Category Archives: Training

Is This a Major Sign Your Company Culture is Broke?

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Or, is this just the reality of workplaces today, in the world we live in with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements?

That’s the question I was asking myself this week when the Wall Street Journal reported that a group of female employees at Nike circulated their own survey about workplace behaviors. Here are some details from the Quartz at Work article:

According to The Wall Street Journal, the developments were precipitated by an employee-led survey circulated among women at the company. It reportedly asked respondents about inappropriate behavior by men at the company and gender inequities more generally.

Sources told the paper that Parker eventually learned of the survey, which led to a recently completed six-month formal review of company culture. Then, last week, employees learned that Nike brand president Trevor Edwards, widely considered Parker’s likely successor, would step down in August, while one of his top lieutenants, vice president Jayme Martin, was terminated immediately. According to the Journal, the two men “protected male subordinates who engaged in behavior that was demeaning to female colleagues.”

So, before I give you my opinion, I have to tell you I’m a complete Nike fanboy! My first pair of Nike’s happened around the 6th grade when I was in high school the first Air Jordan’s were released. I saved my money all summer to get my first pair (by the way, I came home from college to find my Dad mowing the lawn in these same shoes, believing since I left them in my closet I no longer wanted them!). I’m not a complete sneakerhead, but I’m a wannabe sneakerhead for sure. I love Nike, as much as anyone can love a brand.

I believe Nike’s culture is fine. It’s probably better than most places to work in the world by a great deal. I feel this way from people I know who work there and feedback I hear in HR circles. Nike is not Uber, by a million miles.

I think this shows that every workplace, no matter how good, still has some things we need to clean up. Should female employees at Nike have to circulate their own survey to deal with poor workplace behaviors? No. But, understand that Nike, over most companies, hires emboldened, powerful women. That means this isn’t surprising. The surprising part would be that these women didn’t take action.

I’m not sitting in Nike, so I don’t know if the response that happened was right, or enough. On the outside looking in, it seems like the senior leadership team handled this appropriately.

In the past, I can only imagine how this would have been handled, but my guess is it wouldn’t have been with a senior leader leaving the company, it probably would have been a lot of coaching these female employees around the appropriate way to lodge a complaint, followed by many of these females eventually leaving or being pushed out.

That was the old HR/leadership playbook. That playbook no longer works.

I would love to hear your opinion on this real HR issue and how it was handled by a very visible brand? Hit me in the comments!

 

Are HR Conferences Responsible for Ensuring You Connect? #UltiConnect

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So, this week I’m out at Ultimate Software’s annual customer conference called Ultimate Connections. They do a great job with their conference, and like their software, they’re willing to change quickly and try stuff.

A couple of things happened while I was here and it got me thinking about what the true value of any conference is we attend. Of course, the easy answer is always – it’s about connecting with peers and learning! But, then you show up at the conference and you talk to know one, you ask no questions, and you’re back in your room by 8 pm.

Ultimate Connections has peer networking time, but like many conferences, they make these sessions, with activities, based on the size of similar organizations. This is brilliant for a number of reasons because you now will make some really good connections and share your pain and successes, and down the road when you have a question you now have a handful of people to reach out to!

Speaking of questions. You know that awkward time at the end of conference sessions when the speaker says – “So, any questions?” and you hear crickets, or that one person who will ask, “Is the powerpoint deck available?”

Ultimate figured this happens to everyone so what’s a better way to increase engagement? How about you give the session attendees a phone number to text your questions to throughout the session!? It’s simple and you can’t believe how many questions come in. As a speaker, you bring a partner who can filter similar questions and now you have some real dynamic Q&A to go along with your session!

Conferences, for the most part, are all fairly similar. You get some great content, some average, some cool keynotes, some parties, a vendor show, etc. The reality is the best conference you’ll ever attend is the one where you remember actually connecting with real people, and you maintain those connections.

That will be a great takeaway for the Ultimate team in how can they continue the great connections beyond the conference with their customers. Not only is a super value-add for the attendees, but it also ensures higher retention when you can build your professional network because of the technology you’re using.

So, as the HR conference season gets into full swing, challenge yourself to force yourself to make connections with people you don’t know and build that network!

Career Confessions from GenZ: Are you Pre-boarding Interns?

