I love benchmarks. I’m a competitive person, and I like to measure and keep score for a lot of things. But I’ve had some very good teachers and learned some very good lessons over the years that have helped me choose wisely when to trust and use which competitive  instinct. This is a good topic for the end of the year when people are setting personal goals for the new year and companies are setting their objectives, selecting their scorecard’s key performance indicators, and seeking out industry benchmarks to measure their quality and progress. BEWARE! Choose wisely! read more »

Ebenezer Scrooge, the principal character in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, was visited by spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come on Christmas Eve to give him a new perspective on priorities and show him the weakness of his wicked ways.

In the same vein, what have you learned from staring into the terror of what you thought was going to be a mass exodus of retirees and enormous turnover of younger workers as they hip-hopped through their career positions? Has your company learned from it’s weaknesses? Can you point out where this economy (even if it is a bit of a nightmare, like Ebenezer’s) is a chance to learn, retool our lives, and be better people and employers in the future? read more »

One reason Aquire is successful is that the most common way companies visualize their organization mentally and literally is through the org chart. Yet there is another triangular image in the career and talent management visualization which is also important. This is the Career Pyramid.

I have never liked the term “climbing the corporate ladder.” It implies that your career path is going to be linear. I have seldom seen paths to career nirvana as straight lines. Instead, there is an analogy, pulled together by Lindsey Pollak, that aggregates several examples of why building your career as a pyramid is valuable. read more »

You don’t need to read a blog from me this week. But you do need to read many HR blogs this week.

For the best-of-the-best and for some of the most heartwarming stories, here is an HR Carnival (a collection of blogs around the HR industry or by HR Professionals). This HR Carnival collection was created by Mike VanDervort at The Human Race Horses, and the reading is the best time you can have this week while still getting yourself thinking about many diverse yet timely and interesting human resource topics.

Just go to the HR Carnival of Global Giving.

You should also set your RSS reader to keep you up-to-date on posts from these great authors.

Cheers,
Lois