The Week That Was in HR recaps HR news and views around the world. You are receiving this because you have visited EmployWise.com and have expressed interests in receiving HR news. EmployWise™ is an award winning HR software delivered on the cloud or the SaaS model. It's easy, affordable, and quick to implement for organizations of any sizes. If you've enjoyed this, you can forward it to your friends and colleagues here. You can also share on and .

August 08 to 14, 2011

HR EVENTS
HR@EmployWise Webinar on Employee Separation
Venue: Your Computer
Date: Thursday 18 August, 2011
Time: 03:00 PM to 03:30 PM IST
To register click here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/880609321
HR@EmployWise Webinar on Compensation and Benefits
Venue: Your Computer
Date: Thursday 25 August, 2011
Time: 03:00 PM to 03:30 PM IST
To register click here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/880609321

Leadership
Shattering Confidence is a Negative Motivator!
Ian Welsh via Toolbox for HR
Things go right when you believe life is going in the right direction - when you have confidence in your own future, and the environment governing its progression. There is no guarantee, of course, but stepping confidently forward is a good start. Parents can shatter the confidence of their kids at an early date by telling them they will amount to nothing. Some kids take this as a challenge and do very well – others wrestle with their early-detected failure for the rest of their lives. Either way, it does not promote family harmony. Read more on Toolbox for HR.

Good Enough Can Be Great
Aaron J. Nurick via Harvard Business Review
Good enough? Is that the best you can do? In our culture, with its focus on excellence and perfection, good enough is usually considered not enough. While that may be the conventional wisdom, good enough is sometimes exactly what you need.
Take our earliest interpersonal relationships, for example. In psychological theory, the "good enough mother" (or parent) creates a "facilitating" environment for her child, meeting all of the child's needs in the beginning and then gradually allowing greater autonomy, still within secure boundaries. Similarly, a Good Enough Manager (GEM) adapts his behavior to facilitate employee autonomy, all while providing well-structured parameters. Read more on Harvard Business Review blogs.

Men Think in Nouns, Women Think in Adjectives…?
Jason Seiden via My Blog is Profersonal™
This is a hypothesis. I could be way off. But I don’t think so. Actually, let’s make it: Men think noun/verb, women think adjective/adverb. Now I’m probably a little less off. The idea of this struck me the other night while my wife was watching Real Housewives. I sometimes join her, until I can’t stand it anymore and have to leave the room. I get bothered by the fact that I am watching people fighting. She is entertained by hateful people being catty. I don’t understand why these people choose to be together. She thinks it’s funny that women can act so nastily. I react to the what; she, to the how. Read the full post online here on My Blog is Profersonal™.

Recruitment
Millenials Are Like You and Me, Only Different
John Zappe via ERE.net
There’s nothing that different about Millenials that age doesn’t explain. So concludes an interesting study by the Kenexa High Performance Institute on the work attitudes of Millenials. “Millennials are, in fact, much like their older counterparts,” says the study authors, who compared the results of current surveys and historic surveys of Boomers and Gen Xers. What they found is that contrary to the stereotype of being a malcontented, coddled, naive lot, Millenials, the Gen Y generation, are in many ways more satisfied than their older counterparts. Read the full post here on ERE.net

Employers: Look Closer at “Over-qualified” Candidates
Heather Huhman via TheSavvyIntern
We’re sorry, but you’re overqualified for this position.” Unfortunately, you’ve probably heard that statement before. For entry-level candidates in particular, how could they possibly be coming out of school “overqualified”? That just doesn’t make sense, especially when we (experts) and the job market keep telling them they need to complete at least one internship before graduating from college in order to be even considered for an entry-level job. They go ahead and complete an internship or two, and we turn around and tell them they are “overqualified”? Personally, I think this word is a complete cop-out employers use when there is some other reason (or perhaps no good reason) they don’t choose a particular candidate. Andrew O’Connell of Harvard Business Review agrees with me (although he doesn’t use the phrase “cop-out”)... Read the full post on TheSavvyIntern here.

