Category Archives: Brilliant Mind

The Top 5 Predictors of Employee Turnover

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Quantum Workplace recently released a study they put together on the predictors of employee turnover. Employee turnover is becoming a huge issue as the unemployment rate falls, which is expected. As your employees have more options, they’re more likely to leave.

I’ve always been a fan of Quantum’s research but this one seemed a little light. Here are their five predictors:

  1. Lack of job satisfaction.
  2. Individual needs unmet (health, wellbeing, balance)
  3. Poor team dynamics (Basically they hate working with the people they work with, or the team hates them, either way, they’ll be leaving)
  4. Misalignment (this is a hiring fit issue – you hired the wrong person for the job. Could be culture, skill set, etc.)
  5. Unlikely to stay (when an employee indicates they want to leave, most likely they will leave. DUH! This was actually #5! How can this be a ‘real’ indicator of turnover?!)

Okay, I’ll give them the first four reasons. Of course, those are all real reasons someone will leave. Are they the top 4? Depends on your environment. Number five is just flat out silly! “Hey, when someone tells you they’re about to leave, that’s a predictor they’re going to leave your employment.”

Really!? When I tell someone I’m hungry, guess what? That’s a predictor I’m hungry! Probably could have come up with a better number five! But, check out the study, they also give some tips and insight on how control turnover.

What are the real Turnover Predictors?  Here are my Top 5:

#1 – My boss is an asshole.

#2 – I hate what I’m doing, so I’m unwilling to put up with any B.S.

#3 – I oversold myself and I will most likely fail, so I’m leaving for a new position before you fire me, so it will look like this was my position.

#4 – I’m a bit crazy (or a lot bit crazy) and my co-workers hate me, so I need to find new co-workers to creep out.

#5 – I’m telling you I’m leaving! (Ha! Just kidding!)

#5 – You’re underpaying me for what I’m doing and we both know you’re underpaying me.

Bad bosses and not paying market will kill your retention of great talent faster than anything! The crazy piece of this is I always find that organizations clearly know about both of these issues.

If you ask an organization who the worst managers are they almost always align with the highest turnover by department, location, etc. The same thing works with those being underpaid in your organization.

People will take off if the market is clearly paying more and your organization is just average. The worst part of this is most organizations will then overpay to get back average or less talent when their good talent leaves. The market always wins. Always.

 

 

 

 

Everything I Know About Recruiting I Learned from my 70 year old Mother!

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So, most of you know I’m the President of HRU Technical Resources. Most of you don’t know my Mom is the CEO!

She makes sure to point that out to me about once per month! Today is her 70th birthday. While it’s been a while since she’s been on the phone filling requisitions, to this day, she can not turn if off!

She started her technical recruiting company in 1980 when almost no women started their own businesses, and it’s been successful every year we’ve been in business. Through two major recessions, constant competitive pressure, and an every changing client environment.

She’s the only person I’ve ever met in business I would not want to compete against! How’s that for a role model growing up! She resisted, before resisting became in fashion!

So, I wanted to share some of what I learned about recruiting that she taught me:

– The recruiter with the most activity will almost always have the most placements. 99.9% of the time.

– Our clients are important, but if they ask you to work for free, you won’t be able to help them for too long. Only work with companies that value the work you give them.

– Talent is the lifeblood of our business. It’s the only thing that will differentiate you from the competition. Never forget that when you’re talking to a potential candidate.

– Following the process is important until it isn’t. Don’t allow it to get in the way of making placements.

– People don’t know what they can accomplish until they get pushed. It’s your job as a leader to push them to their limits so they can see how great they can be. (Sounds like Bobby Knight, right!)

– Balance is never really the issue. If you’re successful you have all the balance you want. If you’re not successful balance shouldn’t be your biggest concern.

– Candidates always tell you why their great, or why they suck. You just have to keep them talking and ask the right questions.

– If you ever feel that a candidate has a red flag, ask the question. The embarrassment is not them having to answer the question, it’s you explaining to the hiring manager why you didn’t ask the question!

– The best thing you can do is turn down a client’s requisition when they’re completely unrealistic about what they want. It’s a waste of your time, and they think you suck for not filling it. Most recruiters won’t turn them down, when you do, they’ll want to know why. That’s the conversation you really want.

I could go on all day like this! The learning never stops. Running a business your mother started is tough. I’ll never run like her, and it’s taken us both a long time to understand that’s okay, as long as the core of what she’s taught me never changes.

Happy Birthday, Mom! Yeah, yeah, I’ll get back on the phone!

