Monthly Archives: February 2016

HR Leaders, It’s Your Job to Get them an Audience

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HR thought leaders and bloggers laugh at posts like this. The seat at the table post. We’ve been talking and writing about this for twenty years. So, those of us who write about it, are sick of it. But, like all good writers, everything that is old is new again! I declare 2016 to be the year of Get Your Seat at the Table!

Just kidding, no I don’t, that’s stupid. Even though, I’m sure I could have gotten a speaking session at SHRM with that exact title: 2016 The Year of Getting Your Seat at the Table. The session would have been crammed with HR folks still hoping and wishing!

Even though, I’m sure I could have gotten a speaking session at SHRM with that exact title: 2016 The Year of Getting Your Seat at the Table. The session would have been crammed with HR folks still hoping and wishing!

Let’s take it a step beyond and talk about what is the job of an HR leader to their teams.

I’ve been truly blessed to work for some great HR leaders that all understood one thing, it wasn’t about getting their seat at the table. As an HR leader, it was about ensuring their team was able to get an audience, so they could get their own seat.  It was their job to make sure the door was open to the room, once inside the room you still had to fight for your own seat.

The leaders I’ve worked for had their seat at their table, but more importantly, they made sure their team had an opportunity to get their own seat, at the table that was right for them.

Don’t ever think your leader should get you a seat at the table, and leaders don’t ever think it’s your job to get them a seat! The leader creates the opportunity for an audience, it’s your job to prove you deserve that audience’s attention!

 

Chipotle’s HR Just Had a Major Screw Up!

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If you pay attention to the news at over the past few months you’ve heard about the E. coli outbreak at a number of Chipotle restaurants all over the U.S.:

“The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) along with state and local officials are investigating two separate outbreaks of E. coli O26 infections that have been linked to food served at Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants in several states.

As of January 27, 2016, the CDC reports a total of 55 people infected with the outbreak strain of STEC (Shiga toxin producing E. coli) O26 from a total of 11 states in the larger outbreak: California (3), Delaware (1), Illinois (1), Kentucky (1), Maryland (1), Minnesota (2), New York (1), Ohio (3), Oregon (13), Pennsylvania (2), and Washington (27). There have been 21 reported hospitalizations. The majority of these cases were reported from Oregon and Washington during October 2015.”

No restaurant wants this to happen, ever! It has an immediate and lasting impact to sales. I worked for Applebee’s, one of the largest restaurant chains in the world, food safety was our single biggest focus and a constant worry.  Chipotle’s entire company went into immediate crisis mode when all of this was going down.

So, much so, that they decided to do an unprecedented all store closing to ‘re-train’ all employees on current, new and additional food safety measures. From Fast Company:

The company is still not clear on which ingredient brought on the E. coli outbreak, though it again confirmed that the norovirus was spread through employees who came into work while sick.

“If you are feeling sick, or if you have vomited, either at work or at home, you need to tell your manager or field leader immediately,” co-CEO Monty Moran told workers. Managers are also expected to report if an employee gets sick at work, and if a worker or customer vomits in a restaurant, the location must be shut down immediately.

Most people won’t catch what just happened. E. coli is major! Both Chipotle and the CDC never found out where the E. Coli came from. Norovirus is completely different. Restaurants have norovirus outbreaks. It’s not frequent, but more frequent than you think. It’s usually caused by a worker with stomach flu coming to work and spreading it to cooking areas, thus giving it customers and other workers.

Two very different things!

But, since we can’t find out where the E. coli came from, which was more than likely a supplier of some fresh ingredient – since it showed up in so many states and so many locations, not connected any other way, let’s show our customers we solved something else!

The problem is, Chipotle doesn’t really have a Norovirus issue. Sure they might have had one or two restaurants with an outbreak, but that is solved with a good bleach cleaning and some retraining.  Chipotle’s executive team and HR went off the deep end and instituted the following things:

  • Sick employees who have vomited at work or at home, now get 5 paid days off before they can return to work. 
  • If an employee or customer vomit at a restaurant, that restaurant must be closed down immediately. 

