Monthly Archives: March 2018

The Latest Dating Trend has Always been a Leadership Trend!

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Have you heard of the dating concept called, “Stashing”?

Here’s the Urban Dictionary definition of stashing (editor’s note: you know you’re about to read a great HR post when it starts with a definition from Urban Dictionary!):

“Stashing is when you’re in a relationship with someone and you refuse to introduce them to your friends and family; mostly because you view the person as temporary, replaceable, and/or you’re an assh@le.”

There are other reasons you might ‘stash’ someone. Maybe you know your friends and family would approve of this person, so you stash them because you still like them, but you don’t want to upset your friends and family. Maybe you’re worried your friends might try and move in on this person themselves, so you stash them.

But, usually, stashing has more to do with there is something about the person that embarrasses you, most likely because you’re a shallow, horrible person, so you stash this person you’re in a relationship with. On the leadership side, stashing actually takes the exact opposite effect.

Leadership Stashing

Leadership stashing is when a leader purposely makes sure one of their direct reports doesn’t have a high profile, so that other managers within the same organization won’t know you have a rock star on your team and then try to steal them to their team.

This happens all the time, especially within large organizations!

Here’s how it works. I’m a leader of a group, my name is Tim. A year ago I hired Marcus right out of college. Your basic new hire grad. Green as grass, just like every other new graduate. I quickly came to understand that Marcus had ‘it’. He was a natural. I know Marcus will easily be better than me in the near future if he’s not already better than me.

As a leader, I’ve got a decision to make. Keep Marcus stashed on my team and reap the professional benefits, or position Marcus for promotion, in which I’ll probably lose him off my team. With Marcus on my team, I exceeded all my measures last year, and Timmy got a big bonus. So did Marcus.

When asked in leadership meeting what I’m doing with my ‘team’ to exceed all my measures, I let everyone know some of the ‘new’ leadership accountability strategies I’m using, and how it really comes back to setting great measures and then holding your team accountable to meeting those measures. Marcus, specifically, doesn’t come up.

Am I a bad leader?

Yes, and this is happening in every organization on the planet.

We love to frame this around, “well, Marcus just needs some more seasoning, and I’m the right person to give it to him”. “Marcus is young, and not quite ready.” “Under my leadership, Marcus is thriving, but under some of these other yahoos, who knows what might happen.”

The right thing to do is obvious and simple. My group is doing well, I let the organization know, it’s a team effort, but you all have to know, I hired a rock star, and we need to get Marcus on a fast track to leadership. That’s the right thing, but it’s not as easy as it sounds when you’ve been struggling to climb your own ladder.

What we know is leaders stash talent.

It’s our job as HR pros and leaders to find that stashed talent and elevate that talent within the organization. If we don’t, that talent will most likely leave because being stashed sucks in life and in your career.

 

My New Favorite Interview Question!

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I love the concept of questions that will truly show you who someone is. We’ve gone through a long history of asking basic interview questions that don’t really get to the heart of anything. “So, Timmy, tell me what you would like to be doing three years from now?” Okay, well, sitting on a beach drinking margaritas sounds better than this. How am I doing? Did I get the job?

For my interview questions, I really want to understand how someone thinks. What are their true motivations? What gets them up in the morning? It might not be the job I have, in fact, I hope it’s not the job I have because that would be depressing. I don’t get up in the morning for the job I have, I get up because I’m a grown-ass man with a responsibility to take care of my family. I really like my job, but my job is not my motivation.

So, what’s my new favorite interview question? It’s simply this:

So, with the latest data scandal at Facebook, did you delete your Facebook account? 

I ask, then I shut up and wait for an answer.

What am I looking for? I’m looking for people who aren’t so naive and fragile that a data breach on a free platform that they willingly signed up for wouldn’t cause them to freak out.

I’m looking for candidates who would go, “no, why would I?” They would describe the process of signing up for Facebook, knowing they were getting value out of something they never paid a dime to use, and knowing that came with a cost. That cost? It’s your data.

