Category Archives: Benefits

Tiger Woods Returning To Work

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Most folks probably didn’t notice, but this week PGA golfer, Tiger Woods returned to the tour after a lengthy absence due to an injury to his back.  People either love or hate Tiger Woods.  I love him.  Yeah, yeah, I know what he did, I don’t like that at all.  I love watching the greatest athletes of my generation perform, and he’s one of those.  I can separate his personal life from his professional life, and appreciate the skill it takes to perform at the highest level.

In HR we have people go out on leave all the time.  Traditional HR thought is when an employee is out on leave (FMLA) you shouldn’t talk to them, communicate with them (unless to just get updates regarding the leave), practically not even acknowledge they’re alive!  I’ve seen HR pros tell their hiring managers to have absolutely no contact with an employee who is out on leave, if they contact you, have them contact us in HR.  I think this is crazy!  We miss great opportunities to build loyalty with our employees, and opportunities for our leadership to be empathetic.

Some of this has to do with why a person went out on leave, and HR’s belief that an employee might be gaming the system to try and get something more than just time off needed for whatever problems we have.  We add into it this belief that we have to treat everyone the same, and medical leave’s of absence become a nightmare for employees.

Our reality is, most employees just want to get better and return to work as soon as possible.  Another reality is that most HR Pros don’t actually believe this.  This is where the conflict comes in, and we begin to make it very difficult for our employees to be off.  I never believe in the theory we should treat everyone the same.  You will have some employees in your HR career who don’t want to work, and want to find some way for your company to pay them to sit at home.  That’s real life. But we can’t start believing that is everyone of our employees, it’s not!

HR should encourage hiring managers to keep frequent contact with employees out on leave.  Let them know we care about them, we miss them, we can’t wait to have them back.  This type of communication will allow you to plan for their return, keep them engaged with your organization and the rest of their coworkers.   HR needs to firmly believe our employees are innocent until proven guilty when out on leave. To believe each and everyone of our coworkers can’t wait to get healthy and return to work, because that is actual reality.

It’s tough, I know, I’ve been there as well, and gotten taken advantage of.  But our employees deserve better from us.  They deserve empathy and compassion. They deserve the same thing you would want if you had to go out on leave.

 

Michigan HR and Talent Pros!

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Hey, just getting back from SHRM’s 2014 National Conference and it’s just one more reminder to me why I love going to HR conferences.  I get to meet new HR folks, who are passionate about HR and Talent!  I love that!

Here’s what I want to do.  I want to push myself to meet one new HR person, face to face, in Michigan for the next 52 weeks.   Let’s connect, and let’s get together.  Here’s my information:

Email – sackett.tim@hru-tech.com

Phone – 517-908-3156

Twitter – @timsackett

Reach out to me and let’s schedule a time.  I’ll come to you, or we can meet at some place close.  Coffee, lunch, an ice cream cone, a Diet Dew, whatever, let’s just make this happen.

Send me a message.  I want to fill up my calendar.  I’m in Lansing, but I’m in the Detroit Metro area a lot, also close to Grand Rapids, etc. Let’s face it, I’m centrally located and driving an hour or so, isn’t a big deal. The connections will be worth it!

Let’s do this!

The Top 8 Things Employees Don’t Want For A Recognition Award!

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I run a small business.  When I need to know something, I usually reach out to my employees and find out what they think.  It’s not some big fancy ‘research’ survey with thousands of responses, but it’s real.  Recently, I wanted to know what people might want in terms of a recognition award.  Ironically, what I found goes against some big fancy research done by recognition companies who are in the business of selling the crap on the list below – crazy how that works in the research game! Any who, what I found wasn’t surprising to me.

Here’s the list of the Top 8 things my employees don’t want when it comes to Recognition Awards:

1. Anniversary Pins! If you give me one of these I will stick it back in your eye! “Hey, Tim, Thanks for 10 years! Buddy, here’s a pin!” A What!?!? I’ve given you ten great years and you’re giving me a pin. Is this 1955?

