The calendar has turned to March, which means, as a SHRM student chapter advisor, it is time for the HRGames. Tonight, for example, 20 teams from around the state of Wisconsin descend onto Oshkosh to test their knowledge of human resources.

What are the HRGames? The HRGames consist of a one- or two-day series of Jeopardy-style matches, between teams of up to three undergraduate students from various colleges and universities. The questions for the matches are divided into categories similar to those used in the PHR certification exam (i.e., Management Practices; Selection & Recruitment). In each round, students select points and a category of questions. The question is read twice and the teams have 15 seconds to supply the correct answer. After a series of initial matches, teams with the best records participate in the championship rounds for first and second place. The hope is that students who prepare for the HRGames will, in turn, be successful when taking the PHR Certification

A sample question might be:
Q: This is the pay rate that is below the minimum of the pay range
A: What is a green circle rate

The top four teams in Wisconsin, for example, will receive travel money from the WI SHRM State Countil to attend the North Central Region Student Conference and HRGames at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN on April 23-24. The significance of winning the regional competition is even higher. The winning team of undergraduates not only gets the pride of winning the competition, but SHRM will provide each team member with a $1,000 scholarship, as well as free conference registration, hotel, airfare, and food budget, to attend the SHRM Annual Conference in San Diego.

As noted, the 2010 SHRM North Central Regional Student Conference will take place at Purdue University in Indiana on April 23 and 24, 2010.

The 2010 SHRM Northeast Regional Student Conference will take place at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania on March 5 and 6, 2010.

The 2010 SHRM Pacific West Regional Student Conference will take place at the University of Nevada Reno on March 19 and 20, 2010.

The 2010 SHRM Southeast Regional Student Conference will take place at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on April 9 and 10, 2010.

The 2010 SHRM Southwest Central Regional Student Conference will take place at the University of New Mexico on March 26 and 27, 2010.

If you haven't had the opportunity to see it in person, it is well worth checking out to see the HR leaders of tomorrow. Each conference is always looking for volunteers. If interested, please contact Maureen Flaherty at Maureen.Flaherty@shrm.org

Every Thursday, I receive the latest issue of The New Yorker and I quickly turn to the table of contents to see this week’s set of contributing authors. I usually look for two names: Malcolm Gladwell and Atul Gawande. While Gladwell, I believe, needs no introduction, Gawande is an endocrinologist who writes frequently on the topic of health care. However, like Gladwell, he also often writes on decision-making.

So, it was with some excitement that I read his latest book, “The Checklist Manifesto,” Gawande tackles the problem of complex decision-making and problem solving and with it provides some suggestions that human resource managers should take to heart. Our world is becoming increasingly complex, and that has led to two significant problems. First, “the fallibility of human memory and attention, especially when it comes to mundane, routine matters are easily overlooked under the strain of more pressing events.” We tend to focus on a particular tree, and lose the forest. The second problem “is that people can lull themselves into skipping steps even when they remember them.” Even as non-programmed decision making becomes more familiar, people look for short cuts. The answer, Gawande argues, is the simple checklist.

Gawande recounts the story of Peter Pronovost, as critical care specialist at Johns Hopkins, who put together a simple 5-point checklist to address the problem of central line infections. This checklist consisted of

• doctors washing their hands with soap
• cleaning the patient's skin with chlorhexidrine antiseptic
• putting sterile drapes over the entire patient
• wearing a mask, hat, sterile gown, and gloves; and
• putting a sterile dressing over the insertion site once the line is in.

Simple and obvious, right? Yet, when Provonost asked nurses to observe doctors in the ICU for a month and record how often they carried out each step, more than a third skipped at least one step. Pronovost got Johns Hopkins Hospital administration to authorize nurses to stop doctors if they skipped a step. They monitored the results for a year, and found that infection rates went from 11 percent to zero. They also calculated that the checklist had prevented forty-three infections, eight deaths and nearly two million in costs.

Gawande also shares the familiar story of Chelsey "Sully" Sullenburger, whose exploits in landing US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River after the plane collided with a large flock of Canadian geese. While much has been made of Sully's experience, much of the success of the landing can be attributed to the array of checklists he and his co-pilot had at their disposal in case of such an emergency.

Why might there be reluctance to adopt checklists? Gawande argues that, first, checklists are boring. We get thrilled with the latest technological advance, but checklists lack flair. Further, they require discipline, something we often lack. It is something we have to work at. Third, is pride. As we become more specialized and gain more expertise, checklists often seem beneath us.

With that in mind, how can checklists be applied to the many tasks facing a human resource manager, such as:

• detailing the steps to take with an applicant when they come in for an interview, ranging from greeting him/her to following up after the interview?
• terminating an employee
• a disciplinary or performance appraisal interview
• an industrial accident
  
• one employee attacking another

Do you have checklists of your own? Have they worked? Why or why not?

