Yearly Archives: 2016

2016’s Newest Benefit – Baby Sign-on Bonuses!

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According to this USA Today article, the U.S. birthrate is in sharp decline and is at it’s lowest levels in the past 25 years.   Here are probably a few facts you don’t know:

– Projected 2013 birthrate in the U.S. is estimated to be 1.86

– Birthrate needed to maintain a population over a 20 year period is 2.1

Why should this concern you?

There are a number of reasons one might be concerned that you need as many young people as old for the simple fact of having enough young people to take care of your older population.  If you turn that equation upside down (Taiwan 1.1 or Portugal 1.3) you have a society full of older people and not enough young people to fill the jobs needed to keep running your society.

The U.S. already has 3 Million jobs left unfilled because of lack of skilled employees today. Imagine if you now have millions of fewer workers to even choose from, and by the way, skilled workers aren’t coming from other countries because their societies are growing and need them as well.  That is what our country’s employment picture will look like in 2032.  I know for many people right now this sounds very good – because of our high unemployment – but this will be

That is what our country’s employment picture will look like in 2032.  I know for many people right now this sounds very good – because of our high unemployment but this will be an HR/Recruiting nightmare for those young HR/Talent Pros starting out their careers in the next 20 years.

Being the Futurist that I am, I’ve already provided a solution to this problem back in 2011 over at Fistful of Talent, Should You Encourage Your Employees To Have Babies, check it out. Basically, my advice remains the same as U.S. employers we need to create a positive, encouraging environment for our employees, with family-friendly policies that make our employees feel like starting a family is a good thing, and that if they do start a family their job and ability to get a promotion won’t be compromised.  This is not the case as many U.S. employers right now for both men and women in the workforce.

As HR Pros and organizations we tend to think this isn’t our issue.  It will take care of itself.  But as we look at countries with low birthrates the issue doesn’t take care of itself and those countries have a worker crisis going on right now.    We need to change our ways right now. We need to be family friendly employers. We need to, as HR Pros, be concerned and find solutions for our employees around daycare, flexible schedules and other practices that will help our employees with families.   I know it sounds a bit the-sky-is-falling-ish, but the numbers don’t lie we are headed for some of the hardest

I know it sounds a bit the-sky-is-falling-ish, but the numbers don’t lie we are headed for some of the toughest hiring this country has ever seen.

One solution I’ve thought of, that I didn’t bring up in 2011, is baby sign-on bonuses!  We already do it for college students! I think we start doing for babies of our best employees.  I mean if parents can arrange their kid’s marriage, what stops us from arranging their first job?  Nothing! That’s what.  Imagine how happy your employees would be to cash a $20,000 check to help with baby expenses for the simple task of forcing their kid to come to work with your company upon college graduation.  It seems so simple, I’m not quite sure why no one has started this yet!

It seems so simple, I’m not quite sure why no one has started this yet!

What if it’s impossible to fix the Gender Wage Gap?

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I love the HR and Talent data analytics platform Visier and have been following them for years. Recently, Visier released a study called the Visier Insight’s Report: Gender Equity that I found fascinating!

Basically, Visier claims they discovered the main reason behind the gender pay gap and they titled it the “Manager Divide” (You can download the report here). The Manager Divide—an underrepresentation of women in manager positions—significantly contributes to the gender wage gap. To break it down simply, women begin to leave the workforce around age 26 to begin having babies. At this point, the wage gap begins and women never catch up!

Screen Shot 2016-06-28 at 2.33.25 PMYou can clearly see it in this graph from the Visier report. Men and women virtually earn the same up until age 26, in fact, women earn slightly more. At age 26 there is a huge split in the graph, and women don’t even start to close that gap until close to retirement.

Visier gives a bunch of great ways for organizations to close the gap:

– Implement the “Rooney Rule”: for every manager position you have open to fill, consider “at least one woman and one underrepresented minority” in your slate of candidates.

– Implement blind screening, removing names (or other gender identifiers) from resumes when selecting candidates for interviews.

