If you do any meeting or workshop facilitation, this video will make it easier! It provides an overview of facilitation and many tactical insights which I plan to apply at my next facilitation.

You never need fear that guy who slouches in his seat with his arms crossed ever again.

My guest for this was Robin Parsons. Robin owns a facilitation company called Parsons Dialogue. She has been doing this work for 10 years and even teaches facilitation through ICA Associates. After talking with her I can see how I would have benefited from facilitation training. Things like:

- It is important to start with ground rules.

- Humans are emotional creatures. There are stages a group goes through and you can't skip the step in which they talk about their emotions.

- If your client wants you to get the group to 'come up with the right answer themselves' beware. This is as much manipulation as facilitation.

- Robin has many HR people in her classes because we know we need the skill but didn't learn it in university.

This honestly was such a useful episode. I have some upcoming facilitation and will refer back to it. Check it out!

https://ica-associates.ca/

https://www.parsonsdialogue.com/

https://thehrhub.ca

What if your employees had the willingness and ability to respond quickly and flexibly to changing business needs? Sounds a little like a fairytale.

Maybe not. There are things you can do to build resilience in the workplace.

This whole conversation with Beverly Beuermann-King about building resilience in the workplace was a revelation. Beverly talks about resilience a lot at conferences as well as presenting workshops and participating in panels. Her company, Work Smart Live Smart is a resiliency and corporate culture focused company helping people deal with reactions to stress and live better lives.

A few things I noted:

- A lot of what she talks about aligns with what we know of engagement - but not all.

- The most intriguing part for me was about hope. Why don't we talk about hope at work more often? It makes total sense.

- We need employee creativity and ideas. So working them to burnout is not the answer.

Beverly has thought about this a lot and the message was so welcome. Check out the full discussion.

Find Beverly at Work Smart Live Smart

https://worksmartlivesmart.com/

And of course find me at https://thehrhub.ca/

This is a special episode and is part of podcasthon. Podcasthon is a global movement bringing podcasts and channels together in service of all the AMAZING not-for-profits out there. This discussion revolves around doing HR in this kind of organization.

There are so many great NFPs out there, but I am on the board of Trinity Place Foundation of Alberta. They provide housing for people who are hard to house and those with limited income. Given current housing conditions and the personal struggles of some people, this is so so important!

I was happy to interview Jennie Deneka, the dynamic and passionate CEO of TPFA. Jennie has a background in healthcare and has been at the helm of TPFA for 4 years. She is currently guiding the organization through a transformation and was happy to talk about what NFPs TRULY need from HR. LIke:

- Be a generalist. Many NFPs are smaller so you will have to do a lot of things.

- You have to be realistic. NFPs often have small budgets and you have to make do.

- Maybe you can also be really creative and get some great things done

- The mission of the organization will fuel you. It's not the only thing that matters, but it helps a lot.

It was a pleasure to do this and highlight the great work of so many charities and not-for-profits in all of our communities filling gaps and helping critical causes in our communities.

Consider donating to a charity in your community or to TPFA. You can reach TPFA at

[email protected]

HR is often shouldering the burden and leadership around the impact of societal shifts. We have to ensure the organization is prepared to respond, culture is aligned and any risks around the shift are mitigated. So we need to think about the future of work.

I was delighted to have this conversation with Anthony Ariganello, CEO of CPHR Canada and President of the World Federation of People Management. AND he is a member of the Order of Canada!

Anthony shared is big picture perspective on the future of HR. Somethings will be advanced and only get better from where they are today and there may be big shifts - like the one in the video below.

🧠 We need to continue focusing on mental health. We have made great strides but the work is not done.

😵‍💫 Employee engagement will continue to be critical - we need to lead around effective remote work and things like quiet quitting.

🙂 Immigrants will be important to meeting our labour needs when we are not having enough kids. HR creativity may be warranted.

🤝 We may be moving away from the hyper focus on collaboration. I'm not sure how because I think it is the reality of how work gets done, but we need to monitor.

♾️ HR is part of a system involving the HR associations and government to effect the change that our organizations need.

It was a wonderful big picture conversation with a global leader in HR. Check it out!

Check out CPHR at https://cphr.ca/

Find me at https://thehrhub.ca/

You can build psychological safety pretty fast - note I didn't say 'easily'. And, actually, it's not that hard either, but it does require a little adventurous spirit and bravery to keep doing it long enough to see improvement. BUT THE BENEFITS!

Psychological safety has been proven to have so many business benefits. Think about it. How well do YOU perform when you feel like you have to bite your tongue? When co-workers are in cliques and you're not welcome? When you are micromanaged?

My guest this week is an emerging thought leader IMO. Israel Peck had a journey through finance doing massive cost cutting including 'reducing head count' which is a nicer way of saying mass terminations. In the process, he discovered how important culture is to rescuing an organization's financial performance. And, in turn, the importance of psychological safety.

So he did something about it. He created cratic.ai which, through a slightly odd way of creating successively deeper conversations, helps teams create psychological safety and better cultures.

He takes a financial view on HR:

- HR needs a standard measure and he argues for eNPS. Really nothing is going to be perfect, so why not eNPS?

- eNPS is the collective answer to the question: On a scale of1-10, how likely are you to recommend your place of work to a friend or colleague?

- The point is: if you can move eNPS a quartile up, you will add between $10 and $25,000 EBITDA PER EMPLOYEE!

- Psychological safety plays a huge role in eNPS and he has a methodology for driving it.

- The key is better conversations not magic.

It's genuinely one of the most exciting things I have seen while hosting my show. There really ARE better ways and Israel knows of one.

Do yourself a favour and tune in!