One of the challenges of teaching human resources is keeping up with the latest trends and laws. The most recent textbook is unlikely to be up-to-date (Lilly Ledbetter anyone?) and even some of the most recent research is likely to have some lag time. As a result, I am taking a different tack this semester and having my students read blog posts by some of the most influential HR practitioners. On Thursday, January 28, for example, they read:

Dr. Drewett. “ An Open Letter to the HR World” (http://blog.drdewett.com/?p=89)

Keith Hammonds. “Why We Hate HR.” http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/97/open_hr.html

Mike Van Devort. “HR – Not Dead Yet” (http://www.thehumanracehorses.com/2009/09/18/hr-not-dead-yet/)

Laurie Ruettimann “HR is Dying – Yes? No? (http://punkrockhr.com/hr-is-dying-yes-no/)

Trish McFarlane. “Making the Rubber Hit the Road – “Rebranding” HR” http://hrringleader.com/2009/09/22/making-the-rubber-hit-the-road-re-branding-hr/)

Mark Stelzner. “The Future of HR – Why “Do Nothing” is an Option” (http://www.inflexionadvisors.com/blog/2009/10/22/the-future-of-hr-why-do-nothing-is-an-option/)

Lance Haun “ Is Human Resources Fatally Flawed?” http://www.rehaul.com/is-human-resources-fatally-flawed

Sharlyn Lauby, “The HR Profession” http://www.hrbartender.com/2009/strategic/the-hr-profession/

Trish McFarlane. “HR – A Call to Action” http://hrringleader.com/2009/09/25/hr-your-call-to-action/

Larry Wilson. “CSI Determines HR is Dead.” http://hrcommons.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/csi-determines-hr-is-dead/

Maren Hogan. “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room.” http://marenhogan.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/slow-dancing-in-a-burning-room/

Karen Berman & Joe Knight. “Do HR Managers Have the Skills They Need?” http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/financial-intelligence/2009/10/do-hr-managers-have-the-skills.html

Dr. John Sullivan. “The Current State of Ill Preparedness in HR” http://www.drjohnsullivan.com/newsletter-archives/242-the-current-state-of-ill-preparedness-in-hr

Read “Should you ban the use of social media in the workplace?”

(http://www.halogensoftware.com/hr-raging-debates/?cat=7)

In the future, not only will they be reading more from the above writers, but they will also be reading posts from authors and websites such as:

• Ben Eubanks (http://upstarthr.com/)
• Paul Hebert (http://www.i2i-align.com/)
• April Dowling (http://www.pseudohr.com/)
• Kris Dunn (http://www.hrcapitalist.com/)
• Kelly Mitton (http://thryving.com/)
• Jim D'Amico (http://humanresourcespufnstuf.wordpress.com/)
• The HR101 series at http://creativechaosconsultant.blogspot.com/
• Tim Sackett (http://www.fistfuloftalent.com)
• Joan Ginsburg (http://http://www.joanginsberg.com/)

Finally, I am ensuring they are keeping up with the anyone and anything I might have missed with the twice a month cavalcade better know as the Carnival of HR.

It is my hope that not only will my students stay current, but that they will see the passion about the field the writers express and be encouraged to read even more of the various authors' perspectives.

This past week, Mike Vandervort published the pros and cons of having Al Gore as a keynote speaker at the 2010 SHRM Annual Conference in San Diego. Out of curiosity, I went back through my old conference programs to see who SHRM has chosen as keynote speakers in the past and whether Al Gore is truly a controversial choice.

2001 - San Francisco - Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gary Hamel, Nando Parrado

2002 - Philadelphia - Rudy Guiliani, David McCullough, Gordon Bethune, Star Jones

2003 - Orlando - Madeleine Albright, Jim Collins, Tom Morris, Dr. C.K. Prahalad

2004 - New Orleans - Queen Noor, Magic Johnson (replaced by Christopher Reeve), Marcus Buckingham, Scott Livengood

2005 - San Diego - Bill Cosby, Malcolm Gladwell, David Ulrich, Bertice Berry

2006 - Washington, D.C., Gen. Colin Powell, Louis Gerstner, David McCullough, Liz Murray

2007 - Las Vegas - Lance Armstrong, Linda Alvarado, Dan Pink, Erin Gruwell

2008 - Chicago - Sidney Poitier, Patrick Lencioni, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Nancy Giles

2009 - New Orleans - Jack Welch, Earl Graves, John Kotter, Lee Woodruff

2010 - San Diego - Steve Forbes, Al Gore, Angela Herrin (panel), Marcus Buckingham

So, SHRM has chosen a number of conservative voices as prominent speakers (in Giuliani and Powell). One could say Al Gore is the first political person from the other side of the aisle in over 10 years. Is it really that controversial?

