Jim Thomason's "The Business of People"

If you've read this blog or followed my tweets since I started using social media you know it has been an uneven path.  I have twice deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts only to re-start them some time later.  I have vacillated on the best use of this blog and generally questioned the whole purpose of this medium. Now a few years later I use this blog, Facebook, Twitter and Linked In on a regular basis. The reason I use four sites when I once questioned the use of social media at all is simple; it makes sense to separate various types of communication among various outlets and restrict access to some. If you have ever sent a Facebook friend request and been ignored, or worse yet been accepted and subsequently dropped, do not feel excluded.  I use Facebook for family and current close friends only. By that I mean if we grew up together but haven't seen each other since high school, or we work together but do not see each other socially, I don't grant you access on ...

There are all manner of new-concept workplaces written about in on-line and print media.  From Google to Zappos HR professionals are forever getting articles, some of them sent anonymously, about the rule-less workplace; where performance is all that matters and policies are so last-gen. New Concept, Meet Reality. As much as I would like to build a workplace where the rules are minimal to non-existent, there is a huge looming presence that makes that irresponsible in the form of Federal, State and Local Governments. The various laws and regulations promulgated and enforced by various government agencies at all levels comprise a bureaucracy that can be used as a weapon against employers.  Some of these are staffed by true believers who honestly feel that greed and discrimination are institutionalized in every workplace and its their job to use the full force of government to set things right. HR's job is multi-faceted, but it is primarily to build a fair workplace where...

I came on board at Thomas Nelson in April 2001.  There was a lot wrong with the overall HR program for a lot of reasons (no body's fault in my estimation; just a dysfunctional evolution), which was why I was recruited.  The one thing that was going right was payroll, and by May of 2001 I had managed to screw that up pretty well. We were closing all operations except Plano, TX and Nashville.  To do that required that we consolidate payroll processing from four ADP processing centers in four different regions of the country into one center in Atlanta.  We had a new payroll person and we didn't know what we didn't know. The first pay date after going live with the consolidation we had 265 messed-up paychecks.  The ADP center in Atlanta, we would come to find out, trained its people on small accounts like ours.  Our instructions weren't followed and we didn't know how to find that out before the line formed outside our door. One fateful week all sales commi...