Creative HR

Last year, I took a two day intensive HR Admin primer with the EANE, a great group of HR professionals and lawyers. I came out of the course a bit paranoid and, if you were to ask my boss, completely freaked out.

I am going to sound totally naive to some of you now-- but there are so many laws. Laws you need to get other people (namely, managers/supervisors) to comply with. It's tricky, to say the least.

After I calmed down, I decided that I needed to impart this information to our management team. I immediately opened PowerPoint and created a quick outline of what I wanted our managers to know.

Then I immediately closed PowerPoint.

A standard PowerPoint presentation just wouldn't do. Our workplace is spurred by constant outbursts of creativity and innovation. It mostly resides in the engineering department, but I like a challenge and wanted this presentation (my first in the company) to be superb.

I assessed the situation:

1. Most of the group had, at some point in their careers, received formal human resources trainings-- videos, sessions, you name it.
2. As a general rule, no one likes HR meetings.
3. I wanted them to have a discussion about some of these laws and how they apply to our work environment without saying, "Now let's discuss these laws and how they apply to our work environment."
4. Our management team has a fantastic sense of humor.

What I had learned in my training was that the laws and regulations regarding harassment and record keeping were not as obvious as I had thought. So I put together a Jeopardy-style presentation. Here's a the cover slide:


(Since I appreciate the details, I made sure to use Alex Trebek circa 1989. My apologies to Jeopardy.)

My participants had a about a minute to discuss the answers among themselves. After I revealed the correct answer, a short discussion naturally ensued and we also reviewed the legal implications. At the end of the session, we had a larger (unplanned!) discussion about policies and consistency.

There were a few snags-- it would have been great to have the actual laws referred to on hand for folks to review-- but all in all, I felt that it was a success. I'll be doing a couple more of these presentations this year around other relevant topics for managers (interviewing, performance management). In addition to those, I'm wracking my brain for an innovative harassment presentation to give the employees.

I'm curious to hear about other ways you are making your job more creative-- whether it's open enrollment, or just day-to-day stuff.

UPDATED: Just wanted to link to this great eBook by Manager's Sandbox regarding training with presentations.