Category Archives: Compensation

HR Manager Position that Pays $364,000! Want it?

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I ran into an age old issue last week, which for some reason hadn’t come up for a very long time, but there he was staring me right in the face, and I still don’t get it!  Here’s the issue, should you post the salary (or your desired salary range based on experience, yadda, yadda…) for the position you are hiring, or not?

My guess is you clicked on this post because you wanted to find out which kind of HR Manager position pays $374K! Well, none, but you clicked, I win! But, while you’re here let’s take a look at the issue at play because it’s a polarizing issue amongst HR Pros.

I say, post the salary right out in front for God and everyone to see.  It will create most interest, which gives you a larger pool of candidates, which gives you better odds at filling your position with the type of talent that fits your organization.  It allows you to eliminate many candidates who won’t accept your job, because you’re too cheap. Sure you’ll get some people who see $98K, and they are making $45K, but they want to make $98K, so they send their resume, hoping.  But we’re smarter than that, plus, maybe Mr. $45K would be a great fit for me for another position, or in 3 more years when I have the same position open.

Posting the salary on a job post creates 137% more candidate traffic, than those posts which don’t list salary, or at least it feels that way to me when I do it that way!  I’m sure my friends at CareerBuilder can probably come up with some more precise figures on this exactly, but I’ll bet my made up math isn’t too far from correct.  It’s common sense. You walk by a store and see “help wanted”, and no one goes in. You walk by the store and you see “Help Wanted $12/hr”, and they have a line out the door asking for applications.

There are only 3 reasons you wouldn’t list the target salary for the position you are hiring for:

1. You know you’re paying below market, and you don’t want to the competition to know, because they’ll cherry pick your best people

2. You can’t find the talent you want, so you’ve increased the salary target, but you aren’t going to increase the salary of the poor suckers already working for you at the lower amount.

3. You don’t know what you’re doing!

Look, I get it, I’ve been there.  You don’t want to list salary because your current employees don’t understand that while the position title is the same, you are “really” looking for someone with more experience.  Or, we just don’t have the budget to raise up everyone already working for us, but we really need some additional talent. Or, we’ve always did it this way, and we want people who are “interested in us” and not money.

Well, let me break it to you gently, you’re an idiot.  People are interested in you because the value equation of what you are offering fits into their current lifestyle!  Otherwise, you could just move forward as a volunteer organization now couldn’t you?!

Do yourself a favor and don’t make recruiting harder than it has to be.  Just tell people what you have to offer. “We’re a great place to work, we have these benefits, they’ll cost you about this much, and we are willing to pay “$X” for this position”, if this is you, we want to speak to you. If it’s not, that’s great to, but check back because we might have something for you in the future.

Also, let me know if you find an HR Manager job that pays $374K. I know the perfect candidate!

Compensation 701 – A Master’s Course

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In terms of one part of your corporate Compensation Philosophy you can be a Pay Follower, a Pay Leader or Market Rate.

You never hear Pay Leaders complain about Turnover…

You always her Pay Followers complain about how Pay Leaders can actually pay that much…

Those who Pay at the Market always talk about how money isn’t that important…

HR and Compensation Pros will always talk about how it’s not about how much someone makes, it’s about the total compensation package.  Ironically, those Best Companies To Work for tend to have the highest total compensation packages and be Pay Leaders.  It’s a vicious cycle to get the best talent.

If your a pay follower you will never have the best talent.  If you pay at market, you will never have the best talent for long.  If you’re a Pay Leader you’ll have the ability to attract the best talent and the resources to hook them, but you still have to have the culture and leadership to keep the long term.

This is everything I know about compensation after 20 years of working in HR.

What have I learned?

I always try and work for Pay Leaders, otherwise you end up chasing your tail a lot within the HR world.

Consider yourself graduated.

Better Employee Relocation Design in 4 Easy Steps!

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I have to admit I’ve been one of those HR Pros who has had to design and develop relocation policies a few times in my career.  My philosophy on relocation has changed somewhat over the years. In my career, I’ve accepted positions 4 times in which I went through “professional” relocation for various HR positions in my career.  That fact has more impact on my philosophy of relocation than all other issues combined.

So, Fact #1 on getting a better relocation policy for your company: force those designing the policy to relocate, at least once.  If you haven’t relocated, you can’t design the policy, it’s that simple.

People who haven’t relocated to another state for a job have no idea what impact it has on your life.  It’s not the same as moving to a new house in another part of the city you live in.  For the most part, if you have a significant other and some kids thrown into the mix, it’s probably one of the most stressful events you’ll go through in life.  You get hired, Yeah!  You now have to go show up at the new job, without family, belongings, etc. You’re trying out the new position, culture, etc., all the while your spouse is home trying to run life, now without 50% of her support resources. That person, you, is now living in a hotel or furnished the apartment, eating out each meal, sitting around doing nothing, etc. You’ll only understand if you’ve been through this!

You need to find a new house, but not until the old house is sold, find the right schools, etc., etc.  Oh, and, by the way, you probably have some HR administrator going over your relocation expense reports like they’re a Zapruder Film. Oh, I’m sorry Mr. Sackett, you seem to have spent $1.32 too much on parking at the airport last week. Really!? I haven’t seen my wife and kids for two straight weeks, and we’re talking about $1.32?  DON’T UNDERESTIMATE FACT #1.

