Category Archives: Communication

T3 – @OrgVue #HRTech

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T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

Today on T3 I get the pleasure of reviewing OrgVue a London based tech firm and management consultancy, that built one of the most awesome HR specific Business Intelligence tools I’ve ever seen!  OrgVue is an integrated software platform bringing Org Design, HR Analytics and WOrgVue logoorkforce Planning together in a single product. Gartner named them the ‘Cool’ product of 2014, and ‘Cool’ is an understatement!

Think about this way, you have many systems in your organization that have employee data, and even in a suite environment, rarely does everything come together nicely.  It’s messy. OrgVue takes all this messy data and brings back to you clean answers.  One thing every HR shop gets tasked to do is developing Org Charts. OrgVue takes Org Charts into the next millenium.  It does, intuitively, what we always wished Org Charts could do. Click on a person and gives you all their data, performance, roles they’ve been, etc.

From a workforce planning perspective it does real-time workforce modeling.  Lose your head of design? What impact will that have downstream? OrgVue can show you in a few clicks. Want to re-org? OrgVue can show you cost savings of the new org before you even make the move through it’s modeling tool.  OrgVue takes the HR Business Partner model to a whole new level.

5 Things I Really Like About OrgVue: 

1. OrgVue gives an organization one source of true data maintained through seamless integration of multiple systems and locations. Want to compare hiring analytics between Michigan and Texas, just a few clicks. North America and Europe, a few more clicks. It’s crazy powerful!

2. OrgVue constantly is intaking and cleaning data in real-time.  This means the charts and reports you pass along to decision makers are accurate and not dated.

3. So many of our executives are visual learners. OrgVue understands this and brings your HR data to life visually. Also, executives are known for asking for ‘one-more-thing’, “Can I just see this data sliced a bit differently”. It’s the vain of HR pros around the world. Not with OrgVue.

4. The organizational modeling and scenario planning tool is unlike anything I’ve seen from any other vendor, ever. In fact, I’ll say that OrgVue probably could take the jobs of some highly paid consultants that you pay to do this now!

5. Everything you create and see in OrgVue is turned easily with a click into Excel, PowerPoint and PDFs.  Why fight it?! Big orgs want their paper, spreadsheets and slides, so give it to them, when they need it.

I say this too often, but I was completely blown away by this product.  I would invest in this company, that’s how blown away I was!

But, let me be clear, OrgVue is for a sophisticated HR buyer.  This is a big shop, Fortune 1000 type product.  Regardless, I would encourage every HR executive you must demo this product. Even if you aren’t in the market, treat this a personal development, the OrgVue folks will teach you some stuff on this demo.  You will never look at your data the same way again!

Double Your Chances for Promotion in Two Easy Steps

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I had a kid reach out to me last week and ask how he could get promoted at his current company.  I call him a kid, because he was probably 20 years younger than I, so I’ve reached that point in my life I can start calling adult professionals, ‘kids’.

Laurie Ruettimann and I had this talk just a couple weeks ago, right after she turned 40. I told her, “I’ve finally reached that point in my life where I have 20 years of solid work experience, but I feel bad about telling people that number!” 20 years of experience sounds old!  I remember when I had five years of work experience and I would try and stretch it to 7 or 8 years of experience by adding in college jobs!

Now, I have the legit experience and I want to make it sound like it’s ten years!

So, this kid wants to get promoted.  He’s got just under 5 years of experience and he’s itching for more.  We’ve all been there. Here’s what I told him:

“You need to do two things in this order: 

1st – Put together a self-development plan with activities and goals and a timeline. Show that you’re working on your ‘opportunity’ areas. (Opportunity areas are weaknesses for the GenXers reading this) 

2nd – You need to make your direct supervisor keenly aware of this plan, and (the most important part) you need to ask that supervisor for help in accomplishing your plan.  Have very specific things your boss can do to help you complete your development plan.” 

We then talked about what some of those things would look like based on what he told me he thought his ‘opportunity’ areas were.