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College orientation was one of the most uncomfortable and awkward experiences of my life. I would say that most other current college students would attest to this. I think it’s very unreasonable to expect a group of 18-year-olds to meet for the first time and become friends in a short time span while learning everything you’re supposed to know about the school you are attending.

Thankfully I am through the college orientation process, but I have a lifetime of job orientations ahead of me. Apparently, this process in the workforce is called “onboarding” (thanks, Dad!), but to newbies like me, we invented a new term to describe this orientation called “pre-boarding”.

This new style of onboarding is a more in-depth look into general ideas about the workforce in addition to normal onboarding events. This is for people that have never worked real-life jobs before (yup, that’s me). I like this idea of pre-boarding because I am a very curious person that has a million questions and likes them all to be answered! So, here are some specific topics that I want companies to focus on while pre-boarding newbies like me:

  1. Dress Code: For someone that has always put a heavy emphasis on what I wear, this is very important to me and other young people. The words “business casual” mean absolutely nothing to me. I need concrete examples of what to wear and this means VISUALS.  I want someone to show me pictures or even show me real-life examples of what I should be wearing every day to work. Please and thank you.
  2. Logistics: I’m calling this section logistics because it encompasses a whole array of logistical things. I need to know where to park, where to sit, when I eat, where I eat, where’s the bathroom, when I’m supposed to arrive, when I’m supposed to leave, among many other things. And I would like a concrete answer to all of these. Coming from a school environment, like most newbies are, we are always told when to do things and how to do them. Therefore, it is important to realize this and adhere to how your new employees have been given information for most of their lives.
  3. Job-related content: This part of the pre-boarding process should be different for every job because it has to do with the specific duties and tasks that new employees will be performing. This can include things like meeting your fellow team members, learning how to use certain software or programs, and other instructional demonstrations as needed (you guys already know how to do this part). Will I have a laptop, desktop, no computer, no desk? Should I bring my own laptop? What about my phone, you know I’m not going anywhere without that!? 

I’m sure I’m forgetting a million other things that are important, but these are just things that I specifically worry about. For this pre-boarding process, it is extremely important to leave all questions unanswered. Gen-Z (and young people across history) DON’T ask questions, so it is important to make sure you think of everything beforehand. This process will help alleviate pressure from your new employee and will warrant an easy and successful transition into their new position.

Here’s to hoping that my future bosses will be reading this post to make it easier for me!

 

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll have Cameron respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for Cameron? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

Are You In a Rush to be Offended?

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I was on a webinar recently and the speaker kept adding “she” and “he”every time they tried to say something like, “‘he’ would have to fill out that form” and then quickly go “or ‘she’ I know we have to be correct in HR”. In my mind, I was like okay, I get it, the word we use matter.

When I write, I frequently purposely change gender to try and be more gender-inclusive in my writing, knowing I’ll always by habit write from a more male dominant voice.

If we go back to the webinar example above, I’m sure you’ve seen and heard the same, but what really stuck with me, probably because he kept doing this so often, was me waiting for a comment to come across in the question box saying something like “well, you know there are more gender identities than male and female!”

Yep. There are. But, is this really the place to point this out. Clearly, the dude speaking was having a hard with just two and making sure we knew he cared equally about ‘both’ genders.

Years ago Salon had a great article about comedians struggling with how ‘politically correct’ the audiences were becoming. Here’s a quote from Jim Norton:

“Western culture has become a “tireless brigade of social-justice warriors” and that “Being outraged and upset and feeling bullied or offended are not only things we enjoy, they’re also things we have become thoroughly addicted to. When we can’t purposefully get our feelings hurt by a comedian, we usually find another, albeit less satisfying, source of indignation… I choose to believe that we are addicted to the rush of being offended, the idea of it, rather than believing we have become a nation of emasculated children whose only defense against an abyss of emotional agony is a trigger warning.”

We live in an offensive world, especially right now.

Every day media blasts every offensive phrase uttered by politicians, professional athletes, celebrities, etc. We see our employees and leaders say and write offensive things that in another time would probably have been ignored, but now we have platforms to call out the offense.

I think we hope that in our rush to be offended we will stop the offensive behavior, or at the very least get one person to stop their offensive behavior. We hope that by doing this we’ll ‘raise’ the level of conversation around these issues.

