Hold the Phone

Want to get someone to click your blog post link, attend your conference breakout session or download your whitepaper? Apparently, as we sit here in 2016, you can ensure that happens by using the word “disruption” (or some variant) in the title of your content.

We in HR are told we best be disrupting something or, if we’re not, we may as well be wilting away and dying. I hear that, I swear to you, every single day.

And yeah…I get it. I believe it. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time exhorting my fellow HR professionals to push, prod, and question. Challenge the status quo! Fight the machine! Bust those the HR stereotypes that tell us we’re not only clueless and out-of-touch but also slow to react!

I’ve written blog posts about disruption. I’ve done presentations at conferences with the word “disrupt” in the title. I even spoke at one of the first DisruptHR events in Cleveland. (I used the word “penis” in my opening sentence of that one; admittedly with the intent of leading some of the HR gals to clutch their pearls.)

But…every now and again I, and you too I bet, want a moment of relaxation. Enough with the disruption.

Sometimes it’s perfectly acceptable to crawl back into the soothing comfort of benefit administrivia; blissfully spending your day reviewing monthly utilization reports and reconciling STD/LTD plan invoices. There’s nothing wrong, my friends, with scheduling some down time in the file room. (We all still have those archived files don’t we; ancient artifacts from the days before we captured electronic signatures and scanned and stored everything ‘in the cloud?”) Go ahead; dress in jeans, escape to the dusty confines, and spend a lazy afternoon sorting and organizing.

Remember when you perused paper applications, picked up the phone, and actually called (omg! the horror!) your applicants? Try it again when you want to calm your nerves; for old times’ sake.

Oh. Wait. That might be disruptive.

Settle down.