HR Undercover

Last week an insurance worker lost her job after surfing Facebook while off sick. The employee said she could not work in front of a computer as she needed to lie in the dark but was then seen to be active on Facebook.

The company said it was an abuse of trust, rather than activity on Facebook, that caused her to be fired. The woman said she had been surfing Facebook in bed on her iPhone and accused her employer of spying on her and other employees by sending a mysterious friend request which allows access to personal online activity.

The accusation of spying was rejected. Rather the woman’s activity on Facebook had been stumbled upon by a colleague who told her supervisor. Now the Facebook site has been blocked in the company….

We recently noticed that one of our administrative assistants seemed to spend an inordinate amount of work time on myspace.  It was frequent enough and extensive enough that it was causing some resentment to build in other staffmembers who were staying late to get things done.

As a team, we processed through the associated issues, realizing that part of the dynamic was that ”Annie” was superbly efficient and ready to handle a greater workload.  By resolving these issues together as a staff, ”Annie” learned that it is important for her to be more proactive in seeking more work when other tasks are completed.  In turn, our consulting staff learned that we could harness the power of social media to have quick contact with some of our temporaries when urgent client needs arise.

Social media transitioned to “win/win” for us as a business.  This experience brought us into a larger conversation about how we could best utilize SM techologies (within their individual Term of Service, of course).  And now being on twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, and similar sites are part of my daily work responsibilities as a consultant!

We needed to hire a branch manager for a remote location – pronto! The company was about to be sold and the position needed to be filled before the deal closed. To save time, and money we interviewed a candidate via video conference. He was qualified and references checked out ok – not great but ok. We hired him. The staff in that branch was furious! You see, the SMELL of someone is not detected in a video conference. And he stunk. I felt so bad for the staff that inherited him as their manager.

I began my career as a recruiter, hiring IT folk. In my third week I interviewed a lady who arrived with her newborn baby in a sling around her shoulder. Unsure as to whether this was normal practice or not, I began going through my interview script and the interview was ticking along nicely until the baby began to get upset. Without missing a beat, my interviewee pulled down one side of her shawl and began to breastfeed the baby whilst still discussing her experience with me; I was a pretty shy 24-year old at the time and didn’t really know where to look, though both mother and nipper looked happy enough. We concluded the interview with baby still suckling and I trailed back to my desk, wondering whether I’d made the correct career choice or not! Disappointingly, nothing remotely similar has ever happened since.

One of my bosses was interviewing a college student in one of those small interview rooms in a college placement office when the interviewee passed gas.  Since there were only two present, it was clear who the culprit was.  The young man blushed apologized and promptly left the room.