I’ve been on a number of non-profit boards through the years.  All the organizations I supported had missions focused on the development of people, on making our talent pipeline more robust.  I was on the board of an organization that promoted the hiring of people with disabilities.  I was on the board of an organization that provided leadership development programs for young people.  I was on the board of the SHRM Foundation.

Currently, I serve as Chair of the Board of CAEL, the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning.  CAEL works at all levels within the higher education, public, and private sectors to make it easier for people to get the education and training they need.  It does critical policy and research work to ensure that working adults get access to lifelong learning.  An uphill road for sure.

And I’m on the executive committee of the board of JAG, Jobs for America’s Graduates.  JAG is a state-based national non-profit organization dedicated to preventing dropouts among young people who are most at-risk.  In more than three decades of operation, JAG has delivered consistent, compelling results – helping more than three-quarters of a million young people stay in school through graduation, pursue post-secondary education and secure quality entry-level jobs leading to career advancement opportunities.

JAG has provided infrastructure and support that has enabled more than 800,000 at-risk high school kids to graduate and move on to a job, college or the military.  JAG is changing lives pure and simple.

Here are just some of the results from the Class of 2010 – kids who graduated from high school last June:

• The JAG graduation rate was 93%
• Overall job placement rate was 54%
• Full-time jobs rate of those working was 67%
• Full-time placement rate was 88% (percentage of graduates engaged in full-time employment or a combination of employment and post-secondary education)
• Further education rate was 47%

93% graduation rate.  That doesn’t exist anywhere.  But it does in JAG programs in 32 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Routinely.

This program has worked for more than 30 years.  And you know what?  2011 was the toughest funding year in JAG’s history.  2012 will be even more difficult.  Deep budget cuts at the state level for education programs were the norm in 2011 and will be more draconian in 2012.  Sharp budget cuts of federal funding to Governors adversely impacted 9 of 32 states in 2011 with more to come in 2012.

I find this astonishing.  The education of our nation’s youth is one of the biggest issues we face.  If we’re to be competitive in the global economy we must focus on the development of the talent we have.  And it all starts in our elementary, junior and high schools.

Last week I attended the yearly JAG Leadership Awards luncheon in Washington, D.C.  More than 450 JAG high school students raised money to travel to D.C. to attend this event and the follow-on conference.  Some of these kids flew on a plane for the first time last week.  Many of them wore a suit for the first time.  Most of them had never been to our nation’s capital.

These kids are the future of the United States.  And most of these kids would have been dropped by our education system had it not been for JAG.  This was made very clear to me at the end of the lunch.

I was caught in the crush of students headed to the escalators.  A young man looked at my badge and said, “You look important.”  I responded, “No more important than you!”  He then asked if I knew Ken Smith, the President and founder of JAG.  I told him I did indeed know Ken.  The young man then held out his hand to me and introduced himself:  “I’m Ken Watkins from South Carolina.  Would you introduce me to Ken Smith?”

We reversed our direction and headed to the front of the banquet room.  When we got there, I introduced the two Kens.  The student from South Carolina looked at the President of JAG and said, “I asked to meet you because I wanted to thank you for saving my life.”

It was a quick conversation and the elder Ken quite naturally told the young man that it was really his own commitment and perseverance that saved his life – and to keep up the hard work.  I think the younger Ken understood, but it was clearly important to him to thank the man who founded the organization that provided his safety net.  It was a very moving moment – for all of us.

So I think of the other 799,999 students like young Ken from South Carolina who, over 30+ years, have responded to the opportunities created by JAG and who have entered our economy as educated, hard working citizens and contributed to the economic success of the United States and their families.

It’s important to know that in these times of political dysfunction and lack of political leadership ,that there are people and organizations who keep the prize in mind.  Who keep moving us forward.  Organizations like JAG and CAEL.

