President’s Pen
by Andrea Cranfill, SPHR

• President
• President-Elect
• Vice President, Programs
• Secretary
• Director Legislative Affairs
• Director College and Community Relations
• Director Diversity
• Director Volunteer Management

If you are interested in being considered (or re-elected) to one of these positions, please complete the Board Leader form and submit along with a resume no later than October 10, 2006. The nominating committee of the Board (comprised of Past President, President, and President-Elect) will review all candidates and recommend a slate of officers. The membership will be notified of the slate by email and the candidates will be presented and voted on at our October monthly meeting. You can also submit your interest online by clicking or visiting http://www.hraci.com/HRACIboardform.htm

Criteria for consideration:

• HRACI Member
• SHRM Member (or will join SHRM once elected)
• PHR/SPHR certification preferred
• Ability to attend monthly board meetings (2nd Thursday
  of the month at 7:30 a.m.) and monthly meetings/special programs
• Previous HRACI volunteer in some capacity preferred
• Ability to facilitate and lead a committee if position requires
• Ability to commit time to the position and the organization
• Strong leadership skills and self-starter

Robin Kibota, Senior Manager, Six Sigma Black Belt for Strategic Partnerships presented an informative September lunch meeting on how to implement Six Sigma in HR. Six Sigma is a statistical measure that describes the quality of a process in a state of near perfection. It is a problem solving methodology that combines project leaders with advanced statistical knowledge and subject matter experts to eliminate variation in the business process. In addition, it is a business philosophy that enables improved business performance by aligning a company’s strategies to the customers’ needs and expectations.

DMAIC Methodology is used to solve problems. DMAIC stands for define, measure, analyze, improve and control. Another method used is Design For Six Sigma Methodology (DFSS), which stands for: define, measure, analyze, design and verify. Companies need to understand what the customer need and wants and then translate customer needs into what is done internally. All projects should support the Vision, Mission and Goals or the organization. It’s imperative that the top of the organization sponsors and leads the way in Six Sigma.

Six Sigma is organized by certifications. There is Master Black Belts (MBB) who is at the highest level of certification, is full time, and assigned to the organization, and is strategic expert coaches for the rest of the team. The next layer is the Black Belt (BB) who is the heart and soul of the program. This person leads multiple projects, is a trainer and mentor to the rest of the team, and works on 4-6 projects which should result in about a $230K savings. The next layer is the Green Belt (GB) who is a part-time project leader and then there is the Yellow Belt (YB) who is every employee.

There are four phases to the Six Sigma Lifecycle: start up, growth, refinement, and maturity. The start up phase is the first year and activities include vision, communication, core curriculum, and savings focused. The challenges during this time are, “how does this impact me, recruiting the right propel, and selecting the right projects”.

The growth phase is in the second year to about the third year. This is where more people are trained, more projects are started, some projects were successful, what were the dollar savings, and what the wins on those projects were. The activities in the growth phase are: protect wins, training growth, savings focused, and multiple divisions.

Refinement is the third phase of Six Sigma. In this phase, activities include integrating into the business planning, learning what works and modify the approach, and is value focused. Some challenges to this phase are consistency across division, resource re-utilization, and career planning.

Maturity phase is the final step in the Six Sigma program. The activities here are total adoption of the project which extends to the customers and vendors. Here the challenges are in turnover of trained six sigma personnel and defining the next valuable projects.

Congratulations to Spherion’s business card drawing winners:

Carletta Sullivan, School to Work Coordinator, Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township

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ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION!
It’s Membership Renewal Time!

by Ivory Shields, HRACI Membership Committee

2007 is fast approaching. That means it’s HRACI MEMBERSHIP renewal time. As always, we are looking forward to an even better year of programs, which will continue to include National Speakers, CEU Luncheons, After Hour Events and more. Again, be sure to join us for another outstanding year of great programs and professional development! Detailed information will be published in the November Newsletter.

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by Linda Rotert and Helena Masters

The fall student membership drive is upon us! Joining now, students pay just $62.50 to become HRACI members and enjoy benefits like professional development and job services.