Bosses love to promote people they believe they’ve helped and mentored.  It’s a great ego stroke, and they get bonus points from the organization because they are ‘developing’ talent.  Bosses don’t get credit for hiring great talent.  They get credit for promoting great talent.

It’s Organizational Behavior 101 at it’s finest.

It doesn’t have to be very sophisticated.  Bosses like to promote people that they believe are engaged in their job and the company.  By you taking the initiative to have your own development plan, and not wait for them to offer it up to you, and by you asking them for help, you just doubled your chances of getting promoted.

There are a lot of moving factors in anything like this, but if you are working for someone who is respected in the organization, and you have an above average performance as compared to others in your work group, this will almost always play out well for you.

Want to get promoted?  It only takes two steps.

First Ever Michigan Corporate Recruiters Conference!

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I’m super excited to announce I am co-organizing the first ever Michigan Recruiters Conference to be held on March 13th in Lansing, MI starting at 9am!

Jim D’Amico, Director of Talent Acquisition at Spectrum Health, and I have been talking about doing this for over a year and late in 2014 we finally just said, “Screw it! Let’s pick a date and force ourselves to get his puppy off the ground!”  And we did it!  With a lot of help from Jim’s team at Spectrum, my team at HRU, our techy guy Matt Wagmann and our friends at the Accident Fund corporation!

Register at www.MichiganRecruits.com

Our Goal for the Michigan Recruiters Conference:

We want an event similar to an ERE, but local. Great recruiting and talent acquisition content, without having to pay thousands of dollars to attend.  Our fee is $49! We want to raise the level of recruiting in the state of Michigan.  We want to offer this in an environment where the corporate Talent Acquisition folks don’t feel like it’s a meat market (i.e., no staffing agencies).

We want to bring in national speakers, corporate talent acquisition best practices and next-gen practices that aren’t even being used by the masses. We want to network and share our successes, and find ways that corporate talent acquisition pros can better leverage each other and their knowledge. We plan on having two Michigan Recruiters Conferences per year, one in the Spring and one in the Fall.

We are not doing this for profit. The sponsors (CareerBuilder is our first, but we would love more!) and fees are only to cover costs of running a great conference like this. Sounds like we want to be a bunch of Hippies!  I hope so, this is going to be great!

The format of the Conference: 

Unlike normal HR conferences we aren’t looking to do 1 hour and 15 minute sessions. Who the hell even came up with that length of time!? It’s way too long, and just encourages rambling. We are Recruiters, we don’t have time to ramble!  Our sessions will be 30 minutes, 45 minutes and 1 hour, depending on the content and presenter.  A professional national speaker can easily hold the stage for an hour.  Your local sourcing pro who has some great ideas to share, might only need thirty minutes!

We will strive to have you leave each conference with great ideas you can use immediately, ideas that will challenge what you do long term, and increase your network and tribe of other talent acquisition pros you can lean on.

It won’t be a full day.  6 hours or so. Get in, get out, go make placements.

We’ll attempt to always hold these at host corporations who are willing to have this progressive knowledge come into their walls.  Thank you Accident Fund Corporate, and Darcy Kerr, for hosting this first conference in Lansing, MI!

Why no staffing agencies? 

I’ve already gotten a ton of crap on this. “Tim, aren’t you a staffing agency?” “Tim don’t you rail against being treated as a second class citizen by LinkedIn?” “Tim this is hypocritical!”

Here’s the deal.  I speak about a dozen times a year, nationally, to HR and Talent Acquisition pros, and never once have I been accused of trying to sell my services. I’m not worried about me, but I know my industry.  I’ve already had agency folks try and sneak their way into the conference like a Catfish!  To make the Michigan Recruiters Conference a success we need corporate talent acquisition pros and leaders to see the value of a conference like this. If their first experience is some cheese-ball from RecruitTech coming on to them in the first fifteen minutes, that experience is ruined.   So, Jim and I decided, no agencies, yet.

We do see a time down the road, once the conference is established, where we will be able to invite in our agency brethren.  Minnesota started in a similar way.  Even at that point, we’ll have hard rules around selling at this conference.  It’s designed to be developmental. That’s the conference we want.

