Failure to Communicate

kenary820/Shutterstock

For personal reasons, there are certain communities that are near and dear to this blogger’s heart. The Deaf, deafened and hard-of-hearing constituencies served by the Canadian Hearing Society are in that category. So, reading about the on-going labour struggles between the union and management of this particular organization raises conflicting emotional and intellectual responses for someone who has sat on both sides of that particular table.

The Canadian Hearing Society provides services to thousands of people in Ontario who are Deaf, deafened or hard-of-hearing. It is a unique organization in that the service providers are also members of the communities that they serve. Both employees and management members use the services of the organization, such as sign-language interpreters, and are active in the promotion of consumer advocacy.

As of the writing of this blog, the employees of the Canadian Hearing Society (represented by CUPE) are on strike. They have been without a renewed collective agreement for four years and have been unable to negotiate a new agreement with their employer.

As a result of the on-going strike action the parties have now received a fair bit of media attention.

Click here to read a CBC interview about the strike.

Click here to read an update on the strike.

Among the many unfortunate things that happen in any strike is that the parties are unable to sit down together and communicate with each other. Instead, they start to ‘negotiate’ their perspectives through the media. As we see in both of these news articles, each side presents the rightness of their respective positions. Both the union and the management side have a valid rationale for explaining the position in which they find themselves. Unfortunately, this approach is not constructive. As we may experience in our own lives, the more we tell someone else about our story, the more attached we become to our own version of its events.

The same thing happens when parties start to tell their negotiations stories through the media. Instead of communicating with each other, the parties are now communicating at each other.

As a result, the parties become further and further entrenched with no resolution in sight. Until these particular parties are able to sit down and re-establish communications, it does not seem that this strike will have a successful resolution any time soon.

Discussion Questions:

  1. What are the ‘issues’ for each party causing the strike?
  2. What would your approach be to bring these parties together for resolution?
  3. How can the employer re-establish a positive public image with its community members and employees?

The Candidate

Sometimes, the interview process can be deadly dull for everyone involved. Heineken, the Dutch brewing company, is noted for its unique and creative media campaigns when it comes to advertising their beer related products. They’ve taken the extra step and have applied that creativity to their hiring campaigns and documented it in this video clip “The Candidate”.

Source: wwwyoumarkit. The above content constitutes a link to the source website.  Please click on the play icon to stream the video.

It’s fun; it’s inspiring; it’s heart-warming. But is it effective? How do you know?

All too often HR practitioners get lost in making sure the ‘right’ questions get asked and/ or the ‘correct’ tests are administered to ensure that the ‘right’ candidate gets hired based on standard Knowledge, Skills and Abilities requirements. Does the Heineken approach allow for an opportunity to get that elusive ‘fit’ requirement between the candidate and the company? Does this process make the decision to hire the right person easier at the end? Are there other benefits to this approach?

If nothing else, this clever recruitment strategy provides a great promotional opportunity for Heineken to elevate brand recognition and to ensure vast international interest for future recruitment strategies. It also challenges other employers to step up their game when it comes to interactive recruitment processes in order to ensure that the best candidate gets the job.

Let’s recognize that Heineken, as a vast global organization, has the money and resources to put this recruitment campaign into place. Most employers would not have access to do any of this kind of recruitment on such a huge scale. Having said that, all employers, with the guidance and support of an effective Human Resources team, want the same result – to recruit, select and hire the best person for the job.

Discussion Question:

  • How will you as the HR practitioner make sure that the best hiring fit is ensured no matter how big or small your organization may be?