Government is Remiss to Enforce Ethical Behavior

In the digital marketing world, ethical Internet practices are called white hat; unethical practices - black hat. The latter is professionally frowned upon and even though the digital landscape is becoming especially limited to bad form, a black hat association can cost an agency its credibility.

Similarly, if a government agency hires black hat technocrats to tap into the top-secret databases of foreign countries, then said organization is unethical for deliberately hiring and harboring unethical employees. In fact, they seem to admit it. 

There is of course a 21st century Cold War in which diplomacy struggles via the Internet and so the NSA is perhaps a necessary evil. That their tactics involve surveillance and espionage is by and large pardoned in the scope of political realism. But their appetite for big data makes them - by the human resources definition - an unethical organization.

Conversely, big data doesn’t have a code of ethics - no rules, no regulations, no referees. Google has an informal motto, “don’t be evil,” that leaves a lot of headroom. Organizations like the NSA use this headroom as leverage in Realpolitik. To install ethics would be negligent.

Food Service and the Mobile Revolution

What we are living in today is a revolution similar to the second industrial revolution at the turn of the century when chemicals and steel empowered mass production and electricity enabled some pretty well known advantages at home. Today we experience this with the Internet. Internet access is ubiquitous and seamless in several corners of the economy but not all. That margin, however, is shrinking at an increasing rate.

On September 17, 2013, Chili’s Grill & Bar announced that it will install tabletop screens in most of its roughly 1,200 restaurants by early 2014. The screens are essentially tablets mounted to a fixture that are loaded with a menu, games for kids, and a credit-card swipe device.  

Mobile device integration to retail suggests many positive effects on the economy. In this case and probably many more to come, integration is aimed at the consumer in the interest of company revenue. Testing of these devices shows diners often spend more per check, because they buy more desserts and coffee when the screen is present. More spending means a healthier economy.

There are, however, adverse economic uncertainties with any technological advance. Will servers lose their jobs? If so, how many and how fast? If so, what effect will down-sizing have on talent management? And if so, what core competencies will this newly renovated family dining sector demand? Chili’s executives have released a statement that their intention is not to reduce labor costs, but the effects of granting consumers more autonomy in a service industry should be obvious.

HR challenges will also develop. Human resources departments across the family dining sector will have to establish a new culture. If mobile integration is somehow hugely successful, there will be an implication of tech over service since this is essentially the message their innovation will be sending. How many customers will they lose? On the other hand, how many customers will they win? Will diners prefer tabletop interfaces the same way shoppers prefer self-scan cash registers?  

Talent management will change as well. The smaller, family owned restaurants will be wise to seek young, tech savvy startup engineers in addition to experienced servers. If the small business world catches on, catering will be gradually overrun by autonomy and talent retention will revolve around engineers with skills that facilitate that autonomy.

And finally, companies like Chili’s can start preparing for more government regulation of big data. Identification data will now surge through the restaurant industry just as it does with the banks. However now there will be very interesting information troves related to the tastes (and the gratuity) of a community.

While we’re probably not in the end of times for food service, recent developments in tech suggest there will be shifts in recruiting, analytics, and company culture for many of these organizations. But even if the menus of 2014 are touch screens, interactive, and networked to a chef’s iPad, you’d still need someone to carry your dessert and coffee from the kitchen to your table.

HR and Companies I Don't Want to Work For

The company I'm writing about is totally a scam so I won't name them, but they're still worth thinking about.

In the first weeks of summer I was lucky enough to go from consistent rejection to acquiring three opportunities in one week. One of the options I did not select offered two lessons learned on HR management.

Employee Engagement vs. Productivity

Internet research on the organization I'm writing about returned pages from ripoffreport.com and scambook.com. Pay was commission based, but management had a scripted sales pitch and HR demanded sharp punctuality. So here was a company where pay was loose and everything else was rigid. Timeliness and even urgency should be the standard wherever you go. But in a commission based role where employee engagement is admittedly more important than productivity, I'd question any punitive measures for being a minute late (which they assured me there were).

Core Competencies

I showed up for one day of training and was fed the "attitude is what determines your latitude" philosophy. No question of skill sets or fields of study. Human capital as defined in the text is the collective value of the capabilities, knowledge, skills, life experiences, and motivation of an organizational workforce. Too much emphasis on one of these dimensions - in this case motivation - might actually distort an organization's success.

Not wasting time with that.