– Increase measurement and awareness of gender equity in the rollout or implementation of HR policies, including manager promotions and hires, and compensation policies.

– Support meaningful paid parental leave that is equal for both women and men.

– Ensure it is socially acceptable for both men and women to take time off to care for their children.

All good stuff, right?

Here’s my question: if this gender wage gap phenomenon happens because of a natural cause (childbirth and rearing), how does any of this change it?

It doesn’t. The majority of women are till going to leave the workforce, on average between 26 and 36, to begin raising their family. Whether these women leave for 9 months or 9 years, they’ll return to the workforce with that much less of experience.  So, they’ll always be playing catch up, for the most part, to those men who didn’t leave to have babies and raise them.

The reality is, because of women leaving to have babies and raise families, they’ll always be a pay disparity between genders. Should it be 21% on average? No. That’s why we need to focus on the real issue at hand.

In most organizations of any size, you have females making less than men who are in the same position with basically the same experience, performance, and education level. The only reason they are making less is because they’re a female. That’s the real issue.

How do you fix this?

The old fashion way. It’s a big project. You’ll have big spreadsheets and you’ll have uncomfortable conversations with managers who gave larger raises to men, for no reason other than their bias. It’s an uncomfortable project, but it’s the only way to solve the real issue. Painstakingly one position, one department, one person at a time.

You can do high-level analysis in your organization and you’ll find a gender pay gap. That’s natural, the Visier report pointed this out. It’s going to continue to happen because we live in a society and culture where women still do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to childbirth and raising the children. You have to get into the weeds to find the real issues within your organization in terms of gender pay gap, not a 20,000-foot flyover.

Every large organization I’ve ever worked in had gender pay issues within specific positions and departments. It wasn’t rampant, but it was there. A word of caution, don’t point fingers at fault. Just work to solve the problem. It happened, how do we move forward and fix it. Placing blame will cause stalls and fights, you don’t want to be a part of at an executive level. Just find ways to quietly fix the problem and make things right.

 

In Recruiting, Content Is NOT King!

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Something happened over the past five years. Content marketing, which is a brilliant way to connect with a customer base and build sales, became very fashionable in the recruiting space.  So much so, that I constantly read vendors telling in the trenches Talent Acquisition pros and leaders:

“In Recruiting, content is king!”

No. No, it is not! In recruiting, activity is king.  I think the confusion comes into play with people treating employment branding and recruiting as the same thing. They’re not the same thing. One build’s awareness of who you are and what kind of employer you might be, possibly you can stretch employment branding into awareness of your job openings as well.

Content in employment branding is important if you’re doing content recruitment marketing. Again, you don’t have to do this to do employment branding. Many organizations build their brand without content. If you have a great consumer brand, you are less likely to need content to build your employment brand.

I’m not against producing great content to build your brand, believe me! It can be super helpful, especially if you don’t have a larger consumer brand behind you.

The point is you can be awesome in recruiting and never produce a single piece of content. I see so many TA shops missing this right now. The question is why? Why are TA shops believing that the only way to recruit is to build content and build an audience?

Employer Branding is a huge business right now! Organizations are spending millions of dollars per year to build, maintain and grow their employment brand. For huge organizations, or organizations in highly competitive environments, this is very important. For many organizations, this is a complete waste of time and resources!

The noise in the employment branding space is so loud right now, most organizations are not going to be heard. In that case, why are you spending the resources? You’re doing this because it’s easier than picking up a phone and calling a candidate! That’s recruiting.

Recruiting are the activities you do to hire people for the jobs you have open. Included in those activities are not only candidate attraction but candidate interaction. Candidate interaction, the function of a recruiter interacting with a candidate, might be the most forgotten skill in all of Talent Acquisition.

The skill of interacting with a live person is lost on most talent acquisition shops. Sure you can connect with candidates via email, messaging, text, twitter, Snapchat, etc. Eventually, though, someone has to speak to a live person. Someone has to close this person on coming to work for you. We, the talent acquisition industry, continue to spend less and less time on this side of our business, and it’s showing.

