Category Archives: Communication

The Grass Isn’t Always Greener

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This is HR’s go-to advice for employees who put in their two-week notice, especially if that employee is heading to a competitor:

“Just remember! The grass isn’t always greener!” 

HR is mostly right. I’d say here’s the actual breakdown of ‘greenest’:

  • 50% is actually about the same shade of green. You’re moving to just move. You’ll find the job, the people, the money, everything is almost the same. The only change is the name and maybe the location by a bit.
  • 30% is going to be a nice shade of light brown, meaning the grass isn’t green at all, it’s dead! HR wants to believe this number is higher but it’s not, but it’s high enough to give some folks some pause before making such a big decision.
  • 10% is way greener! Like green M&M green. Dream job green! Everything is better and you’re so happy you made the move. You found your dream job!
  • 10% isn’t grass at all. Someone replaced the grass with some other material, like in Phoenix where grass can’t grow so they pave the front yard and paint it green, or just put in rock and cactus. This is completely something you didn’t expect. You were hoping for a better job, and you got something that isn’t better but not worse, it’s not even the job you expected, so you can’t really compare.

So, you have about a 10% chance of getting what you think you’re getting. Not good odds, but like I said, most employees way overthink their odds on this and probably believe they have a 70-90% of bettering themselves when they move. Most will just stay the same or get slightly worse.

Why do we believe moving is better?

1. You’re being sold. Sold by a recruiter and a hiring manager that you’ll be moving from a trailer park to Disney World. You really, really want to believe that’s true, so you buy!

2. You over-value that what we don’t know, over what we already have. This happens in so many areas of our life. Relationships. Jobs. Table at a restaurant.

3. You over-value what others have, over what you have. Think about this for a minute. You’re so eager to get out of this job, yet others are so eager to get this job. What does that say? You’re brilliant and everyone else is an idiot? Probably not. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

Everyone keeps telling me all these ‘new’ young workers just want to jump from job to job. They don’t have loyalty, etc. The reality is much less about their desire to move, and more about them being more naive to the realities of changing jobs.  We all loved changing jobs until it backfires and you leave something good, for something crappy.

Once that happens, you’re less likely to change jobs the rest of your career, even if you’re in a bad job! Don’t underestimate what you currently have. It’s probably way better than you’re making it out to be, and the new gig isn’t as good as it sounds. That’s not sexy, that’s just reality.

 

HR, The DNC is showing you how not to communicate!

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We love to cover our ass in HR. It’s actually in The HR Rule Book, page 1, first paragraph:

“Like our brothers and sisters in the Real Estate game, we all have really only one rule to live by. They live by, “Location, location, location”. In HR we live by, “Document, document, document”. 

Documentation is great until it’s not!

The Washington Post reported this week that:

Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida was forced aside by the release of thousands of embarrassing emails among party officials that appeared to show co­ordinated efforts to help Clinton at the expense of her rivals in the Democratic primaries. That contradicted claims by the party and the Clinton campaign that the process was open and fair for her leading challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Let me start by saying this isn’t a political post. This could happen to any party, in any organization, to anyone who decides to communicate exclusively via email.

What can HR learn from the DNC email mess?

We (HR) need to start asking ourselves this one simple question: If what I’m writing right now in this email, was to be made public, could it get me in trouble or would it be embarrassing to myself, my organization or my boss?

If you answer, “Yes” to any of the above questions, stop typing, click delete, stand up, walk your butt over to whoever it was you were writing that message to! Or, pick up the phone and just have the conversation!

I think at least once a day I begin writing an email, stop, and click delete. I then either stand up or pick up the phone and have a direct conversation with the person I wanted to share this information with. There’s a time to document and there’s a time to have ‘plausible deniability’!

In HR we too often get caught up in wanting to have things in writing. You have to know there’s risk associated with getting something in writing. You now are in the loop of knowing what’s going on, and if you decide not to do anything, it’s the same as knowingly allowing something to happen or continue to happen.

The DNC would have been just fine if they would have run down to Starbucks and grabbed a cup of coffee together or picked up the phone and just talked some stuff out. But, no! Instead, let’s send thousands of emails back and forth that shows how stupid we can be!

