Author Archives: Tim Sackett

Gen Z HR Pros!! Are you ready to blog or vlog? I want you to join me!

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So, this summer my son, Cameron, and I started up this series on my blog called, “Career Confessions of Gen Z”. He did an awesome job finding his voice and creating compelling content that was coming straight from the mouth of Gen Z, and not some old washed up blogger, like me, who claimed to know what Gen Z was all about.

I loved it! The audience loved it!

He went back to school, got busy doing school stuff and Career Confessions just sat there.

Another crazy thing happens in HR blogging. If you look at most HR Bloggers, the vast majority are Gen X, older Millennials, some Baby Boomers. So very few are actual Millennials and almost zero are Gen Z. While our executives still like to believe all young employees are still Millennials, we know in HR that Gen Z is the newest generation we need to pay attention to entering our workforces.

So, Gen Z HR and Talent Pros – I need you! 

What’s the gig?

HR and/or Talent Blogger for The Project – specifically under the “Career Confessions of Gen Z” series.

How much do you have to write?

Once per month, every 4-5 weeks. Each post would be anywhere from 400-800-ish words, or a video-blog (vlog) 3-5 minutes. The initial project is for 12 months, so if you get invited to join the team, you’ll be asked to write 12 posts in 12 months.

What can you write or speak about?

Anything work or career-related, as long as it’s interesting or entertaining or educational, and hopefully a combination of all three!

Can I do this anonymously? 

Hell no! Why would you?! This is your big break and a big platform – let yourself shine!

What do I get for doing this?

Fame mostly. I mean micro-fame, but it’s still fame. You might get invited to attend some HR or Recruiting conferences for free. We can be friends if you’re not super annoying. I’ll tell people you’re awesome. If I find a sponsor for the series I’ll split the cash with you.

How can I apply? 

Simple. Send me a writing sample of what you would do on the blog. Don’t suck. Have an opinion. Don’t tell me you first have to run it by legal for approval. Send that sample to: timsackett@comcast.net or just Venmo me $1000 and consider yourself 100% on the team! (jk – don’t do that) Deadline for submissions is December 19th – that’s 2 weeks! So, get going! Invitations will go out on or before January 3rd for those selected to join the team!

HR and TA Leaders – Recruitment Marketing and Employment Branding leaders – this is a great stretch assignment for the Gen Zers on your team for 2019! Send this to them and get them to submit!

I’m looking forward to reading your work!

Forced Hugs will Continue in 2019, and you’ll Like it!

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Let me make this perfectly clear, I never forced anyone to hug me!

I did for 30 straight days once make one of my sons give me a kiss goodnight, or he wasn’t allowed to buy an airsoft gun. That was different, I only did that because I felt, as his parent, he needed to feel comfortable kissing another man. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. He needed to know it was alright to give a kiss to his father. I mean, he kissed his mom good night, what’s wrong with me!?

I’m a hugger, you all know that I wrote the rules on hugging in the workplace, and clearly, the CEO of Ted Baker, an iconic British fashion company, Ray Kelvin, did not read my rules! (editor side note: I love me some Ted Baker shoes, without hugs from Ray!)

For those who didn’t see (I had about a dozen of my friends and readers send me a link!) Kelvin got himself in trouble for what has been perceived in his company of “Forced” hugs:

“Thousands of people have signed an online petition to end a practice of “forced ‘hugging'” and demand a better way of reporting alleged harassment at fashion chain Ted Baker.

