You’re Scared to Make HR Simple

Have you ever wondered why HR Departments continue to make complex processes?  In reality, all of us, wants things simple.  But, when you look at our organizations they are filled with complexity.  It seems like the more we try to make things simple, the more complex they get.  You know what?  It’s you – it’s not everyone else.  You are making things complex, and you’re doing this, because it makes you feel good.

From Harvard Business Review:

“There are several deep psychological reasons why stopping activities is so hard to do in organizations. First, while people complain about being too busy, they also take a certain amount of satisfaction and pride in being needed at all hours of the day and night. In other words, being busy is a status symbol. In fact a few years ago we asked senior managers in a research organization — all of whom were complaining about being too busy — to voluntarily give up one or two of their committee assignments. Nobody took the bait because being on numerous committees was a source of prestige.

Managers also hesitate to stop things because they don’t want to admit that they are doing low-value or unnecessary work. Particularly at a time of layoffs, high unemployment, and a focus on cost reduction, managers want to believe (and convince others) that what they are doing is absolutely critical and can’t possibly be stopped. So while it’s somewhat easier to identify unnecessary activities that others are doing, it’s risky to volunteer that my own activities aren’t adding value. After all, if I stop doing them, then what would I do?”

That’s the bad news.  You have have deep psychological issues.  Your spouse already knew that about you.

The good news is, you can stop it!  How?  Reward people for eliminating worthless work.  Right now we reward people who are working 70 hours per week and always busy and we tell people “Wow! Look at Tim he’s a rock star – always here, always working!”  Then someone in your group goes, “Yeah, but Tim is an idiot, I could do his job in 20 hours per week, if…”  We don’t reward the 20 hour guy, we reward the guy working 70 hours, even if he doesn’t have to.

Somewhere in our society – the ‘working smarter’ analogy got lost or turned into ‘work smarter and longer’.  The reality is most people don’t have the ability to work smarter, so they just work longer and make everything they do look ‘Really’ important!   You just thought of someone in your organization, when you read that, didn’t you!?  We all have them – you can now officially call them ‘psychos’ – since they do actually have a “deep psychological” reasons for doing what they’re doing – Harvard said so!

I love simple.  I love simple HR.  I love simple recruiting.  I hate HR and Talent Pros that make things complex – because I know they have ‘deep psychological’ issues!  Please go make things simple today!

Sackett’s Things To Be Thankful For in HR and Recruiting

It’s Thanksgiving, you shouldn’t be ready HR blog posts. You’ve got a problem. I can probably recommend someone for you to talk to, but now that you’re here, let me tell you about all the things I’m thankful for in HR and Recruiting.

Sackett’s Things He’s Thankful For in HR and Recruiting:

1. Employees who show up to work on time…and actually work.

2. Those little space heaters you can fit under your desk.  I live in a cold climate, so those little space heaters are like warm puppies wrapped in warm puppies.

3. Candidates who aren’t completed idiots when asked where they see themselves in five years, and don’t say something like “well, probably working at another  company”.

4. An ATS that doesn’t suck. Wait, that’s wishful, not thankful.

5.  A hiring manager who actually appreciates the fact you had to go through 100 crappy candidates to get the one marginal candidate you were able to find her.

6. That finance only asked us to take a 7% cut to our HR budget this year.

7. That our CEO still truly believes that our employees are our greatest asset. Which is exactly what I wrote for him on our internal employee blog, that people still believe he writes.

8. That SHRM finally came up with certification that everyone will respect and honor, unlike that crappy HRCI certification they sold to us for the last 25 years.

9. That the recession is over and our friends in Learning and OD actually can have training classes again. Yay! Soft skills leadership development…

10. That Millennials will soon be the largest demographic in our workforce, and the fact I bought stock in trophy making companies.

Stay hungry my friends.

 

Where Have All The Recruiters Gone?

Originally posted on Fistful of Talent back in April 2011.   Maureen Sharib reminded me of this on Twitter and I wanted to share. Enjoy.

I don’t get it – I don’t get why somehow over the past 5 years it’s not alright to be called a “Recruiter.”

