Ask HR

After decades of trying to make retail "exciting" and "stimulating", Walmart recently announced they're going to permanently keep a low-sensory shopping experience on Saturday mornings, nation-wide in the US. TVs are set to static, store radio is turned off and lighting is lowered. These changes were of course made based on customer feedback and market research.

Depending on your preferences as an employee of such a company, this may either be great news for you or you may dislike it. Employers have changed, in some ways, radically the way employees experience work in the past few decades; from the open-office craze, to standing desks, cubicles, massive office lighting that is only controlled centrally, workplace muzak, providing free coffee, the list is enormous. Ostensibly those changes were made as they were thought to either make employees more productive or happier. Often these fads sounded good to a few people and studies have shown they are very harmful to many, if not some employees mental or physical health and productivity.

What changes have you seen in your work environment that you have liked or disliked? What is a fad that you never liked or it made your work environment noticeably worse?

The US Government's monthly jobs report is one of the most closely watched barometers for the overall economy. Gross jobs added, lost and nets of both are available, broken down by industries.

The last 20 years has seen revolutionary change in the amount of data available with HR record systems going electronic, and now many companies are entering their second or even 3rd decade of electronic record availability. The ability to quickly post a job to multiple job boards and geographic locations is instant for organizations.

However, there are is a number of "open" jobs that are ethereal;

*Jobs that were posted that were cancelled but not taken down.

*Jobs that are duplicate postings in different areas or cities but could be hired anywhere.

*Jobs that are called "Evergreen", as they are never taken down and just trawl for applicants in hard to fill/staff positions where there is (almost) always a need.

*Jobs that are posted by organizations trying to signal things to applicants, investors or other important audiences.

Do you notice ghost jobs? Have them become more common?

Background: In the last few years since the murder of George Floyd, companies have begun to make statements internally or externally through channels to express their alignment with or against actions, policies, philosophies or news events in the world.

There has been a predicable spectrum as these statements have become common: some companies didn't believe it their place to comment as a company. some companies only made a statement about George Floyd's murder or trial result and it has been radio silence since. Others went on to tackle police accountability or funding. Others saw similar treatment of other minorities by police as equally appalling. Still others looked at other instances of systemic suffering by still more groups and made statements about the value and their commitment of righting these wrongs. The issues and statements and alignments and tweets have expanded outward to almost any human issue from there.

The prompt: If your organization makes or has started making such internal or external statements about news, events, political issues and other phenomena in the last few years, what are your thoughts? Is there value to a tweet? Because it's impractical, where does your org or where do you think an organization should draw the line in terms of what is worthy of a statement and what is not? By commenting on some issues is there not a concern it can be interpreted others are not as important? E.g. a tsunami in one country vs. a school shooting. Do you or your org think it's an organization's role or mission to make statements about phenomena unrelated to your core mission?

Despite a mountain of information available about the lack of DEI in most companies and the structures in place that prevent improvement in these areas, many organizations only attempted to start engaging in the these areas in the wake of George Floyd. Frustrating, but better late than never, fine.

As easy money started drying up from the Fed last year, many companies started tightening pocketbooks and eliminating jobs and even entire functions, including previously labeled "critical" and "foundational" roles like DEI.

It would be interesting to hear the size of investments made by different companies, the function and purview given or assigned to these roles, and hear about what impact they have made--and hear thoughts on the reasons for successes or failures in different areas.

A promotional increase cap would be when an organization's comp policy is limited to a certain percentage of current salary, or even a raw dollar amount in some cases "max of $5/HR. for promotions". Do you still see these in the wild?

There is an absolute ocean of shitty "engagement" out there so I'll start; doing a fundraiser that asks employees making minimum wage or less to take unpaid time to contribute to their community while salaried employees still earn regular wages for the time they spend.

Or when they try to raise money from employees by letting them wear casual clothes or some other "privilege", when only leadership is paid well enough to afford it.

Appalling.