Category Archives: Benefits

3 Ways To Make Your Office Productive During March Madness

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For those that know me, I’m a huge basketball fan.  Pro, college, AAU, high school, hell, if you really dig into my past you would probably find me hanging out at some playground breaking down the defense effort of a pickup game between grade school kids.  So, when March Madness time comes around each year I’m like many of your employees.  I’m trying to find the best ways to work and watch basketball, or at the very least stay up on my brackets and see who is getting upset!

With all the hype over the past few years about lost productivity, do to March Madness, in the workplace.  I felt it was my duty to provide HR Pros with some helpful tips and tricks to get the your staff to highly productive during this time of year.  Here’s my ideas:

1. Put up TVs throughout the office.  Let’s face it, you really only have one or two hoops junkies in the office, and those folks usually spend vacation time to ensure they don’t miss a minute.  Everyone else just wants to see scores and highlights.  They’re a casual fan.  They’re willing to work a perfectly normal day, and will probably be just a productive, if not more, with the TVs steaming all the games in the background.  Plus, if you get a close game or big upset, you’ll get some team excitement in the air.  This also stops most of your staff trying to stream the games on their desktops for the entire afternoon.

2. Call off work those afternoons.  Let’s face it, March Madness is pretty close to a national holiday as we will ever get.  Doesn’t matter if you’re female or male, young or old, what religion you are, we all love the drama and excitement of March Madness.  Just close the office.  Make a deal with your staff to reach certain goals and if they’re met, take them to the local watering hole yourself and have some fun with it.  Employees like to rally around a fun idea.  You don’t have to make everything fun, all the time, but once in a while it helps to lift productivity.

3. Shut off all access.  Yep, you read that correctly. Have IT shut down all access to anything related to March Madness.  Threaten to fire any employee caught checking scores on their smart phone, or calling a friend to see how it’s going.  Fear!  Fear is a great short-term lifter of productivity.  Whether we like to admit it, or not, it’s true.  If you went out right now into your office and told the entire staff at the end of the day you’re firing the least productive person, you would see productivity shoot through the roof!  You would also see about half your staff, the half you want to keep, put in their notice over the next 4-6 weeks.

The reality is, most people will do business as usual.  While the CNNs of the world love to point to the millions of dollars American corporations lose during March Madness, it’s no different than so many things that can consume our thoughts in any given day.  I do think HR and leadership, each year, lose out on a great way to have fun and raise engagement during March Madness.  It’s something most of your staff has some interest in, and depending on your city and the schools your employees went to, it can get heightened pretty significantly.

For the record, I’m not picking Michigan State.  I want to with all my might, but I’m nervous that my bracket mojo would work the opposite, so I’ll pick someone else, and feel awesome when Sparty wins and I lose my bracket!

 

The 3 Minute Hire

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Let’s look at how 95% of people are hired. Besides a little variability, almost every person, at some point in their career, has been hired in this manner.  Interview someone for an hour. If you like them, you make them an offer.  Sound about right?  Sure you might actually add some other steps, like phone screening first, a second one hour interview with someone else, but your reality is, it’s an hour interview, and the decision is made!

We’ve taken the one hour interview and expanded it with science.  We add pre-employment screens, cognitive testing, background screens, personality profiles, etc.  But, we still go back to the one hour interview.  “Well, Tim tested off the charts, all the data says, he will be a rock star, but I didn’t connect with him in the one hour interview.  I don’t want to hire him.”  We allow our hiring managers to do this, often.

A much better way to hire would be to have the actual candidate work with you for like four to six weeks, before you actually hire them.  An extended job tryout.  Pay them to come interview with you for 4 weeks.  That would actually be a better way.  It would probably limit your options for candidates.  It would leave you with people who are unemployed, the under-employed, those working consultant or temporary type of jobs, or those people who love your brand so much they would be willing to risk it all to prove to you, that they are the one you really want.

Or, you can continue on the one hour interview platform.  But take away all the other stuff.  In fact, take away the one hour, and just do an initial impression interview.  It might take about 3 minutes.  “Initially I really liked Tim!  Let’s do this.”  You would virtually get the same exact candidate as you do with your one hour process.  But you would save so much time, effort and resources.  Your hiring quality and retention would almost remain unchanged.  That would be the second way.

