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annoucement2 Fact or Fiction?
The Star Spangled Banner is set to the tune of an English drinking song.

Fact!

The Star Spangled Banner is actually set to the tune of an old English drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven”.

Have a safe and happy Forth of July holiday!


Unleash the Hidden Talents of Your Employees
by Ethan L. Chazin, President and founder of The Chazin Group

Imagine being able to unleash the hidden talents and untapped skills of EVERY single one of your employees?

Imagine if every single one of your employees, from front-line staff to senior management, was 100% engaged, doing the work they were cut out for, contributing to the success of your organization by focusing on their core competencies. Can you envision the collective power you would unleash? No laggards…just a company filled with rising stars. Absenteeism would drop instantly, worker defections to your competitors would cease entirely. Entire Departments would start exceeding quotas.

You would become a preferred employer, and employee recruitment would be an exercise in picking the talent you wanted. Better yet, what if I told you this CAN be achieved and WITHOUT the tremendous cost and resource drain of investing in hard to measure training programs? That long sought after seat at the Management Table would suddenly materialize for you, the HR professional.

Does this sound too good to be true? Well, it’s not. There is a beautifully simple tool called a human capital development audit that you can implement immediately to achieve these results.

Here’s how it works…for each employee in your organization, you match the roles and responsibilities of the job they are employed in with their skills, core competencies, and experiences. Be as expansive and broad as possible in identifying their skills. Consider their academic training, software skills, certifications, professional development, leadership, cultural diversity…everything!

The following diagram illustrates a human capital audit conducted for the fictitious customer service rep, Jessica Rivera. After identifying all the roles and responsibilities she is tasked with accomplishing, you then detail her skills. Use a spreadsheet and simply line up the roles and skills along one another in facing columns.

These details should be obtained through interviews with Jessica, her current (and any past) managers, her coaches/mentors, peers she has worked with, etc.

Next, you drill down to identify which skill sets that she possesses are NOT being utilized. In order to maximize the positive impact to your organization from an ROI perspective, you should prioritize those skills that she is NOT currently using, based on her ability to generate revenues, reduce costs, improve your organization’s processes, etc.

Then, you must develop an action plan for all of the highest priority non-leveraged skills that Jessica possesses. For each untapped skill, set a timeframe for completion and any contingencies or potential barriers that would prevent her (and her Manager) from making those untapped skills part of her newly redesigned job description.

In Jessica’s case, she is adept at using her persuasive, good-natured personality to suggest complimentary products to cross-up sell to her company’s existing clients. It’s her nature to take care of her clients, and she naturally knows how to ask probing questions. She also has an uncanny knack for being a leader on her Team. She’s the one that other customer service reps in her unit turn to for advice, even before they engage their own line managers. These are powerful skills to have in a customer care manager and yet, they are not being leveraged in this scenario.

For this human capital audit to work, it has to be embraced by your senior management, owned by Human Resources, and conducted for ALL departments and levels of your organization. It should be reviewed quarterly. Merit-based compensation plans should be developed for employees that integrate untapped core competencies into their new roles and responsibilities.

Having said that, most HR professionals that I work with and lecture indicate this is not possible. They say it is a big time commitment for something that doesn’t seem to be quantifiable, in terms of impact to the organization.

I would offer that, in this challenging economic environment, even if you only achieve a 50% increase in each employee’s productivity the positive potential impact to your organization would be great. I guarantee that a 50% increase in your entire organization’s productivity will force Senior Management to take notice of Human Resource’s role as a strategic partner in driving value through the organization.

Submitted by:
Ethan L. Chazin, President and founder of The Chazin Group. The Chazin Group delivers career consulting services to job seekers, companies, career centers and job placement offices of academic institutions, and governmental organizations. Ethan can be reached at Ethan@TheChazinGroup.com, or visit him on the web at http://thechazingroup.blogspot.com or www.TheChazinGroup.com.


July 4th Crash Course in History
Barbeques. Retail sales. Fireworks. These are a few of the things we think of when we consider the 4th of July, or Independence Day. But was July 4th the real day that America was born? In this issue of Astronology, we take a quick crash course into U.S. History – and a holiday break from HR – with some startling and fun facts.

The Real Story

While we’ve all taken some type of American History course at sometime in our lives, we may be surprised to learn that one of our favorite national holidays might have untrue legends attached to it. For instance, many believe the separation of the U.S. from Britain occurred on July 4th, 1776. In fact, the actual separation of the U.S. from Britain occurred on July 2, 1776. On this day, the Second Continental Congress, a convention with delegates from all the original 13 colonies, approved by vote a resolution of independence from Britain. This document is also known as The Lee Resolution.

Soon after, the Declaration of Independence was signed. While many believe that this document was officially signed on July 4th 1776, this too isn’t exactly true. According to the book, Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, by Carl Becker, most of the delegates didn’t sign the Declaration of Independence until August 2, 1776. Yet, despite these two facts, for centuries, Independence Day has been celebrated on July 4th. Why?

The answer is very simple. Congress didn’t approve the document that would be the Declaration of Independence until July 4th 1776. It wasn’t until 1870 that Congress decided to make Independence Day a federal holiday for federal employees.

Other Interesting Facts

There are other interesting facts about and in honor of Independence Day. These include the followings:

• On its 50th anniversary, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, signers of the Declaration of Independence, passed away.
• In order to commemorate Independence Day, both Benjamin Franklin and John Adams held a dinner for Americans that were “in and about Paris, [France]” at the time.
• There was an estimate of 2.5 million people in America on July 4, 1776. Last year, the population was 304 million people.
• There are 31 places in the nation today with the name “Liberty” attached to it.
• There are nine locations in the United States that have adopted the name “Freedom”; Freedom, California has the largest population of these nine locations with a population estimate of 6,000 residents.
• This year, July 4th falls on a Saturday. This means that for federal employees who are observing the holiday, Friday, July 3rd will be the day of observance.
• Had July 4th fallen on a Sunday, employees would have Monday off instead. The most recent July 4th that fell on a Sunday occurred in 1999.
-Facts taken from the census bureau website and from James R. Heintze’s website, The Fourth of July Celebrations Database

Enjoy the Day

Whether you take advantage of celebrating this holiday by hosting a family and friends barbeque, visiting historical places, or enjoying retail therapy (otherwise known as shopping), why not take the time to discuss some of these interesting facts with your friends and family? We are sure they would be just as surprised as you are by the information!



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Coming Next Time to an Astronology near you!
bullet Astron Road Show 
bullet2 Fact or Fiction?
bullet22009 SHRM Annual Conference & Exposition Recap



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ISSN Number 1549-0467

 
     
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