Is Your Employer Brand A Social Object?
Craig Fisher via MonsterThinking
How interesting is the job for which your company is hiring? How interesting, for that matter, is your company? Is there a compelling story? On July 26th, 2011, the recruiting community in San Antonio discussed this in a live conversation with Robert Scoble as he kicked off TalentNet Live at Rackspace HQ. Talking recruiting and branding with @Scobleizer was just one of the perks of hosting TNL at such an innovative brand’s home office. He detailed these stories in a recent article he posted on his favorite new social spot, Google+. Read the full post on MonsterThinking here.

At the Work Place
10 Best Employers of 2011
via SiliconIndia
Aon Hewitt, the global human resource consulting announced the results of its seventh Best Employers in India 2011 study. It recognized the following companies as the 25 Aon Hewitt Best Employers in India 2011. Best Employers in India represent organizations that have done an outstanding job of aligning people strategy with articulated business strategy. The Best have been able to offer a compelling career proposition to their employees in a high performing work environment that differentiates needs, expectations and drivers of different employee segments. Read the full report on SiliconIndia here.

Why Worrying About Your Personal Brand Is a Waste of Time
Jessica Stillman via BNet
With the rise of social media has come the inevitable question of how to organize and present your professional life online. It’s likely that co-workers, clients and potential employers will Google you, so of course you should give some thought to what they’ll find. But is it helpful to consciously curate the available information about you as a personal brand? UK newspaper The Guardian tackled this question recently in response to an online kerfuffle over some disparaging remarks about the whole idea of a personal brand from Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten. Personal brand enthusiasts responded to Weingarten’s skepticism by saying that Weingarten himself, like nearly every successful professional, has a reputation that amounts to a personal brand and is being a curmudgeon for knocking a concept he’s benefited from. Read the full post here on BNet.

Are Coworkers Crossing the Line? Check Your Boundaries.
Dawn Lennon via Business Fitness
Bosses have employee issues. Employees have boss issues. Coworkers have peer issues. Isn’t working together supposed to be easy? We often set ourselves up for the people problems we face. When we fail to set boundaries that keep out unwanted coworker behaviors, we pay a price. People problems generally sneak up on us. One day we realize we’re caught in a cycle we don’t like—one that’s interfering with our work. Typically, here’s what takes place. Read the full post on Business Fitness here.

HR Trends
HR Managers: Women Don’t Need Help To Get Ahead
Suzanne Lucas via BNet
Robert Half conducted a survey of UK HR managers and found out that 78 percent “did not believe women were at a disadvantage in their organisations” and therefore don’t need special programs for women. HR is uniquely situated to see how the career progression of people throughout an organization. For instance, for a few years, every single non-union promotion or reorganization within a 30,000 person company came across my desk. I read the justification for almost all of them. (During year end when growth promotions were rampant, a good deal of that was delegated to my brilliant staff.) Trust me, there was no one outside of HR that gets that broad of a view of how things operate. Read the full post on BNet here.

Mahindra Satyam Begins Crackdown Against Fraud Employees
via Press Trust of India
Mahindra Satyam has begun a countrywide crackdown against employees that joined the organisation using fake certificates and fraudulent means after it found some people had circumvented the company's background verification process, a senior official said today. According to Mahindra Satyam Chief People Officer Hari T, the background verification of some of the 21,000 employees currently working in India will be completed by September-end and he warned that any employee found to have got into the company through fraudulent means will be slapped with a cheating case. Read the full report here.

Singapore Tightens Controls on Foreign Workers
via Agence France-Presse
Foreign professionals will face tougher rules on working in Singapore, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Sunday as part of moves to allay public anger that saw his party suffer in May elections. Resentment over the government's accommodating policy on foreign workers was among the issues that led to the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) recording its worst showing since independence in 1965 at the vote. Read the full report on The Economic Times online.