Sometimes to make something great, you rub a few folks the wrong way.  Agency folks are resilient, to say the least, I know they’ll bounce back. I look forward to the day I can invite them as well.

7 Things You Should Never Say When Asking for a Raise!

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There are certain conversations in our work lives that cause people the most anxiety and having to go in and ask for money is, on my list, the next most anxious work conversation most people will face.  I can think of many times that I wanted more money, thought I was deserving to get more money, and heck even our good old Comp people said the market should be paying me more money, and still, it is a difficult conversation to have with my superior (at least for me).

Like many people, I think I do a good job, give my best effort, produce great results, and after all that, should I really need to ask? Shouldn’t my boss ‘get it’ and just want to write me a blank check?!

With all this in mind, most people will screw this conversation up by saying things they really want to say, but shouldn’t, if they’re trying to get a raise.  Here are the top things you probably shouldn’t say when asking for a raise:

1. “If you pay 10% more, I will really put in some extra effort!” – So what you’re saying is you’re not putting in extra effort now…

2. “I looked in our HRIS system and I know Sheila on the 5th floor is making $5000 more than I am – and she’s an idiot!” – Not the best strategy to look at others’ private comp information, even if you have access, then call them an idiot – at least in my experience…

3. “If you don’t pay me more money, I’ll be forced to find another job that will pay me what I worth” – Be careful, I’ve tried this one, and they might call your bluff!

4. “I’ve done the math and if you fire Mike, I can do his job and mine, you save $50K, after giving me $25K of his $75K salary” – This actually might be a really good idea, But Mike might be the last one standing with the $25K raise, not you!

5. “I really don’t understand how you can be worth $50K more than me, I do all your work – and deserve more money” – Bosses just love to hear they are overpaid, don’t do anything, and you can do their job – NOT!

6. “I saved the company $1 million in reducing recruiting fees, by implementing a social media strategy successfully, I should at least get a fraction of those savings” – Why, yes you should – if you were in sales, but you’re in HR, and this was part of your job description. Sorry for the wakeup call – all employees aren’t treated equally – put on a helmet.

7. “I know times are tough, so I was thinking instead of more money you could give me an extra week’s vacation or pay for my health insurance or something else like that.” – Okay, Einstein, stop thinking – it’s all money. Vacation, health insurance, paid parking, lunch money – it all hits the bottom line on the income statement. You just showed how expendable you really are.

I’ve learned over the years, through trial and error (okay, mostly error) that many, if not all, of the above statements just don’t seem to have the impact that I was hoping for with my supervisor.  I have seen peers, who performed well, were loyal, dedicated to doing their best for themselves, their co-workers and the company, that got the raise they wanted by just being patient.

Supervisors are as uncomfortable as you are to have the compensation conversation. If you are as good as you profess to be, then they really do want to give you more, but probably can’t due to budget, market, others performing even better than you, etc.   It may be the hardest thing to do, but being patient, usually works out the best of all!

When Should You Suspend an Employee?

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This week it was announced that the NFL would suspend Cleveland Brown’s wide receiver, Josh Gordon, for one year for violating its substance abuse policy. This wasn’t Gordon’s first offense, in fact he has been on under discipline by the league this full season for prior violations.  He has previously gotten a DWI and tested positive for marijuana use, which cost him playing the first ten games of this past season. He also missed the last regular season game for breaking team rules.

This most recent offense came after the teams final game of the season on the plane ride home, he had four alcoholic drinks with his teammates. He was tested upon landing, and that broke his discipline of not drinking until the season was over.  His season was over, but the NFL season still had the playoffs.  He claims, he thought his discipline only ran until his season was over. The NFL didn’t budge and suspended him for at least one full year.

Josh Gordon has had a history of trouble, he failed three drug tests in college. He had a trouble and hard childhood, raised in near poverty and having to fight against the constant influence of bad things you come in contact with growing up in bad neighborhoods.  He’s highly talented.

