2022 Mission for HR ladies

 

Flying back to Moose Jaw for Christmas vacation was not a piece of cake, albeit my first class ticket and the use of the Premier Jet Set Executive Senior Lounge. There was a 6 hour delay on the Air Canada flight and worse, my 141 year old mother kept texting me asking me for an "update". Mom has become rather ornery. Ornery is a word that my (many) non English readers may not understand, so here is a link. 

 

 I decided to make the best of a bad situation, in line with my core values of "leveraging crisis for the best" by putting together my goals for 2022. To be honest, I had already planned my 2022 in 1997, but I did tweak them in line with my core values of "flexible steadfastness". 

 

My first goal is "Smashing Defeatism". Far too many of my lesser colleagues in HR tend to feel that we are facing a new reality, which changes the "old order". HR in this new reality is a handmaiden to the stricken nerd, a shoulder to cry on, as it were. I find this muy malo and non-wow, if you get my drift. "There is no order but the old order, and HR is the lubricant". This pretty well sums up my first goal.

 

My second goal is "Mitigate the Side Effects of Working from Home", which some continental people call "teletrabajo". #WFH causes lack of appropriate attention to detail, shirking and absconding authority, weight gain, demands for more perks, such as better laptops and compensation for lunch. In 2022, #wfh will come to an end and if it doesn't, then it will anyway. How long can we go on having our office space go to waste and suffer the mutterings of our ungrateful workforce, many of whom I recruited at sea or on a mountaintop whilst fleeing the mid east, Africa or Afghanistan.

 

My third goal is "let them eat cake". Yes! This hardly needs any explanation, but I will explain anyway due to my core value of "mission clarity". Due to all this Diversity and Inclusion bs, our cafeteria menu serves too much spicy food, far too much rice and dishes with names in foreign languages. Our white nerds, very few of them left (let truth be told), have complained that the cheese cake we used to serve was ditched. Out of some respect to the the white race from which I come, I plan to reinstate the cheese cake.

 

Finally, my fourth goal is "letting the punishment fit the crime. Most of our nerds come from countries where most things are punished with execution or even partial decapitation, so it's hard to scare them into obedience. However, we will transfer all nerds who misbehave into Accounts Payable for a week, where I think that they will gain an understanding of the consequences of right and wrong behaviour. They will be under the command of Finanzchef Mister Herr Krebbs. 

Happy new year to you all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Firing 900 people by Zoom

 

                                                                         Gloria and Cynthia Axe

Some organizations give HR a bad name. Firing 900 people by Zoom is neither global, or sustainable, or agile. Comrade Karl Marks, our chief nerd, told me that "compared to that fiasco, Gloria, you look like Sister Theresa", who was a famous kind- hearted nun. 

Nevertheless, business partnership (salted with being a People Person) does require at times harsh measures, such as firing 900 people all at once. Thus, how do I reconcile (or align) this statement with my previous statement-in line with my core value of "aligning my statements"?

That's not very difficult to answer. It's all about context and method.

Had I been asked (or axed) how to carry out this task, I would have first celebrated "Pruning Day", in which all our nerds get a pair of scissors and trim the plants in our window sills as well as the garden on the roof of our building. After that, I would have hired a few of consultants (pro bono), who would ask  nerds to conjure up what associations does  "pruning" conjure as related to 1) words, 2) presentation's and 3) organizations. 

Then, I would divide 900 nerds into three groups. That means 3 groups of 300. Claro? Each group would be allocated to one of three "pruning mentors", Mister Herr Krebbs our CFO; Hugh White, the white heterosexual who manages diversity, and Ms Cynthia Axe, our in-house downsizer.

Our pruning mentors would then prune each group down to zero in 30 days, fifteen of which would be retroactive. Oui.

Three pruning tools would be used-Whatsapp, Skype and Signal. These pruning tools would be used in spirts over a 24 hour period, to provide a degree of randomness.

Finally, each pruned nerd would get a handshake at the door by one of our C level executives: Comrade Karl, CEO Stan or yours truly.

HR is a not a science. It is an art. And the HR lady must be an artist par excellence, which are French words.

My Dad's best friend was Art Dupont.