Rush to Metricment

Let me begin by apologizing to the English purists in the audience. I fully realize that I just took the liberty of creating a word as if I was playing scrabble and wanted that one big word to win the game. But read on and I think you will get the intent here.

I am in the middle of reading Kaplan and Norton's The Balanced Scorecard and through out the first 100 pages there are numerous references to metrics int he development of the scorecards. I further refer to Mikel and Schroeder in their book on six sigma make the point that every organization is confronted with five conditions that affect the business:

1. We don't know what we don't know
2. We can't act on what we don't know
3. We can't know until we search
4. We can't search for what we don't question
5. We don't question that we don't measure

I am not questioning the value of metrics and measurements. What I am questioning is the rush to rely so heavily on metrics for everything and anything. when we make that rush to metricment we tend to make our case solely on the metrics involved and not the human factor involved within our organizations. So my suggestion is take the metrics for what they are - a way to measure how we are doing on the path to reach our goals. They are not the end all of factors that indicate our successes. Find a middle ground between the human factors and the mechanical metrics that we use to evaluate our organizations.

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HR Strategic Focus Part 5: They are not human capital assets, they are Employees!!! here to set a title.

In this final installment in this series we want to turn to the need for a new perspective on a critical factor in every organization that is operating today. In this space and others on the web we recently posted a request for assistance in developing the support for the affect of stress and overwork on the productivity within the workplace.

One of the respondents returned a rather terse response in which she took us to task in our post by stating "First of all, they are EMPLOYEES, not "human capital assets." They're PEOPLE, not furniture."

While we agree that they are people, we also suggest that they are a valuable asset of the organization. Try serving your clients or customers with no employees. They dictate how successful your are in the marketplace. Part of the problem with the above stated comment can be found in the landmark work of Robert Kaplan and David Norton entitled "The Balanced Scorecard." The authors make reference to the Harvard Business Council on Competitiveness project which stated that "the U.S. system favors those forms of investment for which returns are most readily measurable; this leads to underinvestment in intangible assets - products and process innovation, employee skills, customer satisfaction - whose short term returns are more difficult to measure." (The Balanced Scorecard Page 38)

In order to reach the stages of innovation that will perpetuate our organizations we have to change the way we look at our EMPLOYEES. The nature of our employees has changed that they are no longer valued on what they make or produce. They are now valued for what is in their heads. They are based on the contribution they make to the organization's ability to create new products or services. Their value is based on how they enhance the organization. So from a strategic perspective organizations need to begin to recognize the value brought to the business. This means they are not truly just expense items on a balance sheet. They are the future of the business.

So how do we change the perspective? Consider these strategic directions when dealing with employee issues:

Listen to the Rank and File: Instead of necessarily introducing benefits because they are the current fad ask your employees what they need and want. Create benefit package centered around both your corporate culture and the voice of your employees.

Flexible Work Arrangements - Many organizations, with great success, have found that being willing to explore new work arrangements have benefits to the organization and to the customers. Best Buy has allowed their corporate employees to switch to a system in which employees are rated on the results they achieve not on what hours they work. This also allows you to assist your employees in achieving an optimal work/life balance.

Employee Engagement - Management needs to bring everyone into the planning process. Utilize the creative skills of the employees to change policies or procedures. Use the employees to locate the obstacles in your processes to make the organization run more effectively. Make the employees aware that they are a vital part of the organization. Not in image but in reality.

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Tuesday morning trivia

For many years this space has posted reference to the new Mindset List from Beloit College. Released at the beginning of each new school year, the list discusses the things that characterize the new class. Click on http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2012/ and enjoy. It gives you the opportunity to reflect on how it might affect the workplace in which we will operate under in the coming years.

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What am I supposed to Do?

According to the TLNT blog this morning the National Labor Relations Board General Counsel has released the fndings of 13 cases involving social media and employee actions. The 24 page report can be found at http://tlnt.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=85f2981883cd879c955d5072f&...

The results may provide you with guidance as how to deal with your own social media policies.

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8 Reasons Social Media Policies Backfire from the HR Examiner

On August 10, 2011, In Editorial Advisory Board, Heather Bussing, HRExaminer, by Heather Bussing

Heather Bussing is a California attorney who has represented employers, unions and employees in every aspect of employment and labor law including contract negotiations, discrimination and wage hour issues. While the courtroom is a place she’s very familiar with, her preferred approach to employment law is to prevent problems.  Full bio…

8 Reasons Social Media Policies Backfire

by Heather Bussing

Lawyers and HR live and breathe risk management. One of their favorite tools is the employment policy.  But, before you issue the latest and greatest social media edicts, understand this fundamental principal—the more you control it, the more you will be legally responsible for everything that happens.