Often, a good manager is one that has spent more of his career developing others than being coached him or herself. In the NFL, it is common to see coaching trees develop. Bill Walsh, the legendary coach of the San Francisco 49ers, has seen many of his proteges go onto varying degrees of success, for example:

• Mike Holmgren (won a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers)
• George Seifert (won two Super Bowls with the 49ers as Walsh's successor)
• Jim Fassel (his 2000 NY Giants team lost to the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl 35)
• Sam Wyche (his 1988 Cinci Bengals advanced to the AFC title game)
• Dennis Green (who took two Minnesota Vikings teams to the NFC championship game (and discovered "teams are who we thought they were))

This coaching tree grew additional branches as the coaches mentioned above developed a coaching pipeline of their own. Dennis Green, for example, saw a couple of his assistants become successful as well:

• Brian Billick (won the 2000 Super Bowl as coach of the Baltimore Ravens)
• Tony Dungy (won the 2006 Super Bowl as coach of the Indianapolis Colts)

With that in mind, what does your organization do to recognize talent development? Have you identified those managers who nurture talent that have helped the organization success in other areas? Do you reward them? What management trees have developed in your organization?

Over the past year, or so, faculty at our institution of higher learning have been having discussions about, what we perceive, as "disruptive" student behaviors in the classroom. As a small, liberal arts school, with relatively small class sizes (less than 35 students per class), student actions out of the norm become more noticeable. These behaviors include, but are not limited to,

• Walking into class late
• Getting up in the middle of class (and often passing in front of classmates) to go to the bathroom, getting something to eat or drink, answer a phone call, smoke
• Talking to others (which has always been a problem)
  
• Having a cell phone ring in class
• Surfing the web on a laptop during class
• Wanting to listen to an mp3 player during an exam
• Texting during class

This discussion even let to a small conference before the fall semester began to discuss these issues.

So, it was with great interest when I read about a student blog called "Raging Wildflower" and a post he made about cell phone bans. He writes:

"I’m sure others out there are experiencing my pain when it comes to professors and the obnoxious policies they implement regarding cell phone usage during lecture. In the past, I’ve tolerated their dictatorship like authority and snuck messages under the desk or behind my laptop, but that era is over. In my latest course, the professor thinks he has the right to automatically deduct 10% of a students final grade for any single use of cell phones: that means texting, tweeting, facebooking, and the like."

He goes on to say, "I pay their fees for a degree, in turn, respect my decision to text." Very worth reading just for the comments.

Is the student correct? Should a student have the "right" to text during class?

In my own experience, the only penalty I impose is when a cell phone rings in class, as it is an immediate lecture/discussion killer as all attention turns to the phone ringing, and the student has the opportunity to control this action by turning off the phone prior to class. For the rest of the actions, I simply state my expectations regarding their behavior during the semester:

·No texting, twittering, Facebooking, or use of laptop computers during class time

·Use the break prior to class appropriately for restroom, food and drink, smoking, texting, cell phone use, etc.

·To only leave the classroom for an emergency; we have only 50 minutes together

·No iPod/mp3 players on during exams

·To be in your seats and ready to go at the beginning of class

In a a recent post, "The Errant Pursuit of Quanitifcation," Lance Haun argues that we too often rely on numbers in decision-making, and that some things simply cannot be measured. I'm going to take a different tack and argue that, instead of numbers giving us a false sense of security, that we do not take quantification seriously enough.

Numerous research articles have repeatedly shown that using a blind algorithmic approach does better than human judgment in making decisions and predictions. Paul Meehl, in his 1954 book "Clinical versus Statistical Prediction," asked an excellent question: Are the predictions of human experts more reliable than the predictions of actuarial models? With his colleagues David Faust and Robyn Dawes, Meehl has explored over a hundred studies comparing statistical or computer formulas with human judgment in predicting the likelihood of to criminal recidivism, and in virtually all cases, statistical thinking was better than subject matter experts giving advice.

Why is this the case?

1. Bounded rationality - as the organizational theorists March and Simon argue, humans are limited in their ability to process, interpret, and act on information. We are easily influenced by others, the order in which information is presented, recent experience, distractions, and how information is framed.
2. Incomplete information - there are time constraints and information costs that limit our ability to make an optimum decision. Further, in this internet age, we are bombarded with information, and it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish between signal and noise (for example, the recent thwarted bombing on the NWA flight from Amsterdam to Detroit ).
3. Prior Hypothesis Bias - We tend to stick to our beliefs even when presented with evidence those beliefs are wrong. For example, if I am a conservative, I am more likely to listen to what Fox News has to say than Rachel Maddow.
4. Escalation of Commitment - we tend to commit more resources to a course of action even when it might be better to cut our losses and run. For example, a gambler at a casino might go to the ATM and withdraw more funds to try to win back his initial stake.
   

As Atul Gawande once wrote, "You might think that a human being and a computer working together would make the best decisions. But,...this claim makes little sense. If opinions agree, no matter. If they disagree, the studies show that you're better off sticking with the computer's judgment."