 

 

Why Hasn’t Employee Referral Automation Caught on? #SHRMTalent

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I spoke at SHRM Talent this week. One of the best corporate recruiting conferences around. Many people don’t believe me when I tell them, but the content, speakers, and audience are really engaging.

TA Tech companies and vendors haven’t caught on yet to the new SHRM Talent. Most corporate TA pros I spoke to might not have million dollar budgets to spend, but every one of them had decisions making over tens and hundreds of thousands of TA budget dollars!

It’s becoming one of the favorite conferences because the audience of corporate TA pros and leaders are very open to wanting to learn and get better. Their questions are genuine and the truly want to learn how to improve recruiting and talent attraction in their organizations.

One topic that I bring up during my sessions as the most under-utilized TA technologies on the planet is employee referral automation. Jobvite created the space, others followed, like RolePoint, Zao, Gooodjob, etc. Still, main stream corporate TA tech in mass aren’t using employee referral automation. It’s one of the great mysteries in the TA space for me!

When you ask corporate TA pros and leaders what their top source for talent is, employee referrals will always come in the top 3. When you ask what is the highest quality of hires by source, employee referrals are almost always number one! When you ask how much money have you invested in increasing employee referrals, it’s almost always $0!

So, help me out, what am I missing?!

The SHRM Talent audience told me I wasn’t missing anything, they just simply didn’t know this technology was available to them! Jobvite was in the expo hall, but mainly they were selling ATS, not employee referral automation (huge miss, but I know ATS margins are bigger than employee referral automation!). 97% of my audience weren’t using this tech, but almost all had an interest in learning more.

It’s really a zero-budget buy for most companies! If you use this type of technology you can basically get rid of your referral bonus program and your numbers will still go up on employee referrals. So, there’s the money you need to buy the tech that will put your employee referral program on steroids!

Truly, the bonuses per referral are not needed! You will have to actually begin recognizing those who do refer in your company, but almost all employees will refer people to your organization without a monetary gain! Also, increasing bonuses does little to actually increase the number of referrals you get.

So, why isn’t the vast majority using this tech?

First, they aren’t being sold this technology. Most corporate TA pros and leaders buy because of what is being sold to them, not necessarily what they need.

Second, I’m guessing the companies that sell this tech are for the most part fairly weak at marketing because it seems like a pretty easy sell to the groups I have in front of me!

Third, most corporate TA pros and leaders just have no idea this tech is even on the market for them, and if they do, they believe it’s too expensive to purchase.

They’ll spend a million dollars on LinkedIn and Indeed, but not $50,000 on technology that gives them more hires of their highest quality source?! There’s a major disconnect here on both sides of the market, which means there’s a giant opportunity for a company with a great brand with great tech that can make it simple for corporate TA leaders.

 

 

What Are You Doing With Your 30,000 Days?

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I had something happen to me recently that was really just one more reminder that life can change in an instant.  It seems like life has a way of trying to shake us awake and bring your focus back to what’s really important when we start to focus on things that really aren’t that important.

Here’s the deal.  If we are lucky we each have about 30,000 days to live.  (I’ll wait, go ahead and do the math…) Welcome back. 30,000 days seems like a lot of days.  The thing is that 30,000 number is really the best case scenario.  Many will not make it to 30,000, and those that do, I can’t tell you those 30,000+ days will be your best days.

So, what are you doing with your 30,000 days?

I won’t say I’ve wasted 16,000 already because I’ve done some pretty remarkable things.  I’ve got a great wife. Three great kids. That awesome puppy in my arms.  A solid career.  It’s taken all of those 16,000 days to get to this point.

Here’s what I’ve learned to this point in my 30,000 days:

– I’ve stopped valuing how valuable each day is.  I mean, I value all that I have and my life, but it gets lost on the daily basis of life.  I get the big picture, small picture overtakes it constantly.

– I don’t enjoy the things I enjoy, enough.  I have enjoyment, but if I only have 30,000 days, I should be enjoying those things more.

– I don’t spend enough time with those I love.  In the end, I won’t cry over not being able to work another minute.  I will cry over not having another second with those I love.

My guess is many of us will have the three things above in common.  Many of us are in this race of life.  Until we realize we are just racing to the end. At which point, you’ll go, oh wait a freaking minute, I don’t want to win this race!  Go ahead, I’ll catch up later!

This doesn’t mean I want to sell off all my worldly possession and walk the earth like Caine from Kung Fu (look it up Millenials).  I don’t.  I like my stuff!  It helps me enjoy my life.  I like my work.  I like to play more than work (my guess is that’s 99.9% of the world!).  This isn’t about balance.  30,000 days doesn’t care about your stupid balance.  It’s a clock, and it’s ticking.