My fear is that we aren’t raising the level of conversation, but shutting it down. In our rush to be offended, we aren’t seeking first to understand, we are first attacking and who cares about what happens after that. I think we need to be careful with our employees and our workplace cultures to correct inappropriate behavior every single time it happens and do it in a way that is lasting for the person who does the offending.

We live in a world of gray. Not black and white. While one employee might be offended, the co-worker standing right next to them might not be at all. Both are wrong, and both are right. Either one attacking the other is never a solution that is sustainable for a positive and inclusive workplace culture.

Welcome to the show kids! This is one of the most difficult issues you’ll deal with in HR. Supporting one employee who is offended, when you know the majority would not be offended. If I had the perfect answer on how to handle this I would share, but I don’t, because each and every one of these situations is unique.

5 Things Leaders Need to Know About Developing Employees

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I think we try and deliver a message to organizations that all employees need and want to be developed.  This is a lie.  Many of our employees do want and need development. Some don’t need it, they’re better than you.  Some don’t want it, just give me my check.  Too many of our leaders truly believe they can develop and make their employees better than they already are.  This is a lot tougher than it sounds, and something most leaders actually fail at moving the needle on.

Here are some things I like to share with my leaders in developing their employees:

1. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” -Maya Angelou.  I see too many leaders trying to change adult employees.  Adult behaviors are basically locked. If they show you they don’t want to work.  They don’t want to work.  Part of developing a strong relationship is spending time with people who are not a waste of time.

2. People only change behavior they want to change, and even then, sometimes they’re not capable of it.  See above.  When I was young in my career, I was very ‘passionate’. That’s what I liked calling it – passionate.  I think the leaders I worked with called it, “career derailer”.  It took a lot for me to understand what I thought was a strength, was really a major weakness.  Some people never will gain this insight.  They’ll continue to believe they’re just passionate when in reality they’re just really an asshole.

3. Don’t invest more in a person than they are willing to invest in themselves.  I want you to be great. I want you to be the best employee we have ever had work here.  You need to be a part of that.  I’m willing to invest an immense amount of time and resources to help you reach your goals, but you have to meet me halfway, at least. Don’t think this means a class costs $2,000, so you should be willing to pay half. It doesn’t. Financial investment is easier for organizations to put in than for employees, but if you pay for the class and it’s on a Saturday and the employee turns their nose up to it, they’re not willing to ‘invest’ their share.

4. It’s usually never the situation that’s pissing you off, it’s the mindset behind the situation that’s pissing you off.  Rarely do I get upset over a certain situation. Frequently, I get upset over how someone has decided to handle that situation.  Getting your employees to understand your level of importance in a situation is key to getting you both on the same page towards a solution. Failure to do this goes down a really disastrous path.

5, Endeavor to look at disappointment with broader strokes. It’s all going to work out in the end.  It’s hard for leaders to act disappointed.  We are supposed to be strong and not show our disappointment.  This often makes our employees feel like we aren’t human.  The best leaders I’ve ever had showed disappoint, but with this great level of resolve that I admired. This sucks. We are all going to make it through this and be better. Disappointment might be the strongest developmental opportunity you’ll ever get as a leader, with your people.

The Secret to High Performance? Stay in your Box!

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I was reminded of something recently – getting out of the box – isn’t comfortable.

Now – I know what some of your are thinking – “But, Tim, you need to get out of the box to challenge yourself, to push the limits, to get you and your organization better!”

Really?

Or have we been sold this by this eras snake oil salesmen and women (leadership trainers, life coaches, every motivation, and leadership book written in the last 20 years)?

I’m not sure.

Here’s what I know:

1. People perform better when they know their boundaries. (their box)

2. There is comfort in knowing what to expect, with comfort comes sustained performance long-term.

3. In reality, a very small percentage of your employees will actually perform above their average performance being “out of the box”.

We as HR Pros tend to go a little overboard sometimes, in the attempt to “help out” the cause within our organization. That can be both good and bad.  Things are going as well as they could be, so we push to get everyone out of their box and reinvent themselves, in hopes that this will lead to better performance and higher organizational results.

