Traaen and Associates, LLC

HR Industry Tips - Archive

FROM THE DESK OF A PUBLIC EDUCATION LEADER

(As published in the AASBO Publication "The Edge" - Fall 2007)

Recruitment and Retention Challenges Facing Business Manager

By Kathy Glindmeier

A few years ago I was speaking with a colleague of mine in child nutrition and she summed up our conversation by saying: “We are all human resources managers at the end of the day. Without people, buses would never drive themselves and meals would never be served.”

I realized there was more than a kernel of truth to what she was saying. This is my last year as the AASBO Director of Education Programs and I thought it fitting that I address the role HR plays in all of our lives and the future of school business.

I recently posed five questions to a good friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Teri Traaen. Dr. Traaen was the Director of Employment in Paradise Valley Unified School District when I joined the organization 20 years ago. Her career has taken her to areas of public sector human resources beyond K-12 school districts. Currently she is the owner of Traaen and Associates, LLC, a human resource management, training and development company. If you would like more information on human resources management, feel free to visit her Web site at: www.TraaenandAssociates.com or you can call her at (602) 510-3989.

My first question dealt with the greatest challenges facing HR in K-12 school districts. She says there are two basic areas that need attention.
The first is the district’s ability to attract potential employees who will join the organization and the second is to provide stability so they will
stay. In recent years, candidate pools have been small and often those in candidate pools are not ready for the next level. This has resulted in efforts to delay retirement or to utilize employee leasing firms to fill vacancies with people who would otherwise be retired.

The second question dealt with recruitment and retention of difficult-to-fill positions. This involves a dual approach in which proactively work with high school seniors, community colleges, and universities to develop a relationship prior to student teaching. This can be further enhanced by offering mock interview sessions for juniors and seniors in the school of education. Dr. Traaen advises that by starting early to build relationships with students, districts have a better opportunity to recruit them when they are ready for their first job.

A concept being used across all industries to address retention involves both the traditional exit interviews and so-called “STAY” interviews. Exit interviews are used once a person has resigned, but supervisors do the STAY interviews with existing employees. For example, a high school department head might do the interview with a math or science teacher. This leads to employee empowerment as well as identifying ways to improve the organization.

The third area we discussed was how to build a successful succession plan. Typically most human resource departments will have information on the demographics of a their specific workforce. It’s important to look at the total amount of service that employees have to determine how many will likely to retire in any given year. Elements of a successful plan take into consideration the program goals of the district, whether the enrollment is going up or down, and the number of employees leaving the district.

The next question I asked Dr. Traaen was: “How will the workforce candidate change in the next 20 years?” She says there has been a significant change in the way 18-to-35-year-olds view their careers as compared to the baby boomers. The younger generation tends to view themselves as “free agents” and are more likely to own their own business. They feel they can manage their own retirements, making traditional pension career choices less attractive. New workers expect to change careers several times in their life and are looking for work that is meaningful and provides an opportunity for work and family balance. They are more likely to take risks in their careers.

My last question involved resources available to business officials who may find themselves newly assigned to supervise the HR function. Dr. Traaen says that when hiring a director of human resources the ideal candidate should be able to handle a high volume of work with an eye for details. They must be knowledgeable about the technical aspects of the job and familiar with all federal, state, and local labor laws. They must be able to practice independence of judgment and not take things too seriously.

Dr. Traaen notes there are several organizations in Arizona that offer regular training for HR staff including the Arizona chapter of the American School Personnel Administrators, the National Public Employer Labor Relations Association and the EEOC.

FROM THE DESK OF AN HR CEO:

HR Leads From The Center – Summer 2007

How often is your HR Department or those handful of HR professionals inside your organization called upon to ‘lead’ from the inside of the organization? Leading is an interesting and often a bone chilling assignment. What may represent leadership for one senior individual giving that direction to an HR Team may in fact mean leading by setting in motion what may be perceived as a defensive posture that can ultimately result in an increase in conflict for the organization at large.

How does this happen? HR professionals navigate the unseemly, the untouchable, the troubled and the unspoken issues ---- and often by the context of the issues and the prescribed organizational climate in a manner that will never become the subject for public discussion outside of an organization’s interior relationships and conflicts. What should be done inside an organization to insure that the health, well being and long term stability of the organization is secured and maintained for the integrity of the service and products represented by the organization’s brand and profile? Listed below are five tips for sustaining and using the strengths of your human resource professionals and their collective capabilities to lead the organization through the most challenging of events and times.

  1. Focus your outreach, recruitment and selection efforts concerning staffing your human resources department on branding an image for that department that is in full alignment with the mission and goals of the organization (i.e., if enhanced performance and accountability are the foundation for this year’s work inside the organization, let all HR candidates know that they are likely to be on the front lines of delivering that message. Be honest about the likely level of resistance that they may experience).
  2. Align the support of executive management for the HR Department so that from the beginning of an HR related initiative, it is known throughout the organization that the HR Department and its staff have the full and abiding support of the entire senior management team. Furthermore, design internal marketing messages that clearly signal that the HR industry is a well respected partner in all the key and strategic decisions inside the organization.
  3. Recognize that often the messages being carried into the organization by representatives of the HR Department are the most difficult in nature and hence may result in either a limited or continuous backlash against not only that department, but also the rest of the organization. Consider if the political and constituent capital and relationships are strong enough to insure that the organization can and will weather that type of storm.
  4. Consider that the human resources staff are often in need of direct access to the highest levels of the senior management team/CEO/designee in order to assist in their professional alignment with the short and long term goals of that group. Nothing beats hearing it from the ‘horse’s mouth’ when it comes to difficult agendas and tough messages for which the human resources team is often held responsible.
  5. Provide for political mentoring and capacity building on a quarterly basis. The human capital driving your organization forward is your single greatest asset. If there is no plan to grow the capacity for understanding and working internally and externally at bringing forward ethics based actions inside the political realities of the labor market and the local and national competition, your organization will fail. Invest in each member of the organization’s team. Dividends will multiply as will your sound and professional reputation for being a great place to work.

FROM THE DESK OF AN HR EXECUTIVE

Alliance for Innovation & Transforming Local Government

The City of Bellevue, Washington was host to the annual TLG (Transforming Local Government) conference in June of this year. Escape to that northwest location did nothing but enhance the offerings of an already terrific professional development experience. The City of Carlsbad, California hosted a great session during this conference addressing the practitioner aspects of creating and sustaining a community/organizational visioning project within their organization. Listed below are the key questions that they posed to the attendees and that might serve all organizations well in their efforts to ‘ignite’ a spirit in their organization:

  1. How can you create a community of accountability?
  2. How do you facilitate a constructive conversation so that competition and isolationism do not become the overriding watchwords of the climate and culture of your organization?
  3. How do we have the professional conversation to ‘create and sustain’ something as the result of shared values (the social contract by which a relationship will be altered or enhanced)?
  4. What is/are the most important collective ‘values’ for a community/organization to possess?
  5. How can personal growth lead to enhanced community spirit?
  6. What are the most difficult choices facing your community (organization)?
  7. How will you involve your community (organization) stakeholders in making the necessary choices to move an initiative/project/decision forward?
  8. Identify an individual that ignited community spirit/brought about significant change in spite of the greatest odds. What single thing contributed to their ability to achieve this result? Can this action/behavior be replicated by others?

Consider how these guided questions can help shape your organization and the needs, desires and growth of the human capital serving in the key roles within your organization. Do you have a culture of innovation in place? If not, why not? What would it take to move from a position of reactivity and maintenance to a culture of fully integrated cutting edge innovation? Start with your current human resources – your answer lies within your workforce.