Okay, let me back up a bit. I’m sick of hearing about “Sourcers”! You know what a Sourcer is?  It’s someone who can’t close a candidate. In the beginning, recruiters had to do it all – put together the JD, come up with a marketing plan (oh, I’m sorry we call that “sourcing plan” now), go out and actually find the candidates (oh, my bad again “go out and source”) and then we had to actually call up the candidate and see if they were someone we had interest in moving forward into the process.

Look, I’ve seen the recruiting desk cut up more ways than a mom trying to be creative with a PB&J in May, after making 180 PB&J’s throughout the year (parents making their kids lunch each day get this reference, others won’t!). I get that it can be more “efficient” to separate out “Sourcing” and “Recruiting.” I read 7 Habits, you didn’t discover something new, companies have been cutting up the recruiting desk for decades. In 1993, I was hired into staffing to be a “Research Assistant”. Guess what that was? Yeah, some idiot who didn’t know how to close (yet) but could go out and find potential interested candidates (by any means necessary) to give to the “real” recruiter who could close them on a position.

So, here’s the rub, right? Who’s better, Sourcers or Recruiters? I’m guessing in most organizations  using this model, they are selling it as if they are equal, which blows all of your efficiency right off the bat. They aren’t equal, one is collecting shells on a beach and one is polishing shells and telling sucker tourists how rare and valuable they are to make a buck and keep the lights on. If the shell picker-upper went away, would the shell polisher/seller go out of business? Hell no, they’d take their butt over to the beach, pick up some shells, take them back to the shop, polish them up and sell them. Would they be as successful? No, but it’s all relative since they also wouldn’t be paying the overhead of Mr. Picker-upper.

I actually like the Sourcing and Recruiting dual model in shops that have that kind of volume, it makes sense. Someone who is exceptional at sourcing combined with someone who is fantastic at recruiting will place more great talent than 3 people all doing it on their own. But let’s not start handing out trophies to the Sourcer.  I can train anyone to source. I’ve failed many times at training someone to close. One of those skills is transactional. One is transformational.

There are a number of companies right now in India that for pennies on the dollar will source candidates for you, and they’ll do it better than Steve who is sitting on Facebook right now “building his Talent Community”. It’s transactional. It’s a process.  it can be outsourced without a slightest blip to your recruiting function.

And okay, haters, before you go all crazy in the comments, let me say this, I think the sourcing technology, tools, etc. are all great. I love reading and trying out the techniques that are shared constantly by FOT’s own Kelly Dingee, or others like Glen Cathey, Amybeth Hale, Maureen Sharib, Jim Stroud, etc. (it’s amazing industry changing stuff). I don’t hate sourcing. In the right organization it makes perfect sense, but be careful. What I find is that many organizations want to move their best sourcers to recruiting and they fail because it’s two different skill sets. Don’t make that mistake.

So, where did all the recruiters go? The fakers – the ones who don’t want to pick up a phone – want to call themselves Sourcers. Why? Because the accountability of finding someone vs. closing someone – is on two different levels. I can find who is the top developer at a company, but it’s a different story in talking that developer into why they need to join my organization. The recruiters are still there – just look for the ones with the phone to their ear.

T3 – Entelo

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be T3 – send me a note.

Talent Acquisition and Sourcing pros are always on the outlook for tools that will get them great talent fast.  Entelo is a software that helps you find that talent.  They are probably best lumped into the genre of “People Aggregators” within the recruiting and sourcing space, although all the people aggregators hate being called people aggregators.  What Entelo, and other people aggregators like them (OpenWeb, TalentBin, HiringSolved,etc.) primarily do is to build profiles of potential candidates based on their social exhaust they leave all over the web.

Think of yourself for a moment. You probably have a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook profile, a twitter account. You might also get involved with industry specific groups who active boards. Software developers use sites like Github and StackOverflow, etc.  All these places on the web you are leaving little pieces of who you are (social exhaust).  Entelo’s software gathers all of this and puts together a profile similar to an online resume of sorts.  Unlike many of the people aggregators on the market, Entelo found some really cool ways to differentiate themselves within the market.

Tools like Entelo can be very powerful in your sourcing efforts.  But make no mistake, it’s a tool that you still have work and mine, do get the most of out of them.  I’ve seen way too many corporate talent acquisition pros invest into this technology, only to let it sit there and do nothing. That isn’t a failure of the tool, it’s a failure of the person using the tool.  Sourcing and mining candidates can be a arduous task, there is nothing easy about it.  The tool will give you almost unlimited potential candidates at your finger tips, now you have the real work in front of you to find who’s right for your organization and openings.

