Monthly Archives: December 2014

11 Rules for Hugging at Work + 2 more

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It’s the holidays, so I’m running some “Best of” posts from the past. This is my all-time most read post. Enjoy. I had 2 more rules just for you!

Hello. My name is Tim Sackett, and I’m a hugger.   Being a hugger can make for some awkward moments – what if the other person isn’t expecting a, or doesn’t want to, hug and you’re coming in arms-wide-open!?

Fast Company has an article recently titled: To Hug Or Not To Hug At Work? by Drake Baer, that delved into this subject.  Here’s a piece from the article:

“the uncomfortable feeling you get when you realize that your concept of your relationship with someone else doesn’t match their concept. The intensity of awkwardness roughly corresponds to the magnitude of difference in relationship concepts.”

I consider myself to have a number of roles: Husband, Dad, Coach, Boss, Friend, Coworker, etc.  In each of those roles I’ve hugged and will continue to hug.  Sometimes, though rarely, I’ll find someone who isn’t a hugger.  The first time I ever met Kris Dunn face-to-face, we’ve had known each other and talked frequently by phone for a year, at the HR Tech Conference – he was coming out of a session, I recognized him, he recognized me, and I went full ‘bro-hug’ (sideways handshake, other arm hug-back slap combo) on him, and I’m pretty sure he was caught off guard – but played along.  Kris is a closet hugger.  I find Southern folks are huggers, more than Northern.  Western more than Eastern.  Canadians more than Americans.  Men feel much more comfortable hugging women than other men. Women will hug anything.

I thought it was about time we had some hugging rules for the office, so here goes:

The Hugging Rules

1. Don’t Hug those you supervise. (The caveats: You can hug a subordinate if: it’s being supportive in a non-creepy way (major family or personal loss – sideways, kind of arm around the shoulder, you care about them hug);  it’s at a wedding and you are congratulating them; it’s a hug for a professional win (promotion, giant sale, big project completion, etc.) and it’s with a group, not alone in your office with the lights off; you would feel comfortable with your spouse standing next you and watching that specific hug.)

2. Hug your external customers or clients when they initiate hugging sequence.  (The caveats: Don’t hug if: it is required to get business – that’s not hugging, that harassment. Don’t let hug last more than a second or two, or it gets creepy; Don’t mention the hug afterwards, that makes you seem creepy!)

3. Don’t Hug the office person you’re having an affair with in the office.  (no explanation needed)

4. Hug peers, not just every day. (It’s alright to hug, but you don’t need to do it everyday for people you see everyday. Save some up and make it special!)

5. When you Hug, hug for real. (Nothing worse than the ‘fake hug’!  A fake hug is worse than a non-Hug.)

6. Don’t whisper – ‘You smell good’ – when hugging someone professionally. (That’s creepy – in fact don’t whisper anything while hugging!)

7. Don’t close your eyes while hugging professionally.  (That’s weird and a bit stalkerish)

8.  It is alright to announce a Hug is coming. (Some people will appreciate a – ‘Hey! Come here I’m giving you a hug – it’s been a long time!’)

9. It’s never alright to Hug from behind.  (Creepier!)

10.  Never Hug in the restroom. (Make for awkward moment when other employees walk in and see that.)

11.  If you’re questioning yourself whether it will be alright to Hug someone professionally – that is your cue that it probably isn’t.

The New Rules:

12. Don’t pat my back when you Hug me.  It makes me feel like you’re trying to burp me. I know this somehow makes you feel like people will view this as a non-affectionate hug, but it makes me feel like you feel it’s a non-affectionate hug. Just hug, or don’t hug.

13. Don’t assume you can Hug a co-workers kids (or any kid for that manner!), but if the kid tries to Hug you, you better Hug back.  My team has their kids come in all the time. I love kids. I’ll Hug their kids. But I’ll wait for the kid or the parent to give me that cue. I usually start with a ‘Hi-Five’ and some kids will just come in for the real thing! Parents are super protective of their kids. If you just start hugging on them, that can get real creepy, real fast!

 Do you have any hugging rules for the office?

T3 – 7 Things HR/Talent Technology has Taught Me

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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 on T3 – send me a note.