1. Extended Job Tryout Hire

2. 3 Minute First Impression Hire

Reality is, most would be more willing to do the 3 minute First Impression hires than the Extended Job Tryout hires, even though one leads to actual better hires, and the other does exactly what you have now.    We fear that changing to something we view as ‘radical’ will be worse than what we have.  Even though, we know it won’t.  So, we keep doing what we do.  Scheduling one hour interviews and hiring those people who we ‘felt’ the best connection with.

If I was you, I’d go with the 3 minute interview.  It’s simple.  It’s the same. Your hiring managers will actually like the new process.

 

Client Respect and Love

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I dropped a vision on my team a couple weeks ago.  I think it’s important for any leader to do this, but it’s also important that it be completely authentic and transparent.  I say ‘dropped’ on my team, because that’s exactly what I did.  I didn’t let anyone know I was ‘working’ on my vision, because I wasn’t.  It came to me.  Like a vision.  It took me about a week to get the thoughts down in my own style, and add a grammatical error or two.

I’m not sharing my vision with you.  It’s for me and my team.

I will share a concept from it.  I want to work with clients who want to work with us.  Not just work with us, but want to partner with us.  Now, I know we throw that word ‘partner’ around a bunch.  My vision of a partner is a client who respects us and loves us.  We have to have both, love and respect, to get to my vision.  Respect isn’t enough.

In HR many times we will say something like “I don’t need that hiring manager to like me, as long as they respect me.”  That’s just a nice way we lie to ourselves that this will be a functional relationship.  It’s not.  You need more than respect, to be wildly successful.  You need Love.

I want love.

I want respect.

I want to work with clients who respect what we bring to them from a skill and support side.  But I also want clients who love us, and we love them.  That I look forward to talking to them, to seeing them, and they feel the same way.  That isn’t easy.  But it is something I think we owe to ourselves.  To work with people we love to work with, whether it’s those sitting next to us as coworkers, or those clients we work with daily.

I don’t care if I was selling staffing solutions, or the cure for cancer, my vision would not change.   I don’t care if I’m running a business or running a department, my vision stays the same.  In HR you have ‘clients’, all those who you support.  Are you trying to get your clients to love and respect you?  If you reach that level, where they do, it will make your job, your life, glorious.

First Marijuana Job Fair. No Drug Testing Required.

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Want a job?  Like smoking pot?  This is your day!

Doesn’t that sound like a bad Hollywood movie script!?  Unfortunately, it’s real world, as Colorado is in the middle of a talent bubble after legalizing marijuana.  From Time:

This Thursday, March 13, a very special, first-of-its-kind job fair is being held in Denver. It has been dubbed “CannaSearch,” and as the name indicates, it’s a marijuana-themed gathering intended to match job seekers with Colorado employers in the cannabis industry—a field that one is now all but required to cutely describe as “fast-growing” and/or “budding.”

At last check, 15 employers were scheduled to participate in the event, being held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Denver headquarters of the job fair’s sponsor and host, O.PenVAPE, a company that specializes in vaporizer pens that get filled with cannabis oil—and that also bills itself as the “the largest national brand in cannabis.”

No advanced registration is necessary for job seekers. Everyone in attendance must, however, be 21 or older. And to answer the question on everyone’s minds: The event is strictly smoke-free.

So, what does it take to get a job in the Pot Industry?  I’m guessing some of the skill sets would be the following:

1. Like weed.

2. Knows stuff about weed.

3. Likes to talk about weed.

4. Willing to bring your own Doritos to work.

5. Don’t steal the weed.

Doesn’t that sound like every stoner you’ve ever known!?  You know they are all going back to those high school guidance counselors who told them they’d never amount to anything if they kept smoking pot and say “See, smoking pot got me somewhere!  I’m now head manager at Smokes-A-lot!”

It’s all fun and exciting now, wait until these companies really start to ‘grow’ and they need to hire an HR lady to come in and start setting up policies. That will be a ‘drag’.   Can you imagine!?  Margo comes in from her dental office HR manager gig in Pueblo and now is trying to build process and practices for Smokes-A-Lot world headquarters.  First, a few ground rules from the burned out CEO Steve.  No drug testing.  Unlimited smoke breaks.  50% employee discounts.  Go Margo!  Can’t wait to see those insurance premiums come in!

