In yesterday’s Advisor, Sir Richard Branson riffed on HR and management. Today, Arianna Huffington and Michael J. Fox echo some of Sir Richard’s ideas and add a few of their own.
Huffington (of Huffington Post fame) posits three basic instincts in the pursuit of happiness—survival, sex, and power—and adds a fourth—doing something for others. That puts problems in perspective and brings balance, she said in her presentation at the recent SHRM Annual Convention and Exhibition in Las Vegas,
Look in the Mirror
You in HR are the front line, Huffington says. “Don’t look for a savior on a white horse, look in the mirror.”
Social Media Challenges
It’s hard to get CEO’s interested in social media issues, says Huffington. Show them what people in the company are saying about the company on social media sites, She suggests.
Get your CEOs to set up a company site and let them see how they can solve problems with social media communication, says Huffington.
If C-suite people are reluctant because they don’t know much about social media, tell them to get their kids to show them what to do.
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Whole Bunch of Competent People
Huffington Post recently merged with AOL. Before the merger, Arianna Huffington was in the dark about HR and didn’t have much of an HR function. After the merger, she says, she suddenly had a whole bunch of competent people who knew what they were doing.
Huffington’s parting advice for HR managers: “Failure is a stepping stone to success.’
The Gift
Michael J. Fox had a rather poignant quip about his Parkinson’s Disease: “It’s the gift that keeps on taking,” he says.
He went on to say that his friend Dennis Leary had asked him to guest star on the television series Rescue Me. The part you’ll play is a paraplegic in a wheel chair,” Leary said. Fox replied, “Don‘t you know that the one thing I can’t do is stay still? (One of the symptoms of his disease is that he can’t stop moving.) “I’m a good actor, but I can’t play paralyzed.”
Michael J. Fox with his Michael J. Fox Foundation is an obvious advocate of wellness. How about wellness at your company? Are you an advocate?
Well-structured and well-run wellness programs can generate ROIs of up to 300 percent—music to management’s ears! But the key words are “well-structured” and “well-run.” Poorly structured programs just spin their wheels—no health benefit and no positive ROI, either.
Many readers have told us that BLR’s comprehensive guidebook, Workplace Wellness: Healthy Employees, Healthy Families, Healthy ROI, has helped them get programs up and running that achieve wellness objectives with a great ROI while avoiding the legal hassles that, these days, seem to accompany any worthwhile venture in HR.
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It’s a comprehensive guide that takes you step-by-step through setting up a program, from convincing management all the way through creating and implementing a viable plan for your workplace. The guide also includes a vast collection of ready-to-use forms, handouts, and checklists that both structure your program and provide the metrics to prove its effectiveness to management’s satisfaction.
If you’d like to examine Workplace Wellness: Healthy Employees, Healthy Families, Healthy ROI on a no-cost, no-obligation basis for 30 days, we can arrange for you to do so. Let us know and we’ll be happy to set it up.