More than 2,000 members of staff and customers of the UK retailer have called on the firm’s founder and CEO, Ray Kelvin, to alter his behavior, including “inappropriate touching,” which they say is “part of a culture that leaves harassment unchallenged.”
The call has come in an open letter to the company’s board of directors on the online platform Organise, which runs workplace-specific campaigns.”
Ray! Ray! Ray! All you had to do was follow the rules, Ray!
Look, I love giving a hug as much as the next person, but ‘forced hugs’ are super creepy!
I don’t want to let one creep stop the practice of hugging professionally. I mean, let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater, people! Hugging is fine if you follow the rules. Forcing someone to hug you is not fine. That’s pretty clear, right?
Now, this is the fashion industry and Ray is worth $660 million dollars, and if my career in HR has taught me anything, I’m fairly sure we’re about to see a lawsuit trying to make Ray worth less than $660 million. If Ray was worth $660 dollars he probably wouldn’t be able to force hugs on anyone, or if he did, he would be in jail!
It’s hard being a middle-aged white dude in 2018 with all the other middle-aged white dudes running around like they’re in an episode of Game of Thrones. Just because you have money doesn’t mean you can do whatever it is you want. Like you can’t just be the President and just say whatever is on your mind on social media and grab women by the, oh wait…
So, I’m a middle-aged white dude who likes to hug. The question is, should I stop?
That would all depend on whether or not my hugs are making you uncomfortable (don’t comment Kris Dunn, your words are irrelevant here, I know you like my hugs deep down in places you’re afraid to bring up at your therapist) and/or are unwanted. That’s why I put together the rules people! Over 1 million people have read the rules. Also the updated New & Improved Version! The Rules on Hugging in the Workplace, work, if you follow them!
Rules people! Let’s make HR great again!

You might decide, your job just isn’t worth it.

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Linds Redding, a New Zealand-based art director who worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi, died at 52 from an inoperable esophageal cancer. Turns out Linds didn’t really like his old job and mad hours he spent creating a successful career. Here is what Linds wrote before he died:

“I think you’re all f—— mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a f—— TV commercial. Nobody gives a s—.

This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.

Countless late nights and weekends, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and anniversary dinners were willingly sacrificed at the altar of some intangible but infinitely worthy higher cause. It would all be worth it in the long run…

This was the con. Convincing myself that there was nowhere I’d rather be was just a coping mechanism. I can see that now. It wasn’t really important. Or of any consequence at all really. How could it be. We were just shifting product. Our product, and the clients. Just meeting the quota. Feeding the beast as I called it on my more cynical days.

So was it worth it?

Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling.”

When faced with death, I wonder how many of us will look back on all the time and effort we put into our career and will feel the same?

That all being said, sometimes I think a job might be worth it as well.  Here’s the other side of the coin.  I frequently see articles and blog posts, recently, written by people who have given up their careers to travel the world.  It all seems so glamorous and adventurous. Until you realize you had a career and job to pay for all those glamorous adventures! From Adweek, “The Couple Who Quit Their Ad Jobs to Travel the World Ended Up Poor and Scrubbing ToiletsThe uglier side of a year-long creative journey”:

 “You remember Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger, the South African couple who quit their agency jobs this year to travel the world and document the experience. It sounded like a dream, and the lovely Instagram photos have made it look like one.

But halfway through their year-long odyssey, they posted a reality check on their blog—a post titled “Why We Quit Our Jobs In Advertising To Scrub Toilets”—in which they share “the uglier side of our trip.” It turns out that following one’s dream—while working odd jobs in exchange for room and board—involves a lot of dirty work, and more than a few tears.

“The budget is really tight, and we are definitely forced to use creativity (and small pep talks) to solve most of our problems (and the mild crying fits),” Cartell writes. “Don’t let the bank of gorgeous photography fool you. Nuh uh. So far, I think we’ve tallied 135 toilets scrubbed, 250 kilos of cow dung spread, 2 tons of rocks shoveled, 60 meters of pathway laid, 57 beds made, and I cannot even remember how many wine glasses we’ve polished.

“You see, to come from the luxuries we left behind in Johannesburg … we are now on the opposite end of the scale. We’re toilet cleaners, dog poop scoopers, grocery store merchandisers and rock shovelers.”

We work for a reason. Your reasons might be vastly different than my reasons, but we all have reasons. I hope if I look death in the face I won’t regret my choices to work and create a successful career. I’ve missed my fair share of school events and sporting events that my kids have participated in. I’ve missed many of their most joyful and sad moments. Those I already regret. What I won’t regret is that I work to allow my family to have so many of these moments.

I’ve lived poor.  I lived with a single mother who wasn’t quite sure how she was going to pay for dinner that night. I work because I never wanted my family to feel this anxiety.  Sometimes a job is worth it, sometimes it isn’t.  It’s all up to you to decide, though.

7 Steps to Fixing a Broken HR Department!

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Almost any HR leadership position you’ll ever interview for is the organization wanting you to come in and fix it. Almost always they’re hiring a new HR leader because someone believes HR is broken. So, you tell them this plan. You’ll get hired. You’ll fix it. You’ll send me a note to thank me!