I’ll tell you, that isn’t the only right answer. The other answer I would accept is, “Yes, I did, and I also deleted LinkedIn, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, etc. I deleted these because I was tired of using free platforms that I know manipulated me and take my data, and I finally got to a point where I didn’t want that to happen any longer.”

Either answer, I would be good with. Both answers show me that the candidate has a pretty good head on their shoulders to understand how the real world works.  The same kind of head my grandparents had. No one gives you a free lunch. If you’re getting a free lunch, there is an expectation that you’ll be giving the person paying something, eventually.

If the candidate did delete their Facebook profile, then went right out to Twitter to announce it, then, well, that’s an answer to. It’s not the answer I’m looking for in a candidate I want working for me. I don’t need employees who are shocked by the basic realities of life. It was free, but it cost billions of dollars to make. How do you think they’re paying for it?

Oh, I just love the perfect interview question! Designed correctly, it can give you such great insight to an individual! So, what’s your favorite interview question?

 

Career Confessions from GenZ: Are You Recruiting Me on YouTube?

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In the past few years, I have developed a new obsession: gymnastics. I have gone full on gymnastics crazy. I watch all of the meets I can and often will go the Michigan Women’s gymnastics meets alone because I don’t want the distraction of having to entertain a friend! Although I don’t exactly know the root of my obsession, I know what has been aiding it: YouTube.

YouTube has become a driving force in the lives of Gen-Z. A new statistic came out recently that over 70% of Gen-Z watches 2 hours of YouTube videos a day. Also, in a survey of teenagers, 97% said they use YouTube which was almost 30% more than Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat.

In my opinion, YouTube is the most diversified of all media platforms. There is something interesting for literally everyone in the world. For example, there’s a whole community of people that post entire gymnastics meets so I can watch them over and over (or so I can watch them on mute during class….).

In order to recruit Gen-Z candidates, I’d argue that YouTube is the way to go.

Not only are you statistically going to reach more of us, but you are going to hold more of our attention due to the nature of the platform. Most of the ads on YouTube are videos and often you can’t close them until at least 5 seconds have passed. I can describe many more YouTube ads than I can of any other platforms.

Another appealing characteristic of YouTube is the ability to appeal to a certain audience. Since YouTube has a wide array of channels and videos, it is easy to target a certain audience by finding the videos they watch. While I don’t really know what audience will try to reach me through gymnastics videos, you can probably find some computer programmers through gaming channels.

I think that YouTube should be the go-to media platform for recruiting.

There is a difference in uses of YouTube amongst generations. While my parents may only be using YouTube to watch the occasional viral video (my current fav is Fergie’s National Anthem), Gen-Z sees it as a place to interact with people of common interests over video content. And we all know how Gen-Z loves our video content. I encourage everyone to go on YouTube and get lost for awhile, and then you’ll see the appeal it has to us Gen-Zer’s.

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech – @Flash_Recruit – Live Chat for Recruiting

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The week on the Weekly Dose I review the recruiting chat application FlashRecruit. FlashRecruit built a technology for recruiting that everyone is already familiar with and comfortable with. It’s not a chatbot, but a real-time messaging application your recruiting team can use to connect with candidates when they are engaging with your employment brand.

FlashRecruit Live Chat connects qualified candidates to recruiters everywhere they post their jobs: career sites, job boards, social media, and email campaigns. It allows you to use Intelligent Screening to ensure quality and easily screen a candidate in or out of your process. The value of FlashRecruit to your recruiting team is its ease and simplicity of use!

Not only can the chat window pop up for candidates who are on your career site, but you can also link to the FlashRecruit live chat function in sourcing emails, and various other recruitment marketing campaigns. A candidate can easily click to ‘chat live with a recruiter now’ and it will open up the application and start the chat. FlashRecruit has seen engagement with email campaigns go from 9% to 36.9% by adding in the option for candidates to do a live chat!

