Winning the Future Part 2: Blackeyed HR

OMG! That's gotta hurt!

While watching ABC's 'What Would You Do?' on Friday 4 February 2011, a terrible thing happened - HR got a seriously ugly black eye. I mean seriously ugly.

If you don't know the premise of this John Quiñones-hosted series, it's this: Quiñones and his team come up with a scenario and then go out and make it happen. Using actors and some fairly elaborate ruses, they create morally/ethically challenging situations to test unsuspecting people and see what they would do. According to Quinones' promo, they're trying to ascertain whether onlookers will "step in, step up or step away".

On Friday last, one test scenario was that of a coffee shop manager looking for a kitchen employee. The test arose when the candidate seeking the position was deaf. Bear in mind that the position was for kitchen help, but once it became clear that the two young women were hearing impaired, the manager was clear in his message: you can fill out the application form but it won't matter, I'm not hiring you.

At three different points during the 'experiment', HR practitioners witnessed the exchange between the coffee shop manager and the prospective applicant. I am shocked, appalled, horrified (is that tongue-in-cheek?) to report that they offered tips and tricks to the manager as to how he could discriminate and not get caught. Discrimination best practices perhaps?

It is not my intent here to judge HR in general, but I do have some pretty strong opinions about these three 'practitioners' in particular. Given my own professional situation, it might best not to say anything too negative, but this does give one pause doesn't it? One of the HR experts offered the pithy comment that "these people have more rights than.....". ['these people'? Surely, you jest?] Another of the HR officers suggested that a better way to handle the situation was to accept the application and simply write on the back "Not a fit". That was her expert opinion. Sigh.

If that is the quality of HR advice some managers are getting, is it any wonder that so many over-40s are unemployed? Is it any wonder that so many qualified people who aren't mainstream - i.e. differently abled, differently nationalitied, differently ethnicitied - are out of work? I don't begin to suggest that discriminatory practices are the only reason folk are out of work, but I do mean to suggest that a clear-eyed (as opposed to jaundiced-eyed) look needs to be taken at hiring practices. The fact that an organization can't be successfully taken to court for its behavior is not a good enough reason to keep doing something that is known to be both illegal and immoral.

Perhaps HR folk need to stop worrying about what can be proven in the court of law and need to start worrying about what can be proved in the higher court of morality and ethics (aka going to sleep at night). Seriously though, this is so not the way to winning the future. The business environment is so cut throat, so fraught with pitfalls and challenges that really, HR needs to be seeking and hiring the best candidate who has the goods to deliver in a given job. If that means hiring a deaf woman to wash your damn dishes then so be it. Can she wash the damn dishes? OK then hire her to wash the damn dishes.

Discriminating (or giving tacit approval to hiring managers' discrimination) is not the way to a prosperous future. I don't know much, but I know that for sure.

WWYD: Discriminating against deaf job applicants

Science Fair Part 2: Win the Future

Some weeks ago, while my sister and niece were in the throes of their preparations for the Science Fair (which I referred to as the Science FEAR), I wrote at length about the things about that process that seemed wrong to me.

More recently, I read an article in which the author talked about the lack of engagement of employees to their work. In responding to some of the arguments advanced, I suggested that perhaps the problem was that hiring managers were selecting based on the wrong criteria. Today's transaction processor I suggested, (someone who can perform a specific task or set of tasks), will not grow up to be tomorrow's transformational thinker. The skill sets are entirely different. In addition, while transaction processing can be easily learned, transformational thinking cannot.

So what is the connection between the two you ask? Well, as I see it, it's this: it's thinking and the teaching thereof.

The science fair is about more than just science...or it should be. The science fair, and the teaching of scientific thinking is also about the teaching of thinking. If well done, the annual ritual of the science fair can lead to greater depth in our children's thinking and greater depth in the nation's thinking as a whole and ultimately to greater productivity and creativity, I believe, in the workforce. Given that not too many weeks ago it was reported on the evening news that by the end of the sophomore year of college most students show little, if any, improvement in their higher order/critical thinking skills, I'm thinking that investing in a new approach to the science fair can't possibly hurt.

So why do we need to care about the development of critical thinking skills? Simply put, it's because the future will be won by technologically and scientifically savvy nations. The future will belong to innovators, and innovation is the result of critical thinking.

Innovation is a product of seeing connections that others don't; asking the questions that others won't and then taking the information received and coming up with an answer to a question others don't even know needs to be answered. This is where the science fair, with its emphasis on hypothesizing and hypothesis testing, is key. Science encourages and develops those skills and those are skills that need to be taught, learned, practiced and honed over years if innovative, transformational thinkers are to be the result.

