{"id":951,"date":"2008-09-02T01:00:32","date_gmt":"2008-09-02T09:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=951"},"modified":"2008-09-02T01:01:25","modified_gmt":"2008-09-02T09:01:25","slug":"cover-ups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=951","title":{"rendered":"Cover-ups"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Up through the Beijing Olympics, I\u2019d been reading stories almost on a daily basis about how China was trying to present a public image of itself that was not necessarily the truth.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00adLimited access for journalists (to protect the athletes?):\u00a0 Really there was concern that the political environment that surrounds the country would be exposed.<\/li>\n<li>\u00adShutting down the factories (to limit pollution output):\u00a0 In the weeks leading up to the games, surveys showed that air quality was as bad as ever.<\/li>\n<li>\u00adMaking workers drive only every other day (to limit pollution output):\u00a0 Wonderful effect on the economy I\u2019m sure when half of the population on any given day can\u2019t get to work<\/li>\n<li>\u00adBuilding brick walls around slums (god forbid people see poor people):\u00a0 Literally, instead of helping the poor, or giving them money to make their places look better, the government decided to build brick walls around homes, force people to put tarps over their homes, and otherwise hide the poor<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Every city tries to put themselves in the best light when the Olympics come to town.\u00a0 They highlight the best about their city, and pour money into refurbishments for areas that might need a bit of touch-up.\u00a0 China\u2019s model seemed to be a cover-up, not a highlight of what was good about the city.\u00a0 I look at what was done there and I can\u2019t help but to think that what ultimately got focused on was the negative which was destined to come out anyway.<\/p>\n<p>(Yes, there is a tie-in).\u00a0 Unfortunately for HR, our own value propositions are often not close to the truth of what employees really experience.\u00a0 The disconnect between employee reality and the portrayed EVP is a gap between what the organization thinks they want to be.\u00a0 However, there is always a positive spin to the real employee culture, and always some reality to some of the negatives as well.\u00a0 The trick is to figure out what the cultural positives are, and also then to figure out what you want to augment that culture with.\u00a0 It is at that point that HR must begin their strategic campaign to shape the culture in the direction that it needs to go, rather than simply putting on duct tape and pretending the vision is reality.<\/p>\n<p>The point is that if your EVP to applicants does not reflect reality, the truth will come out.\u00a0 Employees will see the lie, and applicants will certainly know what the actual culture is.\u00a0 No matter what you, recruiters and interviewers say, everyone will know.\u00a0 Truth simply can\u2019t be hidden\u2026 for long.\u00a0 Ultimately HR needs to acknowledge truth, or transform it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Up through the Beijing Olympics, I\u2019d been reading stories almost on a daily basis about how China was trying to present a public image of itself that was not necessarily the truth. \u00adLimited access for journalists (to protect the athletes?):\u00a0&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,28,8,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-branding","category-communications","category-strategies","category-talent-acquisition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}