2. A Plaque. Or any other kind of trophy thing. If I wanted a trophy to show me that I’m sales person of the year, you hired the wrong person. JayZ said it best “we can talk, but money talks, so talk more bucks”.

3. Corporate logo wear. Giving out corporate logo wear as a form of recognition screams you have executives that haven’t actually spoken to an employee in the last twenty years!

4. A watch. Wait, if it’s a Rolex, I’ll take a watch. If it’s a Timex you better ‘watch’ out, I’m throwing it at someone! Nothing says we don’t really care about you like a $50 watch with it engraved on the back ‘You Matter! 2014!’

5. Luggage. The ‘experts’ would like you to believe that your employees would really ‘appreciate’ luggage because it’s an item they don’t normally like to spend their money on. The reason why people don’t like to spend their money on luggage is because it gets destroyed after one trip through O’Hare! That’s just what you want to see coming around the luggage carousel – “Hey, look honey, it’s your employee of the year award all ripped up and stained”. Sign and symbols.

6. Fruit Baskets. First, most people don’t want to be healthy or we wouldn’t have the obesity problem we have in our society. Second, people like chocolate, candy, salty snacks and diet soda. If you want to send food, send food they’ll actually eat!

7. A Parking Spot with Their Name On It. This goes bad two ways: 1. I drive a $100K Mercedes and you don’t, now you know I drive a better car than you and it’s awkward; 2. I drive a beater and I’m embarrassed to let everyone know I make so little I can even afford a Chevy Colbalt.

8. A Hug! Wait! I totally want a hug! Just not a creepy hug. You know what a creepy hug feels like when you’re about 13 seconds into it and the other person won’t let go! But nothing says “we recognize you” in the totally wrong way, like inappropriate hugs at work!

What do employees want? Well, that’s an entire other post, but my 20 years of HR ‘research’/experience shows people want for their peers and leaders to appreciate their efforts. Nothing says ‘we truly care about you’ like having one of your peers tell you in some sort of way. When teams can do that, they become special! It might be a quick hand written note, a face to face meeting in the hall, etc. It really doesn’t matter the avenue of how it comes, it just matters that you have the culture that it does come and it’s encouraged to keep coming.

Job Seekers! Still believe college degree not important?

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From University of Michigan Econ Professor Justin Wolfers and the Bureau of Labor Statistics comes the following chart on why it’s important to get your college degree:

Unemployment by educationUnemployment rate for College Graduates = 3% ish

Unemployment rate for some college = 5.7% ish

Unemployment rate for High School diploma = 6.2% ish

Unemployment rate for No High School diploma = 9% ish

The one thing I found most interesting from this chart is the closeness between high school diploma and some college/Associate degree.  There is virtually no difference.  I think this would change considerably if you pulled out those Associate degree folks who got a two year degree in some sort of skilled trade.

Otherwise just going to college, and not graduating, is virtually the same as just going to high school and graduating.  I wonder how this might all change with companies like Google claiming they will hire people without a degree?

With organizations like the Kahn Academy, you can virtually get an Ivy League education from the comfort of your parents basement.  How long does it take for those statistics to catch up with our current reality?  When does the ease of access of education online change the numbers above?

Maybe a better question is, do you ever see a time when Fortune 1000 type of organizations will not use ‘college degrees’ as a main criteria for screening out potential candidates?  That’s a huge shift in perspective, but with pre-employment screening tools continuing to advance, we aren’t too far away from having the ability to accurately measure two individuals: one with a degree, one without, to see which one would really be the better ‘job’ fit.

In the mean time – go to school kids!

 

5 Retention Fixes – No Money Down

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I love SMB HR shops (SMB – small/medium sized businesses) for a number of reasons, but none more than for the simple fact, smaller sized HR shops are forced to be more creative because of less resources.