What I like about FlashRecruit:  

– It fits seamlessly into your current recruiting process. You can add the application, and your recruiters get a notice that a candidate wants to chat. FlashRecruit gives recruiters the option of ‘being away from my desk’ communications (or after hours, lunches, etc.). So, your team can turn on and off the ‘live’ ability of the tech.

– It works and it’s inexpensive! Quite simply, we live in a world where people want to ask a question and get an answer when they have time to ask the question and not wait. It might be the biggest complaint candidates have about recruiting in general, and FlashRecruit solves that main issue.

– It integrates into whatever process you’re using, and you can use it sourcing and recruiting campaigns for higher reply rates – just this makes it exciting!

– On average, FlashRecruit users see that candidates ask 2.5 questions. So, this isn’t something that will overwhelm your team, but actually, allow them, and the candidate, to screen themselves out quickly by just asking a couple clarifying questions.

– Recruiters can use this across platforms, so if you have a super hard to fill position, and the recruiter chooses to have the chat on 24/7 so they can interact with that one candidate who might have interest on a Sunday afternoon – they can choose to do that. Or they can set it to out of office and create custom messaging for those candidates who try to connect after hours.

Currently, FlashRecruit is primarily working with staffing companies, but this application can really be used across any talent acquisition function. They started with staffing because for the most part staffing recruiters are more willing to give this access to candidates, but I’m finding more and more corporate TA shops who are also opening this up to better their candidate experience.

If you haven’t seen this type of technology you should be taking a look and demoing FlashRecruit. We know that younger generations of candidates engage with this type of messaging at a high rate, and I would not be shocked if this becomes a standard option in many ATS platforms down the road. FlashRecruit already has built out this integration with Bullhorn.

The Weekly Dose – 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 The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

SpamBrands: Is there really any difference between Employment Brands?

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I have a belief that 9 out of 10 employment brands are exactly the same. Meaning, if you were to really go out and ask candidates to give you specific differences between employment brands, they wouldn’t be able to tell brands apart.

EB #1 only hires the best talent, treats their employees with dignity and respect, values diversity, has a fun work environment, and really listens to their employees.

EB #2 does the same thing as #1 but in green!

EB #3 does the same thing as #1 and #2, but they also only hire top talent.

EB #4 does all of that but they pay for performance.

At this point in employment branding history, we are really just creating SpamBrands! Our brand is just like that brand, but better! How are you better? Because we say we’re better!

I do think we have a few special employment brands in the world. So, the big question becomes what makes those brands truly standout from all the spam we get bombarded by on a daily basis?

I had this idea a while back, about SpamBrands, but I sat on it because I didn’t know how to answer that question. The answers I kept coming up with was just more spam! Not real differentiators that made a difference.

I’m not sure if this is right or not, but in with my limited marketing knowledge, it seemed to make sense. I believe the only true employment branding differentiation that your organization has is:

A truly transformational leadership vision. 

Any organization can pay more. Have better benefits. Have great diversity. Have tremendous leadership soft skills. Any organization can make the product you make cheaper and better. Etc. Etc. Etc.

It’s an extreme rarity to have true leadership vision! Elon Musk vision. Steve Jobs vision. Henry Ford vision. Oprah Winfrey vision. Crystal clear, inspirational, unending. A vision that stands out front and employees will follow it like without question.

So, if this is the case that the only thing that really separates our organizations is a transformational vision and someone who can lead it, and the rest of us are basically the same, what are we really telling candidates? Isn’t it just spam? If it is, isn’t employment branding just a giant waste of time and resources?

I’m going to say NO!

Didn’t see that coming, right!?

Basically, we are living in an Instagram world. Most people see great design and a savvy media strategy as something that is ‘better’ than something that doesn’t have that.

Employment branding works because marketing works.

It doesn’t mean you’re actually a better employer to work for. Let’s not be naive. We can all play the game, and get that’s it’s a game. It doesn’t make you or your organization bad for playing the game. But it is a game if you don’t have that transformational vision.

