I lost it.  I’m posting an all points bulletin for my muse.

If you see it, please call me ASAP so I can reclaim it.

Ugh, maybe it’s the stress at work or the time change or the weather. I’ve had several posts started and scrapped them because I didn’t feel like they were up to my personal standards.  If there’s any place I should feel a muse it’s where I am now, sitting outside under a tree in 66 degree weather on a sunny day. But alas, it evades me once again.

The posts I’ve started but scrapped have had good potential; I just haven’t been able to see them through to the end.  I had one on the importance or lack there of, in a successful business; I also had one on what makes a good leader.  And then I got frustrated last night and had one going on my Social Media Etiquette pet peeves.

So here’s the Readers Digest version of what I have knocking around in my head.

• Technology is important, but I think you need strong leadership, a passion for something, a set of goals for the business/department, and the ability to laugh at your own stupid mistakes to have a successful business. Just because you have the cream of the crop technology, in my personal opinion, does not mean your business will be successful.
• Social Media Etiquette pet peeves: If you request a connection, tell me who you are and how I know you.  Don’t spam me. Spell check, use it.  And last but most importantly, Auto DMs are evil, stop it.

I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done in your career; the functional resume is a horrible idea.

My brother-in-law was recently laid off from his job, a few months before tying the note I might add, so being the good sister-in-law in HR, I offered to help.  Bless his heart, he forwarded me his resume and I all I could do was sigh.

My friend Dawn Hrdlica wrote a post over on Fistful of Talent in January about the death of the Functional Resume.

The Functional Resume, known more affectionately as “the confusing one” and “the manipulator” died today after a long steady decline.  The age of Functional Resume was unknown, since he refused to notate any of his works or accomplishments chronologically.

Functional Resume, born by professors and consultants, was a friend to job seekers convinced (by the same professors and consultants) that their experience was too limiting to be forthright.  Functional Resume was an outspoken advocate of praying on the naivety of candidates; candidates taught by generations past, that diverse, non-traditional career paths were shameful and that wordsmithing, trickery and deception were better paths into recruiting gatekeepers.

Sadly, Functional Resume drew his last breath with the evolution of work-life balance, dual career paths, the emergence of Merger and acquisitions, and the economic crash of 2008-09.  These events lead recruiters to simply not care if a resume showed a less than steady chronological workflow, since it was a sign of the times.

Functional Resume will be buried alongside of facsimile, typewriter, telegraph and dictaphone.

Every time I see one I cringe; even if it’s written well and covers all the bases.  I don’t want to guess what skills and/or accomplishment go with what role.

And to anyone that’s telling job seekers to use the Function Resume, stop it.

Like many US workers, I receive health insurance via my employer; at a subsidized rate via a Cafeteria Plan.  Over the past several weeks I’ve come to realize that insurance companies, for lack of a better and more professional word, suck.

My company switched from Cigna to Anthem Blue Cross this year and with it came new coverage’s and different rate plans.  What we weren’t told was that all the pre-authorizations had to be done again; all those expensive prescriptions had to be reexamined to make sure they were approved by Anthem.

Here’s my frustration with the process of insurance companies. If I’m on a medication, for example, that I take daily that helps me function as a human being should and my doctor prescribed this medication that has no generic form, what place does an Insurance Company have to question that prescription and its diagnosis? Why do I have to jump through hoops to get my own prescription filled because an insurance company has to pay extra for a drug that helps me function?

Another example, a female employee with intense pain in her lower abdomen wishes to have a hysterectomy rather than going through the pain and lost work time of essentially taking one part at a time. She goes to her doctor in January and, after asking the Insurance Company for permission, the doctors says they can’t do it but if she wants to come back in May they can.  Apparently the Insurance Company her spouse has only approves total hysterectomies after the first quarter of the year.

