HR Watches "The Office"

Rebels with a cause

Matt Dubno — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:00:34 +0000

Michael Scott is a rebel. Like many protagonists in American storytelling, Michael’s genius is his alternative approach, which others fight against, but it brings success to him and his team. Well… sort of. Michael has a knack for humiliating people, looking like a fool, and distracting his workers, but his branch’s sales numbers are very good.

In this episode of HR Watches The Office, we are very excited to have the HR rebel Laurie Ruettimann to discuss the practice of alternative approaches in HR, career, and life. Laurie is a former HR pro turned no-bull HR blogger, speaker, critic, and writer. She is most noted for her critically acclaimed blog Punk Rock HR, which is listed as one of the top five career advice web sites by CareerBuilder and CNN. She is a columnist for The Conference Board Review, is frequently published in nationally recognized publications, and advocates for having the balls (see picture) for a humanistic and common sense approach to traditional employment practices.

While discussing when a new path can be carved, why it may be needed, and how it can succeed, we discover that an alternative approach is most often a route back to the road that values people’s lives above all else.

Matt

Good ideas are simple

There’s been a murder!
(for distraction)

What Kelly wants

Successfully Facilitating Organizational Change

Matt Dubno — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:26:45 +0000

Dunder Mifflin has been sold! The Scranton office is safe (surprisingly it’s the only money maker of the entire organization) while David Wallace and his fellow executives will all be fired (for good reason). With new owners, a fiscal need for change, and pressure to improve quickly from stockholders, internal Dunder Mifflin is about to get a little messy, as it attempts to transition into… well, we’re not really sure yet. The second half of season six of The Office has great potential for wonderful comedic conflict and HR nightmares up the wazzu.

In this edition of “HR Watches The Office,” we’ve invited organization effectiveness expert Michael Couch, founder and president of Michael Couch & Associates. We discuss with Michael how Dunder Mifflin can effectively transition to the new and improved powerhouse stockholders hope it can become, and how HR can effectively play a role during times of organizational change. The future is wide open for Michael, Jim, and their staff, will they be guided or try to carve out their own way like they’ve always done before?

Matt

Dunzo Mifflin…

Time to transition…
and stage dive

Trying to fix the low morale

When the company might be imploding

Matt Dubno — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:33:09 +0000

Dunder Mifflin is in major financial trouble and the company is now being sold. According to CFO David Wallace, he and all the other executives are going to be canned, but the Scranton office will be okay. However, in tough times, you never know what can happen. A bad economy and corporate restructuring can lead to any number of possibilities.

For any professional, the chance of losing one’s job requires preparation for the future. For the HR team of any transitioning company, each HR professional has to look out for their personal career while maintaining responsibilities within their current crashing company. It’s a tough circumstance.

In this episode we talk with career coach and veteran business manager Patty DeDominic, founder and president of the specialized consulting group DeDominic & Associates. We’ll discuss what Dunder Mifflin employees, real-life professionals, and HR teams can do to make the best out of a really bad situation.

Matt

“It’s a Christmas miracle!”

Communicating Organizational Change

Matt Dubno — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:45:58 +0000

In recent episodes of NBC’s The Office, a dark cloud has entered the Dunder Mifflin skies. All signs point to bankruptcy, or at least major restructuring, for the corporation. When there’s great conflict within the Scranton branch, the flood gates are open for opportunity for us to talk HR. Bottom line: this massive piece of organizational change was communicated very poorly, with tantalizing conflicts arising.

To talk about the right ways to communicate organizational change, I sat down for this podcast with Lawrence Polsky, a Managing Partner for PeopleNRG, INC based in Princeton, NJ. Lawrence and his company help leaders implement change of all kinds, and he has a new book coming out this February through McGraw-Hill entitled “Perfect Phrases for Communicating Change.” This topic of change management is quite deep, and although David Wallace and his executive posse take some major missteps, you might find a little sympathy for them. Let’s get down to it!

Matt

The vague email

Slacker Ryan

A healthy distraction?

Promotions & Compensation

Matt Dubno — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:12:26 +0000

At Dunder Mifflin, it’s one big happy family. The words “happy” and “family” might be a stretch, but Michael Scott works hard to keep everyone together. However, in a family, roles rarely change. At Dunder Mifflin, roles have been changing with Jim and Michael, and a poor economy has limited the bi-weekly chore allowances.

How do promotion and compensation issues affect employee motivation and morale, and how does that trickle down to the customer? In this week’s podcast, we talk with Murat Philippe about how to handle the conflicts surrounding promotions and compensation. Murat is a Principal Consultant for Chicago-based HR Solutions, Inc. Murat collects and analyzes employee feedback data, specializing in the correlation between employee and customer satisfaction.