So the next time a non-profit asks you to get involved, to make a donation or to serve on their board, please seriously consider their request.  We’re adding to the talent pipeline.  We’re educating our nation.  We’re saving lives.  And if you have jobs that young people could perform, find the JAG organization in your state and interview some JAG kids.  You’ll probably hire them all!

One of the ways I prove this is to quiz the audience on a range of business related topics, testing their savvy and knowledge.  Nearly every question I ask gets an almost unanimous positive answer.  The questions cover topics like the current unemployment rate, the current U.S. GDP and the topics of current business books.

When I ask how many in the audience have ever been responsible for a sales quota, 70-80% of the audience raises their hands.  And when I ask how many have managed a P&L, between 80 and 95% of every audience raises their hands.

After the quiz is over and we discuss the answers in detail I ask how many of their executive teams know that they’ve been responsible for a sales quota or managed a P&L.  Astonishingly most do not.

I find that remarkable.  No.  Actually, I find it disturbing.  HR professionals routinely lament their lack of standing in the strategic workings of business, and yet when they’ve got the golden ticket they ignore it.

So here’s the deal:  if you want to be an HR professional who focuses solely on the tactical and compliance parts of HR, then don’t let on that you’re a business person.  Not letting your C-suite know that you’ve managed a business will ensure that you stay off their radar and can focus on the day-to-day stuff.

If, however, your organization can benefit from your business insight and experience, and you want to operate at a strategic level – not just the tactical level – MAKE SURE YOUR FULL BACKGROUND AND EXPERIENCE ARE KNOWN!

That is all.

This year I’ve been to and spoken at SHRM conferences and un-conferences in the U.S. that were non-profit endeavors and I’ve been to and spoken at conferences and un-conferences in the U.S. and the U.K. that were for-profit endeavors.  And all of them but one share a singular mission:  to provide professional development for HR professionals.  And they offer HRCI recertification credits by the bushel.  That’s a good thing.  Every professional, regardless of functional focus, needs professional development.  We’re never done learning.  Certification and re-certification are important in managing your career and creating credibility.

But there’s one conference that treats HR people like business people.

Wait.  What?

One conference treats HR people like they impact the bottom line.  Like they are business leaders capable of making business decisions.  And spending money.  And that’s the HR Technology Conference organized by longtime HR analyst Bill Kutik and media partner Human Resource Executive Magazine, an LRP Publication.

The 2011 HRTech conference was held last week in Las Vegas, and was unique in my experience,  in many respects.

The most obvious is that vendors, sponsors and analysts are not only welcome, the organizers shine great big white-hot spotlights on them.  Other conferences see them as a necessary evil.  In fact, one might feel that the primary focus of this conference is giving vendors, sponsors, attendees and analysts a unique opportunity to get to know each other – and if the attendees learn something along the way (and get recertification credit) then everyone wins.

Unlike the nonprofit conferences of all sizes and the smaller unconferences, HRTech is a place where business gets done.  All over the place.  In the expo, in the hallways, at receptions, at afterparties, in sessions, in the press room, in the venue bars, lounges and restaurants.  Vendors, sponsors, analysts and attendees all pitching and being pitched to.  Making deals.  Buying.  The air was electric.

I also appreciate that the organizers hold the opinion that many vendors and sponsors are, in fact, experts in their fields.  Putting them on the stage, pitting them against each other, loading them up on panels creates an energy that is palpable.  And the attendees learn from state-of-the-art thinkers and business leaders.  There were practitioners on the stage, of course.  But I sensed the attendees – HR practitioners for the most part – really valuing this real time information about what’s new NOW, what’s coming SOON, and what’s to be expected NEXT YEAR.  With a focus on the business.  On ROI.  On productivity.  On impacting the bottom line.

Not exactly where most HR conferences focus.

And clearly the attendees count on this.  HR leaders from organizations of all sizes came with shopping lists.  The expo felt a little like shopping on Black Friday:  lists in hand, attendees came looking for solutions to their organizations’ people problems.

