Questionnaire- How diverse are YOU?

100% non diverse

Today was Diversity Day, and Hugh White, the straight white boy who runs our diversity plan, gave a lecture to our middle management about how to diagnose the level of diversity in each team. 

During Hugh's long, tedious, protracted lecture, the audience texted their family and friends, sending Whatsapp messages to their native homelands. When Hugh finished his talk, 69% of the nerds were sound asleep.

Hugh had prepared an online questionnaire, which I have included below, which all middle managers need to "administer to the nerds in order to determine their level of diversity". A nerd who score 5 "yes" scores is considered "very diverse"; every manager can have no more than 30 direct reports with more than a 5 score. At least that's the HR diversity goal for 2020.

1) In your native homeland, can you vote more than once in each election?

2) Are women in your homeland often murdered if they loose their virginity before they are married?

3) Are mosque and synagogue shootings frequent?

4) Do you walk around your hometown with a gun, spear or hand grenade?

5) When you speak English, do clients often ask you to repeat yourself?

6) Do you like spicy, hot food?

7) Does your native homeland have free, unfettered elections, yet most journalists are in jail?

8) Do you need to pay for sex before marriage in your homeland?
9) Does the  Field-Marshall,  King or Queen of your native land advocate flogging people who engage in some types of sexual activity?

10) Are more than 30% of politicians in your tribal homeland generals or former generals? 

Hugh sent me an email just now, after having scored the above questionnaire for all our engineers.

"Gloria, we have problem. There is no one who is not diverse except for you and me. Hugh"

Blockchain and labour contracts

Meaning

In today's post, I shall share with you, my loyal readers, innovations to our new labour contract.  
I generally do not share my thought leadership free of charge; this having been said, sometimes I cannot control my selflessness and I cave in, from an HR perspective. So let me roll out the whole story.

I just returned from a meeting with our labour relations lawyer,  to whom I explained needed refinements to our existing employee contract. I constructed these refinements using an Austrian blockchain which was assembled in Hungary.

The lawyer-boys heard me out, promising that within a week, it will all be word-smithed and ready for launch. 
By the way, in grade school, there were twin girls in my class, Sheila and Sharon Wordsmith.

Some of the changes in the contract may be perceived overly liberal, yet I promise my readers that Liberal is not my middle name. Alas, I was never given a middle name. Had I been given such a name, I would have been called "People".

Now to the meat. These are the main points which will be introduced into our labour contract.

1-Long term employment is not in anyones’ interest. It is an old fashioned and stodgy concept. Employees agree that being fired by text is part of the deal, Lucille.

2-Clearly, salaries and other pecuniary perks will be aligned with client payment schedules

3-Employees understand that discretionary effort and running an extra mile are our core values, augmented by intrinsic motivation and willingness for self-sacrifice.

4-Mobile phones are to be left open; calls are to be answered seamlessly within 3 rings. During bio-breaks and sexual activity, the phone will be set on vibrate.

5-Remember and respect the HR lady, so that your days may long upon the Earth.

When I left the lawyers office, one of the young interns walked me to my car, carrying my briefcase. 
The lawyers have a way of making me feel like a million dollars. It provides me with meaning.

Building bridges between Nerds and Sales People-The role of the HR lady

It has been one month since our latest product was released and launched in a small corrupt island off the coast somewhere in the Pacific near Australia, where people throw spears and litter the beach with plastic.

The product crashed upon installation, taking out the Island’s electrical grid for 3 weeks. Many people in the aforementioned island don’t use electricity, but the prime minister and his family sure do and a lot of noise was thus generated.

Our sales manager, who had visited the island several times, is now being held hostage, and being fed with tribal food which is far too spicy.

In the meantime, the interface between our Sales team and R&D team has degenerated, making the middle-east look like a garden of peaceful co-existence. To be more exact, there have been 3 stabbings in the parking lot, and a Molotov cocktail was thrown in the dining hall.

Naturally, this is a people problem and I acted without delay by holding a round table dialogue between Sales and R&D under my auspices in the HR Conference Room aka the Vatican.

The discussion got out of hand after Comrade Carl Marks made his opening comments.

This is what Comrade Carl said, after I promoted HR and then handed him the microphone.

“Nerds, salesmen and sales women, Gloria, the precious Ms Axe, I wish you all a good afternoon. Lend me your ears. Instead of pointing out how useless our Sales team is, and how finicky our client is, I want to tell you about how things work in Saudi Arabia”.

I knew then that this dialogue would be non-wow. The Comrade continued.

“The Sauds and the Wahhabis are two families who work in synergy to run the joint. The Sauds provide the state mechanism and the armed forces, and the Wahhabi boys provide religion and morality. It works wonders, except a limited number of unexpected excesses, which happen everywhere, even in Britain.”

“I see the relation between Sales and Engineering much in the same light. We are 2 love birds in the same nest. We engineers provide the user experience, the brains, the sophistication; Sales handles the tut—tut-tutting customer and other background noise by managing customers’ expectations. It is a marriage made in heaven”.

Comrade Carl then pointed at me saying, “Gloria has good intentions, but HR is full of shit. In Saudi Arabia, most of the HR managers are either British expats or Saudi princesses. Gloria is from Canada, and with all due respect, what does she know about anything except paper work and visas? This conference is dismissed”.

Carl pointed at the door and told his nerds, “bara bara”, with means go out, I was told. But I am not sure in which language.

I just got this text from our CEO Stan. “Gloria- great work. I heard that Comrade Carl gave a great speech. Stan”.

Bara bara

Enhancing a job candidate's user experience: my 2 Groschen

When we are considering hiring a new candidate, be he or she an illegal immigrant or not, it is incumbent upon the sophisticated HR lady to create a user experience second to none, as it were.

As such, I will document the tools that I, as the first lady of HR, have at my disposal, and how I deploy these tools, as it were.

First and foremost, I deploy Ms Cynthia Axe to keep abreast of the candidates in the waiting room and cater to their needs by bringing coffee, tea or any other tribal refreshment they may desire.

Deploying Ms Axe (on the right)

Second as they wait in line to be fingerprinted and deliver a stool sample, the candidates fill out the following questionnaire which is available in the 23 languages spoken in our software department.

1) Do you speak good English, or are you constantly being asked, "what did you say"?

2) Are you willing to work harder than you did previously, receive less pay, and remain highly engaged, including discretionary effort?

3) Do you agree with the following sentence? "Booze and sex are not weekend events that I hold in high esteem".

4) Do you consider an HR lady to be a business partner, a shoulder to cry on, and a Pharaoh to be obeyed?

5) Are you self sufficient from a wellness point of view?

6) Do you have parents or siblings or children suffering from ailments that may de-focus the work effort?

7) Are you willing to take customer calls in the toilet?

8) Do you agree that the rank and file need to do what they are told?

9) Do you like eating pizza at 2 am? Or do you whine that you get  constipation? 

9b) Can you work in a virtual team and feign trust?

10) Do you enjoy taking flights to client sites that leave at 3 am?

Ms Axe's presence and this questionnaire actually can cause a candidate some degree of excitement (albeit not sexual) and  create an emotional bond similar to a mind-blowing user experience.

That's my two Groschen on hiring.