In my 30,000 days, I want to leave the world a better place than when I arrived.  To each of us, that means something different.  One person might want to care for sick kids. One might want to change our environment. One might want to help homeless. I’ve decided I want to leave the world 3 young men who will create a legacy of their own.  Three men who will take my vision one step further and help to leave the world a little better as well.  If I spend my 30,000 days being the best Dad possible, I think I’ll feel content that I spend my 30,000 days pretty well.

What are you going to do with what’s left of your 30,000 days?

The Single Greatest Metric in the History of Talent Acquisition!

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“0.00” or “Zero”

I’ll let you decide how you want to display it, both ways work.

Oh, what is this measuring? Check this out:

The number of candidates, in the past twenty years that I’ve hired, that were willing to accept a job without first having a phone call with someone at the organization I worked for. 

That number is:    0   

I’m guessing your number is fairly close to my number! If fact, this is a universal metric between all types of talent acquisition professionals (Corporate, Agency, RPO). Across all industries and all levels of hiring, hourly, salary, temporary, 1099, seasonal, etc.

Let me ask you a couple of questions:

1. Would you be willing to accept a job without first speaking with someone about this job?

2. Would you be willing to accept a job interview without first speaking to someone about the position, details, etc.?

My guess is almost 100% will say “No” for number one, but some would actually say “Yes” to number 2. Okay, I’ll buy some of you would go to an interview before ever speaking to anyone live about a job. I don’t think it’s many, but I’ll give you some people just want a job and a text or email communication is good enough for them. I’ll also assume the quality of those people will be questionable.

The fact is there is an extremely high correlation between speaking to a candidate ‘live’ on the phone or in person, and their willingness to continue through your process of hiring. Like a .99 correlation!

Another fact, then, would be that the recruiters in your environment (corporate, agency, RPO) who actually make the most phone calls will have the most candidates willing to engage your organization in your hiring process.

Final fact, in every recruiting environment I’ve worked (corporate and agency) the recruiters who connected with the most candidates over the phone, filled the most positions. Every. Single. Environment.

It’s not Rocket Science people! It’s actually Psychology.

If you don’t pick up the phone, you don’t find candidates willing to follow through with your hiring process.

Don’t over think this. Put yourself in the shoes of your candidates. Would you be willing to accept a job without first speaking to someone at the company offering you a job?

0.00!

 

The Single Best Incentive You Can Offer Millennials!

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The world is millennial crazy. If you read this blog you know I think about 99% of the millennial stuff is pure B.S. (we were all young once, it’s mostly great, but sometimes sucks, buy a helmet!), but every once in a while I find something that really hits home.

Student debt is the real deal!

I’ve gotten up close in personal with this. I have two kids in college who are just starting down this debt path. I also have a brother who is a millennial who gets punched in the gut each month he has to make his mortgage-sized student loan payment! Great white collar, professional career, well paid, can’t even think about buying a house. That sucks!

Take a look at his chart:

So, if you truly want to attract great millennial talent you need to do a couple of things:

1. Offer as a sign-on to pay off their student debt.

2. Offer home buying, mortgage assistance.

Why? Turns out employees who own a home, stay around a lot longer, are more productive, and I work for a company that cares enough about me to help me with my student loans and to buy a house, I’m probably a bit more engaged as well!

Here’s the other dirty little secret we know in HR. Let’s say you have a program that pays off student loan debt for employees. With those agreements, you usually have an amount per year payoff (I.E., We pay off $30K, you give us three years of service, or pay us back the money, or something along those lines).

Very few employees leave you after they’ve been employed with an organization for three years. Three years is that tipping point where you decide you’re all in, or all out. So, your job as an HR leader is to get them past three years! Okay, every organization has their own tenure tipping point, but on average most are around three years. Go find yours!

One other item from the chart that sticks out like a sore thumb? No college degree means you’ll more than likely never own a home. That sucks! Guess what, we all have people in our organization without college degrees. These folks need our help with major financial situations, like buying a home, more than any of our employees.

We should be able to figure this out as well. What would stop an employer from offering home buying assistance, for years of service, to their employees? Nothing. But we don’t do it because we see ‘those’ employees as easily replaceable. So, why put in the extra effort?

Employees are our most valuable asset, well, unless, you know, you only make $15 per hour, then you’re just an asset, not really that valuable. Isn’t that what we’re really saying?

Long, story, short: Help your employees buy homes. You’ll never regret it.

 

The real value of A.I. is in HR, not Recruiting!

