House of Paine

hr rave up

hr takes back the job site 


    it was quite a sight to see.

    600 top human resource professionals
 from around the country dressed for success
and     shooting  their arms above their heads
  all at once and  over and over again
     each time crying “preempt....preempt
    preempt ...preempt .”
   
   but if you’d been inside  the Daley  auditorium
    at the McCormick center
here in Chicago
 around 4 PM today 
 thats just what you would have seen.
  
 the national association 
of  human resource professionals
 or NAHRP held its annual convention here 
over the past week
  and this farewell “bonsai chant” 
as one participant called it 
 was the culmination of the whole proceedings.

   for the first time  this year’s conference
 had an overarching theme,“ repowerment”.
  
“   the burgeoning     repowerment movement
  is really all about  management taking back  its rightful control
    over the details of the  work process”  according to keynote speaker 
  Becky Beckner. the lady who led the bonsai chant after giving the assembled
  a rousing half hour  “call to arms” .
      “ I like batting  clean up at deals like these
theres nothing like clearing alll the bases with a four bagger ”says Beckner

  
 “ the last thirty years
 america’s work places took a slide 
   what we got going is a  slide show 
   a job standards slide show  
       in Americas stores, restaurants , offices
               and hotels”    Beckner told  a   wrapped audience
    “  thats way way too long   we got to get 
          the service and sales   floor back under control”

  afterwards Beckner explained 
 repowerment  was necessary to counter act
 “ years of management drift”.
        according to Beckner the situation in most 
big service and retail companies 
   requires  immediate
“ aggressive and  persistent  implementation 
              of   a full blown repowerment program”

    the weeks various semminars and workshops
 were all  organized and      lead
  by associates from  Beckners 
   consulting group LETS  GET IT ON

     “ hopefully we  honed some skills / threw out a few blue prints 
    and  most of all put some fire in their bellies” said Beckner afterwards

    “ she convinced me we have to go back and hit them right between the ears ” said sarah alpone
     a participant from boston. she said this while chuckling to herself.
 
    “  I’m not sure I’ m the right person to do it “ Alpone  said 
               
    “I make my living  matching people to jobs and 
                        i know i  wouldnt pick myself for this one ”
  
  Beckner has the ready answer to this scepticism
                            there is no one else she says.

   “ repowerment is the only method we have to  get things back on track
      there are no other means that are acceptable
        in todays retail and service  job setting” says Beckner 
 “ this is all very well understood  by most top one thousand  corporate executives.
          given the culture we have today they know
   they can  reach a win win outcome no other way” 

    its true  the attending “human professionals’ as they like to call themselves
  seem a rather unlikely band of revolutionaries but thats how people like Beckner see them
      “ these are the shock troops the white  guards of repowerment”she says
    “ the days of plant floor bullies and the likes of chowderhead cohen
 lurking around the factory gates with a 10 inch sap in his paw  are long gone.
    we can’t take back the workplace with a bludgeon”.

  the vast majority of the conventions participants seem to agree with Beckners analysis

“ if we dont take back control of our corporations
 everyone will suffer 
  everyone is  already  suffering
not just management and the stockholders 
 but  the consuming public is suffering and even
 the employees themselves are suffering” 
 says Jody Graham VP of human resources
 for the  Tarncroft Hotel chain. 

   Millie Blumkin director
of employee relations at the nation wide health food perveyors
Crossbar Groceries agrees with the notion 
 that  job slacking and general lack of focus on the tasks at hand
 even  hurts the  employees themselves.
 “ why today  all too often employees   actions on the job undermind
 they’re own personal  goals in life
they’re sabotaging their own futures
they’re own dreams”
.
  “ we professionals in human resource  
are the spear point of employee management
   and as the  trained specialists
  we  must lead the charge”
 adds   Blumkin, a small soft spoken  women 
    in her 40s. Obviously  trying to put some fire in her words.
  
 today in corporate America nearly 80% of human resource  professionals 
are  like Millie Blumkin.middle aged women with  training
  more likely in  soft fields like  psychology  and literature
then  hard ball business courses like
accounting ,operations research or finance.   
“ we all have to play to the same bottom line”says Trancrofts  Graham
 “whatever our own perspective might be”

  “ I guess” says Beckner
“ you could say  if you chose to be  unkindly
     that   I’m  calling out the nurse Ratchet in these   ladies”
 
Beckner , herself a strikingly tall  impeccably dressed woman
looks up to the task.

.  “shes a real   lean machine” says her personal  assistant
 Larry Doowink
  “ she’s  got enough umph  to drop a bull at twenty paces
   you heard  that  voice its like hickory wood” adds Doowink 
      “ and  check out that cobalt pair of eyes”

    
    “ sometimes to get the message across 
    to a drowsing audience  I’ll
call  repowerment 
  the cuckoo   nest strategy ” says Beckner

  “ then again
 I for one 
can think of a few  things
  I’d  rather give
 jack nicholson
 besides a  lobotomy”