I had a friend start a new HR leadership position recently. When I spoke to her the other day, she talked about how the department she has inherited is completely broken. Her first question to me was, “how do I turn this thing around?” (BTW – I actually wrote a book on how to fix a Talent Acquisition Department – The Talent Fix!) 

We all have asked ourselves this question, haven’t we?

So, often you get your first shot at leadership because something is broken and a change needs to be made. Rarely, as a first leadership position, do you walk into Disneyland! Oh, look, everything is perfect, all the processes are great, all the people are hardworking and get along, the budget has more money than I know what to do with!

It’s just not reality. If the department had all that, they wouldn’t be hiring you!

I gave her my steps to turning around a broken department, from my experience of turning around broken departments!

Step 1 – Don’t start by thinking you’re going to change the culture immediately. The culture is bigger than you. The only way you could truly change the culture is to go in day one, fire every single person, and implant your own new team. Culture will always win, don’t think you’re bigger than it.

Step 2 – Look for low hanging fruit and pain points. Anytime you walk into a broken environment there are always simple little things you can do and change, that will lead to big wins. Do those first. This will buy you time to do some of the bigger things you need to do, and at least you’ll be starting with positive energy.

Step 3 – Fire bad people fast. I don’t care that they’re the only one who knows how to make changes in the system. If they’re bad, fire them. Again, the organization will thank you. And if you’re truly broken, being broken a little longer won’t matter, and now you’ll have an excuse.

Step 4 – Hire people who are loyal to you, first, and the organization second. Broken departments eat up and spit out more HR leaders than you can imagine. It would be the first question I would ask when interviewing. So, how many leaders were here before me? Oh, five in five years, thanks, I’ll pass. If you’re going to put up a good fight, you need people who will die by your side.

Step 5 – Have a plan. Gain executive buy-in of that plan early on. Continue to update executives on the plan. It won’t be fixed overnight, but managing up on the progress you’re making, will ensure success over the long run.

Step 6 – Build extensive relationships with your peer group in other functions as quickly as possible. To fix awful, you need friends. Friends in IT, Marketing, Finance, Operations, etc. You need those champions on your side, supporting your change. I don’t need everyone in my department to like me, I do need my other functional peer group to like and respect me if I’m going to turn this puppy around.

Step 7 – Stop saying HR is broken, or bad, or you’re fixing it. Start using language that we’re building best-in-class processes, world-class technology, market-leading functions, award-winning talent, etc. The organization needs to change the language of what HR is, to make it what it can be. Turns out fixing broken also needs a little bit of marketing juice!

It’s the hardest, most challenging, thing you’ll ever do is turn around a broken department, but it will also be the most rewarding and best thing that ever happened to your career!

GM Closing Plants is Just a Good Business Decision!

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I’m in the heart of GM country! My company, HRU Technical Resources (technical staffing), has worked with GM for 38 years! I have multiple family members that have worked at and retired from GM. GM is important to me, personally!

GM closing a few plants is the right decision. This decision might cost my company business and that will hurt.

President Trump can get really worked up over it and try to shame the GM executive team into changing their mind. The UAW can get all worked up and claim it’s the worst thing ever, but the reality is GM has to make the right business decision for the health of all GM employees for the future, not just for today.

In the past, GM wouldn’t have made this decision. They would have kept plants open and kept building cars that weren’t selling. The President would be happy. The UAW would be happy. And ultimately the U.S. Taxpayers bailed them out of bankruptcy. This time around GM, and their CEO Mary Barra, is making the sound financial, and very difficult, decision to close plants that aren’t making it.

Bravo, Mary Barra!

I feel for the UAW members who will be affected. I feel for the GM salaried employees who will be affected. It’s a horrible thing to lose a job and I don’t wish that upon anyone, ever.

This is still the right decision, as it will make the company stronger long-term and protect those jobs of the thousands of other UAW and GM salaried employees. You can’t keep building cars and trying to sell products that no one wants. GM doens’t do small cars as well as some of their competitors. Maybe never have. If you want a small/mid-sized car in the U.S. you buy a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord, or maybe even a Hyundai. The numbers don’t lie.

Every organization has to make unpopular and painful decisions to protect their business and help it thrive.

“Well, GM is going to profit $5 Billion in 2018, smarty pants, what about that!?!?!”