Creativity and SMB HR shops, remind me of my Grandma. Grandma grew up in the depression.  People who grew up in the depression have creativity skills to burn!  They had so little, but found ways to fill their life with so many things.  Lack of resources didn’t stop them, it unleashed their creativity!  Creativity is the most underrated HR skill out their for high performing HR shops.

Having worked in big HR shops the one thing that frustrated me most was sitting around in large meetings, trying to figure out how to “fix” retention – and listening to all the ways and how much money it was going to cost.  In the end I always came back to, if we just take all this money we are going to spend on the “fix” and just go out and hand to the employees, we probably won’t have a retention problem.  Large HR shop folks don’t like to hear that!  So, for you SMB HR shop folks out there, with little or no money to spend on increasing your retention, I came up with a few ideas you might want to try before you go spend all that budget money on programs with little return.

No Money Retention Fixes:

Fire the manager with the lowest retention.  You have the data, you know who is turning people over. Your organization needs to send a message that managers, not HR and not the CEO, are responsible for retaining talent.  This has to be the first step!  Your leaders have to have a clear understanding it is their job to retain their employees, and it’s your job to hold them accountable for it.

Measure it by Department, and post it publicly for all to see.  No, don’t just share it in meetings.  Post it up in the lobby, down the halls, everywhere!  Then just wait.  It will almost change overnight.  No one likes to be at the bottom of any list, and have everyone know it.

Fire your worst performers – then use that money to compensate your best employees more.  It’s a wash.  Your worst employees aren’t helping your productivity anyway, and your best will appreciate the increase, appreciate you noticing the bad people were taking away from the team, and they’ll give you more discretionary effort.  The result – same cost (actually less if you factor in benefits, taxes, etc.) more productivity, a little less headcount.

Have your senior leadership talk about retention publicly, constantly.   That which gets measured will get changed, that which gets measured and has the eye of senior leadership will get changed much quicker!

Institute a “Save Strategy” for employees who want to leave.  Save Strategy? If an employee puts in their notice, have them go meet with your CEO and explain to her why they are leaving. You’ll be amazed at the results and how many people will change their minds.  Some people just want to know you care, and sitting down for some one-on-one with the CEO, shows that a whole bunch. Plus, it’s much cheaper than finding their replacement!

 

The Best Sports Related Job Ever!

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Do you know what the ingredients are to the best sports related job ever?

1. Basketball

2. The 5th Richest person in the world

3. Beautiful weather, water and beaches

4. A Gigantic Yacht with a basketball court on it.

Mix all that together and you get one of the best jobs ever invented!   Pulled directly from the critically, award winning, Wall Street Journal:

The Oracle chief has had basketball courts on at least two of his yachts, said Tom Ehman, who handles America’s Cup matters for Mr. Ellison. He said Mr. Ellison liked to relax by shooting hoops, and has had someone in a powerboat following the yacht to retrieve balls that go overboard.

Mr. Ellison, is Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, and 5th richest person in the world, worth about $48 Billion.  Larry likes basketball, a lot.  Likes to shoot hoops on his yachts.  For those who have ever shot hoops, the ball tends to bounce off the rim and backboard when you miss.  For those who yacht.  Those tend to be on Oceans, or big bodies of water.  So, when you mix those two together, you would suspect you’re going to have some basketballs go ‘into the pond’ every once in a while.

Now, with $48 Billion, Larry could probably just forget about any basketballs that went over board and just keep using new balls.  The problem is, having a couple dozen basketballs go overboard every time you play, might bring some unwanted attention on your from those who are environmentally conscience.  But, don’t fret, there is an easy solution.  Pay some dude to follow you’re yacht in a smaller boat and pick up those wayward balls!

That my friends is the best Sports Related Job ever!  On a boat all day, warm sun, cool drinks, picking up a few basketballs every once in a while.  I don’t think I could ever create a better summer job, ever!