I’m not telling you to cover up stuff. I’m telling you to not have stuff you have to cover up! Some of the best leaders I’ve worked for would send me this message in reply to some crazy email I sent them, “Call me.”

That’s really smart advice!

Is Smiling at a Black Person in an Interview a Racist Microagression?

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From the land of we’ve gone off the deep end of political correctness, check this out!

Do you suffer from “White Guy” smile? “When you pass a person of color on the street, do you give them the “white guy smile”? Congratulations, you’re racist! If you look at a person of color, you’re racist. If you don’t look at them, you’re racist. If you sort of look at them, then look away, you’re still racist. If you keep looking at them, well, damn you, you racist!”

So, I would love to tell you that this has never even crossed my mind, but I would be lying. Do I purposely smile at one person over another based on the color of their skin? No, that’s silly.

If I truly analyze myself I think I probably do the smile thing more for folks who I don’t think can speak English, and that’s probably even more racist! I think the smile would be more of an “I’m not sure how to start this conversation because I don’t know if you and are even going to be able to communicate” and if I smile at least you know I’m trying to have a friendly exchange.

Either way, I’m making a judgment based on how a person looks, and most likely the circumstance, this is probably going to be a problem.

All that being said, I’ve been in some way uncomfortable interviews with white hiring managers who stumbled over themselves with minority candidates and their white guy smiles! The candidates felt awkward. I felt awkward. It’s awful! They go so far overboard trying to act like they’re not racist that it’s more uncomfortable than if they were probably just racist!

How do you fix this?

Wow, that’s a loaded question! If you try to point out to the person they’re being racist, they’ll flip! If you let it go, they’ll continue to act like an idiot. Taped interview training sometimes help people see they are acting differently, just make sure you’re giving them many examples, not just one video of them interviewing a minority candidate!

I’ve seen this done with success when interviewing different genders as well. The classic example is supervisor male interviewing a female and treating them differently than when they interview another male. This training is highly effective if being used as a developmental exercise and not as a gotcha! Being taped in an interview is stressful, but it has a huge impact when you can sit and watch the differences. Not only will help catch and change biases, it also just flat out makes you a better interviewer!

Telling Your Executives The Truth Isn’t Courageous

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If I have to listen to one more leadership guru tell hard working people they need to be more courageous, I’m going to walk up on stage and courageously punch that person in the face! There’s a reason you aren’t telling your executives exactly what’s going on in your business and the reason isn’t that you’re a wimp!

The reason we aren’t 100% truthful to our executives about what’s truly going on in our business is because we’ve bought in!

It’s the job of the executive to build and share a vision of the business. It’s the job of those under this executive to then go out and make sure that vision gets integrated into the business. Once you’ve drunk the Koolaid, it’s really hard to un-drink the Koolaid!

It’s not that we don’t want to tell our executives the truth, we do. We don’t because, like most executives, we can’t see the truth any longer!

I’ve worked for some really great executives who knew this about their next level leaders. They hired and promoted great people who they knew would ensure their vision was seen by all. They also knew, at that point, it was then their job to trust and verify.

The best executives I’ve worked for did not sit in an ivory tower and wait for the word to come back from their generals.  They constantly spent time amongst the soldiers, those on the frontline, to ensure that the vision they wanted, was being heard at all levels.

Do you really think that most of the #2’s in organizations lack courage! They got hired and promoted, but then all at once the majority just lacked courage. That doesn’t add up to me! It’s not what I’ve seen in real life.

The reason those underneath you aren’t sharing the exact full picture of what’s going on is they have painted a different version in their mind, they’ve painted a picture of where they are trying to go. It becomes so vivid many times the present is very clear.

When I traveled to locations away from corporate in my career, I frequently got visited upon my return from my CEO. Not because I was one level below him because I was sometimes 3 or 4 levels below! He knew I was the perfect one to tell him what I was seeing and hearing because I was closer to getting my hands dirty then anyone else on the trip.

You don’t need to be more courageous to help your executives.  You need to go back and dig a few more ditches!