Matt

The bugged mallard

http://www.hulu.com/embed/
Am6vw9t252LFlt3NKzgGQg/118/171

Poor raise negotiation

http://www.hulu.com/embed/OB8BLSZXgo4iti-Tv38y1g/50

From Engaged Employees to Employee Engagement

Matt Dubno — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:53:36 +0000

The issue of what motivates the employees of Dunder Mifflin and spurs them on to great feats of paper sales is something we’ve touched on a number of times in past podcasts, but never really in-depth. In this week’s episode of HR Watches The Office, work management expert John Schaefer joins me to discuss Michael’s attempts to motivate his employees and build a team environment in the office, as well as sharing insight on how Jim and Michael can leverage their own individual strengths to become effective branch co-managers. Also, we talk about methods of employee recognition that go beyond the Dundie Awards.

John is the founder and president of the Schaefer Recognition Group, a consulting firm in Glendale, Arizona that helps employees bring their “A” game every day– because they want to. He is also author of the book “The Vocational Shrink: An Analysis of the Ten Levels of Workplace Disillusionment.”

Join the discussion by leaving your thoughts in the comments section!

Matt

Treat smart people like adults

Push coming to shove

So mental he could write a book about it

Beyond the Wedding Bells

Matt Dubno — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:19:10 +0000

The Pam-Jim wedding, besides being the catharsis that many fans of the Office have been waiting for over five seasons, is a good time to pause and take the 30,000 foot view of the state of Dunder Mifflin. In this episode, Patty Sharkey, who last spoke with us about the ins and outs of office dress codes, joins me again to talk about a range of topics, including Pam and Jim’s strange and possibly inappropriate demands of their co-workers, the difficulty in navigating the line between personal and professional behavior. And yes, we’ll discuss the most anticipated wedding on TV since Monica and Chandler.

Patty Sharkey is the Executive Director of Human Resources with Greenlaw Partners, LLC, a real estate development and investment management firm in Newport Beach, California.

Join the discussion by leaving your thoughts in the comments section!

Matt

Who’s The Boss?

Matt Dubno — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:52:02 +0000

“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” –Benjamin Franklin

As we saw on Thursday night’s third episode of The Office, power-sharing in an office, especially a small office such as Dunder Mifflin, can have some unexpected but serious consequences. Whether the decision was small (Dwight’s expense reports) or large (company-wide CoLA raises), Michael and Jim were having some growing pains getting on the same page. Is there hope for this partnership?

For answers to this and other questions, I am joined on this episode of HR Watches The Office by Katherine Crowley of K2 Enterprises. Katherine is a psychotherapist and expert in interpersonal issues that arise from people working together in office settings. She has previously appeared on this podcast to discuss Michael Scott, and we continue to discuss his mindset on this episode. Katherine’s new book, “Working For You Isn’t Working For Me” is a great read, whether your boss is a Michael or a Jim.

We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section!

Matt

Who’s the Boss?

http://www.hulu.com/embed/
AAzjQyxGOEksa-TPqDTaSw/160/193

Michael hears what he wants to hear

http://www.hulu.com/embed/
AAzjQyxGOEksa-TPqDTaSw/401/412

Dwight: Long Arm of the Law

Matt Dubno — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:25:45 +0000

Worker’s compensation claims can be a delicate process. Various stakeholders are involved, including the injured employee, organization, insurance company, and the law. When Darryl makes a worker’s comp claim from an injury in the warehouse, Dwight inappropriately gets involved with little resistance from Toby, sparking a series of privacy and confidentiality violations. The HR fireworks are lit.

In this week’s podcast, I discuss worker’s compensation with employment law expert Tim Davis, of the Lexington, Kentucky law firm Grasch and Gudalis. We address worker’s comp investigations, legal guidelines, and when a third party, such as Dwight, is ever in a position to get involved.

Matt

Eavesdropping Dwight

The Stakeout

Complaints and paperwork

Water-Cooler Gossip

Matt Dubno — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:57:05 +0000

Office gossip can be one of the biggest challenges facing HR professionals as well as employees in general. In the premiere of Season Six of The Office, we saw how rumors about people, even wildly untrue ones, can hurt feelings and disrupt the day-to-day operations of a workplace.

For today’s discussion, I am joined again by Susan Fitter Sloane, founder and CEO of Global Matters, an expert in Lifestyle, Manners, and Interpersonal Skills and who is credentialed in Etiquette and International Protocol. Susan and I will discuss the relative impropriety of gossip, as well as strategies that HR staff and others can use to keep rumors and talk of personal lives out of the office equation.

Matt

The gossip begins

Jim lays it out for Michael

The aftermath of gossip