I’m not going to review a specific company the Tuesday between Christmas and New Years, because traffic is usually very light, and I don’t want to do that to some of the great tools I’ve been reviewing.   I do want to share some overall bullet points of my initial impressions of my T3 series and some of my overall opinions of HR Tech.  This might be a bit disjointed, but I’ve got some nuggets that I wanted to get out:

1. Every HR Technology company believes they are now a “Data Analytics” company.  They aren’t. This is marketing.  If one of them changes next year and decides to be a “Cupcake Bakery” and you love it.  All HR Technology companies will become “Cupcake Bakeries”.   This is a function of so many of the HR Technology companies are young, new startups. Marketing is usually an afterthought, and they call some Bro or Chick they knew from school.  Bad marketing just follows the crowd. It’s easy.

2. There are two types of HR Technology companies: 1. Technology companies that saw a problem with something in the HR/Talent space and designed technology to solve it. 2. HR/Talent companies that know of HR/Talent issues and either tried to buy the technology or are fumbling around on their own trying to design technology to fit their solution.  You can tell which is which, very quickly.  I’m not saying one is better than another.  I’ve seen some great Tech, from folks who have no idea what they’re talking about. I’ve also seen some great HR/Talent companies that get it 100%, but they have no idea how to make it work on the technology side.  I think there is a place in our industry for an eHarmony type broker of great tech companies and great HR/Talent companies.

3. Great HR Technology does not need to cost a lot.  Many companies are virtually giving away their solution to gain users, and build their brand.  Never in the history of HR and Talent has technology been more affordable.  If you are paying a lot for something you are not happy with, you need to change.

4. Changing HR/Talent technology is not 1990’s painful anymore.  HR and Talent Pros hate changing technology because they believe it’s a nightmare to change.  This is no longer the case for most of the HR vendors in the tech space.  Big, expensive HR technology does not want you to know this.

5. Before signing a contract to buy a HR/Talent solution, talk with those folks running the company.  What you’ll find is some of these companies are run by folks who are so passionate about what they are solving it’s almost unbelievable.  You’ll also find some folks who are trying to solve a problem, but also are try to ‘just’ sell their company. I’m a capitalist, I’m all for you selling your company and making a bucket of money.  But I like to buy technology from someone who is so passionate, they wouldn’t want to sell their business because it’s a part of them.  Either way, you’ll learn a lot by having these conversations. Both parties are super smart, usually.

6. Buying HR/Talent technology is still mostly a relationship based sale.  In the end, Mr. and Mrs. HR and Talent Acquisition need to feel like you truly care about helping them with their problems, and you get their daily struggle.  Some companies completely bomb at this.

7. Many HR/Talent technology companies bomb demos because they don’t truly understand how a ‘normal’ HR or Talent pro will use their product on a daily basis.  Thus, the demo, should demonstrate this experience.  Many times I, someone who loves HR and Talent technology, will leave a demo feeling overwhelmed by what I just saw.  If I’m feeling that way, imagine how Mike and Mary in Fargo are feeling.

The T3 series is teaching so much, I love it.  I hope you are liking it as well, and getting to know some of the great HR and Talent technology that is available to you in the marketplace. I encourage everyone to do demos.  I rarely ever feel pressured to buy anything, especially if you let them know up front you are really just looking for the future.  So many of the vendors do great demos and really teach you things during the process.  In a way, doing demos is great personal development for your career.

4 Things Job Pirates Have

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It’s the holidays, so I’m going to run some “Best of” posts from the library at The Project. Enjoy. 

Dollars for donuts, Fast Company is the best publication out their for anyone in the business world!  They hit a home run in my book recently with the article: An HR Lesson from Steve Jobs – If you want Change Agents, Hire Pirates!  “Why? Because Pirates can operate when rules and safety nets breakdown.”  More from the article:

A pirate can function without a bureaucracy. Pirates support one another and support their leader in the accomplishment of a goal. A pirate can stay creative and on task in a difficult or hostile environment. A pirate can act independently and take intelligent risks, but always within the scope of the greater vision and the needs of the greater team.