Entelo separates themselves with their predictive analytics.  When you go to source, the last thing you want to do is spend time and resources on candidates that are highly unlikely to want to move into a new position.  This is a huge issue in sourcing.  Entelo solves this using a predictive analytics model within their software ‘creatively’ called “More Likely To Move”. Which can predict individuals who are more willing to move into a new position based on their history and social makeup.  Does it work? Yes. 30% of the folks Entelo flags as “more likely to move”, actually move within 90 days!  That is crazy awesome.

5 Things I like about Entelo:

1. “More Likely To Move” is easily the best thing I liked.  When you use a people aggregator you get a ton of data to shift through. Being able to screen based on those individuals who are probably at a point to be ready to move, just makes my job way easier as a Talent Acquisition Pro!

2. Diversity Filters.  Entelo actually lets you search by various diversity filters (female, African American, Hispanic, veteran, etc.).  This is almost a 1A in likeability in my book! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve either been asked directly, or ‘hinted’ at heavily on the ‘type’ of candidate a hiring manager or organization was really looking for.  Great HR and Talent Acquisition Pros know they need to balance diversity and inclusion within their organization, and sometimes that means having to find a certain demographic.

3. Entelo Button.  Entelo has a Chrome plugin which is a nice feature to have as you are mining sites like LinkedIn.  The plugin allows you to view the Entelo profile of an candidate you are viewing in Linkedin with one click, to see what else might be out there on this person.

4. Entelo profile emails. Like most folks, I’m inherently lazy.  If I don’t have to do extra searches to come up with contact information, that just made my life easier. Entelo profiles have a very high percentage of contact emails attached to each potential candidate, many times more than one.

5. ATS Integration already built out. This is a must if you use a people aggregator because you want a ‘one click’ easy way to get those potential candidates into your ATS.

Entelo has a very familiar feeling UI. If you use LinkedIn, you can use Entelo.  Like most sourcing tools, the entry level price point is around $10K, that is pretty typical, and goes up with increased users, etc.  From an ROI standpoint, that’s pretty easy to justify.  One saved headhunter placement, and Entelo paid for itself.  If you actually use this tool, you’ll make more than one placement from it!  If you have to do diversity recruiting and sourcing, this is really a no brainer of a purchase.

 

HR TV Shows I Really Want to See

I sure not too many folks have seen the Top Recruiter Internet based TV show.  It’s going after an extremely narrow audience to be sure.  But it looks and feels like a real live, reality TV based show, except you watch it on your computer and not on a specific TV channel. Chris Lavoie, the producer and originator of the show, does a great job. He gets what sells, which is mainly sexy people in conflict with each other.  It’s the basic formula for every successful reality based show.

Top Recruiter is in it’s third season, I’ve watched 5 minutes of one episode in the first season.  I personally know some of the folks who have been on it, they seem to have fun with it. That’s what life is about.  And Chris has found a market of HR technology companies that want to pay for content, and he’s paying his bills! That’s what also counts.  Here’s a marketing shot:

Top Recruiter

 

See what I mean? Sexy. Chris is up front, he’s a nice dude, regardless of how it looks all douchey. That’s marketing, you have to sell it.

I have a few more HR related TV show ideas for Chris (even though he hasn’t asked me) that I think the HR community would eat up!  Check these out and let me know what you think:

Frumpy HR Manager

 

Or, if that one doesn’t seem ‘sexy’ enough. How about this one:

Top Personnel Dept

 

I just really think these shows would connect with the HR world!  What do you think, hit me in the comments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will ‘Facebook at Work’ be a LinkedIn Killer?

At this point you’ve seen the announcement, Facebook has decided to go after some of that ‘professional’ networking money, with a product called Facebook at Work. A space currently owned by the LinkedIn empire.  Who does social networking better than anyone?  Most would argue Facebook. The kids might say Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.  But the numbers don’t lie.

LinkedIn owns the ‘professional’ networking space, as they’ve decided to title it.  The job board crowd now sees LinkedIn as Job Board 2.0, and have been working to see how they can get some of the billions flowing LinkedIn’s way.