You know the boat you’re picking up basketballs with is top notch.  You don’t have a piece of crap follow around a $200M yacht.  You’re probably outfitted in some cool uniform.  Paid lunches, delivered out on the water.  Great tan.  Good music.  Absolutely, no stress.  You’re getting paid well.  The guy has $48B and is asking you to retrieve basketballs for G*d’s sake! Where do I sign up?  I would do that job in a second, and would be the best ever at it!  No one would ever be better than me picking up basketballs in the ocean.  I really think I could retire from that job.

Just mark this down as crap you’ll never understand because you’ll never have $48B.

(Hat tip to Daniel Savich for passing the article on to me, and having the great boss who ever lived!)

SHRM Releases Their New Certification Designations!

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So, currently you have a PHR (Professional of Human Resources), or a SPHR (Senior Professional of Human Resources), or a GPHR (Global Professional of Human Resources) from HRCI.  SHRM announced it was launching it’s competency based program of certified HR professionals, and the one thing everyone wants to know is what are my new letters going to be!?!?

Hello, My Name is Tim Sackett, SPHR.  But not for much longer, soon I’ll acquiesce to the new SHRM certification because that’s what we do as HR Pros, we give in and take it.

I like having letters after my name.  It makes me feel important, even though only HR people have any idea what they mean.  I’ve always known the letters were a little bit of a fraud.  I got my SPHR without every working in HR.  I can say that now because the statue of limitations has run out on SHRM legally taking away my SPHR, plus my SPHR is now worthless in the eyes of SHRM so they could care less about it!  In 2001 I accepted my first corporate HR gig, after working at a recruiting agency for eight years. I sat for and received my SPHR, without technically ever working in HR.  I did have eight years of recruiting experience, which mostly consisted of sales.

Either way, I felt proud to have letters behind my name.  This is why I’m super excited when SHRM chose my little old blog to make such a super big announcement of their new designations!  Here are the new SHRM Certification Designation letters (if they allowed me to choose them):

HRN – Human Resource Ninja – The HRN designation is for HR Pros who actually get something done, and you never have to hear about it.  That shit just happened and nobody knows how it happened. That’s because it was done by an HR Ninja!

SHRN – Sr. HR Ninja – Like the HRN, the SHRN gets stuff done without needing acknowledgement, but also without notice gets rid of horrible performing employees and leaders, never to be heard from or seen again.  Cold HR killers.  You need to get rid of an under-performing employee? Call a SHRN!

CHRR – Corporate HR Recruiter – The CHRR is a designation for those folks who work in corporate recruiting but don’t actually recruit, but they do a lot of stuff that sounds like recruiting, but isn’t really recruiting, because they don’t really want to recruit, they want to be in HR.  Is that clear?

SCHRR – Sr. Corporate HR Recruiter – The SCHRR is savvy enough to not only not doing any real recruiting, they’ve made a career out of coming up with analytics to prove how good of a non-recruiter recruiter they really are.  The SCHRR is also tech savvy enough to find programs that will endlessly post and pray, so now they can find ways to use Pinterest to not recruit great talent.

NHRBP – Not HR Business Partner – The NHRBP is someone who is so strategic, so business savvy, they aren’t actually considered to be in HR any longer.  A NHRBP can actually run your company. They know everything: Operations, Finance, Marketing, Sales, etc.  Just don’t ever ask them to plan a picnic, organize your annual United Way drive or send flowers to a grieving employee, because they don’t do that!

SNHRBP – Sr. Not HR Business Partner – Or as we like to call it- The CEO.  Moving forward SHRM will now push that every single CEO in the world get their CNHRBP certification.

HRGP – HR Global Professional – The HRGP is like the current GPHR but we moved the letters around. This is for those people who fell into HR and traveled overseas in either high school or college and decided they would rather live outside of America.  We don’t understand them either, but American companies like to feel like the people they send overseas to offend other countries have some insights, so here you go.  No SHRGP will be offered because why.