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What if you could catch and stop sexual harassment in the workplace before it got started? What about other types of violence, embezzlement, etc.? What if you could determine when disengagement was starting with an employee and address it immediately?

All those would be pretty powerful advantages to HR and leadership, don’t you think!?

Google is beginning to use A.I. and machine learning to find objectional content on the internet. Now, the main reason for this is a little less moral than it sounds. Google was losing advertisers because many ads they were paying for were showing up on content that was not something they would want to be associated with their brand.

Seems like most solutions to problems happen because of money…

Recently, in HR, we’ve seen some really high-profile cases of harassment come to light with Uber, Tesla, etc. These cases have had a major impact to both the consumer brand and especially to the employer brand of these organizations. While those of us who work in HR understand this is far too often occurrence, it seems like little gets done to stop it.

Say hello to my little friend!

Why couldn’t an artificial intelligence technology tell me when some creepy employee is sending inappropriate things to other coworkers, customers, vendors, etc.? What about when an employee uses threatening language to intimidate another employee? Wouldn’t you want to know about that? I think Mary just told Jennifer she’s ‘done’ and wants ‘out’ and she needs to get her resume together.

Would love to know that, so I can find out how to talk Mary off the ledge!

Say hello to Big Brother!

Yikes, right!? But, this is probably closer to reality than we realize and it will probably actually help our work environments a ton! Our employees communicate in a number of ways: email (primarily), messaging, voice, various tech platforms we use to do our daily work, etc. Almost all of which have unstructured data that A.I. could analyze and make predictions.

Some of those predictions could help you as an organization reduce risk. Tim seems to be coming very close to crossing a line with Mary, maybe we should give him a little reminder about our policy on harassment in the workplace. Bam! A nice, neat, little piece of content automatically hits Tim’s inbox and a message gets sent to his boss to stop by and remind Tim about what’s appropriate behavior in the workplace.

Some might help the organization retain their talent. There’s already predictive analytic solutions in play that predict employee turnover, add in machine learning, and A.I. will begin to show you employee who might turn before they’ve even thought of turning!

This might seem all futuristic, but the technology is really already here. Eventually, someone will launch a solution that does all of the stuff mentioned above, I’m quite certain someone already has this in development. It will only take one company to put it in place and the dominos will fall.

What you get paid to do at work is owned by your employer. We’ve all known this for a long time. What we never realized was that eventually, technology would actually hold us to not only the work but the behaviors as well!

Would you want to work in an environment where every move you made was measured by A.I.? I’m guessing not, but I’m also guessing it won’t be a choice!

What if you could predict all of your Turnover? #UltiConnect @UltimateHCM

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Out at Ultimate Software’s Conference, this week and one of the cool features that Ultimate has within UltiPro is Retention Predictor. Ultimate has done a really good job at going out and buying some great data analytics companies and implementing that tech and talent into their organization.

So, what’s Retention Prediction? 

The concept is that if you analyze enough of your employee’s data points you’ll see trends that show if someone is highly likely to leave your organization as a voluntary term. As an organization, we really want and need to know data this to help retain our best performers.

UltiPro delivers a ‘score’ of each of your employees showing if someone is a flight risk based on their level of performance, so that you can filter, if you want, by high performers to low performers. The notion being, you definitely want to ‘save’ your high performers.

So, how do you save an employee that shows up as a High Risk? 

UltiPro will then deliver to the manager of the employee at risk specific “Leadership Actions”. These actions are recommendations of things the manager can do to help retain this employee. Currently, UltiPro has over 50 actions built into the system, and you can build in your own actions if you want for specific things you might want to do in your organization.

Does this really work? 

I spoke with multiple Ultimate Software customers who raved about how this one feature has literally changed their entire culture! One great example is Gregg Paulk, an executive at Anderson Center for Autism in New York.

Anderson had high turnover of their support staff, and also had an issue of lack of quality leadership training. Before they began using UltiPro’s Retention Predictor they had 30% turnover. In the two years since turning on the prediction feature, they’ve lowered their turnover to 15%! That’s giant! That’s real money that can now be used in other ways to better their organization and increase student care.

Anderson also saw higher engagement with their managers because they were now being able to deliver each manager specific actions to help them retain their staff, and ultimately help them become better managers of their team.

Paulk said one of the challenges in implementing anything like this is always the potential of false positives. One of your employees comes up a high flight risk, but in reality, they’re not. Yes, this can happen and will happen.

He said the key for them was to get their managers to understand how data prediction works. Yes, we’ll have a few false positives, but the majority of the data will be highly accurate and the percentage that is correct is so high, you can’t ignore what the predictions are telling your team.

