Human Resources Guide in Cultivating Your Personnel Garden: Proven Methods of Communicating with Your Employees

By Maxine Wilborn

Human Resources Guide to Cultivating Your Personnel Garden is a reference guide intended for human resources professionals in efforts to increase the importance of employees in the workforce. The guide will cover many topics, such as communication methods and styles, understanding the generational difference within your workforce, the importance of the employee evaluation, tips on conducting an ironclad investigation, and protecting your HR department.

Ive been able to apply basic psychology in combination with useful tools acquired in my mental health clinical training in hopes to assist in developing a successful management team. My goal is to educate leaders by defining the wide range of cohort groups within your workforce and introducing new communication methods to exercise throughout your employees employment. If adopted, the benefits will be rewarding to the corporation and encouraging employment personal growth. The hope is not just to provide the human resources professionals with insight and ideas but to offer tools to be adopted by the management team.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514409930

Maxine Wilborn

Maxine Wilborn is of a Southern descent and had an early successful career in Federal Contracting to include the Department of Defense contracting, Federal Law Enforcement, Family Advocacy and Military Readiness Programs. While educated as a Psychologist through the University of Maryland continued her Clinical education at Walden University with honors, she has embraced her educational academics in Clinical Mental Health. Utilizing her education in combination with her 20 years of Human Resource expertise, she has made a positive impact in Human Resources as a North American Human Resource Director for several years. She has taken the opportunity to address employment communication issues impacting the current workforce. Married for 30 years to Zachary James, with two children, Russell James and Kacie James and two grandchildren Kamyran and Jake James and last but not least our four legged family member, our Schnauzer (Oscar).

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Copyright © 2015 by Maxine Wilborn.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015915729

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5144-0995-4

             Softcover    978-1-5144-0994-7

             eBook         978-1-5144-0993-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 09/21/2015

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1   Recognizing the Eclectic Cohort Groups

Who Are Your Prized Personnel?

Your Personnel Gardens Cohort Groups

Baby Boom Generation

Generation X

Generation Y

Millennial Generation, or Second Half of the Ys

A Stroll through the Garden

Nurturing Your Garden

Listening to Your Garden’s Needs

Chapter 2   Listening to Your Employees

What Tools Can Be Used to Ensure Healthy Growth?

The Employee Survey

Asking the Right Questions

Sharing Your Survey Results

Be Ready to Compromise

Be Careful When It Comes to Forced Fun

Chapter 3   Effective Communicating

Put Your Human Resources Gardeners to Work

One-on-Ones: The Private, Confidential Meeting

Cultural Differences

Town Hall Meetings

E-mail Communication

Suggestion Boxes: Pro or Con

The Mysterious Note under Your Door

Instant Messaging

Weekly Department Meetings

Employee Evaluations

The Ninety-Day Review

The Annual Review

Review Acknowledgment

The 360-Degree Evaluations

Chapter 4   Nurturing Your Employees

Applying the Miracle Grow

Confidential Communication

Make Sure Employment Rewards Will Benefit Everyone

Know What Is Being Said and Done When You’re Not Around

Chapter 5   Saving Your Employees

Retention

The Introductory Period

Exit Interviews

Reporting Your Retention

Chapter 6   Tricks of the Trade

From One Human Resources Professional to Another

Recruiting

Conflict Resolution

Watch Out for Those After-Work Dinners with the Executive Team

Concluding Your Day

Introduction

With the workforce continuing to change over the last twenty years, little to no measures have been taken to bridge the gap in communication styles. You have an amalgamation of multiple-generation, diversified professionals working together in combination with a management team that can’t manage themselves, let alone their employees, and employees instilled with immediate gratification, wanting to skip from entry level to CEO. With a diverse generational garden such as the one currently existing in the workforce, you can anticipate conflict. What happens when employees have difficulty communicating with one another? Or more importantly, what happens when management has difficulty managing their personnel garden? Your human resources department has never been more valuable in cultivating your personnel garden.

The last interview I had a couple years ago, I was asked, What was so different twenty years ago that made you stay with a company for eight years? I was a little taken aback by the question, so I was trying to read the general manager to see what kind of fishing expedition he was conducting. Since there was no context, I simply answered the best I could, Loyalty does not exist in the current workforce, and corporations condone the ‘slow to hire and quick to fire’ dais. It was a bold shot in the dark considering I didn’t know if I answered his question. I was surprised he agreed with me, but later I determined it was because he didn’t expect an honest answer. I often get myself in trouble by answering the corporate questions candidly and without filters.

Interestingly enough, the job offer came a couple days later, $20K lower than labor market rate and delivered by the general manager himself. During the casual conversation exchange, he was most confident he acquired his new human resources director. When I didn’t immediately accept or appear to be giddy at the offer, he became offensive and stated, If you don’t take the offer, someone else will. He continued to reassure me the decision to come on board would be one of the best decisions I could make. I took that opportunity while he was boasting his management capabilities to inform him I greatly appreciated the opportunity to join such an elite group as his, but after consideration, I wanted to pull my candidacy for his human resources position.

In reading the exchange between the general manager and me, what does his tone and demeanor tell you about his management style, conflict resolution ability, or the ability of managers he has mentored? I share the previous experience as an example of how individuals communicate with one another. As a society, we have gradually moved forward to a day when communicating with respect is a parable. This particular general manager has no concept of his actions, nor will it be likely he will be able to change in time to recover from his poor management and leadership skills.

After hanging up the phone with the GM, I sat down for a while to digest what just happened. I knew the lack of professionalism was becoming rampant within the professional ranks, but I didn’t know it had reached this point. I also knew corporate management teams were having difficulty with the overall communication across the generational diversity, but this was ridiculous. For just a moment, I thought about taking the position just to help those employees by educating the managers on proper leadership.

The lack of a respectable communication style was the problem, not only in the general manager’s questions and comments during the interview, but also the fact that he didn’t see anything wrong with his interactions with an applicant. I knew he was down a human resources professional, but why on earth would the corporate office let him extend an offer? Where was the human resources VP’s support? Clearly the general manager didn’t have any respect for the human resources professional team. If he were a strong leader, he would have reached out to human resources and asked them for assistance in the recruitment of his vacant human resources position. Leaders in management in general do not have the training needed to conduct interviews, and most I know