PhDP – The Doctor of People – I had to do this one for my professor friends who teach HR – hello Matt Stollak and Marcus Stewart! The only way you can get this designation is by spending most of your life at university and actually getting a PhD, and teaching HR classes every Tuesday and Thursday from 9am to 10:30am.  I might actually go back to school because having a PhDP would be the coolest designation ever!

I can’t wait to use my SHRN designation! Thanks Hank!

 

 

Attention Employees: Get Healthy, Or You’re Fired.

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(I’m on vacation, I originally posted this on Fistful of Talent in August of 2009 -way before Obamacare, but still rings true!)

I love companies that have had enough and aren’t going to take it anymore (Network clip). I also love listening to the workers, of said company, complain about how their company is “being intrusive” because they are being “forced” to take care of themselves.  The Wall Street Journal has an article entitled When All Else Fails: Forcing Workers Into Healthy Habits that uncovers the latest employer, AmeriGas Propane Inc., which gave its employees an ultimatum: get their medical checkups or lose their health insurance.  Isn’t that wonderful!?  Here is an employer who loves its people so much, they want to make sure they are going to be healthy and actually survive to collect their paycheck. Talk about employee engagement.

So, what is wrong with this?  Well, let’s just hear from one skeptical AmeriGas employee:

“Dennis Price Sr., a 48-year-old propane-truck driver in the company’s Warrenton, Va., office, says he was “a little shocked” by the idea at first. “I thought it was an invasion of our privacy,” he says. Mr. Price had never gotten his cholesterol checked, and generally avoided doctors.”

Sounds like he’s taking his god-given-all-American right to be unhealthy – nothing wrong yet. What say the unions?

“Labor officials say they object to the idea of mandated health tests. “This is a personal health matter,” says Gerry Shea, assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO. “To bring it into the workplace and tie it to benefits is inappropriate. It’s like Big Brother.”

Sounds like more god-given, all-American wisdom – boy I can smell the apple pie cookin’! What about management?

“Despite these efforts, Mr. Katz (VP of HR) and benefits director Carol Guinan found themselves in April 2007 chewing over some unpalatable numbers. Besides annual health-expense increases of 10% or more, the company, which self-insures its health plan, had paid more than two dozen insurance claims in the previous year for amounts greater than $100,000. Its workers had high rates of diabetes and heart disease.

 

The program, dubbed Operation Save-A-Life, was unveiled in August 2007 and took effect the following January. Each worker received a DVD at home to explain the effort and discuss cost and health statistics. One fact: AmeriGas employees younger than 60 were dying of natural causes at nearly three times the expected rate for that age group based on actuarial data.

 

AmeriGas estimates that more than 90% of its workers have gotten the required exams. Use of cholesterol drugs rose 13.6% in 2008 from a year earlier. For diabetes drugs, the increase was 7.7%, and for asthma medications and blood-pressure medicines, it was 7.4% and 2.5%, respectively.”

Damn management – they always have more to say and have all those fancy numbers!

The article, also, points out two specific examples of the screens catching one employee’s breast cancer, self-admittedly, earlier then she ever would have caught it herself. Also, the screens caught another employee who had liver disease and was able to reverse the effects by early detection.

I know there is a gray area here where companies can go overboard, but in today’s competitive world for talent, you can’t tell me that most companies aren’t trying to do the right thing.  Is making your employees go get a health screen a bad thing?  Probably not. Is firing them because they have high cholesterol after the screen a bad thing? Depends on their performance…  Just kidding… the fact of the matter is we have a broken healthcare system and most employers have to do something to reduce costs. So they can either interview under the precursor “does this person look young and healthy”, or we can allow them some slack to help make their own workforce a bit more healthy.