Yep, they are. That’s what a strong business is supposed to do, make a profit. All the stakeholders of a business demand it! Those stakeholders of GM are: UAW members, salaried GM employees, GM shareholders, GM supplier base, GM retirees, etc.  We’re talking hundreds of millions of lives that rely on GM being successful.

Healthy organizations go through times of growth and times of contraction. You have a product that is taking off, you add employees to meet market demand. Those products go out of favor and you reduce your employees base to meet that lack of demand. If you don’t, you go out of business and ALL employees and stakeholders suffer.

Mary Barra is making the tough decisions that her male predecessors were unwilling to make. Let that sink in a minute. Sure GM has closed plants in the past, but that was usually the last thing that happened, and only after they spent years burning cash and pushing forward no matter what the market was telling them.

So, yeah, this hurts. Closing plants and terminating people hurts. This is a strong business move, and it’s the right call for GM. Mary will be unpopular, but she’s doing what is needed for the whole, not the few.

I had a wise mentor once ask me a question. “Tim, do you want your team to throw you a party?” I didn’t understand. “Well, if you do want every employee wants, they’ll love you, and when you get fired, they’ll throw you a big party down at the local pub for your going away! If you do what’s right, they won’t like you as much, and they won’t throw you a party, because you won’t get fired. So, do you want a party or not?”

Mary doesn’t want a party, she just wants to do what’s best for everyone.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Indeed takes Away Free Traffic to Staffing firms!

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Today on The Weekly Dose I dig into Indeed’s recent announcement to stop scraping the jobs from staffing companies. If you didn’t hear Indeed announced as the Staffing World conference that beginning January 7, 2019, they would no longer include “recruitment-based” jobs in their organic search results due to ongoing search quality issues (link to the official Indeed Policy on Recruitment-based companies).

I was able to talk directly to Paul D’Arcy, the SVP of Marketing for Indeed, about this decision. Paul was refreshingly frank about the announcement. Here are some of the things that came out of that conversation:

Think of the jobs Indeed posts on its site in four type of buckets:

#1 – Organic Jobs listed on Corporate websites scraped by Indeed

#2 – Promoted Jobs listed by corporate TA teams willing to pay to get those jobs to show up higher in the search results

#3 – Organic Jobs listed on Staffing Industry websites scraped by Indeed

#4 – Promoted Jobs listed by staffing firms (recruitment-based organizations – in Indeed’s wording) willing to pay to those jobs to show up higher in the search results

Of those 4 kinds of jobs, three out of the four have very similar rates of candidates getting hired. One of those types doesn’t do well at all because of a number of factors. Basically, Organic staffing jobs that Indeed has been scraping do very poorly. “Analysis shows that impacted jobs represent approximately 5% of applies but just 2% of hires on Indeed.”

So, the decision is made, by Indeed’s Search Quality team, to no longer scrape staffing jobs.

THIS IS SUPER UNFAIR TO STAFFING FIRMS!!! (I hear a collective 3 trillion dollar industry shout!)

Is it?

No one on the planet has lit up Indeed worse than me over some of their practices! (Hi, Todd!) I’ve been in Indeed Jail since early 2018 when they first shut off my free organic traffic. But, let’s be real, Indeed isn’t saying they won’t work with staffing firms or kicking staffing firms out. In fact, every single product Indeed sells is still available for staffing firms to use. They just aren’t giving you anything for free anymore, and that stings a bunch.

It’s like that first time the crack dealer tells you that you have to pay for the next hit! It sucks, and then you hand over some money.

Indeed understands the optics of this, according to D’Arcy, and they also know this will take some work to repair some relationships within the staffing industry. The fact is, staffing companies have been making millions of dollars off of free traffic from Indeed and it hurts to lose that!

The reality is, we (staffing) basically did this to ourselves. No not you! It was always the other guy! There was location spamming, posting ‘evergreen’ jobs that you would never fill, etc. Like most good things in recruiting, the staffing world found ways to exploit it and Indeed is shutting that down.

It’s D’Arcy’s hope that Indeed will find a way to begin bringing back some of the ‘real’ staffing jobs that out there. Think of contract and temporary jobs. Indeed corporate clients will be impacted if those jobs aren’t filled, as many now rely a great deal on their contingent workforce for large parts of what they do. Those are real jobs, that real candidates, will want to apply for and Indeed just took those away from candidates. They do realize this and they are trying to come up with a way to bring the real jobs back, without opening up the bad jobs again.