Great recruiting organizations are activity focused and activity driven. Sales funnel. Candidates come in the top, and hires come out the bottom. It’s not difficult. It’s not art. It’s a process. It’s metrics. Teach your recruiters to be able to engage live people on the front side, and you will see a great return on that investment in more hires. No content needed.

 

 

T3 – HR & TA Technology Startup Competition at The HR Tech Conference!

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I get to review some really great HR and TA Technology on a weekly basis. Many of those companies are just looking for a ‘shot’. A way to be heard, to let people know what they do and how it will help their organization. Well, this is it!

The HR Technology Conference is having a competition called, “Discovering the Next Great Technology Company”.

It will be a “The Voice” like a competition where each company that gets selected will be given a ‘coach’ to help them before the competition be prepared for their presentation, then at the competition, there will be voting and someone will be named the 2016 Next Great HR Technology Company!

Okay, I’m not a coach, but there are some other great folks who will be that understand the industry really well (Jason Averbook, Trish McFarlane, Madeline Laurano, George LaRocque, and Kyle Lagunas).

Here are the important details:

HR Tech startups can submit to be considered and get more information at:

http://www.hrtechnologyconference.com/ant.html

One that page you will find instructions, information, and the link to the application forms. There is no charge to apply, but the deadline is coming up fast, so interested HR technology providers should not hesitate in applying.

And one last note, because I know I am going to be asked – the “Awesome New Technology” session at the Conference for larger, established HR tech companies will once again be held at the event, and it uses the same application form at the same link as above. The HR Tech Conference has not, (this year anyway), given that session the reality TV makeover just yet.

What’s In It For You? 

1. You’ll get some great free advice from some of the top Analyst in our industry.

2. You’ll get to present, on stage, your product in front of one of the most attended sessions at HR Tech!

3. It’s great publicity for you to even be selected to present, to be one of those “next great HR Tech companies”, it’s even better if you win!

The Deadline is June 30th!  But, a little HR Tech Conference birdy told me that they’ll extend registration for this competition an additional week! So, get on it today and apply. It doesn’t cost anything and only takes a few minutes to apply.

5 Things You Should Be Doing in June to Prepare for Your Open Enrollment in the Fall

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It’s a beautiful day here in Michigan! 75 degrees and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. In the north, we get only a limited time to enjoy summer, so when it finally arrives you better believe I’m taking full advantage! (For, me that’s tending to my flowers and doing some yard work.)

What’s my point? The last thing you probably want to be doing right now is brainstorming ways to prep for open enrollment!  But guess what—you don’t have to…Because, while I’m still here in the office, I’m going to do it for you, so you (and I) can spend a little more time enjoying this great summer weather!

Here then is my list of Important OE Stuff You Should Be Doing Right Now:

  1. Schedule employee roundtable meetings to get the feedback you need on the last benefit design. Make it fun. Provide an ice cream sundae station! It will work twofold: you’ll get the feedback you need to start your next design, and people love ice cream! You connect talking about benefits with having a positive experience. Simple psychology is the best psychology!
  2. Do a mid-year follow-up with your benefits broker.They should already be on top of this and begging you to go out to lunch, or golfing, but if they haven’t, remind them. Specifically, this is a great time to look at your brand-name drug utilization and talk about some strategies to increase generic use and reduce this cost to the organization.
  3. Executive cost foreshadowing should be happening right now.At this point in the year, your broker can have a pretty good guess at where your new premiums are going to come in at, and what this might mean to your new benefits design. Schedule a meeting with the C-Suite to give them some insight now, so they’re prepared when budgeting season comes. The best way not to ‘shock’ an executive is to get to them early in the process.
  4. Deliver your own Summer Tips and Tricks communication to your employees on proper benefit utilization!Summer seems to be the time when people find their way to the emergency room when maybe the could have gone to urgent care. These are also a great time to highlight wellness initiatives since we are all trying to get into those swimsuits before vacation! Simple reminders like these save the organization money and keep your most important messages top of mind to your employees.
  5. Schedule an OE marketing session before all the summer vacations start.As benefit pros we spend a lot of time and care figuring out what to say to our employees. What we tend to figure out too last minute is HOW we want to market these changes to our employees. Summer is a great time to not only think about the how—but to play around with some new ideas. What if you texted employees tips about OE on top of emailing them? What if you decided to send postcards to everyone’s homes? Now’s the time to figure out what you want to try—and establish a schedule for getting it done in time.

