The HR Blogosophere
As blogging has gone from quirky to mainstream over the last few years, more and more HR blogs have emerged. So who are these bloggers and what's there to gain for HR executives?
By Jared Shelly
Allyson Meldeau needed a little guidance. Helping run the day-to-day HR operations at a hospital in central Florida with 1,100 employees, Meldeau felt like every situation she'd encountered in her eight years in the profession seemed to be unique -- and figuring out just how to handle them tended to be quite a chore.
"When it comes to HR, it's not black and white; there's a lot of gray area," says Meldeau.
So she looked around for a place where she could continue her education. A place where she could find out how other people dealt with similar problems. A place with a sense of community.
But she didn't turn to a membership organization or a university; she turned to the Evil HR Lady.
Just like millions of blogs about sports, celebrity gossip and pretty much any other topic that might come to mind,
Evil HR Lady
(launched in 2006 by Suzanne Lucas, an HR executive with nine years of experience, mostly at a Fortune 500 company) includes articles and reader comments.
The site could be likened to a kind of Dear Abby for HR professionals. Lucas posts an HR question from one of her readers, then offers advice about how to solve the problem.
One reader recently asked how to make a development recommendation for an exemplary receptionist near retirement age ("Ask what type of development activity she is interested in!" responds Lucas), while another reader asked if he should bring back an employee, with a wife and three kids, after firing him for sleeping on the job twice. ("You did the right thing ... . Sleeping on the job is not like making a minor error, especially when he's gone to the trouble to find a quiet spot to lie down and removed his shoes.")
For Meldeau, following along with the Evil HR Lady gives her an opportunity to read about how others in HR handled tricky situations and gives her access to a community of HR professionals who offer suggestions and tips. Hopefully, it all leads to Meldeau becoming better at her job.
"It helps you to know that there are other people out there; that you're not the only one," says Meldeau.
Indeed, she is certainly not alone in the HR world. There are plenty of people in cyberspace blogging and commenting about HR 24/7. Some blogs are written by HR executives with valuable experience, while others are written by people who have virtually no HR experience.
Some blog to promote the profession. Some blog to promote themselves. Some blog because they're genuinely interested in enhancing the knowledge of HR professionals. And increasingly, people are writing much shorter posts on Twitter, then referring followers to their more traditional blogs.
Whatever their reasons and whatever the format, experts agree that HR executives would be wise to venture into the blogosphere because it contains enough sites with high-level information that they should be able to find at least one or two they can relate to, sites that can help them manage their workforces and the intricacies of their profession -- not to mention offer a bird's-eye view of what's happening on the front lines.
They warn, however, that since bloggers typically have varying levels of -- and sometimes no -- journalism training, they can often spread misinformation, so any knowledge gained should be taken with a grain of salt. It's possible, they add, for credibility to be better ascertained over time.
A Vast Blogosphere
There's no way of knowing just how many HR-related blogs there are, mainly because of the erratic nature of blogs themselves -- anyone with a computer and Internet connection can launch one pretty simply. It could be active and thriving for awhile, then go dark if the writer stops posting.
(See what our readers think about HR blogs.)
Gerry Crispin, co-founder of Kendall Park, N.J.-based staffing strategies firm CareerXroads, estimates there are tens of thousands of HR blogs in cyberspace. He is connected -- by either becoming a follower or through an RSS link -- to 1,000 blogs, and even runs a
blog
of his own.
Jason Corsello, vice president of Minneapolis-based HR and talent-management consultancy Knowledge Infusion, estimates that the number is more like "a couple hundred" but still calls it an "overabundance."
The Evil HR Lady certainly has her share of readers, drawing in more than 451,000 unique viewers since she launched in August 2006, according to Bravenet, a counter attached to the site. From Sept. 17 to the 23rd, the most recent statistics available, the site averaged 664 unique visitors per day and had 5,421 followers on Google Reader. About half of her regular readers work in HR and half do not, according to a recent reader poll.
Lucas initially blogged secretly, afraid her co-workers and bosses would find out her alter-ego. (Even though she has since quit her job to move to Switzerland, where her husband was relocated, she still wouldn't disclose the name of her last employer for this article.)
"I work[ed] for a conservative company and I didn't know quite how people would feel about it," she says, noting that she didn't want to encounter a situation where she expressed an opinion different than company policy.
But as secretive as she hoped to be, somebody did take notice: U.S. News and World Report, which signed her up as a contributor to its Web site on the strength of her blog.
When she re-enters the workforce this time around, she won't hide her blogging ways. She actually plans to feature them prominently on her resume.
"I came to the conclusion that ... if I had to go to work for a [new] company pretending to be something other than what I [am], I'm not interested in working for them. Now it's all out in the open," she says.
According to Crispin, more and more bloggers are outing themselves, and companies have generally accepted and even encouraged it. Employers are protecting themselves by creating Web 2.0 policies stating explicitly what workers can and can't discuss in cyberspace.
A "Cacophony of Noise"
Despite the best efforts of bloggers, few HR executives (director level and above) are reading HR blogs, says Crispin, because going through so much information is too difficult and time-consuming.
"I think the C-level HR leaders are not spending much time reading blogs at this point," he says. "I've talked to a number of them in the last few months and I don't think they're getting their information that way."
But they should be reading blogs because they provide a great way for executives to follow what's happening on the front line, says Crispin.