It’s even cool if you truly believe your company is a great company! Belief is what separates good from average for most employers. I mean belief is what transformational vision is based on.

So, what’s the favorite part of your SpamBrand?

What Paid Holidays Should You Be Paying Your Employees?

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Every year, American employees leave 430 million vacation days up for grabs. (If you were wondering, that’s 1,178,082 years of unused vacation every year.)

Or in other words, way too much time.

We already know Americans are by and large workaholics. But still, if you own a small business, there are some days you should definitely give off to your employees. And it’s helpful to know what that mix of days should be.

That’s where I come in. I’ll show you how to build your own paid holiday schedule for your small business, using benchmarking data as our trusty guide.

The bigger PTO picture.

Let’s start with the main question on your mind: How much time off do people normally get? An average full-time employee in a small, privately-owned business in the U.S. receives about 7.6 paid holidays per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number also breaks down even further:

  • Technical/professional employees get 8.5-ish days a year.
  • Clerical/sales employees get 7.7-ish days a year.
  • Blue-collar/service employees get 7 days a year.

While that’s the average, other studies have shown most employees report getting about nine paid holidays per year. Think about these benchmarks as you decide on the number that will work best for you business.

There are no federal laws requiring employers to give PTO, but most companies offer it anyway. Why? Because it’s a must to attract and retain great employees. In fact, PTO is the second most important benefit to employees, right after health insurance.

Now, onto the next layer of the paid holiday puzzle: Choosing the actual days you give off.

So, what paid holidays should I offer?

Click through this link to my Gusto post to get the rest of this riveting content! 

No, really, I promise, it’s good stuff! Have I ever steered you wrong?

Is This a Major Sign Your Company Culture is Broke?

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Or, is this just the reality of workplaces today, in the world we live in with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements?

That’s the question I was asking myself this week when the Wall Street Journal reported that a group of female employees at Nike circulated their own survey about workplace behaviors. Here are some details from the Quartz at Work article:

According to The Wall Street Journal, the developments were precipitated by an employee-led survey circulated among women at the company. It reportedly asked respondents about inappropriate behavior by men at the company and gender inequities more generally.

Sources told the paper that Parker eventually learned of the survey, which led to a recently completed six-month formal review of company culture. Then, last week, employees learned that Nike brand president Trevor Edwards, widely considered Parker’s likely successor, would step down in August, while one of his top lieutenants, vice president Jayme Martin, was terminated immediately. According to the Journal, the two men “protected male subordinates who engaged in behavior that was demeaning to female colleagues.”

So, before I give you my opinion, I have to tell you I’m a complete Nike fanboy! My first pair of Nike’s happened around the 6th grade when I was in high school the first Air Jordan’s were released. I saved my money all summer to get my first pair (by the way, I came home from college to find my Dad mowing the lawn in these same shoes, believing since I left them in my closet I no longer wanted them!). I’m not a complete sneakerhead, but I’m a wannabe sneakerhead for sure. I love Nike, as much as anyone can love a brand.

I believe Nike’s culture is fine. It’s probably better than most places to work in the world by a great deal. I feel this way from people I know who work there and feedback I hear in HR circles. Nike is not Uber, by a million miles.

I think this shows that every workplace, no matter how good, still has some things we need to clean up. Should female employees at Nike have to circulate their own survey to deal with poor workplace behaviors? No. But, understand that Nike, over most companies, hires emboldened, powerful women. That means this isn’t surprising. The surprising part would be that these women didn’t take action.

I’m not sitting in Nike, so I don’t know if the response that happened was right, or enough. On the outside looking in, it seems like the senior leadership team handled this appropriately.

In the past, I can only imagine how this would have been handled, but my guess is it wouldn’t have been with a senior leader leaving the company, it probably would have been a lot of coaching these female employees around the appropriate way to lodge a complaint, followed by many of these females eventually leaving or being pushed out.

That was the old HR/leadership playbook. That playbook no longer works.