(Speaking of schedules, if you want even more ideas on what to be doing in June and July for OE, check out this excellent post—What to Do 12-16 Weeks Before OE, by the folks at Jellyvision.)

Anyway,  I really do believe you can never be too prepared for Open Enrollment. A little extra effort now will lead to a great experience for you and your team come fall—and let you have more fun this summer, knowing you’re ahead of the game.

 

 

SHRM Gems! #SHRM16

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SHRM’s National Conference just finished up this week. I couldn’t attend in person, but through the ‘magic’ of social media and a bunch of friends who did attend, I was able to keep up on much of the action. I saw so many great pieces coming out on Twitter, Facebook, and Facebook Live (Sorry, SHRM, some folks lived streamed some stuff!).

My friend Laurie Ruettimann also wrote a great piece on remembering many of the past SHRM National conferences she attended, check out that post it was great. With that in mind I wanted to share with you SHRM Gems I’ve gathered over the years, but instead of telling which year I got them from, I want you to guess! It’ll be fun, play along:

SHRM Gems!

1. Receiving feedback is a leadership skill that needs to be developed. Year ________

2. People get hired because of their ‘hard skills’, but fired because of their ‘soft skills’.  Year ______

3. Create a culture that makes it okay to make mistakes. Year ______

4. Change is inevitable, growth is optional.  Year _____

5. Hiring managers spend only 6 seconds looking at a resume before deciding if it’s worth consideration. Year ______

6. HR must be able to adapt. Year _____

7. I see humans as humans, not as resources. Year _____

8. Become a solutions machine. Year _____

9. Headcount is meaningless, focus on how you can get work done. Year _____

10. Feedback shouldn’t come as a surprise. Year _____

11. Good leaders focus on connecting people and building relationships. Year _____

Okay, so what do you think?  Tough right!?

It seems like many of these we’ve been talking about for the past decade or more!

Drum roll, please!  All of these quotes were taken from speakers at this year’s SHRM conference! 2016, oh, we’ve come a long way, baby…

When I first started seeing these I got a bit depressed. I was like, “Come on! We’re better than this! We’re HR Pros!” Then, I actually said this in my head, “We need to elevate the conversation!”

You want to know when the first time I heard, “we need to elevate the conversation!”  It was at an SHRM National conference, about eight years ago.

That’s when it hit me.  SHRM National is good because it allows HR pros from around the world, at all levels, to come and get what they need, at whatever level they’re at.  All 11 items above I’ve heard at past SHRM conferences, but thousands of up-and-coming HR pros heard it for the first time this week in D.C. That’s awesome!

Just like I needed to hear that stuff at one point in my career, and still need to be reminded about much it still today, SHRM is about developing yourself at whichever level you are at currently.

I used to get frustrated when I went to SHRM and saw presenters bring back the exact same presentation that I saw them do the year before! I thought that was amateur hour. I’m the amateur. Great content, in HR, probably has at least a five-year life span, if not more. If you can nail a great presentation, with a great message, it will have legs!

I’ll be back in New Orleans next year if SHRM will have me. I missed it this year. I missed being surrounded by an engaged community of great HR pros. I missed being reminded of the vastness of this community. I missed the great reminders of what we all should be striving to accomplish each day.

