HR Insomniac

There was a great article in workforce.com called Companies Find Fruitful Results When Hiring Autistic Workers. Many give lip service to hiring those with disabilities. That’s fine, but lip service isn’t enought. Go out on a limb and try it. Here’s how.

Daxko has partnered with a local Birmingham group called Triumph Services. They help adults with developmental disabilities, including autism, live independently. Daxko put our money where our mouth is; we’ve hired a young man with autism to help us with administrative items, light cleanup work, restocking supplies, and most importantly…keeping our soda fridges and fruit bowls filled. (We offer these free to all our team members, so high on the priority list for sure.

One other thing about our hire is he also has a job at Publix. He works two jobs – more than many other candidates we screen. Shows initiative, drive and commitment.

Check out this success story. Startup company Aspiritech hires those with Aspergers (a mild form of autism) as software testers. Yes software testers. Due to the typical high attention to detail found in many adults with Aspergers, for Aspiritech it is a good and successful match. Win-win.

Adding autistic workers to your workforce is really easy. Here is what you do.

• Find a local group that supports autistic workers. Partner with them now.
• Check out www.autismspeaks.org. Here are a few articles on autism in the workplace:
  • Autism in the Workplace
  • Employment Opportunities for Individuals with Autism
• Find a job that needs filling. Usually those with high attention to detail (although that is not always the case).
• Typically more flexible organizations are ideal for this type of hire. Strict clock-watching environments may not be the best.
• Treat autistic employees like every other employee in your co. They are working for pay and to learn real life skills. If it doesn’t work out, that is OK.
• Have courage to try something different.

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One word:  Prioritize.  Covey would agree.

I just heard Steven Covey, author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, founder of Franklin Covey and general life guru died.  He died on July 16^th, 10 days ago.  I am just hearing about this now.  How is that possible?  When I Googled it, many articles came up, but I was still surprised I didn’t hear more about it sooner. I mean I’m plugged in right?

No, I really haven’t been.  I needed my world to smaller for just a few days.  These were the days apparently Steven Covey died.

It is important you stay plugged in all the time.  But to the right things at the right time.  If you don’t know this, current leaders, managers, directors have to stay plugged in ALL the time. This can’t be overstated. Our paycheck depends on our ability to know, on a personal level, our employees.  The best managers have social relationships at work. That means you really have to:

• Talk to people
• Engage your employees using social media (really you do)
• Understand your people

Yes—you must be plugged in at all times but NOT to all things.  Something must give. Plugging into people sometimes means you need to tune out of the rest of the world.  About that world being smaller thing…I needed to tune out of the Batman movie massacre.  I needed to tune out of the political opining on every news outlet.  I needed to tune out of the John Travolta sex scandal. I had to tune out.

Being plugged into people doesn’t mean you have to only spend face-time with them (although that is important).  You can use several other mediums.  But it takes a lot of brain-power to stay plugged in through all the mediums.  Still do it.  You just have to tune the other noise out even more.

It’s not your job to be a beat-reporter.  It’s your job to tune in to your real-life people.

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This week I am giving you a double dose of the Fistful Of Talent  and workforce.com CYA report.  It’s too great to only post once.  Here is some more real-time info to help you CYA at work (AKA, more tasty bits of HR knowledge so you can rock your corporate world). 

Click here to listen.

In this new episode Tim and I talk with Carol McDaniel… VP of HR Florida and SVP of Kenetix.  In case you didn’t know HR Florida is one of the best HR Conferences in the US.  To learn more, you gotta listen.   Good stuff.

Also, Kris and I razz on the new Facebook Job board AND… JC Penny’s bold new move to take away all cashiers.  Really.

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HR Peeps…

Do you want Fistful Of Talent to get you some real-time info to help you CYA at work?  AKA, have so many tasty bits of HR knowledge you can rock your corporate world?  Then click here to hear me and Timmy Sackett co-host this week’s installment.  We’ve got a great interview with Ben Casnocha, co-author with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman of The Start-Up of You.  The book correlates personal growth, career development and job search to the entrepreneurial spirit of start-ups.  Good stuff.

Tim and I also do impressions.  Worth a click. 

Check it here

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Hey Insomniacs–

Gotta give a big promo to the Fistful of Talent Gang… at it again with a great webinar offering!

Fistful of Talent is back with the July installment of the FOT webinar, brought to you by our innovative friends at TweetMyJobs. Join hosts Kris Dunn and Steve Boese, as they deliver: Bootstrap Your Employment Brand the FOT Way, and serve up the following:

- A Quick-Hitting Approach to Building Your EVP (that your Employer Value Proposition for folks like me who didn’t know!) . Forget what you think your employment brand is. FOT’s going to break down a low cost way for you to determine your EVP and get some fresh ammo for your recruiting brand.

- How to Create Cool Content to Support Your EVP. The FOT team will walk you through how to develop a low-cost, low-pain way to develop quick hitting content that supports your EVP.

- How to Deliver Your Cool EVP Content via Social Media, with the Usual Suspects and TweetMyJobs. Now that you’ve identified your culture via an employment brand-supporting EVP, it’s time to package your message and ship it out to the public via mobile, photos, video, social apps, etc.

- What You Should Focus on When Gauging Your ROI, Ignoring Clicks and Other Measurement Gibberish. FOT will bring in TweetMyJobs Co- Founder, Gary Zukowski, to tell you what really matters when it comes to measuring your return on investment in relation to your employment brand – it’s more than click deep.

- 2-Way Conversations or How to Eat the Dog Food and Ease it Down with a Kool-Aid chaser. We’ll wrap up the webinar by walking you through how smart companies get team members fully engaged with the EVP and on the front lines of building a talent pool that wants to work for you.

Don’t call it a comeback – your EVP has been there for years. You’ve just never asked the right questions to figure out what people think is in it for them to work at your company.  Join FOT and Tweet My Jobs for this webinar and we’ll show you how to determine your real employment brand via the EVP and share it with the world.

Link to register: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/639535150

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I just saw something wonderful.

I have to give a shout out to William Tincup (Tincup and Co) from Drive thru HR and co-host Lars Schmidt from NPR.  I am a fan of DTHR, a daily HR radio show; a show dedicated to highlighting HR pros for 30 mins a day. The same question asked every day of the pro, “What keeps you up at night?”  It think the answer after this broadcast would have been “teaching bad presenters how to be better”.

At #SHRM12 as a part of the new social media hub “the hive”, William Tincup did a live broadcast at the conference of Drive Thru HR.  Cool.  REPEAT – this was LIVE.

You all know what happened.  The inevitable.  Tech problems on a global scale.  The mics didn’t work, the telephone feed- which took a long time to get up and running- had a terrible echo, blah, blah.  No slam on SHRM– that happens regularity.  What doesn’t happen regularity is the presenter (in this case the MC) keeping their cool.

The wonderful Mr. Tincup didn’t sweat it, his voice was calm his body language was calm, he just Fonzed it up.  He made a few low-key jokes, it was cool.  He apologized to phone guest, on the air asked to reschedule, and then interviewed the co-host.  Let’s just say he made some lemonade folks.

Its a little sad that this is groundbreaking behavior.  But when something rare and extraordinary happens, I gotta give it a little love.

Good job boys.

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