The Candidate Fade Away

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There’s this thing that happens with dating nowadays, called the Fade Away.  I know this because I have teenage sons.  The Fade Away is when you’re dating someone and you know it’s not for you long term, but instead of just telling that person you start the Fade Away process.

You stop talking and start texting.  The texting slowly becomes less frequent, spread out and shorter in length, to eventually stopping altogether.  No finalization.  No uncomfortable exchange of items. Just fading away into a life without that other person being in it.

You see, back in my dating days, well, we didn’t have texting.  You had phone calls that you could duck for a while, but let’s face it your parents were not going to cover for you, so eventually, you had to face the other person.  Those conversations were awful, I so wish I had the fade away!

Because of how we treat our personal relationships today, candidates are now using the Fade Away on companies.   Recruiters talk to a candidate, they seem excited, they call you back every time you call them.  They give you their cell phone number and you begin to text. All is right in the recruiting world.  At some point, the candidate decides that the position, or the company, or you just isn’t right for them and they stop returning calls and texts.  It’s not all at once, it just gets less, until it fades away completely.  Just like we were dating.

Here are some ways to stop the Candidate Fade Away:

1. Be the understanding Girlfriend.  You know the type: “No! No! Really!  I get it! At any point you aren’t cool with this, I’m totally cool with this, let’s just make sure we are straight with each other and tell each other!”  Then you tell her and she loses her effing mind! Okay, ladies, I know, it works both ways!  As a recruiter start out the candidate relationship like this, be a pro. “Tim let me tell you how I work up front.  There is going to come a time when you might feel I presenting you something that you just don’t want for some reason. I’m completely cool with that, I’m presenting you.  I’m your Jerry Maguire. Let me know right away, and I’ll make sure we both look good when speaking to the company and hiring manager.  But I need to know up front what’s going on.”

2. It’s about you, not me.  Find out how the candidate prefers to be communicated to and have them set the terms.  This usually works out well, because they become invested.  You told me this is how you wanted to be communicated to, and I’m following what you wanted.  Experienced recruiters usually hate this route because they’ve been trained to ‘control’ the candidate.  Used in the right manner it can be very effective.

3. Call out the Fade Away!  Making fun of what is going on won’t connect with everyone, but it will definitely connect with some.  Many folks will get defensive if you call them out on the Fade Away, but if you have fun with it, you’ll get some to come back around and laugh it off. “Timmy! Are you trying to break up with me!?  Come on, let’s talk this out, we could be so good for each other, at least talk to me before you break up with me!”  You’ll get a response to this, trust me!

Recruiting Blocking and Tackling!

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This week I was at CareerBuilder’s Empower Roadshow talking with a few hundred Talent Acquisition pros and leaders in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Great event, great group of pros that were super engaged.

I led a panel on tips and tricks for in-the-trenches TA pros and leaders and one of my panelist was Bryan Rice, TA leader from Stryker. The title of this post came from him, he was big on getting TA pros back to blocking and tackling!

What’s blocking and tackling in talent acquisition?

Here’s what I would call the building blocks of great recruiting (Bryan’s blocking and tackling):

1. Phone skills. Have your recruiters conquered their fear of being on the phone? When they need to reach someone is their first thought, “Oh, I should pick up the phone and just ask the person.” Versus, sending them an email.

2. Ability to sell the position they are recruiting for. Can your recruiters effectively talk to a candidate and get them excited about the position, the supervisor of the position, the direction of the company, all the opportunities you can provide them, etc.? Bryan believes today’s recruiters might struggle with this the most, over anything else, and yet, as TA leaders we do very little to ever develop this skill!

3. Building relationships with hiring managers. Do your recruiters meet face-to-face with their hiring managers when they are working a position for that manager? Not only the first time but every time! You don’t build a strong relationship and find out how to add value if you don’t put in quality time with hiring managers. Today’s recruiters are moving too fast, to understand this value, and how it ultimately saves them a ton of time and effort!