Facebook is like that big giant kid in high school who was super friendly, and everyone called him a “big teddy bear’, until one day the wrong kid pushed the ‘teddy bear’ too much and everyone got to find out how strong the ‘teddy bear’ actually was.  LinkedIn is about to get ‘bear’ hugged!

The reality is Facebook had the capability all along to put LinkedIn out of business if they wanted, but they were raking in their own piles of cash, and didn’t see the LinkedIn money as a priority.  It was just a matter of time.  LinkedIn’s core weakness is two-fold:

1. They don’t go deep enough with the position you actually need to hire for.  Great you have technology candidates (who are running away from LinkedIn in droves), you have sales candidates and you have recruiters. That’s really about it. Have you searched on LinkedIn lately?

2. Users of LinkedIn rarely go to their LinkedIn profile and rarely respond to LinkedIn messages.

The two weaknesses of LinkedIn are actually strengths of Facebook.  Facebook has everyone, from skilled trades folks, to truck drivers, to teachers, to doctors, and lawyers, and bakers, and candlestick makers, mall Santas, you name it, they’re on Facebook.  Secondly, people use Facebook a lot, all day, every day.  Exponentially, more than they ever use LinkedIn.

Facebook has made it very clear they’ll keep professional and personal profiles separated, but make it easy to go between and share stuff in between. This takes away the one major fear many have at integrating their Facebook life and their LinkedIn life (although I argue this fear is also going away quickly).

For those of us who have found ways to recruit talent off Facebook, we understand the potential of the sleeping giant, err, teddy bear. I like LinkedIn and use it daily.  I wish LinkedIn met my needs for a greater number of positions.  I believe Facebook has the user base, and data, to be all things professional if it’s done in the right way.

It’s going to be interesting to see these two fight it out.

Sackett’s Office Holiday Party Rules

It’s fast becoming that time of year when you’ll be invited to office holiday parties across the world!  This is one of my favorite times of the year.  Let’s face it, I’m married and 40sih, the office holiday parties are one of the few times a year I have a get out of jail free card.  “What!? You want to do shots? Well, I shouldn’t, but I want to be a ‘team’ player. You know me!”  My wife mildly puts up with me, for one night, so I can act like one of those millennials who works with me.  Usually, I’m yawning at 11pm, and wondering what I’m missing on the local news.

The HRU holiday parties are awesome. Basically, because I’m in charge of two things: 1. Ordering the food and 2. Paying the bar tab.  Which means we have plenty of variety of great things to eat, and we have an open bar.  The ‘kids’ like an open bar. It always goes over well.  I don’t have any rules.  I used to be one of those ‘bosses’ that was like, “you better show up”, which led to about 2 or 3 people being at the party that didn’t want to be. But I’ve matured, and now I’m like “don’t come if you don’t want to have fun!”

I do think some HR Pros need rules for their employees, and as usual I’m here to help you.  So, here are Sackett’s Office Holiday Party Rules:

Rule No. 1 – If you drink too much and throw up at your office holiday party, never go back to work at that job. Ever!

Rule No. 2 – If you bring a date that looks like a stripper, you’ll be forever known as the employee who brought a stripper to the office holiday party. Dress appropriately, strippers.

Rule No. 3 – There are these things called Smartphones which take pictures.  Always remember this, or you’ll be reminded of it the next morning on Facebook.

Rule No. 4 –  If you have a date that is anti-social, you might want to rethink that plan.  No one wants to deal with ‘creepy’ at an office holiday party.

Rule No. 5 – It’s okay to dance at your office holiday party. It is not okay to dance alone at your office holiday party.

Rule No. 6 – You don’t have to ask if your employer will let you expense a cab or Uber ride home. They will, 100% of the time. Be safe.

Rule No. 7 – Don’t flirt with your office crush at the office holiday party. You have 364 days a year you can do that and not look completely desperate.

Rule No. 8 – Getting your boss drunk, and making an idiot of her, isn’t funny, it’s career limiting. Be a good ‘wing-person’.

Rule No. 9 – Don’t get all religious at an office holiday party. Yes, I’m sure, Jesus is the reason for the season, but not the office holiday party season.  Jesus isn’t into that season.

Rule No. 10 – Don’t talk work.  Talk cars, or sports, or kids, or video games, or movies, or books, anything but work.  Get to know your co-workers as people.