A truly personal example of the dysfunction that is our American Healthcare System, I visited the doctor a few years ago with intense pain, doubled over kind of pain. Confused as to what it might be, my doctor wants to run several tests to rule out a few things. The first thing he did was run it through the insurance company to see if they’d cover the tests he wanted to run to make sure I didn’t have Liver cancer, Liver. Cancer. I don’t care what the insurance says, run the test man. (I don’t by the way, clean as a whistle)

I understand that insurance companies are businesses and their primary function is to turn a profit. But at what cost? How many Americans that actually have cancer go without that test because their insurance won’t pay for it and they can’t afford it? How many women are enduring multiple surgeries all because the insurance company wouldn’t pay for a hysterectomy in the first quarter of the year?

I don’t know what the fix is for the American Healthcare system. The public option may be it or it may be a complete cluster, who knows. What I do know is that something has to give; the health of Americans should not be in the hands of an insurance company that is only out for a profit. My healthcare options should be between me and my doctor; not me, my doctor, the insurance company, and my employer.

What does this have to do with HR? Nothing really, other than I beg you to do your best to provide the best coverage you can for your employees; and make sure you know what the fine print says.

Editors Note: This guest post is authored by Ben Eubanks.  Ben is an HR professional from Huntsville, AL. He lives much of his life online. Don’t believe it? Catch him on LinkedIn, Twitter, or via email. His blog, UpstartHR, is about many things, including human resources, leadership, and zombies.  Take it away Ben!

Ever since I’ve been a wee lad, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres. All of the alien attacks, meteor strikes, and undead hordes make for great entertainment, but they can also help you to be better at HR.

Succession plans

If zombies attack and eat your CEO tomorrow, do you know who will take over the position? What about your HR director? Your star recruiter? Every eventuality can’t be prepared for, but keeping things in perspective never hurts. Learn more about succession planning.

Emergency plans

When the giant meteor strikes the earth and demolishes your office, what happens next? Do you go to a secondary location? Who do you get your information from? Should you go to try and find out if all of your records were vaporized (yippee, no more filing!)? While the chances of a meteor smashing through your office and leveling it are quite slim, we ARE overdue for a zombie attack. Is your department or organization properly prepared? Learn more about emergency planning.

Enough Gloom and Doom

Check out the video below. Enjoy it.  But seriously, make sure you’re planning ahead. It’s what any Dark Lord (or HR pro) would do.

The Alabama Senate has a bill on the tables that has the potential to affect a major policy in most handbooks of Alabama HR Pros.  I’m going to redirect you over to my local chapters blog, SHRMingham, to read more about it.

I would love to hear your comments on this legislation.

In the before times, I worked in fast food; a girls gotta have spending money in high school.  The experience, I think, molded my customer service beliefs into what they are today.

I find myself critiquing customer service in the food industry each and every time I go out to eat.  It only takes a little effort to go from a mediocre experience to a real crappy experience and vice versa.  My husband and I visited a local fast food restaurant this morning for breakfast. The woman working the drive thru hands me the large diet coke I ordered with a stack of napkins on top of it. She says “I over filled it a bit, sorry”.  There was soda dripping down the side of the cup.  Crappy experience.

On the opposite side of the coin, I hit the McDonalds on Friday’s for a biscuit and soda.  The lady working the window is the nicest woman. She calls me doll and wishes me a great day every single time. Stellar experience, I’d hire that woman in a heartbeat.

There’s been debate in the past about who HR’s customer is; employee or the business. It doesn’t matter who we label the customer, they’re both the customer.  HR often gets a bad reputation but I think a lot of it comes down to bad customer service.  Kris Dunn said it best “The secret to great HR – find a way to say yes.”

Good customer service isn’t rocket science; whether you are serving biscuits, helping an employee understand FMLA, or developing a headcount budget for next year.

A slap on the wrist and a request for an apology for Reindeer Games; really?

Get real.

I really enjoyed the first episode of Undercover Boss but the episode that aired Sunday night was joke.  You’re telling me that a CEO sees a manager blatantly playing a sexist ‘game’ with his staff and he just stands there afraid to break character?  I. Don’t. Buy. It.