What do you think?  Did the NFL go too far in their discipline? Would you have done the same thing in your work environment?

Here’s my feelings:

1. I don’t suspend this kid. I get him highly supervised treatment, that includes still being apart of football, but not playing in games. Take away the big money, give him enough to live on, but enforce treatment, practice, increased testing, all for that same year.  You don’t help Josh Gordon by telling him to go away for a year.

2. Does he deserve this? No.  But, from a business perspective, it is in my best interest to fix him and use his talent.  I would also lock him into a long term deal that is advantageous to my organization and allows me out without payment.  I turn this into a win-win for my organization. I’ll help get you better, but I need something in return. Welcome to capitalism.

3. At a certain point, your talent will not outweigh my need to protect my organization. This means you can’t keep screwing up and believe we are going to keep trying to help you.  No matter how talented you are. This means that less talented people in my organization would not get the same treatment.

Most HR people will not be comfortable with #3. The fact is, I’ll jump through more hoops to help my best salesperson than I will for an entry level salesperson.  My investment is different. thus my threshold of help is different.

I suspend someone in my organization when their value to my organization is no longer greater than the cost to my organization. Until that point, I work with them to correct whatever actions we need to correct. I don’t look for an equal equation.  I’m not in the business of equal. I’m in the business of generating greater value.  My employees have to add value.

 

 

HR and Snow Days

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Based upon the ‘historic’ snow storm on the east coast this past week, I pulled one from the archives on my feelings about how HR should handle snow days. Enjoy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talent Isn’t Fair

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We have a big problem with this concept in HR.

We want everything to be fair. At the core of what we do, though, is the most unfair dilemma that we can do nothing about. Our people come to us with talent.  It is never equal.  We can try to help our employees leverage the talents they have, but in the end it’s their talent, their desire.

I work my butt off, but Mary makes more sales than me, and she doesn’t put in half the effort I do!  Yep, she has more talent.

I am loyal to this company, and Bill hates this place, but he got promoted! Yep, he has more talent.

I just can’t seem to find a solution to our problem, then Sue finds it after working on it for ten minutes. Talent.

Everything we do in HR and Talent Acquisition comes down to us managing the inequalities of talent in our organizations.

Turns out, talent isn’t fair.

 

 

How Much Will Your Raise Be in 2015?

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Some great data coming out this morning from Glassdoor on what your employees are expecting in 2015. It’s always nice to know what someone is expecting beforehand, otherwise things tend get awkward.  It’s like that time you showed up at your girlfriends house in college right before the holidays and she bought you a $50 Tommy Hilfiger rugby shirt and you got her a $4 box of chocolates shaped like Santa. That level of awkward.

In 2015 your employees are expecting a raise. According to Glassdoor’s Employee Confidence Survey they are expecting:

– Between 3-5%.

Not bad.  Most companies probably expected this.  2015 will be a good year for many companies, so the 3-5% annual increase is something that will be doable.

Here’s what you might not expect:

– 35% of your employees will look for a new job, if they don’t get the pay raise their expecting.

This can be a major issue, individually.  This is why you need to manage expectations early. If your top performer is expecting 10%, and you have 5% in your back pocket, this will be a negative increase.  I hate giving negative increases.  I feel bad. The employee feels bad. I would rather almost not give the increase at all.

Another expectation that came out of the survey is that both men and women believe women get paid less. Not a huge surprise, but why let that belief live in your environment if it is not true?  I’m a big proponent of sharing pay equality by department or division within an organization, if the data is favorable to you.  I don’t want employees believing we have equity issues, when we don’t.  Make it a celebration that you’re not like all the rest.  If you are like all the rest, fix it!

Lastly, all these surveys come with a bit of scare tactic.  This one is around turnover! Glassdoor’s employee confidence survey found:

– 48% of your employees are confident they can find another job if they need to. (highest in 6 years)

– 13% fear they will be laid off. (lowest in 6 years)

What does this mean to you?  Nothing, if you’re a good employer!  It could mean a big headache if you’re a bad company to work for.  People have options.  Our reality is most employees still won’t leave, if you’re a decent company. That’s just life.  People hate change.

