eeeww: The Top Employee “Issue” That Makes HR People Quesy

Working in human resources means you get to do all sorts of cool things related to organizational culture, employee experience, performance and development, and change management. Sometimes you just get to crank out some good old-fashioned rah-rah cheerleading which, although many in “strategic” HR are loathe to admit it, can be quite enjoyable.

Working in human resources also means you have an…

Your Company’s “Management Culture Number”

If there’s one word that every HR practitioner (and every employment attorney for that matter) would spend good money to have embroidered on a custom-made throw pillow to keep in their office it would be “document.”  Good grief how we love to talk about documentation.

Having a coaching session with Bob about his slovenly attire? Document.

Discussing Polly’s tendency towards tardiness every Monday…

Comfort Food and the American Worker

I don’t like to cook. Nor, for that matter, am I all that enamored of baking. It’s quite sad actually because my grandmother was fantastic in the kitchen; she could effortlessly whip up a kugel or get the weekly Sunday roast on the table with ease. My grandpaowned a butcher shop as did his parents before him. (That picture at the top of the post is from a receipt book from my great grandmother’s…

I’ve recently found myself diving into multiple conversations, online and off, about “belonging” at work. I’ve been reading articles and news stories about the topic, veered off course in a twitter chat about Diversity & Inclusionyesterday, and have spent a bit of time gauging the climate at my own workplace by observing, asking questions and reviewing some of the norms embedded in our workplace…

The Not-So Magical Place Where HR Policies are Born

Most everyone, I imagine, is somewhat familiar with the Cabbage Patch Dolls, and perhaps, to a lesser degree, the origin story that accompanied them (as explained on Wikipedia):

Xavier Roberts was a ten-year-old boy who discovered the Cabbage Patch Kids by following a BunnyBee behind a waterfall into a magical Cabbage Patch, where he found the Cabbage Patch babies being born. To help them find…

Ass in Chair, Inc.

Right now, as you’re reading this, people around the world are sitting in their offices. They have a desk, chair, phone and a computer with a monitor. Maybe two monitors if they either work in IT or are sufficiently high enough on the corporate food chain to get the requisition approved that uses valuable budget dollars to appropriate a second monitor.

The lucky ones have a cup of coffee, a can…

Advocating for the Workplace Revolution

I can barely browse through LinkedIn or Facebook, open a magazine (remember those?), or attend a conference/event where the topic of the Future of Workis not being debated, dissected and regurgitated out as sound bites. We churn through conversations on automation, AI and machine learning, the gig economy, re-skilling and up-skilling of workers, income stagnation, and more. We discuss how work…

The Fax Machine is Alive and Well. Thank You Very Much.

Every now and again, in any one of the myriad recruiting and/or HR technology Facebook groups to which I belong, someone will post “OMG; I was just asked for my fax number! We haven’t used a fax machine in the office for 15 years!” Numerous people chime in with increasing incredulity: “WTF? That’s crazy! Who faxes things anymore? Luddites!.”Scorn and disdain are heaped upon anyone who still has…

Bobbleheads and Knock-Off Reproductions

There’s an actress named Phoebe Jonas who, if you watch television shows geared to a certain demographic, you may recognize. From June 2016 through March of this year, Phoebe was the “Phillips Lady,” when she served as the spokesperson for Bayer’s digestive health products; laxatives, fiber gummies, stool softener, and good old Milk of Magnesia.

Phoebe’s contract ended in the spring of this year…

Looking for the BEST in Your New Hires

The hiring process can be tortuous.

Lengthy and cumbersome, the journey from completing an application to day-one-of-employment is often fraught with peril for both the applicant and the recruiting/HR team.  There are hundreds of steps with various decision points along the way; there’s an overabundance of judgment from the first time a recruiter’s eyeballs (or a robot’s algorithm) glance at the…