I would actually pay money for the ability to show up at the Marijuana Job Fair and interview potential hires!  They don’t even have to pay me, I’d have blog fodder for the rest of history!

3 Reasons Women Make Less Money Than Men

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In the State of the Union speech last week, President Obama spoke passionately about wanting to end the wage discrimination between males and females.  He used the number $.77 in the context of women make $.77 for every dollar a man makes.  Is that actually true?  Probably not, when you look at all the data:

“[Women] still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. A woman deserves equal pay for equal work.”

Hard to argue with that, but the 77-cents statistic does not convey the point.

All it tells us is how the median annual earnings of full-time, year-round female workers compare with that of full-time, year-round male workers.

It doesn’t speak to any of the factors that determine one’s pay, such as the type of job chosen, education, experience, tenure, or hours worked. Nor does it reflect the host of less tangible factors that play a role, such as job performance.

Controlling for those factors would shrink the pay gap considerably in many jobs and in some cases all but erase it.

Does that mean there’s no gender discrimination in pay? No. But teasing out just how much exists is very hard. Assessments will differ depending on what methodologies are used and what specifically is being compared. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research, for instance, estimates that somewhere between a quarter to a third of the 77-cents pay gap may be attributable to discrimination.

But it doesn’t really matter, in my mind, if we are talking about $.23 or $.03 – any difference is too much.  Our reality is there shouldn’t be any difference in pay given all things being equal.  So, why is it that really, today in 2014, have pay discrepancy between men and women?  I’ll give you 3 reasons why we have it, and why it’s going to continue:

1.  HR still does not have enough influence in most organizations to stop illegal and immoral decisions by leadership.  72.7% of HR Professionals are female (based on 2012 BLS figures).  So, in the vast majority of our organizations women are actually in a position to influence this issue.  You would think with such a large number of females in HR this would take care of itself.  But here we are.  I’m not saying women don’t have influence, I’m saying HR doesn’t have influence. Having over 70% of HR positions filled by women, should make, and keep, this a top of mind issue to put an end to.

2.   HR does not train, and consequently discipline, male leaders who over inflated performance of male employees over female employees who are similar or above in performance of their male counterparts. We see this happen all the time, and we (HR) turn a blind-eye to the practices, instead of putting a stop to them.  I think one could easily argue that an over-reaching competency amongst HR professionals in their inability to directly handle conflict, which definitely perpetuates this issue.

3.  Culturally, in America, we want women to make less.  That one hurts, right?  Before you react, think about it.  Who is expected to take off work when a baby is born?  Who is expected to stay home with a sick child? Or on a snow day from school? etc.  All of things attribute to Obama’s $.77 figure.  If 20% take off 12 weeks after childbirth, that has a huge impact to female average wage as compared to male wage!  Also, what about that thing we don’t talk about?  Men who can’t handle being with or married to a woman who makes more than them? You can scoff, but it is a very real thing!  In my career I’ve had to sit with female employees and have them tell me to my face they don’t want a raise, or to take on a new position, because it would cause them to make more than their husbands, and that was a bad thing.

#1 all by itself should make us furious with anger.  HR could put a stop to most of this wage discrimination, almost immediately, but we don’t.  It wouldn’t solve the entire amount, but it would make a huge dent in the difference!  I have been apart of trying to tackle this issue with major corporations.  I’ve stood in front of a CEO and showed this person the disparity and the solution.  The cost would be substantial, in the millions, and was told to ‘bury it’ and take care of the most critical outliers. Organizational leadership knows this is happening, they just don’t want to hurt their potential bonuses to stop it.

 

Right To Play

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Football players at the Big Ten University Northwestern are taking steps to launch, for the first time in history, a labor union for college athletes.  College athletics is a growing business worth billions of dollars to the higher education institutions that sponsor these activities.  It was just a matter of time until either the athletes, current or former, would come up with the idea that they wanted, and needed, a larger voice in the activities in which they participate.  Let’s face it, the billions being made are being made on the backs of these young men and women.