"Typically, the kind of information that flows up in a hierarchy has many different filters," says Crispin. "Executives can use blogs to get in touch with the raw data happening at the trench level."
HR executives should also check out the blogosphere to get a handle on their company's reputation.
"I'd be searching the blogosphere to determine how my company is being perceived," says Crispin, "how all consumers and others see the company. It's an instantaneous poll."
But those reading blogs should do so with a cautious eye. With such a "cacophony of noise out there," Crispin warns, trusting a blogger's word as fact could land you in deep trouble.
"To assume that bloggers are accurate ... simply because they declare themselves to be HR bloggers is the height of arrogance," says Crispin. "Any HR professional would quickly lose [his or her job] taking at face value all of [the information in] those blogs."
Take legitimate reasons for firing people, for instance. If an HR executive were to act on information he or she read on a blog saying some punitive action is legal when, in fact, it's not, the company could easily be hit with a wrongful-termination suit.
Even though blogs can often lack good hard data, it's those diamonds in the rough that Crispin hopes for.
"It's worth it when I find a seriously thought-through analysis of some of the things that we as human resource professionals go through. For those gems that I see, it's worth it."
A Powerful Medium
With headlines such as "How Do Great Companies Make Sure People Are Living the Values?" and "The Human Element: Is Your Internship Program Helping or Hurting?"
Jon Younger's blog
on the Huffington Post seems to provide information that's right up an executive's alley.
Younger, who posts every week or so, says his philosophy is to expose HR executives to "practical innovations" -- ideas that, he adds, can be readily applied to help them drive the business. That could consist of "a better way to develop people, or a new way to communicate the values of the organization, or challenging HR people to stick their necks out a little bit and replace self-doubt with courage," says Younger, who leads the strategic HR practice at the RBL Group in Provo, Utah.
He says he's not being paid by the Huffington Post.
Younger believes that a new blog is created every five seconds, making it an incredibly powerful source of knowledge transaction.
"If you do the math for HR, that means that, every week or so, somebody out there is creating a new vehicle to share what they're doing [in HR] and hear what other people are doing," he says. "That's terrific."
Another HR blog, perhaps one of the most successful, is
Cheezhead
, which mainly covers topics such as recruiting, talent management and vendor offerings. Cheezhead was named the No. 1 HR blog by
Fistful of Talent
-- a blog from Workforce Management magazine -- and No. 2 by HR World -- an online information source for HR professionals. It got more than 50,000 unique visitors in August, according to www.compete.com, a Web-site-usage tracker.
Joel Cheesman, the founder of the blog and company, broke the story of a mass-firing at Monster in July, which was not the first time his blog was ahead of the business press.
"Stuff we've reported or broke wouldn't have seen the light of day [if it wasn't for HR bloggers like] us," he says, "and I could argue that the information is quicker [and] it's sometimes more entertaining and thought-provoking."
(The Cheesman Group, including the blog, was recently purchased by Phoenix-based job board Jobing.com and hasn't posted since Sept. 9 as of press time.)
Sense of Belonging
In addition to finding information they might not get elsewhere, many people participate in the commenting process because it gives them a sense of community about the profession. According to Younger, many HR professionals are eager to know what others are doing and appreciate the speed of blogs over more traditional media and events.
"There will always be a good deal of interest in attending events, where you can physically network, learn and grow," he says, "but what we're learning is that [some conferences and other forms of knowledge-sharing aren't] fast enough to respond to the needs and interests of our professional community. Blogs have been created to help fill that gap."
Lucas, aka the Evil HR Lady, says that, before blogging picked up speed, "you really needed to be a part of [HR-specific associations] to come in contact with other HR people," says Lucas. "Now, thanks to the blogosphere, you don't have to do that. You don't have to pay ... to get feedback from other people who do what you do all day."
Crispin, however, says that the HR blogging community is in no way a replacement for professional organizations.
"Human resources is a body of knowledge and, for someone to assume that they have learned the body of knowledge because they have access to blogs, is [in a state of] total confusion," he says. They should first arm themselves with the knowledge provided by professional organizations and other sources, such as print publications, he says, then take that to the blogosphere.
One potential downfall of blogging is the potential for conflicts-of-interest, since bloggers may have their own contracts with third-party vendors or are just looking out for the best interests of the corporations they work for.
Cheesman, for example, was not shy in his criticism of Monster over the years, but did not disclose in those posts that he served as a consultant to other recruiting sites. He says, however, that he has split his business relationships and his blogging, and plans to continue that into the future under Jobing's ownership.
"I simply do my best to divide the two. I have never taken money to blog positively," he says. "Obviously, there are ads in newspapers and magazines, and just like [print publications] would divide their commentary or news content [and their ad business], I certainly do my best to keep the two divided."
The Federal Trade Commission has published a set of guidelines -- not enforceable by law -- stating that bloggers who have a relationship with a company or product they are writing about should disclose that relationship to their readers. If a blogger is also somehow connected -- perhaps by working as a consultant -- to a payroll vendor, for example, then writes a complimentary article about that payroll vendor or negatively about a rival vendor, the blogger's business relationship must be disclosed, according to the FTC.
Enforcing such a law is nearly impossible, says Corsello.
"I frankly think it'll disappear," he says. "It's not anything the government can control, nor should they control it."
See also:
Where's Cheezhead?
Your Space or MySpace?
A Visit to the HR Blogosphere
January 1, 2010 Copyright 2010© LRP Publications
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