What I really like about this feature is it puts HR into an immediate strategic position within the organization. It helps to make your entire team proactive and stop reacting to turnover as it happens. Your organization can finally become proactive in developing your team and leaders, which will naturally just help you drive a more dynamic culture.

What’s next? 

Ultimate Software is not just sitting on this, their data team is off the charts brilliant and they’re already working on their next generation product called “Perception” that will add in even more unstructured data into the algorithm and make these predictions more accurate, faster.

Check it out. I was super impressed by the accuaracy and real-life outcomes of this. It’s definitely a game changer for organizations.

Every Moment Matters! #UltiConnect @UltimateHCM

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So, I’m out at the Ultimate Software Conference this week and they had one of the most unique keynotes, Will Smith! Yeah, that Will Smith! Fresh Prince, I Am Legend, Hancock, Men In Black, Bad Boy himself!

At HR Conferences you don’t normally get big time Hollywood. You usually get a dude who’s really good looking, who wrote a book, telling motivational stories. The HR ladies tend to like those types. Well, they really liked Will! I really liked Will!

For starters, Will Smith is an entertainer. He immediately grabbed the audience and didn’t let go. He knows how to control and audience, tell great stories, be funny, and hit on big themes that make you think and leave you feeling motivated. That’s what a great keynote can do.

My favorite story he told was about his father dying. His father was told he had three months to live and he ended up living about six months. Will said after they got to three months every single moment felt like it really could be the last moment.

Because of this, hellos became special, goodbyes tended to linger longer, embraces were more special. It went on like that for another three months, and it made Will realize that all moments with those that you love and care about, should be moments like this because we don’t know if that will be the last moment.

On the last day of his dad’s life, Will was in LA and his dad was back in Philly. Will’s dad called him on Facetime and told him he thought this was it, that this was going to be his last day. Since he was going through this, it wasn’t a shock, but he stayed on the phone with him for a while.

Will said they went about fifteen minutes without saying anything to each other, just staring at each other, just spending this time together in the only way they could at that moment. Will’s sister was with her father in Philly and eventually broke the silence and said, “Well, dad, do you have anything you want to say to Will?”

His response was awesome and it brought down the house in classic Will Smith fashion:

My dad said, “Shit, anything I haven’t told this motherfucker isn’t going to make a difference now!”

He died that night. The crowd laughed. Will laughed. At the story, not at his dad dying!

The crowd laughed. Will laughed. At the story, not at his dad dying!

Most of us won’t be as lucky as Will to know you have that time and also in that time realize the importance of those moments. Our loved ones will die today, tomorrow, next week, and we won’t have any idea that it’s coming. We live with this reality.

We also live with a reality that we don’t have to let these moments go by. We can choose to not let moments go by and let people know how much we value them and care about them. For me, that was the real message Will was sharing.

You’ll have a bunch of moments today with people you care about. Try not to miss them!

Why Won’t Your Employees Go See The Doctor?

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So, we have few major psychological issues that come into play when drag our feet in not going to see the doctor when we need to.

1. We don’t have the time! Ugh, these doctor offices are all run by former DMV or post office workers who were fired for poor performance in being too slow! We know if we go to the doctor’s office we’ll miss a half a day or more of work.

2. Yuck, sick people! Apparently, doctor’s offices are filled with sick people. You’re sick too, but just not that sick! I’ve got a cold, I don’t want some disease I’ll die from!

3. What if something is really wrong with me? I don’t want to know! I’m always surprised by this but it’s an actual thing. People would rather ignore a serious health issue, then to actually deal with it.

I’m definitely a number 1 & 2 person. I don’t have the time and I don’t want to be around sick people. So, going to the doctor is basically an ambulance ride for me! Meaning, I’m not going unless they drag me out in an ambulance!

That’s why I fell in love with seeing a doctor on my iPhone! One of the coolest things I’ve done in a while! Check it out:

If you haven’t tried it with your insurance company, you need to! So, simple. So, fast. It’s life changing for people like me!

Hit me in the comments about your experiences. Also, I would love to hear the kinds of things people have used this service for. Mine was a simple sinus infection and some antibiotics. The early adopter in me wants to know how far I can go with this service! Can I meet with a therapist and get an Adderall script? What about Viagra? I don’t need it, but a bet a bunch of dudes would rather do this over the phone than in person!

The early adopter in me wants to know how far I can go with this service! Can I meet with a therapist and get an Adderall script? What about Viagra? I don’t need it, but a bet a bunch of dudes would rather do this over the phone than in person! What about back pain? Can I get narcotics over the phone? That could be a game changer!