A social rewards and recognition system?

A new ATS?

An upgraded payroll system?

Want to investigate a video interviewing platform?

Need a new approach to assessments?

An outplacement 2.0 solution?

How about moving portions of your HRIS to the cloud?

If I were an HR leader and had the appropriate budget, I’d try to go to three conferences a year:  a SHRM conference (either national or state), the Bersin Impact Conference, and HRTech.  And if I had to pick only one, I think I’d pick HRTech.  I’d send my team to as many SHRM and unconferences (like HRevolution) as we could afford.

But I’d be at HRTech.

Because I’m a business person.

And .1% of the time we just disagree.

And this falls in that .1%.

I think that when you’re in HR you have to speak the language of business.  I think speaking HR in business is the kiss of death – or irrelevance, which is really the same thing.

It’s not about furniture, it’s about influence.  And when you’re influential you speak the language of those you influence.

Business people are everywhere in organizations.  They’re in Finance (where they speak finance and business).  They’re in Marketing (where they speak marketing and business).  They’re in Operations (where they speak operations and business).  They’re in R&D (where they speak r&d and business).  They’re in Sales (where they speak sales and business).  They’re in IT (where they speak technology and business).

Business people are most definitely at the top of the organization where the only language spoken is business.  So if you want to influence the people at the top of the organization – all those people whose job titles start with a great big “C” — you have to speak to them in their language, not yours.

This quote from Frank Romer says it all:

People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.

The bottom line is that language is important.  Using language your target audience doesn’t understand ensures that you won’t be understood.  It also ensures that you will have no influence.  None.  Zero.

So if HR is to be influential and interact with a certain type of furniture it has to be fluent in the language of business.

Actually, I’m pretty sure Laurie Ruettimann will agree with me.

You see the data:

• Job satisfaction has been moving downward and is now at an all time low:  according to the Conference Board, only 45% of America’s workforce report being satisfied with their employment experience.
• Over the last 6 years, the percentage of departing employees who would not recommend their employer has grown from 42% to 75%, according to company exit surveys aggregated by Corporate Executive Board
• The percentage of all employees leaving their employers who are leaving voluntarily is growing – and now greater than the percentage of employees who are laid-off according to current BLS data.

And now, like HSBC, Cisco, Bank of America and a growing group of other employers, you’re about to announce a layoff.  A major layoff.  And like most employers, you still have critical job openings in several sectors of the business and in various locations around the world.  And you’re predicting talent shortages in many of your critical operations.  A layoff.  Really?

What’s an employer brand to do?

With the fluid nature of today’s global workforce, you know it’s critical that you maintain a positive employer brand so that you can retain the critical talent you have and continue to attract (and in the future rehire) top talent.

What’s an employer brand to do?

You know that over the course of the next decade recruiting top talent is going to continue to become more and more challenging and you realize that the way you treat employees on their way out of the organization has now become as important as how you treated them on the way in – now more than ever.  The way you treat someone during the upcoming layoff will decide – for them and their network – whether they would ever consider working for your company again.

Remaining employees have always watched how impacted employees were treated during a downsizing or restructuring event.  But now, as the Boomers are beginning to make other plans, as Gen X is itching to see the fruits of their labor, and as Gen Y is yearning to work for organizations that are changing the world – the perception of how their former colleagues are treated will have a significant impact on your company’s employer brand, how loyal they will remain to the company and ultimately how easy it will be to retain them.

In these days of lightning speed feedback on hundreds of social networks, one negative comment can spread like wildfire.  Treating employees with dignity and respect as they exit the company can do a lot to mitigate the risk of that happening.

What’s an employer brand to do?

Revisit your severance policies and make sure that outplacement services are front and center.  Companies like yours that have invested in your employment brand could easily see that investment go up in smoke quickly without providing immediate, 21^st century job finding services like cloud-enabled virtual services that harness the power of social networking sites and semantic search engines to automatically and continuously deliver personalized job leads.