@AnythingOverIce Takes Over The Project at #SHRM16

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I couldn’t be at SHRM National this year so I sent my roving reporter, HR Pro, and friend, Chris Bailey! BTW – He’s also the Director of PwC’s HR Practice in the Caribbean. Chris will be giving you daily updates from D.C. and filling you in on all things #SHRM16! (P.S. – We could name this series “Selfies of Chris Around D.C.!) P.S. You can tell this isn’t me – I never write 1200+ words! Thanks to Chris for the SHRM updates! Make sure you connect with Chris on Twitter and on LinkedIn! 

Dear Tim Sackett and his many readers,

As my last ramble was filled with spelling errors I must apologize.  As mentioned it was mainly written on the go on my iPhone! I should also point out that I was a “train”- wreck yesterday as subsequent videos on my Facebook feed will attest to. You see the heavens opened which could only mean that I was destined to spend some time at the bar as it was far too wet to venture outside late in the day. It did, however, mean that I attended some of the later sessions which can often be the graveyard session for speakers as most people are off getting ready for the big night out! Now at this point I need to ask for some feedback from the HR community – Have we forgotten how to party? I mean, really, going home at 9:30pm after a kick ass concert from Train just doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I know the majority of us are mid 30’s onwards and have kids but isn’t the point of a conference to come get away from it all learn some stuff then party like your graduating college? I have a theory on this and you’re not going to like it!

HR people are not healthy! Yet we are the people promoting the wellness campaigns in our organizations, if you we’re tired after walking around the expo followed by getting on an escalator and sitting down for an hour in a session then you need to take a good look at yourself.  Seriously, people were having to rest just from moving from one session to another, it’s no more than about 1000 meters which is a 10-minute walk from the furthest session to the next – I know because I measured it on my Garmin. So if a 10-minute walk tires you out to the point where you enter the next session sweating and slumping down into the chair with an audible sigh then you need to outsource your wellness program cuz people are not going to buy what your selling!  I weigh 260lbs – I ran every morning around the Washington monuments, (About 10km) I took the stairs not the escalators during the conference and frequently walked the 3km back to my hotel. I did this as I wanted to see the city, stay in shape and work up to the dinner and beer I had in the evening. It really made me wonder whether wellness in the workplace is just a thing that we talk about rather than a thing that we should practice.  

Two of my colleagues from Cayman also wanted to get a little exercise and see the city.  So, at lunchtime rather than running for the box lunches (which are proper rubbish btw) we grabbed those capital bikes and we cycled the monuments of Washington. They had a blast and we had a healthy lunch stop mid-way. Quick shower and change then back for afternoon sessions. Now when they posted those picture back to their teams at work they were happy smiling and being active way more engaging for their own wellness programs. So I am going to throw it down for New Orleans #SHRM17 I will do a daily bike or running tour for any HR pros who believe as I do that we have to be the ambassadors for what we do and if corporate wellness is a part of that then so must we be. So my theory was that due to the lack of activity amongst our HR Pros they were all knackered by 9:30pm and went to bed… leaving Washington to me….(enter evil laugh here). Ok wellness rant over, sessions – as mentioned I attended a 4pm session, but first caught very well-polished –

Brad Karsh presenting, How to Be Present When You’re Not.

I was interested in seeing what he would talk about for an hour on this and much to my amusement the first 15 minutes I spent going OMG really 1000 people in this room don’t know this stuff! However he had to start somewhere and he was very funny in his delivery but a couple of key points which reminded me that I should do these during Webex or webinar on phone conferences etc…

·        Start with a bang

·        Tell them what is coming up

·        Keep it simple

·        Don’t send them slides in advance

·        Refer to their names often (makes them pay attention in case they get asked something)

·        Every 10 minutes do something that engages the group

55% of what someone takes in from you come from body language, 38% of that same engagement comes from tone, and only 7% is your actual words! Which means if you’re not present you have to engage through tone and visuals cues to have your message heard. Now this is Brad’s take on it and I would love to know how we measure those percentages but I am not going to argue with them as I happen to think they are true. So some interesting this to consider from a session that I didn’t think would hold much relevance.