This is unsustainable. HR should have advised the executive team that this isn’t sustainable.

Do you know who goes and works at a Chipotle? Mainly college aged kids who love to drink and eat giant burritos!  Can you imagine the number of Chipotle employees who will be calling in sick the Monday of Spring Break to tell their manager they just vomited!? Sorry, but I’ll take my five days of pay, and I’ll do my recovering someplace warm!  I can see Chipotle restaurant managers pulling their hair out already!

Also, dumb drunk people throw-up all the time at restaurants. They don’t have Norovirus. They have the brown bottle flu! You don’t close a restaurant over that.  You clean it up really, really well. Investigate the circumstances and make a decision on what you really need to do. Chipotle just made a black and white decision, that will hurt their company.

So, I’m so freaking smart, what would I have done?

1. Give individual restaurant General Managers and Area District Managers more control over how to handle these situations, like when to close, or force an employee to stay home, and make sure it doesn’t hurt them financially by making these decisions. Local managers don’t want to close a restaurant because it impacts their bonus, which is a huge part of their compensation.

2. Hire a PR firm to explain to America that what happened at Chipotle, what really happened with the E. coli outbreak, had nothing to do with local restaurant food safety procedures. Also, what they did to ensure a higher level of safety moving forward.

What they did was all smoke and mirrors, to make people feel like they have the problem handled. By the way, they probably could have done nothing and still be in the same position. Young people are notoriously forgiving on these types of cases because they believe it still won’t happen to them!

Okay, I’m off my soapbox. What do you think?

5 Ways to Make the Best Impression During Onboarding

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Like the saying goes, “you only get one chance to make a first impression!” Well, unless you hire back a boomerang, then you get two chances, or if you fire someone, but then hire them back, you get another chance on that one as well. Theoretically, if you hire identical twins you would get two chances, but genetically it’s almost the same person.

You get where I’m going with this! When onboarding, you need to make a great impression, and for most of us, we only get one chance.

Years ago when I first went to work for Applebee’s, I actually started the week of Thanksgiving.  The timing just worked out that way, and they wanted me for the first three days of the week. When I arrived for my first day, I was blown away at how much work they did to prepare for me to come. I had all the accesses I needed, a laptop and phone ready, libraries of documents electronically that I might need in my position, a training calendar that laid out my first month of employment by the day!

It was unlike anything I had ever experienced.  It set the ground work for an amazing employment experience, that I still talk about and share, ten years later!

Not everyone has the resources that a large company like Applebee’s has, and can do what they can, but everyone can make a great first impression regardless of their size and resources! Here are some things you can do to make a great impression during onboarding:

  1. The element of surprise! This is the one idea where I think you should spend a few bucks. I love sending a token of appreciation to someone close to your new hire. A spouse, a boyfriend, a parent, etc. I’ve sent flowers to the home of parents of a new hire thanking them for raising us a great person to work with. It costs $25-30. The result is priceless! Talk about a huge win in onboarding.
  2. Don’t waste their time! Probably 80% of current onboarding can be done before the employee even shows up to work. Use technology to get ahead of the game and have employees fill out all the necessary paperwork before they show up. That way, day one,their ready to rock and roll, and not fall asleep in endless, boring onboarding meetings.
  3. Executive presence is a present! Being able to spend a little one-on-one time with your highest functional leader in your division, location, etc. can be huge your first day/week. Instantly, you feel like what you are bringing to the company and your position matter. I mean, what company allows you to talk with a high-level executive day one!? Bonus, this is free!
  4. Everybody needs a friend!Having a work mentor day one is nice, having a work friend day one is even better. I love connecting people who work in different functions. It’s really difficult to ask stupid questions to your peers. You’re new, and you don’t want to sound dumb, but someone in another area will tell you how tuition reimbursement works, without looking at you like you’re an idiot. Bonus, this is free!
  5. Check out this free webinar for even more tips! (It’s called 8 Tips for Awesome Onboarding, and it’s being hosted by the folks who make ALEX (and friends of The Projects), a benefits decision support platform I think is pretty neat. Next Tuesday, February 16, 2-3 EST.)