Pirates are more likely to embrace change and challenge convention. “Being aggressive, egocentric, or antisocial makes it easier to ponder ideas in solitude or challenge convention,” says Dean Keith Simonton, a University of California psychology professor and an expert on creativity. “Meanwhile, resistance to change or a willingness to give up easily can derail new initiatives.” So Steve’s message was: if you’re bright, but you prefer the size and structure and traditions of the navy, go join IBM. If you’re bright and think different and are willing to go for it as part of a special, unified, and unconventional team, become a pirate.

The article is an excerpt from Steve Jobs book: What Would Steve Jobs Do?: How the Steve Jobs Way Can Inspire Anyone to Think Differently and Win by Peter Sander, and it goes into some of the hiring philosophy that Jobs had while he was at Apple.

So, what did Jobs Pirates have to have?

1. It’s not enough to be brilliant and think differently- a Pirate has to have the passion, drive and vision to deliver to the customer a game-changing product.

2. Will the person you hire, fall in love with your organization and products?

3. A Pirate is a traveler who comes to you with diverse background and experiences.

4. Even though they’re a Pirate they still have to fit into the team and come with or be able to make connections.

“So, in Steve’s book–recruit a team of diverse, well-traveled, and highly skilled pirates, and they’ll follow you anywhere.”

You Will Never Win The Employee Engagement Battle

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There is an interesting Psychological phenomenon that happens when you do something over and over, it’s called “decline effect.”  Decline effect, simply, is when you first go out and measure something, then put some focus on bettering that one thing, as you continue to do it, you don’t get better results the more you do it, you actually start to see declining results.  I bring this up as I see so many articles recently written on declining Employee Engagement, and almost all of those articles focus on the economy and the lack of additional or more choices for the employee to change, as being the primary culprit for lower engagement scores.  That could definitely be one answer, and it fits well with the timing of our economic collapse – all though I think many companies actually saw engagement scores increase as the economy started to go south.  So, maybe this decline effect fits for some organizations.

Here’s my theory.  Over the past 5-10 years employee engagement has been a huge focus of HR shops around the world.  An entire consultancy industry has sprung up to support increasing organizations employee engagement levels.  As organizations do, meaning we usually go right ditch – left ditch, we focused on Engagement!  We began by measuring our baseline – we then implemented programs – and we saw the fruit of our labor by increased scores.  Every year we went out to increase those scores, damn the torpedoes, we need more engagement, I don’t care if you have 100% engagement – Google has 105% engagement – we need that as well!  So we double-triple-quadruple our engagement efforts, but something strange started to happen – our scores weren’t getting better, they started to creep the other way – oh no – they’re getting worse!

Has to be those lazy managers – more leadership training is needed – more focus. Still lower scores.  Oh wait, those lazy employees, we need to change some of them as well. Still lower scores. Must be that crappy engagement vendor we are using  – go find a new one! Still lower scores.

Give up?

When I bough my first house, I was very happy with it.  I had never had a house and my first small, cozy house was perfect.  3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a lawn – and I was happy.  Then I bought my next house and it had more, it had more bedrooms, more bathrooms, more lawn – and I was even more happy!  Then I bought my next house and it had all my last house had, but it more garage and it was on the water and it had more space. But, I really wasn’t happier – it seemed like the more space had some issues as well – it cost more, it took longer to clean, it was just more work.

We spend so much time and effort on making our employees happy.  New chair – you’ll be more comfortable.  Free lunch – you look hungry.  Let me wash your cat – you look overworked. Have a free massage – you look tired.  Let me fix your boss – he doesn’t seem very nice.  Then all of sudden we don’t have more of offer, anything else to make better.  It’s not that our employees weren’t engaged before all of this, they were – we just wanted more – but more comes with a price.  To keep more, you have to keep giving more and eventually you’ll run into a wall where more isn’t the answer. When more won’t give you more – it will start giving you less.

Employee Engagement is tricky – don’t fall into the “more” trap – you won’t like what you will create!

HR’s Christmas Gift

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Ok, before we get started, stop it.  I could have titled this, “HR’s Holiday Gift” or “HR’s Chanukah Gift”, etc. But, I didn’t, the majority of people celebrate Christmas, so I used Christmas. Breath in HR people. (for the record we celebrate both Hanukkah and Santa in my house – my kids are equal gift getters!).

So, what would it be? If you could have one thing in HR for Christmas, what would you ask for?