Lizbeth Clause (@global_I_press) Trends in Global HR Practice – Avoiding the Disruption.

Now, the last session of the day had a title with some promise, so I wondered what she saw as disruption and how she was promoting we combat it. To say I was blown away was an understatement. She should have had a mega session not the smattering of die-hard HR folk still actively participating at 4pm on the evening of a Train concert!  She got off to a slow start but after she explained what she believed trends where and how HR analytics play a big part in identifying them she started giving some real world examples of how her data had avoided massive disruption. That’s the part that hit home for me because the academic principles that she employed to gather and extract data plus employ a hypothesis which subsequently delivered a solution became real and it’s something I will absolutely use going forward.

Stay with me here! Example when the Ebola scare was hitting US hospitals. They used string data mining to formulate hotspots amongst nurses which showed they were really concerned about providing treatment. Nurses would use company email to voice their concerns to colleagues which when triggered in the algorithm created a hotspot of worry that HR was able to respond to and avoid industrial action. They used data analytics to get ahead of the problem.  

I could go on and give the several examples she did but I’ll simply leave you with some of her key takeaways:

·        Make HR Decision based on Analytics

·        Change the Organization culture to include Evidence-based decision making and HR Management

·        Balance the use of ambient corporate data with privacy

·        Move HR to the cloud

·        Use HR apps

I did a little  video interview with her afterward as I wanted to continue the discussion. As an academic, she is brilliant, and passionate and I wish other speakers who waffled out the same old crap would take note. HR analytics + Passion + solving real time and real world issues with simple use = Awesome so glad I went to this!

So then I went to see train perform and the night became a blur…… Thank SHRM and goodnight!

Drops mic walks off……

“Recruiter” is the best job in HR! #SHRM16

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I grew up and lived most of my life in Michigan.  There are so many things I love about living in Michigan and most of those things have to deal with water and the 3 months that temperatures allow you to enjoy said water (Jun – Aug).  There is one major thing that completely drives me insane about Michigan.  Michigan is at its core an automotive manufacturing state which conjures up visions of massive assembly plants and union workers.  To say that the majority of Michigan workers feel entitled would be the largest understatement ever made.

We have grown up with our parents and grandparents telling us stories of how their overtime and bonus checks bought the family cottage, up north, and how they spent more time on their ‘pension’ than they actually spent in the plant (think about that! if you started in a union job at 18, put in your 30 years, retired at 48, on your 79 birthday you actually have had a company pay for you longer than you worked for them – at the core of the Michigan economy this is happening right now – and it’s disastrous!  Pensions weren’t created to sustain that many years, and quite frankly they aren’t sustainable under those circumstances).  Seniority, entitlement, I’ve been here longer than you, so wait your turn – are all the things I hate about my great state!

There is a saying in professional sports – “If you can play, you can play”.  Simply, this means that it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, how much your contract is worth – if you’re the best player, you will be playing.  We see examples of this in every sport, every year.  The kid was bagging groceries last month, now a starting quarterback in the NFL!  You came from a rich family, poor family, no family – doesn’t matter – if you can play, you can play.  Short, tall, skinny, fat, pretty, ugly, not-so-smart – if you can play, you can play.  Performance on your specific field of play – is all that matters.  BTW – NHL released this video a while back supporting the LGBTQIA (BTW – will someone get the LGBTQIA a marketing consultant and stop just adding letters!) community (if you can play…) –

This is why I love being a recruiter!  I can play.

Doesn’t matter how long I’ve been doing it.  Doesn’t matter what education/school I came from.  Doesn’t matter what company I work for.  If you can recruit – you can recruit.  You can recruit in any industry, at any level, anywhere in the world.  Recruiting at its core is a perfect storm of showing us how accountability and performance in our profession works.  You have an opening – and either you find the person you need (success), or you don’t find the person (failure).  It’s the only position within the HR industry that is that clear cut.