Anyway, onboarding doesn’t have to be fancy (or expensive) to be exceptional. People don’t come into your company expecting a parade. They come into your company expecting to go to work. It’s our job to make sure they’re ready to do that!

Walking Dead: Reviving Your Talent Networks!

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You have a bunch of zombies surrounding your career website right now, and you don’t even know it.

They stumble around and look at your content, lurk at your jobs and then just stumble away when they don’t find anything to take a bite out of. Well, the folks at FOT and Smashfly are here to help you turn those zombies into real-life candidates by reviving the talent networks you probably don’t even know you have.

Who said zombies can’t turn back to real live viable candidates?! Not us, because the FOT crew knows how, and we’re going to show you, too. Join us on February 24 at 2pm EST and we’ll give you the following goods:

  • Show you the difference between a Talent Network and a Talent Community. We’ll give you ways to build your talent network into active pools of great candidates. By using and developing talent networks, you’re letting those zombies hanging out around your career site tell you “I’m next…” “Pick me…”, making it super easy to identify your next victim!
  • Help you develop a Talent Network Strategy that lasts, with little effort from your team to keep it going. The biggest problem we all face is we just don’t have enough capacity to do more. Talent networks give you the more— without the work. We’ll show you how.
  • Show you 5 ways the best companies are engaging their Talent Networks to make real placements.We won’t just tell you the ways, we’re going to hear about straight from a Talent Pro who is using these now to successfully hire and fill position within her company.  The good, the bad, the dead. You’re going to hear it all!
  • Give you 3 things you can do with candidate contact information before they even apply to your company. Talent pools aren’t about the apply, they’re about getting you to apply. Some zombies are ready to eat, some are just milling around being zombies. What do you do when potential candidates aren’t ready to eat? We’ve got the answer.
  • Provide insight to how you can measure the success of your talent networks. By now we know none of this matters if we can’t back it up with measurable data that proves it works. Talent networks, and the data you get from them, will give you a ton of insight to what is working in your Talent shop and what might need some tweaking.

Don’t let your time get “eaten” up by a bunch of zombie candidates who will never fill the needs your company has. Learn how to build great talent networks that will give you real live placements, with less effort than you ever thought imaginable. It’s time to fight back and win against your walking dead applicant pool!

Come join the FOT Zombie Hunting crew on February 24 at 2pm EST and learn how you can implement and take your talent networks to the next level!

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T3 – HR Tech Conferences for Spring 2016

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The T3 series delivers you all things HR and Talent technology. This post won’t be highlighting an individual piece of HR tech, but instead introduce you to two brand new HR Technology conferences in the U.S. that will both be taking place this Spring, 2016 – PeopleTech and HR Tech Fest.

Of course, the granddaddy of all HR Tech Conferences is The HR Technology Conference that takes place in the fall, this year in Chicago, but traditionally in Las Vegas.  It’s one of my favorite conferences of the year, but I love that we are able to give HR and Talent Pros and Leaders a couple of other options that might be more cost effective and closer to home!

PeopleTech Conference – Dallas, TX April 13-14th

PeopleTech is a conference designed for HR and Talent Acquisition Leaders who are exploring and interested in all things related to the technology within the HR industry. The sessions are a combination of industry experts, HR Pros, and vendor driven content. Here’s a flavor of some of the sessions:

  • Current Trends in Human Capital Metrics/Analytics – Taking it to the Next Level
  • Getting to the Finish Line in New Software Implementation: An Exercise in Effective Change Management
  • Designing for the Workforce of Tomorrow
  • Building a Magnetic Culture: How to Attract & Retain Top Talent
  • And of course, my session! HR Pros Buyers Guide to HR Tech!

For those who are really looking to invest in new HR technology and upgrading your tech in the next year or so, you will get some great insight from others who are currently going through implementations and beyond. Many of the sessions are lead by HR leaders who have recently gone through this process.