It does mean that you probably have to wrangle in some of your leaders who have been getting a little to command and control over the past 5-8 years. People don’t leave companies, people leave horrible bosses that are assholes.  You know which ones you need to fix. Fix them, or fire them, you can’t afford to have bad leadership in an employee driven marketplace.

What do you want to hear?

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I think I might be on the cusp of the next great employee feedback mechanism for leadership.  I’ve been thinking about this concept for a long while. You see, for years I’ve had the opportunity to test out my various theories on employee feedback.  I’ve watched my own feedback theories change over the years, but they always were grounded in people truly want feedback about their performance.

That is mostly true.  People do want feedback about their performance.

Here is what also is true:

1. People want feedback about what they’ve done well.

2. People don’t want critical feedback. Someone asking you for critical feedback is really just testing you to see if you are either:

 1. Upset with them for how bad they did

2. Just seeing if you have the guts to them how bad they did

3. People really just want you to tell everyone else how great you think they are.

I think a better, more effective, way of delivering feedback to employees should start with this one question:

“What do you want to hear about your performance?”

At this point the employee will say stuff like, “I just want to hear how well I did”, or “Tell me that you appreciated my work”, or “Tell me I’m the best employee you have”.  This will then drive the conversation appropriately and keep everyone fully engaged.  “Alright, Timmy, you are doing really well. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you do. You are the best employee I have.”

Timmy leaves feeling great and satisfied.  You don’t have to deal with someone losing their mind about how they are really performing. Everyone goes back to work with minimal disruption.

Yeah, I know what you really wanted to say was, “Timmy, you can do better. While I appreciate the work you do, I wish you would actually do more of it. You are like most employees hear, nothing special, but you could be.”

How does that conversation end?  Timmy is pissed. He creates a scene.  He usually ends up disrupting the work environment and kills productivity. He might even go out and find another job with someone else.

Is that what you wanted? Probably not.

So, make it easier on yourself.  Just remember to start every feedback conversation out with that one question: What do you want to hear?  They’ll tell you. They’ll be happier. You’ll be happier. Everyone can get back to work.

Feedback is is the leadership sucker test.  No one really wants to hear what you think about them.

The Key Trait of Great Hires

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For twenty years, I’ve been hiring and firing people. I’ve been lucky enough to have some great performers, a bunch of good performers and an also a few crappy performers. It seems like every time I turn; someone has an answer for me on how to hire better. For years I have given the advice if all else fails, hire smart people. It’s not a bad strategy. For the most part, if you hire the smartest ones of the bunch, you’ll have more good performers, than bad performers. I’m talking pure intelligence, not necessarily book smarts.

But, just hiring smart people still isn’t perfect. I want to hire good, or great, people every single time. How do you do that? That’s the million dollar question.

To me there is one trait we don’t focus enough on, across all industries. Optimism.

Your ability to look at the situation and come up with positive ways to handle it. Think about your best employees, almost always there is a level of optimism they have that your lower performers don’t.

I can’t think of one great employee I’ve ever worked with that didn’t have a level of optimism that was at least greater than the norm. They might be optimistic about their future, about the companies future, about life in general. The key was they had optimism.

Optimistic people find ways to succeed because they truly believe they will succeed. Pessimistic people find ways to fail, since they believe they are bound to fail. This hiring thing can be difficult. Don’t make it more difficult by hiring people who are not optimistic about your company and the opportunity you have for them. Ask questions in the interview that get to their core belief around optimism:

– Tell me about something you’re truly optimistic about in life? (Pessimistic people have a hard time answering this. Optimistic people will answer quickly and with passion.)

– Tell me about a time something you were responsible for went really bad. How did you deal with it?

– The company has you working on a very important project and then decides to cancel it. How would you respond?

Surrounding yourself with optimistic people drives a better culture, better teams, it’s uplifting to your leadership style. I want smart people, but I truly want smart people who are optimistic about life. Those people change the world for the better, and I think they’ll do the same for my business.