From the article:

Backed by the United Steelworkers union, Huma also filed union cards signed by an undisclosed number of Northwestern players with the NLRB — the federal statutory body that recognizes groups that seek collective bargaining rights.

“This is about finally giving college athletes a seat at the table,” said Huma, a former UCLA linebacker who created the NCPA as an advocacy group in 2001. “Athletes deserve an equal voice when it comes to their physical, academic and financial protections…

“The action we’re taking isn’t because of any mistreatment by Northwestern,” Colter said. “We love Northwestern. The school is just playing by the rules of their governing body, the NCAA. We’re interested in trying to help all players — at USC, Stanford, Oklahoma State, everywhere. It’s about protecting them and future generations to come.

“Right now the NCAA is like a dictatorship. No one represents us in negotiations. The only way things are going to change is if players have a union.”

Sounds very legitimate.  This is a very hard topic for me to argue for – I hate Unions!  With a passion and fire of a thousand suns.  I see absolutely no use for labor unions in today’s society.  That being said, I think are strong arguments on both sides of this fight. Here are some thoughts I have about the Unionization of College Athletics:

1. Universities continue to empire build on the blood, sweat, talent, brand, and hard work of these athletes.   It’s time that the athletes get a piece of this pie.  Yes, I know they get a scholarship and free education.  Yes, I know what that means for lifetime earnings.  We’re talking about billions of dollars per year.

2. Only a few sports, in a few schools actually make money, and that money is usually used to fund all the other athletic teams.  No, Volleyball, Baseball, Tennis, Golf, Wrestling, Swimming, etc. are not revenue generating sports.  It take big time Football and Basketball in college athletics to make money.  Unionizing College Athletes, could actually hurt more people than it helps.

3. The NCAA has a monopoly on major college athletics and I would love to see it broken up.  Unionization might be the first step to that.

4. We shouldn’t need Unions to keep college athletes safe.  That should be the universities responsibility over all else.  Aren’t these athletes students first?

5.  Players want an equal voice in Academics?  I’m sure that’s what they were thinking when they used that athletic waiver to get into the school they couldn’t have if it wasn’t for athletics.

6. Players want financial protections.  Isn’t that what they are getting by getting an education?  The ability to make a living outside of their physical attributes?

I always say that I see no use for Unions in today’s society, with one small caveat, if there isn’t legitimate competition and that group is then being taken advantage of.  The problem is we aren’t really talking about ‘college athletics’, we are talking about major college Football and Basketball.  No one cares that the rower at Cornell isn’t getting extra payments for the big win last weekend.  With no competition, the NCAA has put their member schools in a precarious position of making unionization a real threat.

Newest Employee Benefit – Divorce Insurance!

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You know what happens when you go through a prolonged recession?  Divorce rates drop.

It’s pretty simple economics.  It costs more money to live alone in two separate spaces, then to live together in one.  It cost money to get divorced, you can live in misery together much cheaper!

You know what happens when the economy rebounds and everyone is getting those new shiny jobs!? Divorce rates increase.

It’s pretty simple economics.  Why live with an asshole when you have your own money and can find someone who will treat you like the princess that you are!

Yep, HR Pros it’s that season, the season when you’re going to once again become a marriage counselor.  You should know that with increased employment opportunities come increased desires to finally take that step out of a bad marriage and into the awesome life of online dating and eating Ravoli out of can with your cat at 9:30 pm on Friday night while watching Bachelor reruns.

I know. I know. You hate being a marriage counselor to your employees.  First, they never will listen to your advice. Second, they will never listen to your advice. But, I think I have a solution for you. Did you know you can now purchase Divorce Insurance for your employees!  I mean what tell an employee that you care so much about their well being that we, your great employer, will help you break up your marriage!? I say nothing!

Trying to get your employees to call EAP and go to counseling is so 1990’s!  Employers who truly care about their employees in the 2010’s get them Divorce Insurance.  Yes, it’s real.  Check it out – DivorceInsurance.com – basically you pay premiums, like all insurance, and in the ‘rare’ case you get divorced, they pay your cash to help with the financials costs of a divorce. It’s like Aflac, but for Love! (Hey, don’t try and steal that now for you commercials DivorceInsurance.com!)