These sessions are definitely more specific and directed to HR and Talent Acquisition specifically, unlike many HR conferences where they’re the sessions are heavily centered on soft-skills and management.  It’s great that PeopleTech decided to hold their conference in Dallas since HR Leaders have so few options for really good content down south!

HR Tech Fest – Washington D.C. April 20-22nd

HR Tech Fest is an organization that I first came into contact with when I spoke at their conference in Sydney, Australia late last year.  HR Tech Fest is unique in that they don’t “sell” any of their sessions to vendors.  It’s a fairly common practice in today’s conference scene where a vendor will pay to ‘sponsor’ a session, and get to put their own client into that slot. What it turns out to be normally is an hour commercial for their project, unwittingly being sold by their client who is paying for their software. Brilliant strategy really (to make money), but many times it makes for poor content.

So, all the sessions at HR Tech Fest are either delivered by actual HR and Talent Leaders, who were chosen regardless of the tech they use, and by industry thought leaders. What I found at HR Tech Fest in Sydney was that this dynamic really opened up the audience and the interaction between audience and presenters was very high, in and outside of the sessions.

Here’s a flavor of some of the sessions at HR Tech Fest:

  • HR of the Future: Where is Technology taking us?
  • Navigating Organizational Evolution with Talent Analytics (delivered by SVP of Hulu)
  • Digital Gondola: Career Development Ride (delivered by HR executive at Google)
  • Open Source Comes to HR (delivered by the VP of Talent at Hootsuite)
  • I’ll be hosting a session track and be a part of an HR Tech expert panel

While this is a new HR Tech conference in the U.S., the Eventful Group has put on these conferences in other countries for years, and they really know what they’re doing.  I also love that they decided to offer this on the East Coast, where so much HR Tech innovation comes out of, but rarely is a conference held in this area.

 I’ll be attending both conferences. What can I say, I’m an HR Tech geek. If you’ll be coming, please connect with me so we can meet in person!

If I was the National HR Czar…

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I think the next President should add a position to their cabinet. That position would be called HR Czar.  That person should be me, and here’s what I would do as the HR Czar.

As HR Czar I would:

– Establish a National Database of No Call, No Shows on interviews.  This database would be used by all public and private employers to let each other know what idiots set up an interview, then without any warning, just decided to ditch it and not show up.  That way we could all know who these awful people are by name, address, SSN and poor professional etiquette.

– Establish a National Database of No Call, No Shows on the first day of employment. Worse than not showing up for an interview, these people have serious problems and should be put on some double-secret probation.  If someone did this they would publicly have to stand out in front of this employer with a sandwich board sign stating “I’m a Loser! I Suck! Honk if you Agree!” for two straight days, before they could be hired by any other employer.

– Establish a National Background Check System. This system could be checked instantly, by all employers. No more waiting 48 hours or more for information that should be accessible instantly in a database a twelve-year-old could put together in about 15 minutes.  This includes educational verification, where all post high school institutions would have to input graduates, degrees, and grades.

– Establish a National Job Posting Site. All jobs, all employers, one place.  All public and private employers would be required to post their openings on this site, close them when their filled and post the name and photo of the person they hired for the position. A little transparency would help both the employers and all those people who applied and have no idea who got hired.

– Establish a National Database for Candidates to Search pending, current and past employee-related litigation of an employer. You like to allow your managers to harass employees? Fine, but understand, everyone is going to know about it. Kind of like Glassdoor, but actual verifiable stuff. Each employer would have a rating, like the ratings we give restaurants – A, B, C, etc. We can make them post their rating in the window of their lobby where candidates come to interview.

– Establish a CEO pay scale whereas a CEO couldn’t make more than ten times the average pay of the top 10% of earners within their company. That’s fair. That’s still a giant amount of money. I support CEOs and their right to earn a lot of money. I don’t support them making four million times more than the actual people busting their butt each day. (JFC – it sounds like I’m voting for Bernie! I’m not!)

That’s a good start! What would you do if you were HR Czar?