4. Building relationships with candidates, that goes beyond the initial screening interview. Can your recruiters share with the hiring manager the candidate’s ‘story’ for each candidate that is presented to the manager? My goal as a recruiter should be that a manager shouldn’t be able to ask me a question about a candidate that I can’t answer. That’s tough, but that’s my goal!

This all seems so basic, yet most recruiters are weakest in these skills.

Why?

I believe the industry struggles here because TA leaders don’t know how to train these skills, and we don’t have off-the-shelve training programs that really go deep on these skills. So, instead of training recruiters properly, we just give them more technology so they can do a bad job, faster.

The training for four things above is very much a hands-on, one-on-one training. Sitting face-to-face and going over and practicing what these conversations look and sound like, and correcting in the moment, and doing them again and again.

The phone skills are just down and dirty getting recruiters on the phone and seeing who will conquer their fear! My first three weeks as a recruiter in training was calling 100 candidates a day. I couldn’t leave until I made 100 outgoing calls, each day, for three weeks.

At the end of those three weeks, I didn’t know if I could recruit, but I knew I wasn’t afraid to pick up the phone and talk to someone!

Make sure you connect with Bryan, he’s one of the TA leaders in the industry that really gets it!

What if it’s impossible to fix the Gender Wage Gap?

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I love the HR and Talent data analytics platform Visier and have been following them for years. Recently, Visier released a study called the Visier Insight’s Report: Gender Equity that I found fascinating!

Basically, Visier claims they discovered the main reason behind the gender pay gap and they titled it the “Manager Divide” (You can download the report here). The Manager Divide—an underrepresentation of women in manager positions—significantly contributes to the gender wage gap. To break it down simply, women begin to leave the workforce around age 26 to begin having babies. At this point, the wage gap begins and women never catch up!

Screen Shot 2016-06-28 at 2.33.25 PMYou can clearly see it in this graph from the Visier report. Men and women virtually earn the same up until age 26, in fact, women earn slightly more. At age 26 there is a huge split in the graph, and women don’t even start to close that gap until close to retirement.

Visier gives a bunch of great ways for organizations to close the gap:

– Implement the “Rooney Rule”: for every manager position you have open to fill, consider “at least one woman and one underrepresented minority” in your slate of candidates.

– Implement blind screening, removing names (or other gender identifiers) from resumes when selecting candidates for interviews.

– Increase measurement and awareness of gender equity in the rollout or implementation of HR policies, including manager promotions and hires, and compensation policies.

– Support meaningful paid parental leave that is equal for both women and men.

– Ensure it is socially acceptable for both men and women to take time off to care for their children.

All good stuff, right?

Here’s my question: if this gender wage gap phenomenon happens because of a natural cause (childbirth and rearing), how does any of this change it?

It doesn’t. The majority of women are till going to leave the workforce, on average between 26 and 36, to begin raising their family. Whether these women leave for 9 months or 9 years, they’ll return to the workforce with that much less of experience.  So, they’ll always be playing catch up, for the most part, to those men who didn’t leave to have babies and raise them.

The reality is, because of women leaving to have babies and raise families, they’ll always be a pay disparity between genders. Should it be 21% on average? No. That’s why we need to focus on the real issue at hand.

In most organizations of any size, you have females making less than men who are in the same position with basically the same experience, performance, and education level. The only reason they are making less is because they’re a female. That’s the real issue.

How do you fix this?

The old fashion way. It’s a big project. You’ll have big spreadsheets and you’ll have uncomfortable conversations with managers who gave larger raises to men, for no reason other than their bias. It’s an uncomfortable project, but it’s the only way to solve the real issue. Painstakingly one position, one department, one person at a time.

You can do high-level analysis in your organization and you’ll find a gender pay gap. That’s natural, the Visier report pointed this out. It’s going to continue to happen because we live in a society and culture where women still do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to childbirth and raising the children. You have to get into the weeds to find the real issues within your organization in terms of gender pay gap, not a 20,000-foot flyover.

Every large organization I’ve ever worked in had gender pay issues within specific positions and departments. It wasn’t rampant, but it was there. A word of caution, don’t point fingers at fault. Just work to solve the problem. It happened, how do we move forward and fix it. Placing blame will cause stalls and fights, you don’t want to be a part of at an executive level. Just find ways to quietly fix the problem and make things right.

