2025's challenges for the HR manager: and how to handle all 4 of them

 I have been on a sabbatical recently, getting a PhD in AI and German grammar. The AI stuff was easy. 

I won't talk about the German grammar part.

Anyway 2025 is upon is, and from what I understand,  Australia,  New Zealand, Samoa and the Canary Islands are already well into 2025-if I am not mistaken. So I'd better hustle and set forth my four part blueprint for 2025's HR thought leaders.

1-The implementation of transgender toilets has been "pushed out" to a later date. This is not because transgender toilets are unimportant, but because our plan to hire transgender employees was frozen by our head of R&D, Comrade Karl Marks, who just returned from the mid east. Here is what Karl blurted out at an all hands meeting:

 "The woke crowd have been caught with their pants down. The whole map of interests is shifting. We need to hire better engineers, without any PC criteria. HR Diversity is a thing of the past, just like OD and the slogan that "people matter".  Long live Otto Van Bismarck."

Thus, I plan to reintroduce transgender toilets when the Dems are back in power. In other words, don't hold your (m) or your (f) breath.

2) I cannot emphasize how important AI is to the future of HR. It's as important as flossing your teeth or washing your hands after a stay in the toilet. I have set up an AI committee, we will celebrate "AI Monday" weekly and ....get this....we will hire 5 nerds names AI-leen, male or female. Sorry, female.

3) Working from Home is now a crime against humanity. Unlike scurvy, it it is not lethal to the employee, but rather to the firm. Yes- there are mitigating circumstances due to which working from home will be permitted-for example earthquakes near HQ, civil war or an outbreak of leprosy. But don't bet the farm that WFH will be tolerated. Thank you for your understanding.

4) HR strives for gender equality-especially in hiring, downsizing and medical care for various intimate diseases. We hire pregnant staff, whether male or female, as long as the candidate verify their ten-month plan, which can be downloaded almost anonymously on line.

 

It's done: my HR department is all digital

 

It's done; my HR department has been digitalized, leveraging on AI, bigdata, small data, windows 11 as well as fully in line with my core value of "saving my own ass".

Here's why:

As we transitioned into the last leg of 2024 it became clear that our client base was not aligned with our growth plan; thus the need to adapt to the devolving nature of our non-positive growth.

Here's how:

Our Diversity Chief, Hugh White who is (was) white and heterosexual, passed away when hit in the head by an axe wielded by his wife Ludmilla White, perhaps due to a misunderstanding about Hugh's whereabouts. I decided to digitalize Diversity because our board members decided to "fire the bitch (me)  if she wastes money hiring people who can't speak English and is opposed to not checking peoples' chromosomes in order to determine what crapper to use". 

Nowadays, Diversity is handled by voice enabled software that determines colour, sexual proclivity and level of HR services available. All staff will be asked to read the latest and greatest book on Diversity.

Cynthia Axe, our former Chief Downsizer, moved to Denmark because "I want to be happy". She has a government job, giving out free housing to immigrants.  All our downsizing is now done via AI. All employees get a buzzer which gives them a slight electric shock when they have been downsized, and virtual reality removes them from the office even before they have actually left.

One on one coaching and business partnering is now executed by our two bots, Pauline and Mao. Pauline speaks in a Scottish accent and Mao speaks in a Chinese accent. Most of our nerds come from India, Israel and Russia, and we are developing a bot to handle the relevant tongues spoken by the aforementioned. In Russia people speak Russian or Ukrainian and in Israel, people speak in Hebrew or Russian, Russian or Russian. In India, there are 87878 languages.

With my entire department digitalized,  my focus is on augmenting my skills in AI, predictive analysis about not-meeting-deadlines as well as preemptive counter-strikes against employees who bad mouth us to our clients. 

I stop at nothing in order to maintain our reputation. I learnt that from a blog written by an African. I am global and very diverse.

 

How to determine a candidate's ability to work in an AI - rich environment

 

"AI" could have been my middle name, but alas I was not given a middle name. This having been said, even someone who has no middle name is not necessarily a dumbass. 

I don't need to tell my readers how important AI is. Rumor has it that AI is more popular that schnitzel in Vienna or triple cheeseburgers with onions in the US. However, we ladies in HR do not rely (only) on rumors, we use big data. This having been said, bigdata is smaller than AI, from an HR perspective.

I shall move on. On Friday, we had a senior management meeting to define the domain knowledge that our nerds  need to have about AI in order to pass the hurdle and join our team. Hitherto, all a nerd needed to join our firm was a valid foreign passport, a name such as Sanjay, Moshe or Lars, and a belief in intrinsic compensation. 

This has changed. Due to our "brand recognition strategy", all new nerds need AI domain expertise, albeit limited.