When Keeping It Real, Goes Wrong in HR

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You might have seen this recently in the news. Three HR employees at Wyman-Gordon Company decided it would be a good idea to ‘secretly’ videotape and employee they wanted to terminate. Three HR employees who all had Master degrees in HR, and each with five years of HR experience at this specific employer:

Three employees at Wyman-Gordon company in Grafton, Massachusetts, are facing felony wiretapping charges for setting up a hidden camera with audio to record their coworker inside their workplace, reports CBS Boston.

As the investigative team at CBS Boston first reported in November, the hidden camera allegedly captured former Wyman-Gordon employee Mark Ferguson sleeping on the job. The company fired Ferguson last April.

Prior to his termination, Ferguson discovered the hidden camera in his workspace. He took it home for a closer look.

A clip he provided to CBS Boston revealed the HR employees setting up the camera. They could also be heard discussing the camera placement.

Ferguson realized if they recorded audio without his consent, it could be a violation of Massachusetts wiretapping statute. He brought the camera to the Grafton Police Department. An investigation was launched.

When I first heard about this, I wasn’t all that surprised. I assumed, wrongly, that it was some little company, with HR Pros that had no background or experience with HR. That is common in the industry. There are a ton of unqualified people running HR shops in companies that have no business being in HR.

This wasn’t the case.  All three of these guys had a strong educational background in HR and extensive work experience in HR. I will say, none of their LinkedIn profiles say anything about HR professional certification.  I don’t know about you, but my SHRM certification testing addressed this very issue!

This isn’t a small issue. These are felony charges. You can’t just go, “Oops, we didn’t really understand videotaping a crappy employee sleeping on the job was against the law. Our bad!”

Now, it was against the law, but I understand. Having to go to jail because you suspected an employee sleeping on the job, set up a camera to catch this behavior, and then actually catching the behavior, seems like it should work in the favor of these HR guys. But, it won’t.

So, what should these three HR guys have done? Just fire the employee!

Just fire the employee!  Sure, my brilliance in hindsight is 20/20, but 99.9% of HR pros in the U.S. would have just fired this idiot!

So, why didn’t they just fire him?

This is purely speculation, but my guess is they had an ax to grind with this guy. This guy probably had something over these guys, and they wanted to embarrass him. Maybe he was in a position where management didn’t want him fired, and HR was going to give them a reason they couldn’t ignore. Maybe this employee had just made HR’s life a nightmare over the past however long time.

Who knows, but it seems clear that these guys wanted to do more than just let this employee go. They wanted to shove it down his throat.

That’s when keeping it real, goes wrong!

Recruiters – Have You Figured Out Snapchat? You better…

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I’ll be the first to say, I don’t currently use Snapchat.  My sons do. In fact, they use it constantly. So, do their friends. Teens and College students are using Snapchat to communicate with each other in a major way, and you are starting to see major stars and athletes join as well. Unless you have kids from the ages of 12-22, you probably have no idea what Snapchat even is.

Why should you care? Check out this chart:

Screen Shot 2016-02-03 at 8.17.52 AM

 

Two years ago the use of Snapchat didn’t even register. In the spring of 2015, it was 13%. What do you think it’s right now? My guess is over 25%, maybe even more!

This isn’t necessarily about recruiting on Snapchat. Although, I know some folks will do this and find a way to be successful in some certain areas. Most of won’t.

Understanding and using Snapchat is about knowing how the talent you want to recruit likes to communicate. It’s about building your brand on a communication channel of your target audience.  You can dismiss it, but your competition probably won’t.

Another interesting thing about the chart is the dramatic shift from teens out of Facebook.  We’ve seen this in the industry for a while. As Mom and Grandma jumped on Facebook, the kids jumped off in a major way!  I suspect, and we’ll eventually see the data to support this, is that when they stop being kids, those kids will come back! Either way, Facebook is still an important tool to understand as well, because we recruit more than young adults!

Check out this tutorial on Snapchat to see what it’s all about:

Also, check out this great piece by SocialTalent on How to Use Snapchat to Recruit.

