Monthly Archives: November 2016

HR’s Unwritten Rules!

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For those NFL/Professional Sports Fans out there I give you one of the dumbest unwritten sports rules that are out there:

You can’t lose your starting spot due to injury.

Dallas Cowboy’s, Tony Romo was injured at the beginning of this season and potentially could have come back this past week, but his ‘backup’ Dax Prescott has done such a good job this season, that the coach and GM now have a really difficult decision to make! This has sports news, radio and fans talking about ‘the rule’ – if you’re the starter and you get injured, once you are better, you automatically get your starting job back.  But, why?  Where does this come from?

This has sports news, radio and fans talking about ‘the rule’ – if you’re the starter and you get injured, once you are better, you automatically get your starting job back.  But, why?  Where does this come from?

I can think of a couple of reasons why an organization might want to have this type of rule, in sports:

1. You don’t want players playing injured and not wanting to tell the coaches for fear if they get pulled, they’ll lose their job.  Thus putting the team in a worse spot of playing injured instead of allowing a healthy player to come in. Also, you don’t want the player furthering injuring themselves worse.

2. If the person has proven themselves to be the best, then they get injured, why wouldn’t you go back with the proven commodity?

I can think of more ways this unwritten rule makes no sense at all:

1. No matter the reason, shouldn’t the person with the best performance get the job?  No matter the reason the person was given to have his or her shot – if they perform better than the previous person, they should keep the job.

2. If you want a performance-based culture, you go with the hot hand.

3. Injuries are a part of the game, just as leave of absences are a part of our work environments, the organizations that are best prepared for this will win in the end – that means having capable succession in place that should be able to perform at a similar level, and if you’re lucky – at a better level.

It’s different for us in HR, right?  We have laws we have to follow, FMLA for example, or your own leave policies.  But is it really that different?  In my experience, I see companies constantly make moves when someone has to take a personal or medical leave and go a different direction with a certain person or position.

Let’s face it, the truth is our companies can’t just be put on hold while someone takes weeks or months off to take care of whatever it is they need to do.  That doesn’t mean we eliminate them, and legally we can’t, but we do get very creative in how we bring them back and positions that get created to ensure they still have something, but at the same time the company can continue to move forward in their absence.

I wonder if ‘our’ thinking about the NFL’s unwritten rule of losing your position comes from our own HR rules and laws we have in place in our organizations.  It would seem, like the NFL, most HR shops figure out ways around their own rules as well!

T3 – Fitbit Group Health – @Fitbit

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This week on T3 I take a look at wearable technology Fitbit, but not from the actual wearable tech perspective, but from their health wellness tech solution. Fitbit Group Health was developed specifically to support organizations that have decided to use the power of wearable tech to help their employees reach their wellness goals.

I was drawn to this tech because seemingly everyone knows the brand Fitbit. As an experienced HR pro, I’ve learned that the path of least resistance is critical when getting employee adoption of any HR program! Meaning, if my employees are already Fitbit fans, why would I fight the momentum!?

Fitbit has been around for a while now and because of this they’ve been able to do some long term studies with large organizations using their wearable tech and run side by side control groups to find out what impact this wearable tech has on wellness from a cost perspective, and it’s quite stunning!

Fitbit Group Health recently released a study that shows year over year results can reduce your overall healthcare spend by almost 25%! The study compared one group of employees with the Dayton Transit Authority (bus drivers who sit almost all day) with a control group of the same employees not wearing the Fitbit tech. For one year they followed this group and the group wearing the Fitbit incurred 24.5% less per person average overall healthcare cost as compared to the control group.

Fitbit’s own data amongst all their corporate users is showing similar great reductions across 2.6 million users in 70 of the Fortune 500. Wearing the tech leads to more active lifestyles and better health outcomes. Makes sense, right? Get your employees moving more and crazy enough they get healthier.

What I really like about Fitbit Group Health:

  • Employees already like Fitbit and are wearing Fitbit. This makes is super easy to gain adoption.
  • Fitbit Group Health makes it easy for you as an employer to supplement the cost of buying individual Fitbits and setting up a site just for your organization for employees to purchase the technology.
  • The Fitbit Group Health technology gives you a dashboard to track employee usage, set up contests and message individuals and groups of employees. The metrics you receive in HR allows you to track your own results and tie it back to cost savings.
  • It’s proven outcomes and reduction of cost over many industries, blue collar and white collar, fully supplemented, partial supplemented and non-supplemented. It doesn’t matter, it works!
  • It’s scalable and can easily be tested in an organization at the department level, location, etc.

What you’ll find is you already have Fitbit fans in your organization and you’ll easily be able to make some new fans, but you’ll also be able to drive a culture of wellness with employees supporting each other.

We all know the struggle of getting high adoption of wellness in our organizations. I think Fitbit Group Health is providing a great model of getting your employees moving and supporting each other. The fact is, that small thing, can give every organization huge positive results!

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 HR, 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.