 

5 Things You Should Be Doing in June to Prepare for Your Open Enrollment in the Fall

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It’s a beautiful day here in Michigan! 75 degrees and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. In the north, we get only a limited time to enjoy summer, so when it finally arrives you better believe I’m taking full advantage! (For, me that’s tending to my flowers and doing some yard work.)

What’s my point? The last thing you probably want to be doing right now is brainstorming ways to prep for open enrollment!  But guess what—you don’t have to…Because, while I’m still here in the office, I’m going to do it for you, so you (and I) can spend a little more time enjoying this great summer weather!

Here then is my list of Important OE Stuff You Should Be Doing Right Now:

  1. Schedule employee roundtable meetings to get the feedback you need on the last benefit design. Make it fun. Provide an ice cream sundae station! It will work twofold: you’ll get the feedback you need to start your next design, and people love ice cream! You connect talking about benefits with having a positive experience. Simple psychology is the best psychology!
  2. Do a mid-year follow-up with your benefits broker.They should already be on top of this and begging you to go out to lunch, or golfing, but if they haven’t, remind them. Specifically, this is a great time to look at your brand-name drug utilization and talk about some strategies to increase generic use and reduce this cost to the organization.
  3. Executive cost foreshadowing should be happening right now.At this point in the year, your broker can have a pretty good guess at where your new premiums are going to come in at, and what this might mean to your new benefits design. Schedule a meeting with the C-Suite to give them some insight now, so they’re prepared when budgeting season comes. The best way not to ‘shock’ an executive is to get to them early in the process.
  4. Deliver your own Summer Tips and Tricks communication to your employees on proper benefit utilization!Summer seems to be the time when people find their way to the emergency room when maybe the could have gone to urgent care. These are also a great time to highlight wellness initiatives since we are all trying to get into those swimsuits before vacation! Simple reminders like these save the organization money and keep your most important messages top of mind to your employees.
  5. Schedule an OE marketing session before all the summer vacations start.As benefit pros we spend a lot of time and care figuring out what to say to our employees. What we tend to figure out too last minute is HOW we want to market these changes to our employees. Summer is a great time to not only think about the how—but to play around with some new ideas. What if you texted employees tips about OE on top of emailing them? What if you decided to send postcards to everyone’s homes? Now’s the time to figure out what you want to try—and establish a schedule for getting it done in time.

(Speaking of schedules, if you want even more ideas on what to be doing in June and July for OE, check out this excellent post—What to Do 12-16 Weeks Before OE, by the folks at Jellyvision.)

Anyway,  I really do believe you can never be too prepared for Open Enrollment. A little extra effort now will lead to a great experience for you and your team come fall—and let you have more fun this summer, knowing you’re ahead of the game.

 

 

Candidates Actually Want Human Interaction!

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TA Leaders and Executives, this is the dirty little secret that your Recruiters and the Talent Acquisition Technology industry does not want you to know!  Candidates actually prefer to have human interaction when searching and applying for a job. From a study done by ASA:

“Three of the top five ways job seekers land a job are “high touch,” according to the survey findings. Word of mouth is the most popular means (43%)—followed by job board websites and employer websites (both at 30%). Contacts or acquaintances with prospective employers (30%) and staffing and recruiting companies (25%) also rank high as resources that led to job offers.

Three in four (77%) actually prefer human interaction when searching for a job, according to the ASA Workforce Monitor.“

Recruiters and TA Tech are in bed together to pull the wool over your eyes!  TA Tech wants to sell you automation! Recruiters don’t want to pick up the phone! Put those two groups together and it’s one big circle jerk about to use only technology solutions to recruit and never pick up another phone as long they live!

Seriously! 3 out 4 candidates prefer to have a human contact them and tell them about the job you have open. I bet if you sent out an informal survey to your recruiting team, right now – today, the response from your recruiters would be that they believe only 25% or less actually would prefer a call!

That’s a huge disconnect, and should be very telling about the talent on your team!

So, how do you get your recruiters back on the phone?