Truth is, there are outplacement organizations that are taking advantage of cloud computing, semantic search, virtual technology, and up-to-the-minute content being created by experts every day.  The harnessing of these technology and content-components have done two things that are important to employers:  they’ve driven cost out of the service and they’re helping former employees find jobs faster – saving UI costs and severance costs, in some cases.  Finding new jobs fast is the point.  For all the stakeholders.

While the traditional bricks and mortar outplacement firms are certainly “bolting on” some technology solutions to their learning based processes, and their consultants are learning how to harness LinkedIn and FaceBook for networking purposes, there are new entrants to the space – technology based entrants – that are redefining this industry’s processes, outcomes for laid-off employees, and deliverables to the employer.

Job boards, social networks, and the ubiquity of information about employers on the web have certainly changed the way people at all organizational levels and all levels of experience look for jobs today.  In many ways, job boards and social networks have made finding the right job a much more complex activity. Your outplacement solution needs to help untangle those complexities while motivating your former employees to move forward quickly.  Nothing will take the sting (and negative social media activity) out of job loss like finding a great new job fast!  And that’s good for your employer brand.

What’s an employer brand to do?

Be sure to review your outplacement policies before you take another step in the downsizing process.  Providing more service to more people could actually save you money.

More importantly, providing the right service can save your previous employer branding investment – because employees who feel supported as they leave their organization and who find great jobs quickly – continue to be employment brand ambassadors for you.

They won’t be part of the 75% of departing employees who don’t recommend their former employer.

As business leaders, we’ve always known our customers talk about their experience with us.  Sometimes it’s good…sometimes, well, not so much.

Ten years ago, heck, five years ago, if we really cared about what our customers were saying to their families and friends about their experiences with us, we sent surveys to find out what they were thinking, feeling and saying.

Today?  Well, we’ve got the social web to provide a ready and steady stream of information about what our customers, employees, competitors, stockholders, investors, vendors, suppliers, analysts, employment candidates, neighbors and random strangers are thinking, feeling and saying about our organizations.

In fact, there’s so much information flowing that new departments within the customer service, public relations, sales, marketing, human resources, legal and investor relations divisions (and sometimes in all of them simultaneously) are being created to monitor what’s being said by whom and to figure out what to do about it.

With all the noise, with all the new tools (it’s not just Twitter and YouTube anymore), with all the organization attention being paid, why should an executive enter into the world of social media – beyond their personal LinkedIn account and FaceBookpage?  Here’s one executive’s story:

When I was leading SHRM (the Society for Human Resource Management, with more than 250,000 members in over 140 countries) as its Chief Operating Officer, I became aware of a pretty large group of very smart, very active and leading edge HR professionals who were quite vocal about their disdain for the organization.  They were talking with each other through various social and new media tools and had accidentally (I think) created a community that I thought of as the “anti-SHRM gang.”

But here was the thing:  they were terrific HR leaders and consultants.  They were experts in the field.  Many were certified by the Human Resource Certification Institute.  They were active in learning and sharing their knowledge as mentors and coaches – formally and informally.  They were great!  Many of them are future Fortune 500 Chief Human Resource Officers.  And except for their anti-SHRM sentiments, they were just like SHRM members…with one major exception:  they were experimenting with and diving head long into the world of social media.

It was very clear to me that these were just the folks SHRM needed as members at the national level and leaders at the local level.  They included all the age demographics – this wasn’t just a GenX thing.  And they were writing blogs, hosting and participating in internet radio shows, innovating ways to use Twitter – all in an effort to create a community of like-minded professionals.  (They were also innovating ways to use social media applications to make their practice of HR more effective and efficient.)  And I couldn’t get them out of my head:  I wanted them involved in moving SHRM forward.