When in fact, many times, it will lead to the exact opposite.  Not everyone is wired to get “out of the box”. In fact probably at a minimum 80% of the workforce should stay in their box, and keep plugging along with their solid performance that they are already giving you.

The trick to great HR in getting great performance is to find those race horses who you can push out of the box, and they show you a whole other level of performance that you and they didn’t know existed.  But if you keep pushing plow horses out on to the track in hopes of turning them into a race horse you, and they will fail.

So, don’t drink the Kool-aid and believe everyone can and wants to be out of the box thinkers and performers. Not everyone does and you limit yourself by thinking in such general terms.

When You Want It More Than They Want It

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You know what?  Being an HR Pro isn’t tough, being a Dad/parent is tough!  But, sometimes they seem to be very similar jobs.

I was reminded this weekend that many times in life, you want more for your kids/employees than they might want for themselves.  We run into that frequently as HR Pros – you sit through 100’s if not 1000’s, performance management reviews, and in many of those, the conversation is centered around asking the employee,”Well, what do you want out of your career?”

The smart ones usually tell you what you want to here, the not-so-smart ones will tell you something totally off the wall, but either way, you end up feeling like you’re doing the parenting!

Recently, I was taught a lesson that I’ve taught many people in my career.  The usual scenario is me sitting with an executive or hiring manager, explaining to them there is nothing we can do to change this employee if they are not willing to change this for themselves first.  Seems simple, right!?

We can offer the best tools, the best teachers and mentors, send them away to great conferences and nothing happens, it’s the same old employee that we had before.  We (HR, leadership, etc.) keep trying to change the individual, but the individual hasn’t decided, yet, that they are willing to change. In a nut shell, this is Performance Management, and there is a ton of performance management in Parenting!

For me, this is about wanting to turn one of my sons into something they are not, or are not yet ready to become.  I can yell and push and plead and do everything my Dad probably did to me but if he hasn’t made up his mind to change, it’s just not going to happen.

It’s funny how we all teach and train things that we haven’t really experienced or understand.  It’s in our DNA to want more for those we care about most. If you are a great leader/HR Pro and you care about your employees, you innately want them to reach their highest potential, it’s a natural feeling.  The hardest part is getting to the point where you understand that no matter how much you want your employee to change for the better they have to want to change, first before any step forward will take place.  The hardest thing to do as a leader/parent is to wait for this to happen.

So, don’t stop giving them the opportunity because you don’t know when the light will come on when the desire to change will take over. It could happen at any time.  We set the table, we invite them to eat, then they either come and eat or they don’t.  The next day, we set the table again and again and again.

One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from Leo Buscaglia (who is a wonderful writer and teacher), Leo says: “We don’t love to be loved in return, we love to love.”   As HR Pros/Leaders/Parents I think Leo has it right. We don’t try and make those we care about better, for something we are going to get in return, we try and make them better (and continue to try) for the simple reason, it’s the right thing to do.

The hard part is we know, we see the potential usually because, we didn’t reach that potential ourselves, and through that experience, we want to make sure others don’t miss their opportunity.  So, we will head back to the gym, a little smarter, a little wiser and, yeah, I’ll probably still yell a little too much…

2017 Michigan Recruiter’s Conference is October 25th in Detroit!

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That’s right gang! We’re back and better than ever!

The 2017 Michigan Recruiter’s Conference will take place on Wednesday, October 25th from 9 am to 4 pm in downtown Detroit onsite at our wonderful corporate host Quicken Loans!

Registration is now open – the cost of this event is $69 per person. This is a corporate talent acquisition event, no agency or third party recruiting pros will be allowed to register. It’s not that we don’t love you all, it’s that this is a development event, not a come pimp us with your services event.

Space will be limited, so please register early if you want a seat. You can transfer registration to another person on your team if plans change.

Who’s on the Agenda I hear you asking yourself! Oh, boy did I hit a few home runs this year!!!

SPEAKERS:

Carmen Hudson, Principle Consultant at Recruiting Toolbox, and Co-Founder of Talent42

Shaunda Zilich, Employment Brand Leader at GE

Will Maurer, Global Talent Acquisition, Sourcing Manager, General Motors

Holly Fawcett, Curriculum Development Manager at Social Talent

Margie Elsesser, VP of Talent Brand & Strategy at Quicken Loans 

Mike Bailen, VP of People at Lever and former Head of Talent for Zappos

Killed it, right?!?!