Look if you’re going to talk me into Pet Insurance for your stupid cat, you can definitely talk me into Divorce Insurance!  In fact, maybe we could just set up a cafeteria plan of worthless insurances and let you pick like 2 out off the list as one of the benefits the company will offer you.  “Yeah, I’d like the Divorce Insurance and the Immaculate Conception Insurance.”

Being a former child of divorce maybe one of these companies could come up with “Creepy Step Dad Insurance” – oh wait, they’re in the business of probability.  Probably not a good bet on their part…

 

 

 

How Much Pregnancy Leave Is Too Much?

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So, I’m up north at HRPA 2014 and I’m learning so much about our Canadian HR brother and sisters (like the US it’s still mostly sisters!).  Did you know the maternity leave in Canada is 52 weeks!  That’s one year if your slow at math like me!  And that can be divided in any manner between the mother and father.  Plus, from the peers I spoke to, many get up to 55% of their salary for the entire time they off!

Obviously, the US has FMLA for only 12 weeks. By the way, the women I spoke to, who didn’t know this about the US, were completely shocked by this.  But, I was completely shocked by 52 weeks and 55% pay!

My question to you today is: How much pregnancy leave is too much?

Here are some thoughts I have between the US and Canadian policies:

1. 12 weeks is too short.  52 weeks seems too long.

2. I’m not sure how companies manage, especially those with a large female workforce, it would seem like a huge competitive disadvantage to lose your talent for so long, and still have to pay out so many resources for not having that talent.

3. I wish I would have had my 3 sons in Canada.

4. Should a government force a corporation to pay an employee for a very personal decision?  The company didn’t ask you to have babies, why should they pay 55% of your salary?  How is that decision different than many life decisions we make.  I want to train for an Ironman Triathlon – I expect it will take me 6 months. Pay me for that!

5. Canadians game the system just like Americans!  My Canadian HR peers had the same war stories as my American peers.  One was of a female business owner who got pregnant.  Since she owned the business she didn’t have to claim 52 weeks off.  So her husband took all 52 weeks and got paid 55% of his salary.  The HR person knew this was going on and couldn’t do anything about it.  People are people – given a set of rules, they’ll find ways around them.

I run a company that has had many pregnancies over the years, I hire an age that falls into the perfect age for baby making!  Each time we have one person out for 12 weeks, it’s a stress on the entire team.  I can’t even imagine how we would manage for 52 weeks!  A part of me is glad I don’t have to deal with that.  Another part of me wishes we had better maternity leave in the US.

I don’t know what the perfect number is, I’m sure it’s different for each family going through it.

What do you think?  What is the perfect amount of pregnancy leave?  If you were given the chance to design a plan, taking into account both the employee and the company resources, what would you do?

 

 

Work Clothes That Measure Your Performance

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One of the big things that came out of the CES 2014 technology show is wearable technology.  We already are aware of wearable technology like Google Glass and various bracelets that do everything from working as your smartphone to measuring if your fat butt is moving enough.  I think what CES did this year, though, was to stretch our imagination to what could wearable technology become.

Here’s my idea – work clothes that measure whether or not you’re on task or doing exactly what you should be doing.

Think about that for a second:

1. All employees must wear company issued ‘uniform’

2. Company issued uniform has integrated wearable fibers that not only measure movements, but also give you the exact time and location of said uniform, measure the health of the worker, measure the interactions with worker tools, etc. (Hello Big Brother!)

3. Your systems measure everything to the point you can tell which employee is the most productive, which employee takes too many bathroom breaks, which employee said they were going to deliver a load to a client but also decided to stop and have a refreshing adult beverage on the way.

4. Not only measuring performance and output, but also relaying exact ways that an employee can get better at their job. “Tim continues to drop his arm down to his side after every motion “X”, if Tim would keep his arm at a 45 degree angle he would get 14% more output” – now that is some serious specific feedback!

5. Wearable uniforms could also reduce workplace accidents.  If the clothes new the operator was getting too clothes to a dangerous situation, or forgot to put down a safety gate, the clothes could shut down the system before an accident could happen. That’s really cool!