So I took up the challenge and created a Twitter account.  Because I wanted to be transparent about who I was, I chose the handle @SHRMCOO (now @ChinaGorman).  I wanted to let them know I was lurking.  I would ask questions from time to time and I re-tweeted comments I found interesting.  And I began to comment on blog posts that I thought were controversial.  But mostly, I listened and responded with lightning speed if anyone asked me a question.  In short, I listened.  I didn’t try to “tell” anyone anything.  I didn’t try to recruit new members.  I didn’t try to sell conference registrations.  I simply engaged in order to learn what was on the mind of these future members.  And I learned a lot!

The bottom line is that I made myself available in a transparent way to engage with our customers and potential customers.  And although I was just one executive at the world’s largest HR association, the symbolism to the full HR community – members and nonmembers alike – was powerful for our organization.  This community began to see SHRM in a new light.  “If a SHRM executive was engaged with social media, maybe this isn’t my father’s/mother’s HR association after all.”  And several of them joined and began to get involved.  That was good, and I’m glad for that, but what was most important was to hear their voices, understand their issues, and engage them in conversation.  We enlarged our community not by being willing to embrace the uncharted new world of social media but by taking advantage of a new source of business intelligence that informed us about what was on the minds of our audience.  And so we grew in relevance.  A good thing that created lots of benefits for the organization.

Does social media pose organizational risks?  Absolutely!  But to ignore those in-the-moment opportunities to engage a new or current customer, save a former customer, support an employee or just see a new way of thinking about your products or service puts your organization at a competitive disadvantage.

So go ahead and put together your LinkedIn profile and begin to populate a BeKnown network on FaceBook.  But be open to the richness of data available throughout the social web – and don’t just rely on your PR and marketing teams to report their findings to you.  It means so much more when you engage yourself!

China will be speaking at Talent Net Live on July 29 in San Antonio, TX.  Her track, Is Engagement the Antidote for Turnover?…Well, Maybe promises to be a lively session in which she’ll listen a lot!

SAN JOSE, Calif. (July 27, 2011) – RiseSmart, a leading provider of next-generation outplacement solutions, today announced that China Gorman, former chief operating officer of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), has been appointed to the company’s strategic advisory council.

“China is one of the foremost thought leaders in the field of human resources today; she is also an accomplished executive with significant experience in career transition services,” said Sanjay Sathe, founder and CEO of RiseSmart. “We look forward to her strategic contributions as we continue to increase our share of the $3 billion outplacement market.”

Gorman has held strategic leadership roles in human capital management for more than 25 years.   Prior to joining SHRM in 2007, Gorman had tenures as president at two of the largest career transition consultancies – DBM North America and Lee Hecht Harrison, where she also served as chief operating officer.

“I am excited to join RiseSmart’s strategic advisory council, because I truly believe this company is transforming corporate outplacement to the benefit of transitioning workers and their employers,” Gorman said. “RiseSmart has cracked the code by creating a results-oriented, virtual outplacement solution that makes traditional approaches seem lumbering and inefficient by comparison.”

Gorman travels extensively throughout the world speaking to business, professional, corporate and academic groups.  She serves as chair of the board of trustees of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) and is on the board of Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG).

A native Midwesterner, Gorman earned a bachelor’s degree from Principia College and has completed significant post-graduate work in organizational development at National Louis University.

About RiseSmart

RiseSmart is a leading provider of next-generation outplacement solutions. The company leverages a cloud-based technology platform, proven methodologies, and one-on-one support to help employers with their workforce strategy, and displaced employees with their career strategy. RiseSmart drives significant ROI to organizations by offering affordable pricing while reducing unemployment insurance taxes and severance costs. RiseSmart has received a wide range of awards and recognition from organizations including Red Herring, TiE, the Stevie Awards, SiliconIndia, the San Francisco Business Times and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. For more information, visit http://www.RiseSmart.com.