This is just Indeed making a move into the staffing world!

Wouldn’t be a bad business move, let’s be honest! I would do it, so would you, but Indeed is telling me this isn’t part of the strategy behind making this decision. Take it at face value, some will believe it, some won’t. The reality is Indeed is making hundreds of millions of dollars off staffing firms as clients right now, and for years have also been working in the staffing industry simultaneously, so I’m not sure it really makes that big of a difference, short term.

What does this mean for staffing firms!?!?! 

If you want to keep making hires on Indeed, you’re going to have to start paying up! Indeed’s short-term revenue will increase because of this decision because most staffing firms will initially just fork over some money to keep the faucet on. Eventually, they’ll find our avenues to find candidates. Optimize their postings for Google Jobs and the traffic and hires will come from others sites and sources.

You might decide to start testing other tools like LinkedIn Recruiter, CareerBuilder, Monster, Dice, ZipRecruiter, Programmatic job postings, maybe even pick up the phone, build a recruitment marketing machine, grab some sourcing technology, etc. Staffing firms don’t know this yet, but the reality is not relying on one tool so heavily is a blessing in disguise for your longterm success.

One piece of good news from Indeed is they’ll still allow staffing firms to use their paid resume database product.

What does this mean if you’re in Corporate TA? 

The hope will be you’ll actually see more traffic to your jobs, but understand that Google is no longer indexing Indeed’s job pages, so traffic has been going down and will continue to go down unless Indeed buys that traffic through marketing efforts. What does that mean? You’re probably going to be paying a lot more for the same or less traffic.

Now, with less staffing firm jobs clogging up the search results the hope is that you’ll see more candidates, faster to your jobs that are scrapped as part of your organic Indeed feed, and potentially even better results using Indeed’s job promotion products.

What do I think?

From someone who has been living in Indeed Jail for almost a year, you’ll survive. It’s not fun losing your free organic traffic, but you’ll figure it out and you’ll be a stronger recruiting shop in the end.

I think Indeed really screwed up by announcing this without first figuring out the contract/temp/consultant jobs. The contingent workforce is the fastest growing segment of the labor market, and someone at Indeed completely dropped the ball. I’ll blame Matthew in search quality because that’s kind of the inside joke at Indeed, if a client is pissed, blame search quality. But, my hope is Paul and the team will stick by their word and figure out a way to get those jobs back on Indeed for candidates.

I’m not sure this was a wise business move, really by Indeed. You never want to wake a sleeping giant. The staffing industry has been a sleeping giant over the past decade ($3 Trillion). Fat on Indeed free traffic and LinkedIn Recruiter licenses, the normal staffing recruiter today is not the staffing recruiter of a decade ago. Indeed just kicked them awake to see if they wanted to pay the check or go find somewhere else to spend their money. Some will go elsewhere.

I also know that Indeed produces results, so many of us, myself included, will continue to use them and pay for the products that work, but it won’t stop me from continuing to test everything and figure out how to lessen my team’s reliance on any one product. That’s just good recruiting strategy for both corporate and staffing leaders.

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

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

Snow Days and Employees!

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Look I get it.  I have 3 sons and Snow Days are a big deal…if you’re 10!   So, if you’re an HR Pro, right about this time tomorrow, you’re going to feel like you have an entire organization full of 10-year-olds,  as we begin to see the first signs of Snowmageddon!

I understand people freaking out, that is, if you live in someplace south of the Mason-Dixon line, and you’ve never seen snow before. But, I live in Michigan and it snows here. The snow starts around Halloween and ends around Easter.  What I don’t understand is anyone that lives north of, let’s say, Chicago is even blinking an eye at a snow storm coming.  Let it snow, clear your driveway and get your butt to work.

It’s not a difficult concept! No, I don’t want you to drive to a client if the roads are dangerous, and, no, I don’t want you to drive to work if the roads are dangerous, and, no, I don’t want you to run around the office with scissors and your shoes untied!  But I do expect, we’ll all be adults.