 I’m different than most HR Pros in that I actually like holiday parties, and company picnics, and every other time we can get together as an organization that isn’t work.  We spend more time with our co-workers than our families, on a normal week.  Our co-workers become our close friends and extended family.  It’s wonderful to break bread with them and just have fun.  Learn who they are outside of work, and meet others in their life that our special to them.

So, go have fun. Don’t be stupid.  An order something expensive that you normally wouldn’t do when you’re paying the bill!

6 Faces of Thought Leadership

I’m not sure when this started, but recently I’ve been introduced as a “Thought Leader”.  At first is was flattering.  Wow, a ‘Thought Leader’!  I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it sounded cool.  You mean, I’m a ‘Thought Leader’ like Steve Jobs? Well, slow down Sparky, not quite like Steve Jobs. Oh!? Then a Thought Leader like whom?  (The thought leader in me wants to ‘who’, not ‘whom’, but something tells me my blogger thought leader friends will tell me I should have used ‘whom’, but knowing I used ‘whom’ at all means it’s probably wrong!)

That’s when it hit me.  Thought Leaders come in many different sizes and shapes.  I wasn’t a great Thought Leader of our generation.  I was more of a great Thought Leader of that specific moment. Context is everything.

Let’s face it, we all have different perceptions of who and what we believe to be Thought Leadership.  Here are my Faces of Thought Leadership:

1. The Thought Righter.  This is a Thought Leader that you agree with. You believe they are Thought Leader, because you agree with what they are saying, so they must be a leader!

2. The Thought Stayer. This is a Thought Leader who has been around for a long time.  Well, they’ve been in the industry for thirty years, they must be a Thought Leader at this point!

3. The Thought Thinks Differently Than Everyone Else. Yep, this person just thinks differently, thus they are Thought Leader.  This is probably what a lot people believe is ‘true’ thought leadership (Leading thought, thus they are thinking it before you).

4. The Thought Best Practicer. This is conference thought leadership at its best. It’s not really thought leadership, it’s thought leadership from five years ago.  It’s now just popular thought leadership.

 5. The Thought I Work For  A Cool Company. If you work for a cool company you automatically garner status of thought leadership, when in actuality, you might be a thought idiot. I won’t give you an example, you know who these folks are.

6. The Thought Innovator.  This is a person who believes everything is perpetually broken and they must fix it.  “You know what is wrong with babies, they don’t come out of the womb talking and walking. If we just forced gestistation to 218 weeks and planted electrodes into their brains we could be having babies that were as smart as Einstein!”  Um, what!?

Thought leadership is a funny little silly thing.  You can call yourself a “Thought Leader”, but that basically just informs everyone you’re not.  If it is bestowed on you by someone else, they basically are defining what you are as a Thought Leader in. Which can be dangerous, if you really aren’t that person.

I like to think of Thought Leaders as people who come up with ideas before everyone else, but will eventually become popular belief.  This means, you are really only a Thought Leader in hindsight.  Steve Jobs was a Thought Leader because he did things before others saw them, then they became wildly popular.   In this scenario, I might be a Thought Leader in a few years if Hugging becomes wildly popular in the workplace!

 

T3 – WANTED Analytics

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be T3 – send me a note.

I love when I get to demo a company and I have absolutely no idea who and what they are going into it!  That was me with WANTED Analytics. From the name I was guessing they were some sort of analytics HR company, like Visier, but I was pleasantly surprised that they were completely different.   The name throws you, but the reality is they are a Sourcing Strategy company, not an HR analytics play.

What WANTED gives you is a complete picture of your sourcing environment, which allows you to build and plan the best strategy to attract the talent you need.  What they deliver, in terms of data, charts and information is completely insane!

A common problem we face in Talent Acquisition is trying to build proper expectations when it comes to hiring with our hiring managers and our executive teams.  Many times, our workforce plan is critical to a successful, or unsuccessful, launch of major programs and products.  It’s critical that we provide a real-life view of the market conditions we are facing, and set realistic expectations with our hiring managers.  WANTED gives you really easy ways to do this, and the ‘arts and charts’ they provide make it easy to consume for those folks you are working with you are visual learners.