Here are my top 8 reasons why social media policies backfire.

1.            Most Social Media Accounts Belong to the Employee.

If it is an account in the employee’s name, whether they use if for work or personal or both—it’s theirs and they get to say what they want.  Trust them, and stay out of it.

Just because employees drive their cars to work and park them on company property, the employer doesn’t get to tell them what kind of car to own, how to drive, or whether to remove those tacky Hawaiian seat covers.

If it is a blog or company page that belongs to the employer, the company is going to be liable for everything in it anyway.

2.            It’s Bad For Your Brand

The effectiveness of social media is that it is more spontaneous and authentic—more real.  If you dictate what can be said or require all posts to be approved, you lose that edge, as well as all the fun.  The more people who have a say in what is and isn’t said, the less personal and interesting the posts will be.

You will also lose any sense of timing, which is essential on fast-moving streams like Twitter

3.            If You Control It, It’s Yours.

If you have a comprehensive social media policy that dictates what can and cannot be discussed, you will have to pay someone to monitor what is being said, demand that inappropriate posts come down and discipline when the edicts are violated.  How much time, money and energy is this really worth?

Under agency law, if you are directing the conduct of employees in social media, the company will be liable for everything that is said.  To the extent something said is defamatory, violates a nondisclosure agreement or just pisses someone off, a comprehensive social media policy is the best way to get the company named in the lawsuit.

If you are not controlling it, then the company generally will not be liable for things said and done in employees’ personal accounts.  This is because the employees are not acting in the course of their employment and the employer is not controlling or implicitly approving the actions of its employees.  And if there is no deep pocket to sue, the chance of a lawsuit getting filed at all is greatly diminished.

Some employers require employees to post some version of “my opinions are my own and not my employer’s.” For example, see some of these disclaimers on Twitter

But a disclaimer on the employee’s account won’t necessarily protect a company from liability—to the contrary it just looks like the company is trying to control what gets said.  (See Dell’s Social Media Policy: You are responsible for everything you say, but we can discipline you for it.)

While a disclaimer alone does not create liability, the fact that someone is saying “my employer made me say it is not responsible for my posts,” can trigger someone to look further to see whether the employer is also directing the content of the employee’s social media posts, especially if the employer also reserves the right to discipline employees for the content of those posts.

The disclaimer move is also bad for your brand. Why would a company want to look paranoid and untrusting of the people that are representing it in social media?  It’s also bad for recruiting—it signals to potential new employees that the company is run by Legal instead of people with common sense who actually understand social media.

4.            Dictating What Employees Cannot Say Can Violate the NLRA

The National Labor Relations Act protects employees from retaliation by an employer for discussing wages, hours or working conditions.  These NLRA protections apply whether or not your company has a union, because they relate to “organizing” or pre-union actions.

The bottom line is that a social media policy cannot prohibit an employee from saying bad things about what it is like to work at your company.  Protected expressions include being critical of the bosses, the customers or the stupid signs in the kitchen.  If you have and try to enforce a social media policy that dictates what people say, you could end up with fines and a lawsuit from the National Labor Relations Board.

5.            Enforcing the Policy Can Violate Whistleblower or Anti-retaliation Protections

If employees are saying things in social media that relate to a protected status, and an employer disciplines them, the employer risks liability for retaliation under discrimination laws.  Protected information includes anything that relates to the employee’s race, religion, marital status, national origin, gender, pregnancy, age, disability, birthplace, citizenship, military service, ancestry, relatives, health of relatives, medical condition, finances, and sometimes, sexual orientation.  This potentially includes everything.  Even someone’s taste in music and whether they have tattoos can be shown to relate predominately to a particular race, gender or age.

So basically, you can’t control how employees talk about the company and you can’t control how they talk about themselves without risking liability for something. 

But wait. There’s more.

6.            Monitoring Employees Can Violate Computer Hacking Laws

Let’s say you just want to make sure that employees are not violating the company’s confidentiality policy.  You’re just protecting against disclosure of trade secrets.  So you are periodically checking the company Facebook page and doing twitter stream searches.  Okay, that’s probably fine.