And don’t be lame. “Oh Tim, I would just ask for world peace and that Snapple brought back Compassion Berry” No you wouldn’t, not if it was real. I mean for really real!

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for a new HRIS System. I mean that’s what we do during the holidays, we want the biggest baddest fastest new electronic device that will make our lives easier and make us look 10 pounds thinner!

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for the ability to Hire more employees!  What a gift that would be.  Not only for the people getting hired, but for your overwork staff. One thing that hasn’t come back from the recession is HR and Talent Acquisition staffs. Most shops are still running very thin!

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for a new Employment Brand!  Oh to be as sexy as Google, Zappos or Sodexo! Wouldn’t that be a wonderful environment to work in HR.  Life just seems easier when you work for a sexy brand.  It isn’t actually, but that’s what great branding does.  It makes some idiot like me think it must be easy to work in a great place like that, so they should hire me!

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for better Talent for their organizations (which is technically way more than one gift, but let’s face it, some of us HR Pros don’t follow directions well!).   This is the freaking holy grail, right!  If we only had the top talent (instead of saying we only hire top talent – then hire those who respond to our posts) our lives would be so much easier!

There are so many things we could ask for in HR, but this is why I love HR – for all those gifts I listed above, and for so many more you and I could come up with, we work in a profession where we have the ability to deliver each and everyone of those to our organizations.  With enough time, patience, influence, strategy and luck, not one of those things I couldn’t give my organization.  Maybe that’s the best gift of all.

For the record – Visionary Leader – that’s my one gift – the one I would ask for.  Those are rare, those are hard to find.  Not many of us get the opportunity to work with a true visionary. Great managers, strong leaders, charismatic personalities – yes; But a Visionary Leader, that is something few get the opportunity to experience.

What would be your One gift you want for HR this holiday season?

T3 – Fuel50

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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 on T3 – send me a note.

This week on T3 I got the thrill to talk to the good folks over at Fuel 50. Fuel 50 is career path software that delivers a clear line of sight to your opportunities and a tool to help your employees create great career paths with you. What the solution delivers, to their enterprise level clients, is higher employee engagement and higher retention.  It’s really the first comprehensive solution I’ve seen that truly allows your employees to drive their own career path within your organization.

I’ll tell you, of all the T3 posts I’ve done to date, Fuel 50 had me taking the most notes!  There is a ton of stuff they provide and can deliver, customized career paths based on employees strengthens and desires, ability to show employees what other roles are truly like within your organization, individual competency gaps, career assessment desires, succession management, leadership enablement (basically helping make your managers better leaders with guided discussions and tips), etc. Fuel 50 is an OD departments wet dream in one easy to use software solution. (I’m sure they’re really happy I just called them that! They’re from Australia, I know they have a better sense of humor than most HR vendors!)

5 Things I really like about Fuel 50:

1. Completely employee focused. We’ve really gotten to a point in employee development where employees want and need to own their development.  Yes, your boss can help you with this, but it’s up to you to drive your development.  The next generations will own their career path, not wait for some manager to show it to them.

2. But, Let’s help you be a great leader to your employee’s path. Yes, your employees need to own this, but great leaders want to be a part and help them along the way. It’s like my friend Kris Dunn says, great leaders are career agents to their employees.  Fuel 50 was designed around this concept.

3. Fuel 50 allows your employees to share their position story. Yeah, I think I want to get into marketing at my company, because I have some crazy notion of what that might be. Fuel 50 allows your organization to share this with each other in a way that gives your employees an aspect of what is that role really like.

 4. The number one driver for employee engagement is career development. Fuel 50 is seeing upwards of 30% increases in employee engagement, in the first six months, when implementing their solution with their clients.  It’s metrics driven, with proven results. That is a given with most career pathing solutions.  As you can imagine, retention, is another driver positively impacted by Fuel 50.

5. Comprehensive succession management with excellent reporting tools. Every executive wants HR to deliver succession, and most fail miserably.  It’s because it’s more than delivering a list of those ‘next-up’. It’s a process that takes time to build, to deliver great succession.  Fuel 50s solution delivers succession the way it should be done.

Fuel 50 isn’t this simple, one step, silver bullet out of the box solution.  It is simple to use, but it’s comprehensive.  This is career pathing, career development and succession for companies that are serious about this stuff.