If you know of any students or upcoming graduates that may be interested in HRACI membership, let them know more information is available on our web site at www.hraci.com/HRACImembership.htm or by phone at 317-841-3236.

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There will be an opportunity for vendors wanting to reach HRACI members at our October 19, 2006 Legislative Session

The Legislative luncheon has opportunities for vendor participation during the Vendor Marketplace. Please contact Patti Daniels, Director of Sponsorship, for a $250 vendor opportunity. Email her at sponsorship@hraci.org or call (317) 843-0464.

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by Terri Ryckaert, HRACI Communications Committee

Getting to Know…. Danah Ambrose, MPA

Introduction: My name is Danah Ambrose, Corporate Recruiter & Internship Program Coordinator for Midwest ISO. In my current role, I am instrumental in filling all levels of management and staff level positions, as well as leading a successful Internship/Cooperative Education program. I have 6 years of staffing experience encompassing consulting, agency & corporate staffing

Tell us about your family.
I am a single mom with a 7 year old boy name Chase Matthew McMillan and a snoodle (mixture of a poodle and a schnauzer) name Precious. We are active members of St. Matthew Catholic Church and School. Chase and I enjoy attending the Pacers and Colts games. Additionally, we love to play in the snow during the winter with Precious.

What is the worst job you’ve ever held?
The worst job I ever held was a Cost Analyst Job

Surprising Fact:
The fact that I actually like snow.

Quote to live by:
“I do not want the peace that passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringth peace.” -- Helen Keller

List of favorites:
Food – Cajun Food
Book – Good to Great
TV Show – Law & Order
Movie – Beaches
Vacation spot – Aruba
Hobbies – Shoe shopping

Business Favorites:
Favorite HR function – Staffing
Most Helpful Business Book – Business Ethics
Favorite work-related Website – Career Builders

(Alexandria, Va./New York, NY, September 7, 2006)— Nonmanagement workers tend to make full use of their vacation time each year, more so than executive-level and middle-level employees, according to the 2006 Workplace Vacation Survey, jointly conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and CareerJournal.com, The Wall Street Journal's executive career guide.

HR professionals indicated that employees with two years or less tenure were more likely to use sick or personal days as vacation days compared with employees employed for 16 or more years. According to 68% of HR professionals, one year or less tenured executive-level employees at their organizations receive more than two weeks of paid vacation/paid time off per year compared with 50% of middle management and 35% of non-management employees. New hires in non-management level were provided with two weeks per year of paid vacation/paid time off according to 42% of HR professionals.

"U.S. workers are among the most productive in the world, but no time away from work can lead to burnout, reduced productivity and higher turnover," said Susan R. Meisinger, SPHR, president and CEO of SHRM. "Utilizing flexible scheduling and technology can be an effective means for organizations to help employees take a much needed rest."

"Even though they may qualify for more than two weeks off a year, middle and upper-level employees may feel they need to put in more time at work in order to move up the corporate ladder," said David Patton, editorial director, CareerJournal.com. "With the increased use of mobile communication devices and easy access to email, they can take the breaks they need while remaining in touch with the office."

The long weekend vacation was again the choice of U.S. workers this summer, in lieu of extended vacations, and many workers are using their vacations to get work done. Survey results revealed that almost 60 percent of human resource (HR) professionals and 44 percent of employees agreed that employees were opting to take long weekend vacations instead of being out of the office for longer periods of time.

While employees are taking shorter breaks to lessen the length of time away from job duties, 43 percent of HR professionals and 30 percent of employees polled agreed that employees often also combine business trips with personal vacations. One-third of employees surveyed indicated that they typically take work on vacation and almost half of HR professionals said that employees feel personally obligated to stay connected to their organization while on vacation. Four percent of HR professionals and employees said their organizations ask that they stay connected to the office while on vacation.

Additionally, increased access to communication devices has made it easier to link vacationing workers to their jobs. Eighty-one percent of HR professionals said that their organizations provide a means to stay connected to the office, such as cell phones, pagers, laptops and Blackberries or other handheld devices.

Although the survey shows that employees feel obligated to work on their days off, survey findings also indicate that employees still value and want time away from work.

The 2006 Workplace Vacation Survey Report is available for free at www.shrm.org/surveys.

There were 619 HR professionals who completed the survey. Of employees, 473 completed the survey. Employee data was gathered from a convenience sample of visitors to the CareerJournal.com Web site—the online poll was given to one out of five people visiting the site over a 4-week period.

About SHRM
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the world's largest association devoted to human resource management. Representing more than 210,000 individual members, the Society's mission is to serve the needs of HR professionals by providing the most essential and comprehensive resources available. As an influential voice, the Society's mission is also to advance the human resource profession to ensure that HR is recognized as an essential partner in developing and executing organizational strategy. Founded in 1948, SHRM currently has more than 500 affiliated chapters and members in more than 100 countries. Visit SHRM Online at www.shrm.org
CareerJournal.com is the premier career Web site targeted to executives and professionals. Featuring more than 100,000 top-level jobs and over 7,000 articles on all aspects of job hunting and career management, the site attracts more than 800,000 unique visitors monthly. Rated the top job site by Workforce Management magazine, the site won an EPpy Award, a Webby Business Award from the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, received a Best of the Web award from Time, Forbes and American Way magazines, won a 2005 WEDDLE's User's Choice Award and was selected Best Site by CareerXRoads in their 2005 Directory.

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by Gregg Medcalf

September Informal HR Get Together!

A very nice gathering at Joe’s Crab Shack on Lake Clearwater took place with much networking and, of course, laughter as well. Some new faces from new companies were there, and Stan Phariss provided the boat ride and some home made wine too!

Some very nice homes were viewed from the lake, including Brad Davis’s of Davis Homes and Clyde Lee and Dione Willis, both news anchors. Thanks again to Stan!

Our next informal meeting will be at Jillian’s downtown October 19th, a Thursday, where food and tokens are being provided, thanks to Shannon Gardner!

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(Alexandria, Va., September 26, 2006)—Compensation for newly hired employees may be on the increase, according to the October report of the Leading Indicator of National Employment (LINE), which finds that new-hire compensation jumped in September. In addition, over half of manufacturers and service-sector employers plan to expand hiring in October, indicating that the job market continues to remain strong. LINE is a collaborative effort between the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.
LINE continues to provide an early indication of the upcoming Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers. This LINE employment expectations report references the same October period as the report the BLS will release on November 3, 2006. To view the full report, visit www.shrm.org/LINE.
The indicator reports on four employment measures: job expectations, job vacancies, new-hire compensation and recruitment difficulty. The figure below shows how LINE, in red, has correlated with the BLS numbers, which come out five weeks later.

Manufacturing
HR professionals indicate that the pool of skilled employees is extremely tight, even more so than a year ago. The need to fill current vacancies continues to be a challenge; in addition, 57 percent of HR professionals say they have plans to hire for new positions in October. These ongoing challenges appear to be contributing to employers' need to increase new-hire compensation. The index rose to 13.9 percent, which is currently at its highest level since February 2004.

Service
Fifty-one percent of service-sector employers reported plans to increase hiring in October. In addition, while HR professionals are expressing difficulty recruiting qualified candidates, they are at the same time finding themselves with a growing number of vacant positions they are actively trying to fill. In September, this combination resulted in a five percent jump in the number of employers reporting increases to new-hire compensation.
LINE is an economic indicator that identifies early economic trends and changes in the national job market by surveying human resource (HR) executives at manufacturing and service-sector firms.

The indicator is released at 8:30 am ET on the fourth Tuesday of each month.

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There’s a guy in Northern California who loves his work so much that he willingly changed his name in order to keep doing it. Abe Smith was born Mohammed, a Muslim in India. After a long road of dreaming, learning, moving to a new country and working hard, Mohammed had a thriving corporate security consulting practice in Silicon Valley by the turn of the millennium. When his business dropped like a rock after 9/11 a Secret Service agent friend said to him, “Given what has just happened, you have a choice: your career or your name.” While not committing discrimination against Islam as a religion, both Mohammed and his friend knew realistically that the events of 9/11 created a trust and perception barrier that would have been impossible for him to hurdle, especially in the security profession.

Mohammed, who had already converted to Christianity and married the love of his life who was named Smith, knew the choice would be an easy one.

I met Abe while consulting with the semiconductor company he worked for. My task: Interview the company’s employees who were totally passionate, over-the-moon about their jobs. Abe was among the first to volunteer to tell his story. “Why choose the name Abe?” I asked when we got to that part of his saga.

“Abe is short for Abraham,” he said, clearly pleased to have the chance to explain. “Abraham is the last prophet that Christians, Muslims and Jews together revere. By calling myself Abe, I’m using my name as the symbol of my life’s purpose, which is to unify people according to values we all share. ”

So the question I have for you is this: When was the last time you had a conversation like this during an interview with a candidate? Or, during an employee engagement roll-out? You might be saying to yourself, “Well, I don’t have anyone like that in my company.” How do you know? To look at Abe passing you in the hallway, this is what you might see: A smiling, friendly guy, dressed in a suit or business casual, with his laminated employee ID hung from a lanyard and tucked into his breast pocket. Just like any other guy you’d pass in the hallway. And just like Abe, many (but not all) of those other employees you’d pass in the hallway have amazing stories to tell about how their work helps them realize their own heroic missions in life.

Everyone has a story – a saga, actually – of learning, working hard, pursuing their dreams, finding their life’s purpose, making tremendous sacrifices, beating the odds, saving their families, saving their children, saving their marriages, saving themselves. And for many of these people, their jobs play an essential role in their saga of purpose. Capture some of that passion and you can use it to fuel your company’s mission-critical objectives.

It’s easy to do: Just give your employees the chance to express the fullness of their life’s saga and talk about how their jobs intersect with their life’s mission. Over the years I’ve interviewed an animal shelter worker who turns down plenty of cushier job offers, even though she has to euthanize hundreds of animals every month. The reason behind her passion: She’s able to give these animals the one thing they haven’t gotten in their short life – the experience of being loved. A bank chairman uses his influence to send donations to Dresden to rebuild the church he watched being firebombed during World War II. A secretary’s job enables her to keep her family of five together after her husband was killed in a skiing accident. A first-generation Cuban-American computer expert used the proceeds of his stock options to take his mother back to Cuba to see her mother for the first time in 35 years. A factory worker is deeply grateful to the company’s fitness instructor who noticed he couldn’t read and arranged for him to have private lessons, lifting him up from a self-imposed sense of shame and inferiority.

All these people you would pass in your hallway and not see anything extraordinary in their eyes. You have employees just like them in your company who have amazing stories to tell about how their jobs are helping them make huge dreams come true.

Too many employee engagement initiatives depend on top-down messaging from management telling their employees how great the company is to work for. And too often employees are only involved in the initiative through surveys. Surveys are important but they don’t breathe life into the flame of career passion. There are hundreds of books on “do what you love,” but when was the last time you saw a book called, The Survey-Driven Life or Fill Out Those Surveys and the Money Will Follow.

If you want to truly engage your employees, engage them on the level of their passion. If you want to truly engage your employees on the level of their passion, give them the chance to speak from their own hearts, tell their own stories, and inspire each other in the vision that your company is the place that will help them manifest their greatest destinies.

Martha I. Finney is a speaker and communications consultant who helps companies create passion-driven workplaces. She is also the co-author of HR From the Heart: Inspiring Stories and Strategies for Building the People Side of Great Business, with Libby Sartain. For a free copy of her e-book, Find Your Calling, Love Your Life, email her at martha@marthafinney.com.

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Carla M Rodecap
Dawn Ficklin
Jami Fielding
Tatiana Morris
Javier Contreras
Emma Quiggins
Marianne Whelchel
Ann Clifford
Melissa Snowdin
Jim Schaffer
Audrey Newton
Peggy Nichols

Stephanie Reinhardt
Claudia Coulter
Alex LaPointe
Matt Himsel, PHR
Melissa Alexander
Nancy Kolovrat
Gene Dunlap
Jeff Becze
Patricia D. Rowe
Scott Kincaid
Cecilia Forbes, PHR
Henry Dohnert