ERE, SHRM, and TEDx wished they had this line up coming to their events!

Thank you to our sponsors for making this happen – Lever and Quicken Loans.  We could not offer this at such a low price without their financial assistance and support! So, support them!

Can’t wait to see you all in Downtown Detroit! Bringing it to the D!

 

 

 

 

Midwest Recruiter’s Bootcamp! Minneapolis July 31st-Aug 1 (LAST CALL!)

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My good friend and recruiting guru, Paul DeBettignies, is hosting the Midwest Recruiting Bootcamp in Minneapolis next week, and he asked me to come and speak at it. He also asked some of the top recruiting minds in the business as well! The camp is next week July 31st and August 1st in Minneapolis, and you can still register and be apart of this!

Check out this list:

  • Maren Hogan – Create Winning Employer Brand for Knockout Recruitment
  • Jim Durbin – 8 Mistakes You’re Making: The New Rules Of LinkedIn
  • Shannon Pritchett – In OR out? Creative Sourcing Techniques to Find Your Candidates OUTside the box
  • Caroline Karanja – 10 ways to build diversity, practice inclusion and increase engagement within your organization
  • Paul himself – Create and Grow Your Recruiter Brand
  • Nick Roseth – Selling Minnesota: Strategies And Tools to Improve Recruiting To The Region
  • And me – hugging mostly! Okay, not really, I’m going to be sharing the 10 Truths Of Recruiting And Why You Are Failing At Them! And, how you can not fail at them!

When Paul first talked to me about the concept of the Midwest Recruiting Bootcamp I knew instantly it would be a hit and something I wanted to be apart of! Why? This is real Recruiting development for recruiting teams! It’s what I wanted to bring to Michigan with the Michigan Recruiter’s Conference.

National level development and speakers, in our own backyard! 

Paul let me know today he still has some space open for any recruiter’s or recruiting managers who want to join us. We’ll be onsite at the University of Minnesota. It’s two days that are packed with great material. If you can’t make both days – come one day, then send someone else on your team the other day! Or just come one day – you’ll still get a ton out of it!

REGISTER FOR MIDWEST RECRUITING BOOTCAMP! 

This might be the biggest bang for the buck in recruiter training budget history!

Here’s Paul telling us a little more:

Disrupt HR Detroit! September 27th – Tickets On Sale Now!

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DisruptHR is coming to Detroit!!!  

I’m pretty excited about it and I’m part of the great team that’s putting this event together. The date is September 27th with registration starting 5:30 pm and the event starting at 6 pm at the Garden Theater in midtown Detroit. The tickets are only $25! We should be done around 8 pm. Food and drinks. A ton of networking and laughs! REGISTER HERE! (we do anticipate this will sell out – we have limited seating)

What’s DisruptHR Detroit? 

It’s fun and fast 5-minute presentations/talks by HR and Talent pros. Powerpoint presentations of twenty slides where the slides automatically change every 15 seconds. It’s done in a TEDx-style format and the speakers are there to challenge how we think about HR and Talent, or maybe to just to poke some fun at the profession we all grind at every day.

Want to speak at DisruptHR Detroit?

Our goal is to have 12 speakers for this first event. We already have some folks who have applied and we welcome everyone who has the interest to apply to speak. It’s super simple! Follow this link and submit your idea! The DisruptHR Detroit team will pick 12 great ideas and save the others for our next Disrupt!

Why should I come to DisruptHR Detroit?

First, I’ll be there as the Emcee! I mean who doesn’t want more Sackett in their life!?!

Second, if you are passionate about our profession of HR and Talent Acquisition, this is the one place on the planet you should be to be around like mind professionals and leaders within SE Michigan!

Third, there’s a great chance you’ll take back to your organization some great ideas from the speakers and from the conversations everyone will be having about the topics!

What does a DisruptHR talk look like? 

Here’s me doing one so you can get a flavor:

Failure Is The New Black | Tim Sackett | DisruptHR Talks from DisruptHR on Vimeo.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign Up! 

See you there! This is going to be so great! The first 200 people who sign up get a personal hug from me!!!