If it looks like there’s going to be a lot of snow tomorrow, you need to make a plan. How about packing some work to do from home, or just plan on watching Lifetime all day, because I completely understand you missing the 3 days’ of warning that the snow was coming! (he screamed to himself in a mocking voice…)

Snow Days are the kind of crap that drives HR and Leadership completely insane!

Why is it, the CEO finds his way into the office, driving his Lexus sedan, but Perry in IT just can’t seem to get his 4X4Chevy Tahoe out of the garage?   If you want a day off that damn bad, take a day off,  but don’t insult the intelligence of all those who found a way to come in.

Be sensible, give your local snow plows some time to clear roads, give yourself extra time to get to work, but at the very least give it a shot. Then, when you get stuck, take a picture with your phone and send it to your boss, they’ll appreciate the effort!

What is your most prized possession?

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I’m heartbroken watching the California fires. The stories coming out of California are just gut-wrenching. I’m struck by how people find the strength to stand up when they’ve lost everything but the clothes on their back.

I was listening to the podcast, Broken Record, with Malcolm Gladwell and, world-renowned music producer, Rick Rubin, who literally just lost his famous house in a fire. Now, I know, Rick is super-wealthy, but he also is a person who probably has a ton of irreplaceable things he’s gotten in his life. Awards, artifacts of his industry, etc.

He said he didn’t really care about the ‘things’ the fire took, but he was brought to tears by losing the hundred-year-old trees on his property. The trees, the land, was what made his home special and a sanctuary for his peace. While he could replant trees, he would never live long enough to see them as they were.

It made me think about my own possessions. What do I have that if lost I would be crushed? Not people or pets, but inanimate object-type of possessions. If I could only grab one possession before getting out with my life and my families lives, what possession would I grab?

It definitely wasn’t anything like of a material nature. I could replace clothes, furniture, and electronics. At first, I thought I knew, oh, for sure it would be pictures. Pictures of my boys as babies, but most of these have been converted to digital and they are in the cloud, so while there would be a few pictures lost, I would still have many that were probably similar.

Maybe it was something someone gave me to me, but I’ve already lost my most valued possession. After my grandfather died, I was twelve, my grandmother handed me a tattered brown envelop, aged by the years. Inside it was a few pictures of my grandfather in the Navy, along with his medals. I had them for years, but somewhere along the way they got misplaced and I’ve never been able to find them. I still think about that loss. It was the only thing I had of my grandfathers.

I came to the realization, while it would be painful to lose everything, there wasn’t one thing I would have to keep for myself. There was one thing I know my wife, though, would want. She keeps a box with letters and notes I’ve given her over the years. I’m sure there are letters and notes from the boys as well. She would definitely want those, so my one thing would be that box. I know those momentoes are important to her.

So, as you get ready for Thanksgiving I’ll ask you the same question, what one possession would you grab if you could only grab one and everything else would be lost? Hit me in the comments with what you came up with, and if you’re struggling for great conversation at your Thanksgiving table, ask your friends and loved ones this question.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: HR Tech Vendor Fatigue is a Real Thing!

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You know how milk and employees have an expiration date? Come on! We all have that one employee who been with us way past their expiration date and we just can’t take them any longer. They might actually have great skills and knowledge, but they still need to go! They’ve gone past their employee expiration date!

I get to talk to a lot of HR and Talent executives about the technology they use. The majority are fine with what they have. They take the positive leadership stance of this is what we have right now and we’ll make the most of it. If we get to a point where our technology is working against us, we’ll push to upgrade or change. Some are in love with their tech. I find most of these are in the honeymoon phase and were the ones who choose the tech. Some hate their tech.

What I find with most executives who hate their tech is the tech isn’t the issue, it’s usually Vendor Fatigue.

What’s Vendor Fatigue? 

HR Tech Vendor Fatigue is when you are probably having some problems with your tech stack, it’s not doing exactly what you need it to do. You’ve been going back and forth with your main vendor to try and make the changes you need, but it seems to be just more headache after another. You’ve been there, right? We all have!

So, instead of just going the last ten yards and getting it done, you decide it’s best to just move on and start over! You’re too fatigued to continue to work with this vendor, even though if you sat down and thought about it logically you would come to the conclusion staying with your current vendor is really the wisest solution and what’s best short and long-term for the organization and your resources.

But we don’t do that!