Find Israel at https://cratic.ai/ or on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ipeck/Find me at https://thehrhub.ca/

A compensation philosophy is our north star for our compensation plans. It's a statement that outlines a company's approach to employee compensation. It helps align our comp practices with business goals so a business makes the most of it's biggest cost: labour.

I love a good guiding philosophy so was happy to have this discussion with Carolyn Kildare. Carolyn is the owner of Cadence Compensation Consulting. She worked for Mercer for 12 years and is the President of the Calgary Total Rewards Network.

These are just a few tips from our discussion:

💰 Compensation is a high stakes topic. Get your ducks in a row (reasonably) before something inevitably happens.

💰 Your compensation philosophy tells you who, what, when, how and how much.

💰 A theme from my show generally was reinforced: stop paying new recruits as much or more than your loyal employees.

💰 Are you getting FOMO so you pay more? It's like buying a house. It looks SO amazing so you pay the premium. And then you find out about the leaky roof and plumbing issues.

💰 A comp philosophy helps you put your money where your mouth is e.g. if you want a performance culture then your compensation should support it.

Compensation philosophy is important. It's high stakes but it doesn't have to be hugely difficult. Most employees will accept what is fair.

Find Carolyn at https://www.cadencecompensation.ca/or on LinkedInFind me as always: https://thehrhub.ca

Are you trying to do HR in a toxic work environment? That's haard.

You might see that things are not right and see that people aren't being held accountable for awful behaviour. Perhaps you feel a bit trapped in your job and can't switch and yet you don't have the power to really do anything about the problem.

At this point, it's probably a long game and my guest has so much great advice. So much.

Dr. Kevin Sansberry started in HR as an HR Advisor. Then he worked his way up to being Assistant Vice Chancellor of HR. Then he went off and did his own thing including a TedX presentation, consulting, executive coaching and the Toxic Leadership Podcast. I was delighted by the insight he had into tough HR issues - such as toxicity. You can tell that he has deep experience in HR. This is a fraction of the insight he shared:

- As we discussed in a separate video, toxicity is an easy label, but rarely describes actual behaviour.

- You are not without power even as an HR advisor.

- You can change things, but need to think strategically.

- Toxicity has its roots in culture. Focusing on anything else will be a bandaid fix.

It was a fantastic discussion. One of the best if you are in HR.

Find Kevin on LinkedIn at  / kevindsansberry  Find his podcast athttps://www.kevraconsulting.comFind Andrea for consulting supporthttps://thehrhub.ca

Microaggressions in the workplace continue to be hard to understand. I was involved in an investigation a while back alleging microaggressions and I was uncertain. So when I had the opportunity to clarify I did.

I spoke with Sara Taylor who has been a DEI expert for a long time. She started her company, deepSEE Consulting in 2002. She has authored two books including, recently, 'Thinking at the Speed of Bias'. She has been a Chief Diversity Officer. She was on my panel discussion around DEI and it was wonderful to talk to her about this because I am a lot more clear now.

😳 Microaggressions are unintentional.

😔 We often apologize for hurting people unintentionally. Why not also apologize for a thoughtless assumption?

🧑🏽 Microaggressions are based on someone's identity (race, ethnicity, religion, gender, etc)

😇 Microaggressions are not about bad people doing mean things.

👿 If someone is deliberately mean based on any of those areas, it's bullying and harassment.

I'm so much clearer now and it makes sense. There was so much to learn about from Sara's perspective and if you've been wondering, you won't after this discussion. Or at least you will wonder less.

Find Sara Taylor at https://www.deepseeconsulting.com/ or on LinkedIn.

Has a wellness program ever had a positive effect on your well-being? To what degree?

I participated in wellness programs - pilates and a free gym. But I was already so active, that the impact was meagre at best. It would be hard to say I was more well after that. What about you?

That was the subject this week in my discussion with Tim Borys - fitness enthusiast, coach, wellness expert, author, and keynote speaker. We discuss whether or not corporate wellness programs are making a difference to our wellbeing. And, more importantly, how organizations can create more wellbeing.

💪 Wellness programs tend to be surface level - yoga and gyms. Not meaningless but also not that powerful.

🗯️ As the video says below, wellness programs will be totally pointless if your boss is an a*h*.

⚕️We're aiming for wellbeing and that concept extends to all the systems and people in the workplace.

🕺🏻If Tim had $100,000 to invest in creating wellbeing at work, I suspect he would 90% on leadership development.

🔬Leadership development programs are often too tactical to cover topics related to well-being.

What are the goals of your leadership development program? Are you doing an adequate job of training leaders on concepts related to well-being?

This was a thought-provoking chat around wellness - what works and what doesn't. Check it out!

Find Tim at

or on LinkedIn

This episode was supposed to be about upskilling and reskilling exclusively... but we quickly talked about the skills-based organization because that is where upskilling and reskilling start.

You have to know what skills you are trying to build!

I had THE best person for this discussion IMO. My guest was Lori Niles-Hofman. Lori hosts an upskilling course on LinkedIn Learning. She describes herself as an EdTech and AI Transformation Strategist. She is an author having written The Eight Levers of EdTech Transformation which will be published this spring. She has also been an L&D leader for big organizations. Her command of the big picture and the details was impressive.

This discussion was full of new ways of thinking:

- A skills based organization moves away from discussions about job titles to discussions around particular skills.

- People might be paid based on skills rather than job title.

- Upskilling and reskilling become a lot easier when we focus on individual skills as opposed to a large set of skills as is common on an L&D program

- Her clients focus on a limited number of skills as they move towards a skills-based organization

- You might start with ONE skill.

Her insight was so precise - it was amazing. And it was different, Lori is not afraid to consider new ways of doing things!

Check out the sponsor for this episode! iSpring Solutions! https://www.ispringsolutions.com/