There’s been some banter on the HR twitter timeline recently about coffee shops. It started when myself, Michael, Emma and Anne were sharing the worst misspelling of our names (mine was Murvy) on cups from a certain chain that tries to personalise the experience. We’ve joked about trying to set up an HR Coffee Shop.
Fairly typical early morning Twitter banter but today Emma shared the above picture from coffee art and the chat turned to froth. I said that there should be no froth in the conversations at the HR Coffee Shop.
Around the same time Neil’s latest blog popped up in the timeline about big data vs big thinking and whether the rush for HR to understand and use analytics was an act of cowardice, an avoidance of dealing with some of the more pressing, creative issues by hiding behind numbers.
When a serious post meets a bit of fun banter on social media a there’s usually an interesting point to be made and it’s this…
…..to many a lot of HR’s work and concerns are seen as froth. I don’t for one minute believe they are, but many people out there do. As someone who is not a practitioner but is closely tied to the profession I hear it a lot, especially from people who aren’t (and unlikely any time soon to be) part of the Social HR echo chamber.
Recently I was lucky enough to be invited to an espresso tasting at Nespresso’s London boutique. There’s a thin layer of froth on the top of a new espresso which you push to one side to taste the real coffee.
So whatever’s on your agenda today, this week or this month – push away the froth.
Smell the real coffee and make sure everyone else does too…
Talent Trends & Insights 