You can also use WANTED to do some really cool sourcing using their historical hiring analysis.  This basically gives you a quick look back in the market you’re searching of who was hiring just a few month, to year ago, for the same types of positions.  So?  This gives you an instant sourcing model on where to find your the talent you’ll be going after, and many times provides you with leads you never thought of.

What I really like about WANTED Analytics: 

1. The data set they pull from is stupid big. Over a billion job postings collected since 2005, and 10 Million per week in the US alone, gives you piece of mind that the market data you’re basing major sourcing decisions on is better than you’ll get anywhere else.  This amount of data allows you to get very specific in your sourcing.

2. They’re data source neutral.  Many data companies are pulling only from a handful of sources, and sometimes specifically leaving a source out for competitive reason. WANTED is Switzerland, they pull from everywhere!

3. ATS plugin which allows your recruiters and sources to use this within their native tools, and really gives them the ability to leverage WANTED on an entire never level.

4. Gives Talent Acquisition leadership a tool they really have never had in terms of ‘live’ market data, to assist them in building realistic talent, sourcing and workforce plans. Provides unmatched competitive compensation data, job descriptions and historical competitive hiring data. Global in reach, covering the world’s largest 22 economies.

5. Really pretty Heat Maps!  Let’s face it, hiring managers and executives love arts and charts, and heat maps, and WANTED knocks this out of the park.  Critical in delivering the message you want. Plus, from the sourcing perspective, none of these charts are ‘flat’, everything is click through. This was super power.

WANTED Heat Map

 

For those interested, WANTED Analytics isn’t super expensive, and you can definitely make it back on sourcing alone, although, the TA executives will love it for forecasting and planning.  1 user will run your around $12K, 10 users $24K.  For big shops, a tool like this easily pays for itself. SMB players will probably have to justify it more specifically.

Do Your Employees Really Like Your Organization? #EWS2014

Hey, gang I’m running a sponsored post by the great folks at Spherion regarding their 2014 Emerging Workforce Study which has some really great data, check it out.

I’m a company guy.

When I make the decision to go to work for an organization, I’m both feet in.  I’ve always been that way. I’m the dork who loves to get the company logo gear and I don’t just wear it to work on ‘casual’ Friday, I’ll wear it to my families holiday get-togethers!  To me, supporting the organization you work for is a non-negotiable. I want to work with people who want to work with the organization we work for, and if you don’t, get out!

Spherion’s 2014 Emerging Workforce Study found some really interesting statistics around this, that blew my mind!  Crazy as this will seem to you, not everyone thinks like me! Check this out:

    • Only 35% of workers would say something very positive in discussing their company with other people.

35%! If you would have asked me this question, without me first seeing the data, I would have said this was 75%.  I was way off.  This is a major problem for organizations!  65% of your employees basically believe they could not say something very positive about your organization.  Ouch! That hurts.

You want to see another major disconnect that is playing into this lack of engagement?

    • 64% of companies believe their younger workers lack the business and life experience required for leadership positions.
    • While companies believe younger workers lack experience, 61% of Gen Y workers agree they have greater opportunities available to them because of their age.

Organizations are finally really starting to feel the pain of their aging Baby Boomer workforce beginning to leave their positions.  This is that ‘oh crap’ moment when you realize you don’t have the proper succession in place for the future. To make this situation worse, your younger workers believe they’re ready to ‘drive’!  They want the keys to the executive washroom, but you know they’re not ready.

Put on top of all of this, about ten years of not developing your leadership competencies because of the recession, and you my friends have some major organizational issues you are about to face!

What can you do about this? Here are a few ideas:

1. Hire people who really, really want to work for you. Brand advocates will stick with you through thick and thin, even when you’re not at your best.

2. Teach your leaders to be ‘great’ at performance management.  Spend money and time on this.  There is great technology out there that can help as well.

3. Know who your true internal influencers are on your staff, and invest in them.

There is no easy way out of this, for any of us.  But, the awesome part of this mess, is that HR can have a great impact in making our organizations better.  Time to sharpen the saw and get to work HR Pros!

 

Disclosure Language:

Spherion partnered with bloggers such as me for their Emerging Workforce Study program. As part of this program, I received compensation for my time. They did not tell me what to purchase or what to say about any idea mentioned in these posts. Spherion believes that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. Spherion’s policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations.