I don’t get into a lot of legal issues at the Business of Management, but here’s a good one from Workforce Management advisory board member Stephen Paskoff.

Steve is a former EEOC trial attorney and management law firm partner. His Atlanta-based company, ELI, provides “a variety of programs and services that teach professional workplace conduct, helping our clients translate their values into behaviors, increase employee contribution, build respectful and inclusive cultures, and reduce legal and ethical risk.”

He also writes a blog that gets into a lot of legal issues in the workplace, and I found this blog post he wrote this week to be especially insightful given the explosion in social networking and modern communications. I’m happy to share it with you because readers tell us that they always need good workforce legal information, so take a read on this and let me know what you think:

“I’ve wondered when it would happen—for years there have been stories of athletes, proxies for other celebrities, who say and do what they want while their behavior is ignored, minimized or attributed to ‘locker room’ humor or conduct. But the doors of locker rooms, operating rooms, broadcasting booths and boardroom suites are wide open these days; conduct that used to be tolerated in the bastions of such resident ‘untouchables’ is now falling prey to general workplace standards, publicity, business harm and personal penalties.

“Just a few weeks ago, David Letterman’s staff affairs became the grist of other comics’ gags and gigs of online commentary. In quick succession, the married ESPN sportscaster Steve Phillips’ escapade with a much younger, single staffer led to his leave of absence and recent separation, following her releasing intimate details of her affair to his wife—and the public. She lost her job too.

“Also, ESPN suspended Bob Griese for making on-air disparaging comments about a Latino racecar driver. Almost before I’d finished reading that online scoop, another story broke about Larry Johnson, a Kansas City Chiefs running back who used a homophobic slur on Twitter and while addressing reporters. At the time of this writing, Johnson has been told to stay away from the team while the NFL and the Chiefs complete their investigation.

“What’s happening here is that the transparency of modern communications is preventing such behavior, no matter who the offender, from being swept under the rug, or bed, as the case may be. So the message is simple and direct, not just for those at the middle and bottom but also for organizational leaders and ‘high’ performers.

“As we have taught in Civil Treatment, ‘Guard your words and actions.’ The more public your role, the more cautious you must be. There is no invincibility when conduct is outrageous, unprofessional and uncivil. What’s increasingly obvious is that the issue involving such conduct is not simply legal risk. ESPN’s brand has been harmed by its broadcasters’ actions, and the careers of those involved have been tarnished if not ruined, in Phillips’ case.

“Whether lawsuits are filed and ultimately dismissed or settled is almost secondary. Business and irrevocable personal harm has been done, and all of it could have been avoided if standards of professionalism and behavior had been in place and understood and applied by everyone, at all levels.”

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I don’t write much about self-management in this blog, and there’s a simple reason why: It’s because this Web site, and the related newsletters, blogs and magazine, are all focused on one thing  — the art of managing a workforce.

Once in a while, however, I bump into something that’s a little far afield from what I normally focus on here but is still really, really interesting. So it was today when I read this commentary from Advertising Age (a sister publication of Workforce Management) titled “How to Advance Your Career Without Selling Your Soul.”

It’s written by Joe Hodas, senior vice president of brand communications at Vladimir Jones, a privately held, full-service advertising agency in Colorado, and it struck me as an uncommonly good bit of common-sense advice whether you apply it to yourself or pass it along to those you manage.

Plus, it runs counter to a lot of the snarky “I have a blog so I know better” rants by thinly credentialed “experts” who seem to be taking over so much of the Internet today. The fact that it comes from someone like Joe Hodas, a guy who has worked for years in the trenches managing people and knows firsthand what he’s talking about, well, that just makes it must-read advice in my book.

Here are Joe’s 11 rules for managing your career, or, for you to use to help your workforce manage theirs. It’s great advice for just about anyone toiling in today’s challenging and difficult workforce:

1. Nothing replaces hard work. In an industry where smoke and mirrors are used in abundance, take heed: Nothing can disguise the absence of hard work. And don’t confuse effort with results. I don’t care how early you arrive or how late you stay—it’s about ROI.

2. We all have a personal tool kit—know yours and how to use it. As my mother told me on numerous occasions, I have special talents. Specifically, I’m a good consensus builder. You may be a killer salesman. Or extremely detailed. Whatever your “special talents” are, hone them and let them help define your personal brand.

3. It’s about teamwork, but know who is and isn’t on your team. I too hate office politics. And avoid them at all costs. Ignoring their existence is not only careless, but possibly counterproductive. Even if you don’t engage in them, someone else might on your behalf. Know who has the boss’s ear, who the players are, and who could take or leave ya. Whatever the political landscape in your company, it’s your reality and one you’ll have to navigate whether you like it or not.

4. Never lose your shit—at least not in public. Let’s play a little game of association. When I say Christian Bale, you say what? Probably not “great actor from ‘American Psycho,’ ” right? Rather, I bet you said something along the lines of “overindulged jerk who pulverized some poor sound tech on a movie set for making a mistake.” I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be human, but one single outburst—even if merited—can do permanent damage to your personal brand.

5. Life is not always a box of chocolates—so decide how much you can take before you bail. The perfect job doesn’t exist. I would imagine that even the taste-tester at Krispy Kreme has complaints about his gig (though I can’t imagine what they might be). Too often we hit tough times and jump ship for a lateral move or get frustrated and stop giving 110 percent. A career is like a relationship, so make sure you’re putting as much effort into trying to fix the problems as you put into feeling bad about them.

6. Humility goes a long way. Nothing infuriates your boss (and co-workers) more than employees who feel they deserve something they haven’t earned. I’m a firm believer that raises are for the work you’ve done, and promotions are for the work you can do.

7. Individuality is to be respected—as long as you’re still part of the team. Sometimes, there is an “I” in team. It just has to be the right kind of “I”—distinctive yet collaborative, unexpected but on strategy. Don’t be afraid to stand out, but do make sure you don’t alienate your teammates in the process.

8. Always try to add something smart to the discussion. Ask a smart question or make a great point that no one else has thought of. But do your homework so you can back up your comments and aren’t asking things that you should already know the answer to.

9. Sometimes you have to shout to be heard. You’ve heard the phrase “Squeaky wheel gets the grease”? Well, take note: Occasionally, persistent voices are listened to. Don’t be afraid to speak up when you’re passionate about something.

10. Have a perspective on the past, present and future. It’s not enough to do well today. Your boss wants and needs to see that you have a broader outlook on where you/the client/the work/etc. has been, is now and will be going.

11. Always be that ray of light in your boss’s/co-worker’s day. This one’s simple. Surprise. Delight. Be the kind if individual you’d like to spend 200-plus days each year with. And to be clear—that’s much different from kissing ass.

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Hey, Management Guy! My company has been doing big layoffs. This has been a huge trauma for everyone because the company is known for coddling and indulging its workforce, and layoffs were never, ever something you had to worry about. Well, now it’s time for the cuts to hit my staff, and frankly, I’m just not into having to be the bearer of bad news, especially since some of those getting let go are senior members of my staff. Can I avoid this bad scene altogether, perhaps by just conveniently going on vacation when the dirty deed is done?    

—Don in Detroit

Don:

Doing tough stuff is part of the drill when you accept a management gig, pure and simple. And nothing is tougher than having to fire people or lay off members of your staff. No manager in their right mind enjoys this process (unless you’re in the senior management ranks at Tribune Co., of course, but that’s a different story), but it is part and parcel of what ALL managers do. And any manager who crows about never having had to fire anyone—as a bald-headed baboon of a manager that your Management Guy used to work for frequently did—is just not much of a manager at all.

I’ve seen a lot of tricks pulled to get around this process, including firing people via e-mail (a cowardly stunt, of course) or bringing in an outside consultant to handle the dirty work (as Jerry Yang at Yahoo once famously did). But, all stuff like that does is further demoralize workers who are left after the layoffs because it dehumanizes what is already a pretty inhuman process, anyway.

If you get paid the big bucks to be a manager, you gotta be able to handle both good and bad. That means having the huevos grandes to let people on your staff go, if and when it ever comes to that.

In other words, buck up and don’t be a wimp—unless you’re Graydon Carter, of course. He’s the longtime editor of Condé Nast’s Vanity Fair magazine, and he decided to go on vacation when the companywide cutbacks finally hit his staff, according to the New York Post.

“Vanity Fair … took some of the deepest staff cuts at Condé Nast, but Editor Graydon Carter didn’t deliver the bad news himself,” the Post reported. “Although Carter was said to have been at his restaurant, The Monkey Bar (Note from The Management Guy: How can some schlub editor afford to own a restaurant?), Wednesday night, he was a no-show in the office yesterday because he had jetted off on a vacation.”

The Post also added this little tidbit: “Vanity Fair’s layoffs were said to be in the double-digit range, and hit as high as senior editors and as low as fact checkers, and were deep, in part, because Carter largely ignored the edict to chop 5 percent late last year.”

So, Graydon Carter first ignores a corporate edict to cut costs, then runs out on vacation when his staff is getting whacked? Here’s a piece of advice for Condé Nast senior execs from The Management Guy: You would do well to let Mr. Carter permanently retire to managing his Monkey Bar when he returns from vacation, because he’s completely worthless as a manager, especially one you can count on when things get rough.

And that, Don, is what you should always remember: If you can’t handle the tough work of being a manager—like layoffs and staff cuts—you have no business being a manager at all. Yes, you may work in management or flatter yourself with a management title, but if you can’t look your co-workers in the eye and do the dirty deed when it needs to be done, you’re just a manager wanna-be. And in these tough economic times, those are the very first people who should be shown the door.

—The Management Guy

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Close readers of this blog know that I have a low threshold for “news” or “trends” that seem to be generated by the clueless and brain-dead practitioners of America’s public relations profession solely to promote the latest book or expertise of some windbag “expert” they have as a client.

Don’t know what I’m ranting about? It’s the flood of pitches about the problems with office gambling pools around the NCAA college basketball tournament, aka March Madness, every spring. Or, office romance issues around Valentine’s Day. And, I even had one last year that was concocted around the ridiculous notion of workers going overboard and watching the Summer Olympics instead of doing their jobs.

These are all urban workplace legends created out of whole cloth by PR people to hype and pitch their clients.

They are not a problem for 99 percent of the working world and simply are a case of creating a bogus workplace issue that—surprise!—there just happens to be some expert who can help solve.

This would all be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that there are equally brain-dead media types, primarily engaged in the broadcasting profession, who play into this hype and regurgitate the nonsense that these PR handlers and their “experts” are spewing. They help to perpetuate this cycle that focuses on silliness rather than really honest-to-goodness workplace issues.

And that gets me to my latest rant about something called National Boss Day. It’s apparently coming up Friday, October 16, although as Wikipedia rightly says (and readers note, I’ll probably never put that in a sentence again), “The holiday has been the source of some controversy and criticism in the United States, where it is often mocked as a Hallmark Holiday.”

I’ve had a couple of press releases today touting either workplace surveys pegged to National Boss Day or some manner of workplace expertise about how to deal with a boss that spins off the event.

Here’s my take: National Boss Day is a put-on, a fraud, a silly and senseless “event” that one would expect to find in a Monty Python sketch, an episode of The Office or a Dilbert cartoon. And in all cases, the mention of such an event should simply be to mock the pretentiousness of such BS.

Why do we need National Boss Day anyway? As a longtime boss, the last thing I want is for anyone working for me to engage in such nonsense because it seems to elevate being a boss for no other reason than because a boss has power and authority.

In my world, great bosses are honored for the good they do and the respect and loyalty they generate among those who work with them, not because someone concocted some fake day that people are expected to remember. 

So, just remember this when you read or hear some dumb “news” story on Friday about National Boss Day. When you do, smile for a second and perhaps take a moment to wonder, “What kind of real news am I missing because some idiot editor fell prey to this PR crap about National Boss Day?”

When that happens, think of me and remember, I warned you here first.

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It’s surveys like this that drive my fellow blogger and social networking evangelist Kris Dunn completely bonkers.

A new survey of chief information officers by Robert Half Technology found that 54 percent “said their firms do not allow employees to visit social networking sites for any reason while at work.”

An additional 19 percent said that their organization allows the use of social networking sites for business purposes only, while some 26 percent said their workers could use such sites for personal use while on the job.

“Using social networking sites may divert employees’ attention away from more pressing priorities, so it’s understandable that some companies limit access,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology, in a press release about the study. “For some professions, however, these sites can be leveraged as effective business tools, which may be why about one in five companies allows their use for work-related purposes.”

Here’s my take: Doesn’t this sound a lot like the discussions and debates we used to have about employees using the Internet while at work? There was a lot of time and energy spent on policing shortsighted policies that were constructed around the notion that anyone who was on the Internet while at work must be goofing off and not doing their job.

That was a wrongheaded notion in many, many workplaces, and I can’t help but think that not allowing employees on social networking sites while they’re on the job is following along the same path.

We’ve written here at workforce.com about the perils and pluses of social networking, but a lot of that was focused on the notion of posting too much personal information online and how that might come back to bite you.

Smart companies, however, are finding ways to integrate social networking technology for the benefit of their workers, like BestBuy did with its BlueShirt Nation site. But, there are also potential legal issues for organizations that use social networking for recruiting, and forward-thinking organizations are proactively working to craft employee policies that deal with things like how workers use Twitter in today’s workplace world.

But telling workers they can’t use social networking sites while at the office seems to be a move that is both regressive and foolhardy, especially since so many workers use smart phones or other such devices to access their social networks. That’s a lot harder to police than it was back when you could simply block all Internet access on office computers.

Robert Half’s Willmer does offer one piece of solid advice along with this survey: a caution that employees should always exercise good judgment, no matter how lenient their company’s social networking policy.

“Professionals should let common sense prevail when using Facebook and similar sites—even outside of business hours,” he said. “Regrettable posts can be a career liability.”

Yes, that’s always the worst-case scenario. Workers can always post something regrettable that might damage their career, but to my way of thinking, that’s a lot more likely in a world where organizations try to keep employers away from social networking while on the job rather than coming up with a smart policy to deal with that eventuality.

Workers in this day and age are going to use social networking sites and I don’t think there’s any way to get around that. This latest survey simply tells me that all too many businesses simply haven’t faced up to that fact yet. Maybe more will use this recession as an opportunity to work on figuring that out.

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