Check them out, well worth the demo. Plan on a solid hour, and get ready to take notes.  The demo was an education in itself, with a ton of great ideas and conversation that you could put to work right away, even without using Fuel 50. That is another thing I really liked, the folks who are running Fuel 50 love and live this stuff, and they’re willing to share!

5 Things Leaders Need To Know About Developing Employees

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I think we try and deliver a message in 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 on 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.

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 on 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.

 

HR’s Greeting Cards

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Around the holidays I go out and get greeting cards to send out to various friends and family.  We also receive a ton of holiday cards at home and work. I’m always amazed at how specific the greeting card companies have gotten.  Just this past week my own Mom send a card to my wife and I and it was to “My Loving Son and Daughter-In-Law”.  It made me laugh out loud at how specific the title was, and immediately I began to think of even more specific greeting cards I wish I had in my life as an HR Pro:

– “Dear High Performing Employee with Overcompensation Issues”

– “To The Leader Who Wants Everyone to Love them”

– “TEAM – We All Rock, but Some rock more”

– “dear introverted person in accounting, I see you”

– “Hey! Top Performing Sales Pro, we get it, you’re making a ton of cash”

– “Low Performer! Please perform better, I hate conflict”

– “Dear Recent Divorcee, Your eHarmony hookup stories are disturbing”

– “Employee who is also a Parent, Yay! you decided to do this”

– “Dear Gay Employee, we know, you’re Gay!”

– “Dear Bro Employees, Hey Bro” 

– “Dear Hiring Manager, Congratulations! There are no more candidates!” 

– “Dear Sports Guy, yeah, we know, there was a game last night” 

– “Dear Sr. Executive, Your infidelity is showing” 

– “Dear Employee Who Never Seems To Get Recognition, here it is.” 

There seems to be an endless need for specificity in the greeting card business.  No longer can you just give out a “Thanks” or a “Congrats”.   I can only imagine what’s being cooked up right now in the creative spaces at Hallmark and such.  “To My Stepson and his Second-cousin Wife on your son’s Bar Mitzvah, Congrats!”

What greeting cards would you love to see?

Sometimes You Paint Fish in Vaginas

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Pablo Picasso is one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. He has some of the greatest works ever made.  He also made this. It’s called The Mackerel.

The Mackerel
Yep. One of the greatest artist ever made this. You see, to make great works, you have to make a lot of works. Great artist don’t just make great works. Sometimes they make fish in vaginas.  Sometimes what they think is a good idea fails. That’s how they perfect their craft. Every once in a while, greatness is the result.

I write a lot. At least every business day I have a post going up. Many times I have posts going up on other sites, as well.  Ideas come to me, such as my frustration with sourcing and talent acquisition, and I write about them.
I feel, far too often, talent acquisition blindly follows the pack without determining what is right for their environment, their culture, and their needs. Does this mean every day I’m frustrated with HR, recruiting and sourcing?  No. I’m going to write some stuff that I’ll look back on and wonder, “Why did I write that!?”

That’s part of the process.

We are at a place in our society where you can’t have one idea one day, and have another idea the next, if it contradicts one idea you’ve ever had in your whole entire life. What I believe in now, 20 years into my career, isn’t even close to what I believed in starting out in my career. And we lose our minds and judge people in this industry if someone has a different opinion than ours.

At this point in my career, I don’t read a lot of stuff in the HR and Talent space, primarily because I agree with a lot of it.  It’s like the pastor preaching to the choir. It’s not needed because they’ve already bought in!  Now I like reading stuff that I totally disagree with because it challenges my assertions and makes me rethink my positions.

It’s not my goal to write about stuff that is controversial. I’m not that guy. I get far more traffic on my positive posts than on my controversial posts. And it’s easier to write about hugs and babies and show videos that make you cry and appreciate your life.

But I will write about stuff that matters. Some of it will be great. Some of it won’t stick. I hope that people in our industry will see the art for what it is and avoid personal attacks. I know some of the most vocal people in our space. I admire them for their skills. I want to give everybody the space to develop new and deeper ideas, even if those ideas contradict earlier blog posts. And I don’t want to start calling them out when they write their fish-in-vaginas sourcing and talent manifestos.

***Shoutout to my friend Laurie Ruettimann for some editing help with this post***