But many employers assert the right to get on their employees’ computers and monitor use, history and websites viewed at work.  See this article on Microsoft’s Business site advocating snooping and obtaining evidence secretly.   If an employee has saved social media passwords on the network, it is often possible to sign-in and view accounts the employees believe are personal.

Using employee passwords to sign-in to their social media accounts can violate state and federal computer hacking laws and constitute identity theft.  All 50 states have laws that prohibit someone from unauthorized access to another person’s computer and online accounts, especially if the intent is to change or modify access or content.   This would include deleting an inappropriate post.

A California court recently found a guy guilty of hacking and identity theft when he accidentally obtained a girl’s email address and password, then used the email to change the person’s Facebook password, then logged onto Facebook and starting making obscene posts.

While courts will generally allow an employer to monitor to see if employees are working or contacting the competition with the recipe for the secret sauce, it is doubtful that it would be legal to get employee passwords and log into their personal accounts without their knowledge and permission.

The usual legal answer to this is to create a policy that notifies employees that you reserve the right to spy on them and make them sign it, giving their consent.  While you’re at it, monitor their bathroom breaks and issue dress codes and cubicle flags.  Or you can decide not to be a complete jerk.  (See 2 above.)

7.            Monitoring Employees’ Personal Accounts Can Give You Access to Stuff You Don’t Want to Know.

Suppose the social media enforcer logs onto Facebook and learns that an employee’s spouse has cancer.  This means potentially higher insurance premiums, more absences by the employee and the cost of hiring temps to cover.  This gets back to management who becomes concerned.  As the employee becomes stressed and distracted by her husband’s illness, the performance memos start flowing until the employee is either fired or quits from the hassle.

When the jury learns that the employer knew about the spouse’s cancer from monitoring the employee’s Facebook page, they will add several zeros to the amount they award the employee in the discrimination and privacy lawsuit.  And I don’t care whether the employee and the company enforcer were “friends” or not.  Being nosy and having access to employees’ personal lives is not a “best social media practice.”  It’s stupid.

8.            Disciplining Employees for their Social Media posts Can Violate Privacy Rights.

Some states have general rights of privacy and others have more specific laws that protect employees from discipline for their off-duty, off-site conduct.  So reserving the right to discipline employees for their conduct in their social media accounts can violate the employees’ rights of privacy.

There is often an exception for conduct that directly affects the employer—but it has to be more than people might find out that the employee works for the employer.  The conduct itself has to involve the employer’s name and reputation—for example, the employee posts a photo on Facebook having sex in the conference room under the company name and logo.

What to Do:

The best social media policy ever was written was by Jay Shepherd, one of the most sensible attorneys around.  The policy is:  “Be professional.”

If you are concerned about trade secrets and confidentiality, then teach your employees what is secret and what isn’t, so that they understand and don’t screw up.  Train employees to “be professional.” Letting them know what defamation is and what would violate a nondisclosure agreement.  But don’t direct their specific conduct.

If you are concerned about employees being inappropriate, believe me, you’ll know as soon as someone is, because it will be all over the company faster than “free beer in the conference room.”  Figure out the best way to deal with it and handle it on an individual basis, using your good sense and judgment.

And if that doesn’t work then termination for “being a complete idiot,” has always been a legitimate, nondiscriminatory business reason.

Bottom Line: Social media policies do not prevent problems or fix them.  They generally only create them.

So set the example, “Be professional.”

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HR Strategic Focus Part 4: It is Not a Talent Problem, Trust Me

Toyota recalls a major part of their road fleet due to mechanical problems. Johnson and Johnson recalls much of the product line due a chemical smell in the pills. For many managers the tendency is to counter these problems with the theory that if they throw out the talent for the replacements will improve the problem.But here is the problem with that perspective. Assuming you have done your selection properly and the talent meet the minimum job requirements (some organizations admittedly do not do a very good job in the selection process), then replacing the talent will not solve the problem.

Eliyahu Goldratt, the author of the book The Goal, in one of his last statements before his recent passing made the comment that "I smile and start to count on my fingers: One, people are good. Two, every conflict can be removed. Three, every situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is exceedingly simple. Four, every situation can be substantially improved; even the sky is not the limit. Five, every person can reach a full life. Six, there is always a win-win solution. Shall I continue to count?"

The point here is that when your organization encounters such events within your organization it is not the people, Every process within the organization has its hiccups. These hiccups tend to cause our processes to operate in less than optimum levels. The other problem is that many of these hiccups exist because we are so used to the organizational speak that we never look for them.

The real solution here is part of what we discussed in Part 3 of this series. You want to know where the hiccups are? Ask your front line talent. They know better than anyone where the process hiccups are. If asked they will gladly tell you how to improve the process. Your only challenge is to not only listen, you need to be willing to accept the worth of your human capital assets and their insight. You need to be willing to take that voice of the customer and apply it to improving the processes within HR and the other functions in your organization. Forget you are in this supposed HR Silo that knows the ways of organizational development, open up and look at what is good for the total organization.

HR Strategic Focus Part 5: They are not human capital assets, they are Employees!!!

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HR Strategic Focus Part 3: Voice of the Customer

Stop your whirlwind lives for a moment and think about the answers to several very important questions. You may not think they are important but they are vital to the health of your career.

Question1: Who determines the specific job qualifications for your positions within your organization?

Question 2: Who really are HR's customers. both internal and external?

Question 3: Do you take things at face value?

Question 4: What is the strategic focus of your department and your organization?

If you are like most organizations, your job descriptions are written based on templates available in the marketplace or you have run your positions through some system like the Hays method. But have you really looked to see what your customer base wants in those job descriptions? Do not make the mistake of saying we are HR and we know what is supposed to be in the job requirements. One of the best methods for identifying the actual needed skills, knowledge and attributes your candidates will need is to ask your customers.

This brings us to the second question. HR has two customer bases and in developing your organizational needs. To be of contribution to the dialogue you need to meet the needs of both groups. The first are the internal customers and they are represented by both management and the line staff. They know what their department requires to be done. But more important to your organization are the external customers. It should be the standard practice of every HR professional to go out in the filed with your top business development people. While there ask your organizational customers what they expect from your employees. It will provide you with a strong picture of the KSA's you will need in acquiring new talent for your organization. They are your eyes and ears as to what is working and what is not.

As we have said in the past, all to often we take steps through our processes based on what we have always done them. Never mind if it makes sense or whether the steps deliver a highly ineffective process to the organization. Because we do it this way we always do it this way. Listen to your FTE's who are in the trenches every day. They do understand and know where the problems lay. They know where the skeletons are hidden.

In that same vein do you know what the overall business strategy is for the organization and what HR's role is in that strategy. If you do not then you need to begin that road to understanding today. It our job to drive the strategic initiatives of the organization. We are the ones who know what the human capital assets of the organization are. We know what their needs are and how they affect the organization as a whole.

So get a handle on the voice of customer both for the internal messages and the external messages. Learn what the brand is saying to the marketplace in terms of the human capital you are sourcing and recruiting. Learn what the voice of the customer is telling you about the future health of the organization. Become the strategic animal you know you are and look for ways to do things better, faster.

HR Strategic Focus Part 4: It Really is Not the People, Trust me

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HR Strategic Focus Part 2: Are You Part of the Problem or Are You the Solution?

In part 1 of this series we asked the question about what is the HR role- Is it transactional or transformational in nature. In this second installment we are going to expand on that question.

We present a 45 minute program entitled In Plain Sight: Hidden Wastes that Affect the Viability of Your HR Organization" in which we begin by posing to the audience a scenario to be worked through. The question we pose is that you are sitting at your desk and you receive the latest financials for the HR department, what do you do with the numbers?

Our suggestion is that the way you respond to the question will determine whether you are part of problem or are part of the solution. Let me explain more in detail. First of all the majority of HR professionals tell me they never see these types of reports. That is a problem in itself which I will touch on later. Of those who do see the reports, the most common response is that we review the numbers.Review the numbers for what? Are you checking that the numbers add up? Are you verifying that the computer did not err and assign the wrong numbers to the HR account? We would suggest that if this is all you are doing, then stop looking at the financials. Go down to the local business supply store and purchase a wall calendar and begin to cross off each day with a big red X. Incidentally you are counting off the number of days until you do not have a position. If this is the route you take then I am sorry but you are part of the problem.

On the other hand, if you take the time to work through the numbers to see what they are telling you then you are part of the solution. We need to ask ourselves why we are getting the results we are. In example if you see that the numbers are telling you that the cost of payroll has escalated over the previous period . do we understand why? Are the numbers up due to an increase turnover rate which should drive us to ask why are so many FTE's choosing to leave our employment? Are the benefit costs escalating because we have allowed to many exception to benefit guidelines increasing our costs?

In every situation such as these you should make it a priority to challenge every decision with a minimum of 5 why's. Why do we do this? BY the time you get to the last of the five why's you will understand what the problem is. With knowledge and understanding of the problem we can begin to work on the solutions, thus transforming the human resource function.

HR Strategic Focus Part 3: Voice of the Customer

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HR Strategic Focus Part 1: What is Your Role?

You are sitting in your office and a colleague enters the office and asks you to please explain what the role of the Human Resource professional is both inside your organization and in the business marketplace as a whole.How would you respond to the question?

There are only two responses that you could provide to your colleague. The first is that your responsibilities are to ensure that the organization stays out of trouble. You assist the organization with benefit questions and handling personnel problems. I would suggest to you that 90 percent of your colleagues would respond in this manner. If they do so they are involved in the transactional role within the HR world. While what you do is important to the organization at the time it is not forward thinking.

The second response is that you as a human resources professional work with the line management and upper management to explore the human aspects of their decisions. These decisions can look great on paper but if you do not take into serious consideration the impact of these decisions on the human capital assets of the organization the path down the road is going to be a nightmare. In this response, the human resource professional demonstrates that they are involved in a transformational  role within the organization.

The decision is clearly yours. You can either be part of the here and now or you can be part of the future projection of the organization. Being in a strictly transactional role places you within a silo who looks at only what the immediate demands are being placed on you. You do not operate from the macro view of the organization. Being in the transformation role places you at the format of the strategic decisions on where the organization is headed as we progress through these economic times.

HR Strategic Focus Part 2: Are You Part of the Solution or Are You Part of the Problem?

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Found new resource

Every day we find or hear about new questions regarding social media and the legal ramifications of its use. In one of the emails I get every morning I was directed to a site where lawyers talk about social media and technology in the workplace, Interesting read this morning on the new Missouri law which bans teachers in very broad terms of interacting with students in the social media world. To find out more visit http://www.networkedlawyers.com

 

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Help Needed

Daniel Bloom & Associates, Inc. is beginning the process of releasing its first research based white paper. We would like those of you who read this blog to help with the data collection. Here is the question.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that for the second quarter of 2011, the productivity rate had dropped in this country 0.3% from the first quarter. Companies calculate and then brag of productivity being at an all time high since they brought about reductions in force. The BLS calcualtes a somewhat less-than optimal description of the same factors. Ina ddition to the impact on productivity, increased workloads and increased stress the qulaity of the business decision solutions has also been less than optimal.

We are not talking here about the unemployed. We are referring to current internal human capital assets. We can't accurately question what we don't measure. So how do we measure the affect of the increased workloads, the increased expected time expected, and the increased stress on the productivity outcomes of our organization? Please send your comments and input to dan@dbaiconsulting.com.

We will gladly provide those who respond with first copies of the final conclusions and the white paper when they are finalized.

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In addition to the impact on productivity, increased workload and increased stress - another consequence of the down turn and the turbulent times has been the quality of decisions in business solutions.  

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Productivity decline wake up call for business organizations

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the second quarter productivity rates for the non-farm employment showing a decline in productivity of about 0.3 percent.  This should be a wake up call for business enterprises worldwide. 

Corporations in these difficult economic times, have resorted to trying to save costs by laying off great numbers of employees. They claimed that the result was that they were reporting higher level of productivity in years. This was achieved on the backs of their human capital assets. Heavier workloads. Longer hours. What has happened is that the stress levels have come back to haunt.

It is time for business organizations to realize that they have gutted their human capital assets by drastically cutting their staffs in the name of austerity. When they can then return by reporting high profit levels while gutting innovation and collaboration the only ones they are hurting in the long run is the reputation of the organization.

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I am Your Life Blood Revisted: Two sides of the Coin

The other day I posted a blog post entitled Hey, I am Your Life Blood.One of the readers sent me a comment back with this reply:

I recently read an interesting piece on a management decision at Starbucks. The CEO started a program to raise store revenues by $100,000 a year, He pushed for a solution that recognized the value of employees which turned on paying their baristas and managers more than the going rate in the food service industry. This policy recognized the value of those well-trained people who served as the direct conduit to the customer. What a smart idea it turned out to be as in store revenues increased by an average of $150,000 a year

So it got me wondering what the other side of the spectrum might look like. A member of the DBAI Advisory Board turned me on to the other side of the coin. It seems that a franchisee of Pizza Hut is embroiled in a national class action suit because they said under state law the pizza delivery men and women should be paid as tip workers and the fact that they drove their cars for work did not change the requirements. So they were not paid the required $.51 per mile for their driving time thus bringing their take home pay under the minimum wage level of $2.13 per hour. What makes this issue worse is that in 2004 the issue arose with the same circumstances and resulted in that franchisee being fined $5,100,000.