I have a team of recruiters who work with me. Some have 20 years of experience, some have a few months – the thing that they all know is – if you can recruit, you can recruit.  No one can take it away from you, no one can stop you from being a great recruiter.  There’s no entitlement or seniority – ‘Well, I’ve been here longer, I should be the best recruiter!’ If you want to be the best, if you have to go out and prove you’re the best.  The scorecard is your placements.  Your finds.  Can you find talent and deliver, or can’t you?  Black and white.

I love recruiting because all of us (recruiters) have the exact same opportunity.  Sure some will have more tools than others – but the reality is – if you’re a good recruiter – you need a phone and an ability to connect with people.  Tools will make you faster – not better.  A great recruiter can play.  Every day, every industry.  This is why I love recruiting.

@AnythingOverIce takes over The Project at #SHRM16 – Day 2

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I couldn’t be at SHRM National this year so I sent my roving reporter, HR Pro, and friend, Chris Bailey! BTW – He’s also the Director of PwC’s HR Practice in the Caribbean. Chris will be giving you daily updates from D.C. and filling you in on all things #SHRM16! (P.S. – We could name this series “Selfies of Chris Around D.C.!) 

Monday SHRM – 4 keys things a futurist wants you to do with your business that will make it ready for 2020…. Plus some other cool tidbits…

Ok, so Sunday finished off with rooftop drinks at the Washington Hotel see pic, which was epic and it’s why we come to conferences to check out the view! Seriously Washington is a cool city being a brit I’m used to small winding roads and living in the Cayman islands I get a few beaches etc… so to see a city function as well as it does and have buildings on a scale that makes my small island feel tiny is pretty cool. Anyways Tim wants me to write about conference type stuff rather than a Bailey travel blog which would probably be way more interesting but NSFW, so let’s just say rooftop drink watching the Cav’s take their first major titles in 50+ years resulted in a sore head this morning. BTW I’m a Heat fan but you gotta love the game!  

 So I typed the below on my iPhone whilst sat in another faceless ballroom a bit bored before this session kicks off – I’m trying a bit of an experiment this year – I’m going to pop in and out of a few sessions at a time to see what nuggets of information I can glean in 10 minutes of listening. However if the speaker is particularly engaging or telling me something mind blowing I may stick around… So first session 10:45am “t minus 90 days until the election” no idea what it’s about 😉 so 10 mins starts now…. Can Mike Aiken get us off to a good start….this day in 1975 jaws was released…interesting tit-bit…then speakers worst nightmare slides don’t work! Can Mike battle on without slides   Not really attention lost so moved on out! Only nugget gained was the jaws thing…. Went straight into Steve Gilliland enjoy the ride mega session (@stevegspeaks) now I have seen Steve talk before and he is funny and a pro but I was mainly interested in whether he had updated his material, actually yes, new jokes new stories and some key messages that apply to all not just our HR folk….

Laugh listen learn – if you’re laughing your listening so I can hopefully teach you something

A closed mouth gathers no feet – know when to shut up! Love this quote and have not heard it before and it’s so true. Practice this… Only say something that will result in something positive!

Don’t forget why you do what you do – we all get wrapped up in tech, strategy, diversity, that we forget why what we do matters take a step back.

Three really simple messages that we all already know but told with humor that had me laughing right till the end…oops only fleeted once good on you Steve!

So, post the lunch box delight that seems to send the SHRM masses into a frenzy I’m back in a different ballroom listening to some smooth 90’s hits while I wait for Scott Hamilton to rock my world teaching me how he is able to see into the future (see Tim’s blog on which speaker are you) this guy is most certainly a futurist and he has a room of easily 1000 people to preach to! Scott’s talk 2020 transformation – next practices in HR…

Hold tight….

OK, so Scott is impressive probably why they gave him a mega session, obviously knows his subject and started out by giving some interesting facts such as Mercedes-Benz now have over 65 models as they shoot for even more different clients and are actively targeting the over 65 market…. According to Scott, Kodak turned down entering the digital market way back when as they didn’t want to cannibalize their own business….and similarly blockbuster also said no to online streaming of films two years before Netflix entered the market… all decision were made because leadership was unable to change its mindset.  Enter Scots formula for helping an organization use these HR practices to be the competitive companies of 2020.