So perhaps we need to revisit the whole science fair paradigm and re-conceptualize the thing. Perhaps we should begin with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey would say. If we begin by asking, "What is it that we want to achieve here?” we might actually have a shot at achieving it and at winning a greater future.

Stand at the door and knock

I attended a church meeting the other day (please don't stop reading just on account of that!), at which an attendee was saying that it's tough being a Christian when Christians are so reviled. Another attendee supported the first speaker's comment by saying that it causes her some anger to see her way of life and values being eroded. "Hm," I thought, "I don't have any of those feelings. Something must be wrong with my version of Christianity." The more I think about it though, the more I think maybe nothing's wrong with my brand of Christianity, I just have a different perspective is all.

Here's my perspective: I chose my path. As a Christian, that's what you do. As a Christian, you choose to see and live in the world in a certain way. People who are not Christians choose to see and live in the world in some other way. As I understand it, the foundation of Christianity is free will, the ability to choose our path. As a Christian then, I have to be OK with others' choices. I am not called to like them, but I am called to respect others' right to make those choices. Perhaps I feel called to try to help them make different choices, but I am not called to make the choice for them.

The latest conservative Republican attempt to limit access to abortion by first redefining what constitutes rape is a case in point. While some will get caught up in the madness of what equals 'rape', the real issue underlying all this is where my focus is fixed. The goal of this new legislation is clearly to so redefine rape as to limit access to abortion to a much smaller subset of cases. Here, the Republicans are doing the very thing that I object to most with Christians: they are forcing their personal choices on others. I believe it's bad policy and worse, it's bad Christianity.

In this country, as in many others, there is a separation of Church & State. There is a reason for this: my religion may not be yours; my understanding may not be yours. To prevent needless nattering, state/federal law must be based on precepts that do not trample on either of our beliefs. Simple enough. The trouble comes when religious conservatives bring their freely chosen precepts into the drafting and application of law. That kinda sounds like the marriage of church and state rather than the separation thereof and I'm thinking it's the wrong way to go.

Our Christian responsibility is to demonstrate by our lives that Christianity is a good choice, the best possible choice. What we are not called to do, is to drag people across our chosen finish line against their will. God himself does not do that. He stands at the door and knocks. Barging in through the closed door as the Republicans are trying to do is simply the wrong approach and frankly, it taints everything else they try to do.

For what specifically?

A week or so ago, on the evening news there was a report about a gentleman who lost his insurance because his wife paid the premium 2 cents short. The insured, a Mr. Ronald Flanagan, was in the middle of receiving cancer treatment at the time of said cancellation.

When asked by ABCNews Reporter David Muir (I think it was), whether an apology would be issued once the ridiculousness of the cancellation had been exposed, the customer service representative working the case responded, "For what specifically?" Excuse me? Your organization terminates the insurance of an ailing man (never mind a Vietnam veteran ailing possibly on account of his service to his country and his exposure to bioagents during that service), in the middle of treatment and you have to ask for what specifically you might need to apologize? The mind boggles at the stupidity and cluelessness of this employee. The question is though, is it the employee or his organizational circumstances that make him stupidly clueless?

Organizations have to be right. The need to protect the organization from all liability is taught to employees almost from the moment they get through the front door. All well and good to limit liability, but when you are proven to be wrong, surely, surely, surely, you can admit the error and move on? Doesn't there come a point when treating people with decency trumps limiting liability? I refuse to believe that that is too much to ask.

For people who are already ill, like Mr. Flanagan, there are few choices. They can't just run out and change policies mid-stream as no one will have them on their books. Given this reality, there is no need for real customer care on the part of the insurer, but that fact alone makes it all the more precious when it is extended. Has anyone considered that unhealthy people actually might have healthy friends who could be in the market for insurance products? Has anyone considered that treating one sick person well might generate a stream of business from those friends and family? Has anyone considered that good deeds do, ultimately, yield good outcomes?

Were the customer care rep to be in Mr. Flanagan's shoes, how would he wish to be treated? I presume, and I don't think it a ridiculous presumption, that he would hope to be treated with empathy and respect. Why then did he not think to treat the client in the same way? Why then did he not understand that an apology would be necessary? Why would he even need to ask, "For what specifically?" when asked about apologizing?

The fact that a client is in treatment for a life-threatening illness should trigger a whole new set of customer care standards. Why not let the fact of a client's illness determine how staff interact with them? Maybe one day, companies will eventually treat all clients well, but let's just take the baby step of treating the ailing client well first. We'll figure out the rest later.

I know it's a stretch, but if we could just try walking a mile in another's moccasins we might find ourselves changed by the experience, changed in a good way. Empathy isn't weakness. Trust me on this.

Find a link to one of many stories about Mr. Flanagan's experience here: Two cents