I realize that we are in tough economic times but if one food retail establishment makes some changes and receives a huge uptick in revenue and another one faces a dire fine, why would you make the decision not too treat your employees with respect and recognition of their value? Let's keep the dialogue going.

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Sorry, You Can't Eat Your Cake and Have it Too!!!!!

Over the past several weeks we have listened to the rhetoric coming out of Washington, DC about how this action or that would lead to job killing legislation from the people we elected to represent us at the federal level. We further have over the past several years witnessed an ever growing level of unemployment in this country and also in countries around the globe. 

The rhetoric bemused the fact that we have a large number of ready willing and able individuals who want to work but corporations are turning their current situation against them causing individuals to look for work even longer. Congress keeps turning around and stating that despite all the viable evidence, that if we continue to lower taxes then the unemployment problem will be solved. It has never worked the way they expect it too. Look at the employment picture globally and we find that there are jobs out there, but they are not in the United States. Every organization looks at their operations from four perspectives which become the basis for their budgetary decisions. First and unfortunately the primary concern is how much return on investment are we returning to our stakeholders. We will talk later about how this may not be the area that should hold the primary focus. The second factor becomes the cost of sale. How much does it cost us an organization to get to the point where the client or customer says yes they want to purchase our product or service.The third factor is that of the margin under which we make our sales. We can sell X for so much and it costs us so much to produce. The difference is critical in our pricing strategies.The fourth and final factor is the profit we earn from our business operations. Based on these four views of the business operations we rush to judgement as to the best way to meet the goals. Major corporations decide that the best way to achieve these goals is to do the majority of their hiring overseas. There is absolutely no incentive to keep the jobs in the US. Lowering the tax rate is not going to change this. It will however change when the corporations understand that there are factors that they do not take into consideration that could meet all their goals. Listen to your customers. You saved money by sending your work overseas but did the customer service level remain at the same level? From personal experience I would say probably not. From Starbucks to AT&T to Radio Shack there corporations who have come to the realization that bringing the work back to the US would resolve several problems. One it lowers the unemployment levels. Two, it brings back a concern for the reason you are in business-to acquire and maintain customers. Three it may in the long run lower your costs because of the shorter problem resolution durations. It is time that this government takes the necessary steps to show our business enterprises that in the long run it makes more sense to keep the jobs stateside rather than sending them overseas. I was at a HR conference last year where one of the presenters stated he was working with an IT company who wanted to open a customer service center in Wisconsin because it was cheaper then running it in India.  So if you want to at least attempt to eat your cake and have it too, consider ways to revise your internal processes so that they run faster, better and cheaper and hire or maintain your workforce locally. It is possible if you think out of the box of business think that you have always done. New world, new methods, new focus. Employees are assets and you can utilize them to your advantage.

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Hey I am Your Life Blood!!!!

CNN Money this morning ran a post regarding the corporations who are job killers because of the number of people who are being forced into the job market along with the rest of the world. When you review the lost it is a sad view of the marketplace. One, HSBC, actually reported increased profits. How did they do that? The are doing it by laying off 25,000 worldwide. I hear the line that corporations must be able to do the things they must to satisfy their stockholders, but they seem to be leaving out one factor out of the mix.

Mr, Corporation, those employees are the life blood of your organization. They are no longer an expense item, they are corporate assets. They are the ones who have all the knowledge of how to run your organization better, faster and cheaper. Cheaper does not mean laying people off, it means streamlining your processes so that you can reduce the time to complete thus raising the revenue level of the organization.

The workplace has changed and we succeed based on the innovations we can create. To do this you don't need machines. You do not need necessarily immense factories, We need the brain capacity of the human capital assets to see the world not as it is, but see the world as it might be.

Our employees are the life blood of our organizations. Stop before you decide that the path to profitability only lies in cutting employees. Take a moment and picture in your mind what would happen if your customers called the organization and no one answered the phone. Take a moment and consider what would happen to your business if a client had a problem and no one knew how to solve it. As the late Edward Kennedy said at his brother's funeral "some men see things as they are and say why, I dream things that never were and say why not." As one of your human capital assets, the employees job is not to see things as they have been but to see where the future can take us. This view is based on what is int heir heads from the acquisition of data, ideas and projections into the future. They are the ones that will propel our organizations to greatness as we come out of these economic times that we are facing today.

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