1.        Eliminate: Which Policies and practices can you eliminate that your industry has long competed on? –Cirque du Soleil eliminated Star performers, Animal shows, Aisle Concession sales and multiple show arena’s

2.        Raise: Which practices/policies/benefits should be raised well above the industry standard? Again in the case of Cirque – Unique venues (Vegas etc..)

3.        Reduce: Which practices/policies should be reduced well below industry standard? For Cirque this was – Family audience to target Adult entertainment, Fun, and Humour, Thrill and danger

4.        Create – Which policies and practices should be created that the industry never offered – a potentially disruptive approve – for Cirque this was, Theme, Refined environment, multiple productions, Artistic music and dance.

·        For Cirque Du Soleil this created a $2.4bn business!

I really liked these coupled with Dump your HR baggage! Generate Practices that challenge the status quo, Target your areas to start divergent and convergent thinking (there is a whole other blog on this one!).

So to finish, he had the audience shout out some cool games changers here are just a few that you might want to consider:

·        Remove Job titles

·        Create Awesome workspaces

·        Pay off student loans of employees who remain with you over time

·        Think Tanking

Now I really like the think tanking idea simply take your teams once a quarter for 20 mins and think new sh!t up but actually try and create project plans to deliver on the new stuff.

So I didn’t leave Scott’s session, he held my attention, some good takeaways which hopefully I have succinctly placed above. If you want to look him up he is the Chief Exec of NextWorks on twitter as @enpforums.

T3 – @Textio – Words + Data = Magic

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This week on T3 I review the HR technology play named Textio. Textio is a platform that optimizes your job ads and candidate emails in seconds so you can hire better candidates faster.

Textio shows you how your job listings and candidate emails will perform before you’ve even posted them. Will the role be popular among qualified job seekers? Will it fill quickly? How gender-biased is it? Our predictive models give you analytics and feedback right as you’re typing.

Textio is like a very smart word processor. You type, edit, format, copy, and paste, just like you would in any other word processor. You’ll know how to use it immediately. But Textio does something else: as you edit, it predicts how successful your job listing or candidate email is going to be and helps you make it better.

Textio analyzed job text and outcomes data using listings from tens of thousands of companies. They look at which jobs fill the most quickly and generate the most applicant interest. Where companies choose to share additional data with Textio, they also consider candidate demographics and how many among a job’s applicants are strong enough to get called back.

5 Things I really liked about Textio: 

1. Textio gives you a ‘score’ of the document you’re working on. They’ve been able to reduce time to fill by 20% when you get your job posting to 90, on a 100 point scale! That’s a huge drop in time to fill, for doing nothing more than using better (mathematically proven) language to describe your openings!

2. Textio instantly highlights your document and gives you better options to make your job postings and emails perform better from a candidate’s standpoint. They can also assist in making your job postings are not more male or female oriented based on the language you use. The platform will help you ensure you are demographically inclusive.

3. The big win is in job postings, but HR and TA can use this in all communications and documents. Even executives can use it to help their communications!

4. Textio helps point out some written language biases we all have. Not only does it help improve your communications, it helps you uncover some biases you probably don’t even know you have in your writing style. Excellent personal and professional development tool.

5. Built in machine learning works across your entire team to help build consistency in your communications and job postings, as well as the ability to share with each other.

Textio is just loaded with data that helps your organization better communicate. Their data shows that we all like bullets! Okay, I know you knew that, but did you know the sweet spot for bulleted content in your job postings is 1/3?! Probably not, or that if you have no bullets, men will rarely engage with your job postings? Or, if you have more than 50%, you’re less likely to get women?  I have your interest now! It’s cool stuff!

14-day free trial to check out whether or not this would be helpful for you, an annual subscription is really reasonable. It would be worth one license in your shop just to get your job postings better! Check Textio out, definitely worth a look, I was really impressed.