3 Ways To Change Your Life, Overnight!

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Yo!  I’m on vacation for the next week.  Instead of writing I’m gong to run old posts that no one read, but I thought were brilliant.  That’s the hard part because I think everything I write is brilliant.  Some of the stuff really gets well read, and some of the stuff just sits there and gets no love.  In 5 years of blog writing, I still haven’t found out why some pieces I write don’t get read!  I mean, I know why some do.

Everyone wants to read – “3 Ways To Change Your Life Overnight!”  There is this belief that idiots like me will somehow write this brilliant post with the 3 actual reasons to change your life overnight, but in reality this doesn’t exist.  But you click on it, because you’re hoping for a miracle.  I don’t have miracles, or I wouldn’t be writing blog posts.  I’d be sitting on a beach somewhere enjoying a margarita.  That’s how I believe miracles work. If I have one, it equals me sitting on a beach, drinking a margarita.

See!  I can’t solve your biggest problems overnight. I think miracles equal beaches and margaritas.  Which gets me back to the point – that’s where I’m going!  It’s a miracle!

I could actually just title every post something it’s not and it would get more clicks:

– The 1 Miracle Food That Will Melt Your Big Fat Belly!

– Get Pretty By Doing Nothing!

– Hire Brilliant People By Posting and Praying!

– Six Figure HR Jobs From Home!

– It’s Not You! It’s All Those Other Assholes!

– 6 Pack Abs, 6 Seconds Per Week!

– How To Kill A Hiring Manager and Not Get Caught!

See.  It works.  People don’t want real solutions, people want miracle solutions.  My miracle solution is: Beaches and Margaritas.

Sorry – that’s all I really have.

Until I get back from my miracle – enjoy the stuff you should have already enjoyed, but didn’t.

Recruiting is my Drug

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I don’t take drugs.  It’s not that I’m anti-drug, I just had something happen in my formative years that scared the hell out of me, so I never really went down that path. I’m 16 years old in 1986, and I’m sitting at home watching this cool new cable show called ESPN SportsCenter and they announce Boston Celtic’s first round draft pick, Len Bias, overdosed using cocaine, and died. I was in complete shock. His friends came out and said it was the first time he ever tried drugs.  First time, dead.  I was scared straight.

Don’t get me wrong, if I’m in pain, drugs are good.  If I’m sick, give me a pill to get better.  I would love it if there was a pill I could take and never get fat.  Also, to give me a full head of hair again.  One second thought, it sounds like I’m actually pro-drug!

I think all of us find certain things that tend to get us going.  For many people that is exercise. Others like to go out and drink and have fun.  I get super energized when I’m recruiting!  I know, geeky, right!?

Like most drugs, recruiting can bring out the best and worse in me.  When recruiting is great, you have a great opportunity for someone, you find the perfect person for that opportunity, it makes you feel like you can do anything.  It’s the high!  When recruiting is bad, you have positions no one wants, you find talent without any other options, your hiring managers think you couldn’t find ice in the North Pole, well, that’s the down side of drugs.

The high brings you back, though.

The right job, the right person, when it seems like no one else has had success.  It reminds me a lot of golfers.  I golf, but I’m terrible.  I still like to golf, because out of a round you’ll get a handful of really, really good shots, and it feels so good, it makes you forget about the downside.  That’s recruiting.  The positives out weigh the negatives.

I tend to find most people in HR, and many of those in Recruiting, hate to actually recruit.  It’s not their drug.  Maybe they like FMLA or developing comp plans. I don’t get high off those, but who am I to judge the drug of another!

People will read into this (besides that I might have a drug problem) that I ‘Love’ recruiting.  Let’s not confuse love and drugs. I love my wife and kids.  I like how recruiting makes me feel when it all works well.   “Oh, it’s so great that you found work that you love!”  Slow down.  If someone would pay me to fish all day, I’d love that! Recruiting is something I found that I’m really good at.  That’s important, for all of us.  Way too many times I meet people who haven’t found that, so I’m grateful for finding recruiting.

What’s your drug?