6. Wearable technology could measure the health of your workers, and deliver warning signs to HR. Have you ever had someone die of a heart attack at your place of business?  I have. It sucks really, really bad to see a coworker die.

Some of this seems Star Wars, super techy, fantasy kinds of things, but it’s not.  Technology is getting very close to begin doing some these things in the next years.  While some will think of these things as intrusive to their privacy, I’m guessing companies and worker’s compensation insurance companies will not.  You want this great job, with great pay and benefits, at our great company, please put on this company issues uniform.

It’s not about control. It’s about becoming better, faster.  For all the training we do, nothing could get folks up to speed, with 100% compliance, faster than your shirt not allowing to continue to do a work around that is dangerous and delivers a less than quality product.

What do you think?  Would you wear clothes that measured everything you do in your job?

 

 

5 Things HR Can Learn from Airports

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I know many of you will be getting on an airplane over the next few weeks to fly and see friends and family over the holidays.  Some of you fly all the time, so this will be something you experience often.  Many of you rarely fly, so you get really frustrated because you feel it should work better.  We work in HR everyday.  We get use to the stuff that doesn’t work, but we shouldn’t.  We should be like infrequent fliers, everything that is wrong should bother us greatly.

1. The airport never appears to have anyone who wants to take responsibility for anything.  Every airline is on their own. The security folks only handle their ‘area’ of concern. Food vendors only do their thing.  Does it sound familiar?  It’s your department and/or organization.  Some needs to take charge of stuff no one else wants to take charge of.  HR can fit that role perfectly.  Too many times in our organizations we/HR sees things that need someone to take responsibility. We need to be that person.

2.  The one thing about 90% of air travelers need to do after landing is go to the bathroom and charge something (phone, computer, tablet, etc.).  Airports figured out bathrooms, I’ve never had to wait to use the restroom in an airport.  I almost always have to wait to use an electrical outlet!  Should be an easy fix – go buy 100 power strips and increase the amount of charging points by 5 times.  But no one does this.  HR has this issue. We see things that can be fixed, by doing something simple, instead we don’t fix it, because we want to fix it permanently.  Believing is we fix it ‘temporarily’ we’ll never fix it the right way.  Do the temp fix first.  Tell everyone it’s a temp fix. Then work towards a permanent solution.

3. Airports use to treat everyone the same.  Everyone had to check in at the counter. Everyone had to wait in the same security line.  Airports figured out this doesn’t work for those they need most, frequent fliers.  Now, those who fly often, get treated differently.  They can by pass the TSA line through special pre-check lines.  They check in before they even get to the airport (most people can do this, but frequent fliers learn the tricks!). They have special clubs to sit in and get away from the rest of us.  HR needs to treat employees differently.  The only employees/people who want to be ‘treated’ the same, are those who are low performers.

4. Planes won’t crash is you have a little fun. For years Southwest was the fun airline.  They showed you could still fly planes and and have a little fun.  Others are beginning to follow in that same path.  HR is not known for being ‘fun’. In fact, we are probably known for not having fun.  We like to tell ourselves this comes with the territory of having to fire people. “Tim, this is serious business, there is no room for fun in HR.”   You can have fun in HR.  You need to have fun in HR.  Our organizations need proper role models of how to have fun.  People will still have to be fired, might as well have some fun along the way.

5.  It only costs a little more to go first class.  Actually it costs a ton more, but have you ever really seen an empty first class?  And, no, it’s not all frequent fliers filling those seats.  Some people are willing to pay more for a better flight experience.  You might not be willing, but some are.  Your employees are the same way about a lot of things.  Don’t think you know what is best for them, because it’s best for you.  They might want something totally different.  Well, we (in HR) like having half day Fridays in the summer, so we are willing to work 9 hour days Monday through Friday to get those. Everyone will want this.  Unless your the department that can’t take a half day on Friday because your clients need y0u there at 4pm on Fridays.

Here’s a tip to get you through your holiday travel, if you get stuck in an airport.  You aren’t forced to stay at the airport.  If you have an extremely long layover, grab a taxi and go someplace nice to eat, or even a movie.  It beats waiting 4 or 5 hours fighting over who gets the outlet next.