1. Measure the amount of outgoing calls by person and post it publicly for all to see. You don’t even have to say one thing about it, the calls will automatically increase! True recruiters hate being on the bottom of any scoreboard!

2. Have fun with it! Run contest and provide incentives for more outgoing calls by your recruiters. For recruiters who grew up in a world where they thought they could just email and message their way to success, the phone is scary! Some will need a kind push!

3. Group call parties. Take one hour of the day and plan for every single recruiter to be on the phones at the same time. Make sure they prepare by sourcing ahead of time and have a number of candidates to reach out to. They should have at least 25-40 to call. Most calls will go to voicemail, if they’re lucky they’ll actually talk to a few people. It will be the fastest hour of their day or week! When everyone is doing this at the same time, you get great energy from the group and it seems less scary!

An average recruiter with 25 openings on their desk should be talking live to around 75-100 people each week on the phone. What I find when I first go into a new shop and measure this, the real number is more like 15-25!  It’s shockingly low! How are you going to fill 25 openings by talking to 25 people per week!? You won’t. That’s why your TA shop is failing.

I love TA Tech! I love TA Tech more than almost anyone I know. What I also know is that all great recruiters spend more time on the phone on average than weaker recruiters. It’s so simple, yet most of us fail as TA leaders not recognizing this.

 

The Right To Disconnect From Work

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Did you hear that France is trying to pass a law that would allow workers to disconnect from the office without fear of disciplinary action? Here’s some more on the proposed bill:

The “right to disconnect” legislation, which would go into effect in 2018 if passed, would require companies to encourage employees to turn off phones and other devices after they leave work…

The law reflects the sense in France that white-collar workers in the digital age are vulnerable to burnout.

Technologia, a risk analysis firm, found that 3.2 million French workers were emotionally exhausted from work and at risk of developing burnout symptoms like exhaustion and chronic stress.

“It is a real problem,” said Yves Lasfargue, a sociologist who specializes in teleworking. “Twenty years ago, before emails had been invented and we could not reach colleagues, we would have to go and knock on their doors. Traditional courtesy teaches you to abstain from disturbing people. With these new tools, this form of courtesy has totally disappeared. This is why we need to legislate.”

“Traditional courtesy”.

Two things at play here. First, there’s no doubt that our new hyper-connected world is causing people to work in ways we could never have imagined twenty years ago.  Most white collar jobs currently have no ‘unplugged’ off the clock hours any longer. People are connected from the moment they wake until the moment they go to sleep, many even getting up during the night when they hear notifications coming in on their devices.

That’s a problem. That’s an organizational problem because we will see burnout at a faster rate than ever before. I am starting to hear about organizations that are shutting down email servers at 6pm and not turning them back on until 5am, trying to force their employees to shut it down and refresh, even shutting down during the weekends. It’s a drastic step, but one some organizations feel is the right one.

Secondly, is this concept of traditional courtesy.  This 1950’s idea of not disturbing someone who is at home for the evening. Most everyone in the workplace has no understanding of this concept.  We don’t come home at 5pm to a wife and kids sitting down for a hot meal the ‘Mrs’ cooked all afternoon. Our society has completely changed from this “Leave It To Beaver” idea of how our lives should look.

Still, I hear this courtesy issue come up many times when speaking with corporate talent acquisition pros. Well, we don’t want to make calls to people after 6pm because ‘they’ don’t like it.  I still call bullshit on this! People don’t like getting calls after 9pm, otherwise, we’ve been conditioned by telemarketers to expect calls up until 9pm.

People don’t like being bothered at home with stuff that doesn’t have value to them! If you call them about a great opportunity, they would rather take that call from home, than from work. This has nothing to do with courtesy.  If someone has decided to ‘unplug’ for the evening, they simply won’t pick up your call. You believing this is a courtesy issue, is an excuse not to be an effective recruiter!

So, what say you? Should there be laws on the books encouraging people to shut it down at night?  I think our new world has given us more flexibility to work in our own way. I personally like that I can work when I need to. Do I need to ‘unplug’ more, especially around my family? There is no doubt. But don’t take my flexibility away from me!