I want to see the apology.  Oh to be a fly on the wall during the conversation Jimbo’s direct manager has with him.  And where is HR during all of this?

I want to call Jimbo an idiot but I don’t know him personally so I’m going to stick with calling his management style, or lack thereof, idiotic.

Did you watch Undercover Boss Sunday night? Is my need for Girl Power making me madder at Jimbo than I should be?

I’ve seen good players and bad players, more than I’d like to have seen. On occasion a real honest to goodness rock star, A player, whatever you like to call them comes along. When you meet A Players and get the opportunity to work closely with them you always learn something and come out of the experience with new tools in your toolbox.  I’ve never seen an A Player terminated or laid off.

So what makes an A player actively look for work? Is it lack of motivation? Is it an argument with their pointy haired boss? Is it a need to do something more profound?

Of the A players I’ve had the opportunity to work with, the unifying reason for leaving is frustration. A Players see what needs to be done, they know how to get it done, they have all the right pieces in play to get it done, but someone has tied their hands.  A Players have the motivation and the drive to move. They want things done, now.  Standing in an A Players way of getting the job done is just as effective as chopping your own foot off to spite your face.

I had a good friend tell me many years ago that A Players are the ones with jobs that are looking on Monster or Career Builder just to see what’s out there.  I think there has to be a reason for contemplating the thought of leaving. Be it a stubborn CEO who won’t let go the reins of huge company, or a SVP that takes your ideas and spins them as his own; there’s always a reason.

What caused you to look for a job? (see, I’m assuming that you’re an A-player/rock star/whatever because you’re here which means you’re awesome)

So I’m watching Undercover Boss Sunday night just like every other HR nerd out there and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  A few things stuck out as odd to me, one in particular was Kevin.

Kevin is the manager in the facility with the policy on docking two minutes for every one minute you were late coming back from lunch. Of course that stood out as odd and all kinds of wrong.  What got me the most was how Kevin responded to the question asked by the President/COO regarding meeting the new employee that worked one day in his office.

How do you not meet your new staff? I understand managers are busy and can’t always take time to really get to know their staff but come on, how do you not at least take a few minutes out of your day to say welcome aboard to the new guy?

Even in a company as large as Waste Management on boarding has to be important. My office has 77 employees and I can bet you good money that our Center Director, equivalent to old Kevin, has met every single employee out there.

Managers, get off your managerial high horse and meet your front line employees, learn the difficulties they endure every day to make your shop function. Start at onboarding and grow the relationship from there, your office will be better for it.

Let me say up front that I’m an advocator of SHRM; I think they’re a great resource for the majority of HR professionals.  Do I think there’s room for improvement? Of course, there’s always room for improvement in any organization as large as SHRM and China Gorman is helping to lead the way.

When I first started my career in something other than being in front of customers/members it was in Accounting as a Payroll Administrator.  I was obsessed with learning more about payroll and benefits. The American Payroll Association was the first place I went to do my research.

One slow day while waiting for ADP to kick back my reports, I found myself going from the APA site to the SHRM site and it was like someone flipped on a light switch and everything was clear.  I spent literally the entire day on the SHRM site reading about legislation, tool kits for policies, looking at sample forms, reading about benefits, and researching certification.  I made my way over to the HRCI site and downloaded the certification handbook for later reading. I eventually found the Alabama SHRM site and the Birmingham SHRM site as well; though both took some digging.

SHRM was what sucked me into HR.  I don’t visit the SHRM site as much as I used to, mostly because I find what I need via a Google Search or asking my wonderful Twitter friends.

My coworkers, on the other hand, use mostly the SHRM site. They use SHRM for the free webinars and to get sample templates for policies or letters. Even during set up training for our new ATS the trainer talked about adding a link to SHRM on the side bar for external resources.

SHRM is a good tool for those new to HR or those that aren’t as engrossed in social media.  Say what you will about SHRM, I blame thank them for where I am today.