Why Most HR Strategies Fail

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We wear a thousand hats in HR.  Developing a good, solid HR strategy is one the hardest things you’ll ever have to do.  Most of the time, when I see an HR strategy fail it has to do with the leadership just not understanding what they should be focused on.  Then, once the focus is determined, not going deep enough to really understand it fully.

It reminds me of an old writing analogy I was told by one of my professors in college. Imagine yourself in a room that is completely black. You have a flashlight and you shine it on the wall. Within that circle of light, you shine on the wall, you can see some stuff.  It’s not clear, as you stand in the middle of the room, the light (your attention) is dispersed.

As you move closer to the wall, the beam of light becomes narrower. You begin to see more detail. Your focus became clear to what you are seeing.

The goal of writing is to make it clear to others what you are seeing.  Standing far away, you could give them some sense of what you’re seeing. As you stand closer, you can give them great detail and specifics to what you are seeing.

Great HR Strategy is similar.

You can make a strategy that is focused on everything, but rarely does that go anywhere. Most will fail. Or, you can get very specific with your strategy, ensure everyone sees what you see, and make it happen.

That is the challenge for HR leaders, moving closer to the wall, providing that clarity.

 

T3 – Beamery @BeameryHQ

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This week on T3 I’m reviewing the recruitment marketing platform Beamery. Beamery is fairly new to the market being launched in 2014, and jumping into the hottest sector in HR and Talent technology: CRM, recruitment marketing, recruitment automation. They are carving out space by billing themselves as candidate engagement software, knowing almost every company in the world is concerned with candidate experience.

Beamery records and helps you track every single candidate that engages with you and your career site, whether they apply or not. That is important because a solid 70% of those people coming to your site will never apply, but if continue to engage them, you’ll get many to eventually apply.  Beamery’s strength is creating an inbound marketing machine for your recruiting department.

You can develop unlimited talent pools by whatever criteria you select, and engage each pool of candidates differently based on how you decide. The talent pool management, built on machine learning, is definitely a powerful piece of what Beamery delivers.  Beamery integrates with your ATS and is already partnered with Greenhouse.io, one of the hottest new ATS products on the market.

5 Things I really like about Beamery:

1. Beamery has integrated Candidate Experience surveys into their platform, that you can automate to be sent at a certain point within your process, manually push, change by position, etc. All the analytics are then put together on the backend within Beamery analytics engine. This is something not all recruitment marketing plays have right now.

2. Beamery uses predictive analytics for automated followups based on algorithms they have developed.  This truly helps recruiters stay onto of what’s important, and helps them not to forget. It’s a classic recruiting weakness because so many of us end up putting out fires, and we forget about a possible great candidate from a few days ago. Beamery automatically reminds you to follow up.

3. Their email sync with outlook and google is very powerful. One problem every recruiting shop has is getting information from email strings to where it needs to be within a system of record. Beamery uses machine learning to pull any email communication between recruiters and candidates in automatically, without the recruiter having to do anything.

4. Like many of the Recruitment CRM software, Beamery also does unlimited landing pages for jobs, events, etc. Allows to push simple calls to action to build talent pools and easily moves these pools back into your ATS. They also allow one-click action by candidates to engage with you by sharing any kind of social profile – Facebook, LinkedIn, Github, Google profile, etc.

5. Beamery is the first platform I’ve seen that truly has separated the function of Sourcer and Recruiter – working to define that Sourcers use Beamery, Recruiters use the ATS, and they’ve built a workflow to help organizations really build out this practice. For large organizations that have both functions, this will really help define the roles for your team.

I really liked Beamery’s technology and ease of use. Clearly, recruitment CRM software is for more sophisticated recruitment shops, who work in competitive marketplaces. That doesn’t mean just technology jobs. Finding Truck Drivers, Machinist and Retail Managers are super competitive! But you have to want to embrace the technology to help you reach your goals.

Beamery has a great introductory price point for 1-5 seats, and will work with you on enterprise pricing. I was shocked at how low of a cost a SMB shop could get into this software! Check them out, Beamery is well worth a demo.

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 tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.