Instead, we go out and buy a new system that is basically 90% the same as the old system, and we start fresh. It’s like a marriage. Some people work to try and make it better. Hey, at one point I fell in love with you. We went through some hard times and we can now get divorced or we can go to counseling and rekindle that great thing we once had. We already know each other’s deep, dark secrets, so maybe it’s best if we just figure this thing out!

The biggest mistake most HR and Talent Executives make around HR Tech! 

I constantly speak to executives who are using a really great system. Top 5 on the market and they tell me they’re moving to another Top 5 system because they just can’t take it anymore. The system they have isn’t working, “I mean, Tim, my team is only using 35% of the technology!” Then they look at me for approval…

I tell them you’re making a big mistake. The technology you have in place right now is being utilized by hundreds, thousands of organizations that are doing great things with it. You only using 35% is not a tech problem, that’s a ‘you’ problem. Guess what’s going to happen with your new system? Yep – 35% usage. Find out first how to use what you have 100% and then tell me why it’s not working.

HR Tech vendor fatigue is just like a relationship gone bad. But we tend to think about it way differently. “No, Tim, they are a vendor and they should bow down to us and make it right!” Well, sometimes, yes, sometimes, no, you’re being unreasonable!

But, there are also times when it’s time to get divorced from each other. Expectations have become unreasonable. You both are making each other stressed out. While it’s true that one of you is a buyer and one of you is a vendor, pointing that fact out doesn’t help, but it is a reality. I’ve fired some clients and I’ve been fired by clients. Both of those firings cost me money, but one probably eliminated a lot of stress!

If you’re feeling fatigued by any of your HR or Talent vendors ask yourself some questions:

  • Did I do everything I can to make this solution work?
  • If we became a super user of our current tech would this tech work for us like we need?
  • Can we live without this solution? Short and Long-term?
  • Am I making the best resource decision for the organization or just making my life easier?
  • Will the state I’m in right now, happen again with my next vendor? Why or why not?

We love to believe our vendor is the issue, and many times they are, but also many times they aren’t!

Why are you scared to make HR simple?

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Have you ever wondered why HR Departments continue to make complex processes?  In reality, all of us wants things simple.  But, when you look at our organizations they are filled with complexity.  It seems like the more we try to make things simple, the more complex they get.  You know what?  It’s you – it’s not everyone else.  You are making things complex, and you’re doing this because it makes you feel good.

From Harvard Business Review:

“There are several deep psychological reasons why stopping activities are so hard to do in organizations. First, while people complain about being too busy, they also take a certain amount of satisfaction and pride in being needed at all hours of the day and night. In other words, being busy is a status symbol. In fact a few years ago we asked senior managers in a research organization — all of whom were complaining about being too busy — to voluntarily give up one or two of their committee assignments. Nobody took the bait because being on numerous committees was a source of prestige.

Managers also hesitate to stop things because they don’t want to admit that they are doing low-value or unnecessary work. Particularly at a time of layoffs, high unemployment, and a focus on cost reduction, managers want to believe (and convince others) that what they are doing is absolutely critical and can’t possibly be stopped. So while it’s somewhat easier to identify unnecessary activities that others are doing, it’s risky to volunteer that my own activities aren’t adding value. After all, if I stop doing them, then what would I do?”

That’s the bad news.  You have deep psychological issues.  Your spouse already knew that about you.

The good news is, you can stop it!  How?  Reward people for eliminating worthless work.  Right now we reward people who are working 70 hours per week and always busy and we tell people “Wow! Look at Tim he’s a rock star – always here, always working!”  Then someone in your group goes, “Yeah, but Tim is an idiot, I could do his job in 20 hours per week, if…”  We don’t reward the 20-hour guy, we reward the guy working 70 hours, even if he doesn’t have to.

Somewhere in our society – the ‘working smarter’ analogy got lost or turned into ‘work smarter and longer’.  The reality is most people don’t have the ability to work smarter, so they just work longer and make everything they do look ‘Really’ important!   You just thought of someone in your organization, when you read that, didn’t you!?  We all have them – you can now officially call them ‘psychos’ – since they do actually have a “deep psychological” reasons for doing what they’re doing – Harvard said so!

I love simple.  I love simple HR.  I love simple recruiting.  I hate HR and Talent Pros that make things complex, because I know they have ‘deep psychological’ issues!  Please go make things simple today!