Shauna Moerke is…

Wow. I have four, count them FOUR, HR Happy Hours to talk to you about. I guess that’s what happens when you have three shows in one week. But you’re like me and just can’t get enough of the HR Happy Hour, right? Of course you can’t. So let’s get to all the HR geeky goodness!

Episode 60 – Seiden Says
For our 60th show we have a special treat for you all! Steve took the night off but that just meant that we could bring in a special guest host for the evening: Jason Seiden!! I won’t lie to you, it was a fun time. Jason gave out some great advice, I giggled like a weirdo, and everyone learned why I call Jason “punk monkey”. How can you not check it out below?

Episode 61 & 62 Live from HR Florida
We were live from HR Florida this week with two special shows at a special time! And this wasn’t just coverage of the event either, we had some amazing guests on, like first time guests William Tincup and Cathy Martin, who brought some great conversations around HR technology, leadership, and engagement to just to name a few things we tackled. It was so good I sneaked out of work to attend! (Shhhhh! Don’t spread that part around…)

61 – The World According to William Tincup

62 – Leadership and Engagement with Cathy Martin

Episode 63 – The HR Tech Conference Preview
Finishing up the week and back at it’s regularly scheduled day and time, episode 63 was all about the upcoming HR Technology Conference, coming up quickly on Sept. 29th – Oct. 1 in Chicago, IL. To tell us all about the show, the Godfather himself, Bill Kutik was our guest, and he did a great job stealing the show away from Steve! It was great to learn more about the show and I am more excited about attending this year! want to know why you need to go too? Check out the show below!

Thanks for listening in and as always, check out the crazy active #HRHappyHour back channel for the full story!

Dude, I know I said last week’s HR Happy Hour show was going to be crazy, but man, that is one show that “exceeded expectations”! Ha! Get it? It was a show about performance reviews and I said it “exceeded expectations”. Hahaha…ha, erm, yeah, so moving on… It was a great show full of controversy, great questions, comparisons between HR and the KGB, and we had a crazy active #HRHappyHour twitter back channel. Be sure to check it out below!

While I have your attention, you have to check out this week’s HR Happy Hour! Steve will be taking a much needed break from the show but don’t you worry cause Jason Seiden is stepping in and will be your personal career coach for the evening! And he won’t be giving you any of that fluffy advice either. No sir, you better be sure you have the balls to handle it. If you think you do, go here to find out how you can get your question on the show and be sure to join us this Thursday at 8 pm EST. That is, if you have the balls for it.

Last week I tweeted out this little gem:

Saw “willing to meet expectations” on a resume. Aim higher people, seriously.

Ah, I do love reading resumes, you’ll never know what nuggets of HR humor you will stumble upon and have to share with the rest of the world. Hell, Not Hired is a whole site dedicated to that sort of stuff. The more I thought about that line though, the more I came to realize how true of a statement it could be. When it comes to down to it, how many of your employees seem to fall into the category of “willing to meet expectations”? They show up, but that’s about all that you can say about them. They do their job, for the most part. Doing the bare minimum is about all that you can expect of them. They have no real direction or career aspirations, or if they do, it’s certainly not in this job or at this company. Come performance review time, they are harder to evaluate than the worst performers. What do you say to someone who does their basic job but that’s all?

Now, clearly these are not your A performers. They aren’t even B performers. Your B performers actual put in effort and hard work. They are apathetic, disengaged, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. But now that they are in your company what are you supposed to do with them? Be honest. Let them know that you expect more from them, why, and hold them to that. Don’t back down, don’t be vague, and most certainly don’t let them get away with the status quo. When you have an employee who breaks the rules or just doesn’t do their job, it’s easy to find the motivation to give them a proverbial kick in the pants. So why is it so hard for managers to do the same for these employees? The worse that will happen is that the employees will turn into bad performers and get fired or they will decide that the job is suddenly too much of a hassle and leave on their own. Harsh? Maybe. But did you want them in your company anyway? Were they contributing anything of value? The worse thing you can do with an employee who is “willing to meet expectations” is to enable their mediocrity. If nothing else, that’s one less painful performance review you’ll have to do.

Don't be like this manager and maybe they won't flip you off on their way out the door.

Speaking of performance reviews, in my personal experience they always seem to make my head ache, well, it’s more of a stabbing pain behind my right eyeball. Sound familiar? Then you are going to love this week’s HR Happy Hour where we talk to Professor Samuel Culbert, author of ‘Get Rid of the Performance Review!’. It’s going to be a crazy show, so be sure to join us, this Thursday, 8 pm EST.

Another HR Happy Hour is in the can and let me tell you, after 58 shows the craziness still hasn’t gone away. This week we were talking to Tom Silver, SVP of Dice.com, the leading job board for IT and other technical positions. Topics ranged from “Are Job Boards Dead?” to “Is it considered cheating if Lance looks up trivia on Wikipedia?”. Intense stuff right? Well no worries, it was a fun show with a lively discussion, check out the #HRHappyHour twitter back channel for the whole story, and be sure to take a listen to the show below!

That’s right, two more HR Happy Hours are in the can and if you aren’t regularly checking out the show, live or archived, then dude, you are missing out on all the fun!! And useful information and great discussions too. Yeah, I should probably talk that stuff up more than the fun. Anyway, in case you missed them, check out the shows below!

Episode 56
For this episode we previewed all the fun to be had at the HR Florida State Conference & Expo, coming up on August 30th -September 1st in Orlando. Still on the fence about going? Can’t go but curious to hear what they have in store? Want to be tempted to make an 8 hour drive down just to hang with the cool kids? Well, that last one is probably just me but if the rest applies to you then take a listen below!

Episode 57
Do performance reviews make you want to gouge out your eyes with a spoon? Why with a spoon you ask? Cause it would hurt more, and yet, still hurt less than the reviews. Well, then you might be interested in to know that Sonar6 has got your back! Intrigued? You should be. Check out the show below to learn how this New Zealand based software company is dedicated to making performance reviews not only useful but engaging and fun as well!

As always, check out the #HRHappyHour twitter back channel for the full experience and be sure to join us next time!!