Mister Herr Krebbs, our CFO, noted that "ve are not in ze fielt of AI-so vay ve haf  is zis disussion".  Our CTO and User Experience Czar, Comrade Karl Marks, eyed our downsizer Ms Axe and noted that "there is nothing artificial about you". Our CEO Stan asked me to boil down the "entry bar" to the correct answer to 3 basic questions. The Head of Diversity, Hugh White (who is straight and white as a lily) added that "being born in Asia or a ghetto must not impact the ability to answer the questions properly".

I made a note to myself that Hugh need a corrective action plan, including a year in invoicing.

Based on the input of my colleagues, I penned three questions, which will appear from tomorrow on our web site/candidates/questionnaire/english.

1) Do you think AI can be smarter than a seasoned HR lady with feline instincts?

2) If you were swimming across the English channel, would you rather rest in Jersey, or read an article generated by AI?

3) If you were in Scotland, would you try to understand the local dialect, or use google translate?

 

Diversity Under Attack

 

The Diversity Project Manager on my team, Hugh White, burst into my room whilst I was texting my sister, Marie de la Montagne Vilner O'Brien Ramsbottom.

Hugh White happens to be white as a lily and heterosexual, his partner being his lovely wife Ludmilla White nee Khruschev. True, Ludmilla and young Hugh have their rough patches, but I have no reason to believe that Hugh and Lud don't roll in the hay, from time to time.

But, I want to get back to the point.

I could see that Hugh had wet his pants and was shaking like a maple leaf. "My life is in ruins. My career is caduc. Cursed is the ship that brought us here." 

Hugh was upset.

Listening is a great tool and feigned listening is even better. Continuing to text Marie, I asked Hugh to put some meat on the bone and not yelp like a yelper.

"Gloria, all the Diversity buzzwords we have been throwing around, all the smoke we have been blowing up peoples' rear ends, all the rainbow-type love thy neighbour is becoming like as passe as French became as the language of diplomacy.  People confuse between bisexual and bi partisan, between worse and worstest, and poetic justice and plagiarism".

Hugh fell on knees. "What will become of me; I have such  huge fucking mortgage [payments and Ludmilla shops for clothes like there is no tomorrow? Can you move me into recruitment"?

I reassured Hugh that no one, no one, will close down our Diversity Project-we have recruited more Asians than a Chinese restaurant; our IT department looks like we are in Chad and we don't permit too much harassment of Jews.

At which point I received a text from CEO Stan, a Harvard graduate "before Harvard became a "woke shit hole", in his words. "Gloria, close the Diversity Project and if you argue with me, I will fry your white ass and send you back to Canada on a one way ticket. Love, Stan"

Hugh will be setting up our recruitment department, which will report into our CFO, the German Mister Herr Krebbs, who claims that "ve need to trim fifty per -zent frrrrom ze head count".

 

 

Fighting off an acquisition

Truth as an alternative

Truth be told (which sometimes is an alternative), I have been busier than a one armed paper hanger. True, I did take a short vacation in the United Arab Emirates where I obeyed most of the local customs, but my main task has been fighting off an unwanted acquisition. 

There is little (no) reason to believe that anyone was interested in our product suite; my guess is that they wanted to acquire us because of our HR department achievements of 1) "cost effective labour force" and 2) our capability recruitment of migrant immigrants with talent at sea.

In secret talks, I offered my services to the acquiring company for a price tag (discrete-but does include a Samsung 23 Ultra, first class on Emirates and a Tesla) but they were constrained by their core values of full transparency, which seems to me pretty dumb. 

In order to fight off the acquisition, I arranged a meeting between our chief nerd Comrade Karl Marks and Miss Cynthia Axe our downsizer.

                             Engineering and Organized Crime

Comrade Karl spoke with a heavy Russian accent about our clients' myopic biases in assessing our innovative product. The comrade is not Russian, but he was a communist in his youth; he studied Engineering and Organized Crime in Moscow. The meeting between the comrade and the prospective owners can be described non-wow. Karl said that "since our clients' staff  implemented working from home one day a week, our 'pustemah clients' are disconnected from reality and scorn our product's unique value add; which is an undiscovered pearl".

Miss Axe focused on her business partnership approach during downsizing season, and furthermore suggested that the acquiring company speak to our Finance director, Mister Herr Krebbs. Axe: "Krebbs has a real German accent and you'll get tons of details, but at least it's a real accent. Comrade Karl is a basket case".

                              Cynthia Axe: Tis the season to be jolly

Mister Herr Krebbs was in a quandary. On one hand, he wanted to spill the beans to protect his own Arsch after the deal is signed. On the other hand, Krebbs is loyal, which may or may not be a good thing. Herr Krebbs did however disclose one thing: "ve haf no Kash in ze Bank". Krebbs always uses capital letters when he writes Bank.

CEO Stan demanded that I meet with the acquiring company to "blow up the fucking deal immediately or I will send you back to Canada, to freeze your white ass off". 

So, I set up a meeting with our Diversity Project Manager, Hugh White, and met with their CEO about "factoring in diversity". Hugh went on and on, and when we woke up, we were outside, lying on the sidewalk, near a newspaper stand where the economic headline read: 

Major Deal Off.