I would love to hear your opinion on this real HR issue and how it was handled by a very visible brand? Hit me in the comments!

 

Career Confessions of GenZ w/@CamSackett: Maybe You Should Take Our Smartphones Away!

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March Madness is fully upon us. This season unites us all over a love for college basketball or in my case, a love for winning money by googling an article about who the “Cinderella” teams are and somehow winning your neighborhood pool (it’s only happened once). Whether your team is out (sorry Dad) or still fighting (Go Blue!), the close matches between teams can be super distracting to everyone. I know that I was watching a game in class the other day, and I don’t even like basketball that much!

It’s been found that March Madness may potentially cost employers $4 billion in productivity. It’s almost impossible to stay focused when there’s a #16 seed beating a #1 seed! (shoutout to the person running the UMBC twitter). One negative marker of Gen-Z is our ability to be easily distracted or our inability to pay attention to one thing for long periods of time. An average college student’s attention span is somewhere between 10-15 minutes, while most classes are over an hour. Although this isn’t an argument about our screwed up education system, it does open up a conversation about how to best approach the use of things such as cell phones and social media which can be very distracting.

I’ve had a cell phone since I was 10 when a family friend forgot to pick me up at swim practice. Some younger members of Gen-Z have gotten them even younger than me. We have grown up with these distractions around us at all times, and it can be difficult to manage.

I am a big fan of teachers that try to embrace the qualities of Gen-Z rather than fight it. More and more, I see teachers and professors trying to implement activities using cell phones or allowing laptops in class. Although I commend these teachers for trying to work with us, it isn’t working. Every single time I bring my laptop to class, I end up online shopping and missing some important information. The same can be said when cell phones or social media is involved.

Although it seems I’m advocating for an eradication of all cell phones and social media use during work hours, I’m not. Frankly, I don’t really know the rules of cell phones at most offices, but I know that my Dad is pretty quick to respond to my texts during the day. What I am saying is that a healthy encouragement of no cell phone use is a good idea.

I think that something like a station where you could drop off and charge your phone for a period of time could be really beneficial to boosting productivity. When I have to get work done, I’ll go put my phone across my apartment from me and turn it off completely to avoid distractions. Whoever says they are good at multi-tasking is LYING. Whenever my phone lights up, I want to check it and I know you do too.

I don’t have a solid answer for you on this one. It’s a tricky topic that isn’t black and white, but it is important to acknowledge. It is important to remind your Gen-Z employees that they are adults and cell phones aren’t banned like they are in a lot of schools. Also, it is important to remind them that this is a place of work and they are getting paid to do a job, not to sit on their phones and send Snapchats about how bored they are (that’s all that we are doing on Snapchat. I promise!). Let me know what you think in the comments!

 

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

 

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @MontageTalent – The Better Candidate Experience

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This week on the Weekly Dose I review the interview and hiring platform Montage. Montage was started as one of those technologies that filled in some of the huge gaps that most ATS systems just didn’t address. It’s easiest to think of them as an interview platform, but over the last few years, they’ve really grown beyond that.

Montage is an enterprise level TA technology that is looking to transform how you initially interact with candidates. They work with your ATS as an integration. Montage does both on-demand types of things: text-based screening, automated recorded-voice screening, on-demand video interviews, and integrated assessments. They also do live screening and interview related activities, from scheduling and event management, to live video interviewing and the ability to do things like live coding screens (134 different languages) and whiteboard exercises.

Montage is not a low-end video-only type of interview platform, this is the real deal, that does just about everything you would ever need when it comes to screening and interviewing candidates.

What I like about Montage: 

– They’ve integrated some A.I. functionality that gives recruiters an ‘assistant’ to help schedule multiple interviews/screens with candidates and hiring managers without the recruiter having to get involved beyond the initial request.

– Built for both high volume hiring with on-demand text screening, and highly specialized recruiting with interview screen sharing and whiteboard exercises available to recruiters and hiring managers.