Paying attention to the candidate experience is the logical next step as organizations confront the looming talent shortages in many geographic and skill areas.  Thought leaders in the recruiting field are suggesting that automated ATS replies to job candidates and the all-too-common resume “black hole” are negatively impacting many organizations’ ability to attract top flight talent and begin creating relationships with them – relationships that end with employment.

Some really smart people in the recruiting field are stepping out on the edge and calling attention to the need for better candidate experience practices by creating an award to recognize those organizations whose processes show that attending to candidates in a more respectful way has a positive impact on their ability to build talent communities and to actually hire the talent they need.

Gerry Crispin, Elaine Orler, Mark McMillan and Ed Newman have created The Talent Board to manage the North American Candidate Experience Awards which will be awarded at the 2011 HR Technology Conference in October.  The three-round process is easy to complete and gathers information from your organization about the experiences prospects and job seekers have when interacting with your recruitment processes and people.  Even if you aren’t selected as a winner this year, you’ll get to receive feedback on how your organization compares with the others in the competition and how you might improve your recruitment practices in this area.

Gerry, Elaine, Mark and Ed are just the people to put meat on the bones of this conversation.  And announcing the awards at HR Tech is brilliant.  I encourage you to fill out the initial questionnaire – it takes less than 15 minutes – and apply before June 30.  You’ll be starting down the path of connecting the candidate experience and your employment brand to your broader corporate brand and strengthening all of them.

Not a bad way to start the summer.

Today is my husband’s and my 28^th wedding anniversary.

I can’t even comprehend what that means.  28 years of loving and being loved by a most exceptional man.  A good man.  A principled man.  A generous and kind man.  A man who knows who he is and who chose to walk beside me through life.  A man who has supported me emotionally, metaphysically and in every other way imaginable.  He’s supported my career (including 9 geographic moves and several instances of living apart when our jobs were in two different cities) in ways that most wouldn’t or couldn’t understand.

He’s my coach, my confidant, my cheerleader and my business advisor.  And my best friend.  He has dressed up in a tuxedo to escort me to black-tie business events; he has traveled around the world with my business colleagues; he has left great jobs because I had promotional opportunities.  He is a good man.

My husband, the coach, is the coach you want your kids to be coached by.  He’s the coach who tells his high school football team to go home and hug their mother and shake their father’s hand and thank them for their love and support.  He’s the coach who tells his college women’s track team members to embrace their inner “stud” while embracing their femininity.  He’s the coach who tells his high school wrestling team “we may not win every match but we’ll be in better shape than every other team we meet – increasing our chances of winning.”

He’s the coach who treats the gifted athletes and the uncoordinated “wanna-be’s” exactly the same – as long as they’re working as hard as they can.  He’s the coach who treats the rich parents exactly the same as the parents who struggle to provide for their families — as long as they’re supporting their child’s development as a complete person.  He’s the coach who treats female athletes the same as male athletes – that is, with respect, support and encouragement.  He’s the coach who never gives up on a kid who gives it all they’ve got.  Favoritism isn’t in his vocabulary.

I don’t know who loves him more:  the student athletes because he treats them with respect; their fathers because he’s a former NFL coach; their mothers because he focuses on character development; or the school administrations because his his athletes get good grades, because he models good sportsmanship and his teams win.

This man has changed my life.  More importantly, he’s changed the lives of hundreds of young people over the years.  Former student/athletes who are now community, religious and business leaders.  Former student/athletes whose children are now competing – and are calling their coach for advice.  Former student/athletes – now business leaders – who look back at key practice situations and send messages of thanks for requiring so much from them and always thinking the best of them.

It’s an honor to be Mrs. Ira-John Gorman.  I use the “Mrs.” with great pride because my partner is the most extraordinary man I know.  And I love him more today than I did 28 years ago when we said “I do” in a small chapel with two friends standing up for us.

We could never have predicted the amazing life we would live together.  But 28 years later, I’m grateful that God brought us together.  More grateful than words can express.