– The platform is built to give your organization the ability to set up the process how you want it. Want one position to have an on-demand, timed video interview, great, you can do that. Another position to have a text screen, another position to have an untimed assessment, and video, and yet another to have an essay and a coding example. You can basically do anything and everything with the platform. Quite frankly, you have so many options it’s a bit overwhelming when you first look at it!

– Recruiter dashboard allows you to compare candidates and see manager feedback. You can also set up auto-reminders for both managers and candidates that will keep going until completion.

– Mobile optimized to the point that hiring managers are using the mobile functionality to consume video and other content from the platform about 85% of the time, and can respond via mobile as well with their feedback.

Montage really defines what a screening and interview platform should be like for an enterprise-level organization. You need all the bells and whistles, you need a complete ability to configure how you want, and you need the ultimate flexibility that you control. This is not a plug and play just take it off the shelf kind of product. Montage works with your team to really help you design and understand the power of the platform and all the positions you hire.

If you are hiring thousands of employees per year, across multiple disciplines, and multiple countries, Montage could a great tool for your organization to make you more efficient, deliver a better candidate experience, and increase your quality of hire. Well worth a demo. Be prepared to see a lot, because the system can do a lot. The platform definitely has the ability to transform the way you hire.

The Weekly Dose – 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 The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

How to be an Adult! An Employer’s Edition

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Don’t buy into the hype! “Oh, just do what you love!” That’s not being an adult, that’s being a moron! Just do what makes you happy! No, that’s what a child does.

“Tim, we just want to hire some ‘adults’!” I hear this statement from a lot of CEOs I talk with currently!

That means most of the people they are hiring, aren’t considered adults by these leaders. Oh, they fit the demographic of being an adult from an age perspective, but they still act like children!

I tell people when I interview them and they ask about our culture I say, “We hire adults”.

That means we hire people into positions where they are responsible for something. Because we hire adults, they take responsibility for what they are responsible for. If I have to tell them to do their jobs, they’re not adults, they’re children. We don’t employee children.

I think about 70% of the positions that are open in the world could have the same title –

“Wanted: Adults”.

Those who read that and got it, could instantly be hired and they would be above average employees for you! Those who read it and didn’t understand, are part of the wonder of natural selection.

How do you be an Adult?

– You do the stuff you say you’re going to do. Not just the stuff you like, but all the stuff.

– You follow the rules that are important to follow for society to run well. Do I drive the speed limit every single time? No. Do I come to work when my employer says I need to be there? Yes.

– You assume positive intent on most things. For the most part, people will want to help you, just as you want to help others. Sometimes you run into an asshole.

– You understand that the world is more than just you and your desires.

– You speak up for what is right when you can. It’s easy to say you can always speak up for what is right, but then you wouldn’t be thinking like an adult.

– You try and help those who can’t help themselves. Who can’t, not who won’t.

My parents and grandparents would call this common sense, but I don’t think ‘being an adult’ is common sense anymore. Common sense, to be common, has to be done by most. Being an adult doesn’t seem to be very common lately!

So, you want to hire some adults? I think this starts with us recognizing that being an adult is now a skill in 2018. A very valuable skill. Need to fill a position, maybe we start by first finding adults, then determining do we need these adults to have certain skills, or can we teach adults those skills!

The key to great hiring in today’s world is not about attracting the right skills, it’s about attracting adults who aren’t just willing to work, but understand the value of work and individuals who value being an adult.

I don’t see this as a negative. I see it as an opportunity for organizations who understand this concept. We hire adults first, skills second. Organizations that do this, will be the organizations that win.

The Motley Fool has a great section in their employee handbook that talks about being an adult:

“We are careful to hire amazing people. Our goal is to unleash you to perform at your peak and stay out of your way. We don’t have lots of rules and policies here by design. You are an amazing adult and we trust you to carve your own path, set your own priorities, and ask for help when you need it.”

You are an amazing ‘adult’ and we trust you…

If only it was so simple!