I know the talk, lately, about relocation, has been about how difficult it is to get people to relocate because of falling housing values.  Workforce Management’s article Recruiters Get Creative with Relocation in Sluggish Housing Market by Leah Shepherd speaks specifically to this dilemma. Clearly, it’s more expensive to get people to relocate, but I will argue that it isn’t more difficult.  HR folks are classic in confusing expensive and more difficult – finance people don’t have this same issue.  It’s not more difficult to get some to relocate, it’s just more expensive.

Here is where Fact #2 comes in: Never allow your Hiring Managers to get involved with Relocation.

Believe me, they will want to. It’s interesting how people who already work for a company tend to view relocation dollars spent, like the person receiving the relocation is getting a huge bonus!  All of sudden your hiring manager believes they are personally responsible for every penny that is spent.  They aren’t, and you the HR Pro understand this, and that’s why we keep our hiring managers out of the picture.  We need them to have a great first impression of the new person, so take the money out of the picture so they can focus on the fit and skills.

HR/Recruiting Pros are in the business of increasing talent of their organizations, and this fact has to be paramount when discussing the finances of corporate relocation.  This brings us to Fact #3 on how to make your relocation policy better: don’t budget relocation as a single annual amount, budget relocation by the percent of hires you anticipate in having to relocate.

Look, it’s way too easy for finance and executives to look at the HR budget and say, “Wow, $1.5M in relocation budgeted for 2010? You need to cut that by $500K.”  Great, I’ll do that, but tell me which people we won’t be hiring?

Recruiting Pros need to come to the table with market data supporting why relocation is necessary and at which roles and levels.  Cutting relocation isn’t a question about saving money; it’s a question about which talent is less important to the company, because that’s the real cost.  Also, budgeting by hires forces departments and divisions to answer to their talent management strategies, instead of throwing it on HR’s back. Hey, it’s August, and we’ve already spent our Relocation budget for the whole company!  No, Mr. Hiring Manager, it’s August, and we’ve spent your department’s relocation budget. You better talk to Mrs. CEO and tell her why you couldn’t manage your budget.

And lastly, Fact #4 – Don’t come to a Relocation Gunfight with a knife.  Know what the person brings to the table and be able to show the alternatives to hiring that person, but either way show what the impact will be to the organization no matter what decision is made.

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!

The Key to Finding Your Dream Job

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I’ve been given the opportunity to speak to high school and college graduating seniors. The one common question to both groups, I get frequently, is “how can I get my dream job?”  It’s a simple question, with about one million answers.  Which makes it a tough question to answer in front of a group.

I think I might have found the perfect answer for this question.  From current Penn State football coach, James Franklin, when asked at a recent conference how does a graduate assistant move up in the college football coaching ranks:

“It comes down to people and opportunities for growth. I always tell people to stay broke for as long as possible.  When you have a car payment and other things like that, it becomes a factor. Keeping money out of it allows you to chase your dreams longer.”

Stay broke as long as possible.

I remember back to when I first got out of college and was making $20,000 at my first job.  The reality was, I could have gone almost anywhere and made $20,000.  The money wasn’t the draw of the position, the opportunity was.  If it wasn’t for me, I could go and try something else. I had a crappy car and $400 per month apartment. I didn’t have life obligations that were going to stop me from chasing a dream.

Fast forward five years and now I have a new car, a new house and a new kid.  Chasing a dream would be much more difficult.

You hear it all the time, chasing dreams is for the young. Not because the young necessarily have better dreams or are better equipped at chasing dreams, it’s because the young can ‘afford’ to chase their dreams.  They, usually, have little holding them back, financially.  The older you get, the more responsibilities you have and the larger tax bracket you’re usually in.

Leaving a $20,000 job to chase my dream wasn’t going to be a problem. Leaving $100,000 job to chase my dream was going to be a problem.

No one really wants to tell you this in their ultra-motivational writings and speakings.  “Go chase your dream! Don’t let anything or anyone stop you!…Just be prepared to have nothing for a while!”  We never get to hear that last part.  Want to be an NFL Referee? It’s a great gig! You just have to put about 15-20 years in at being a referee at every other level where you make peanuts and have to work other jobs to make ends meet. Yes, you can get there.  No, you won’t get rich getting there.

You can definitely go out and work towards getting your dream job.   Being broke will help you with that.  It takes away the fear of failure and losing what you have.  If you have very little, losing it doesn’t seem as bad.  If you have a nice life, giving it all up, seems extremely hard.  Being broke, in a very ironic way, gives you more options, when it comes to dream jobs!

The Real HR and Talent Job Titles

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I have a feeling HR and Talent Acquisition would look a lot different if we were to use job titles that more clearly explained what those roles actually did.  Here are some of the ideas I had:

Current Job Title Actual Duties Job Title
Corporate Recruiter Post Jobs on Internal Career Site Pro
Agency Recruiter Mine Resume Database Pro
Corporate Sourcing Pro Search the Internet All Day Pro
Agency Sourcing Pro Search the Internet All Day and All Night Pro
Employee Relations Manager Professional Kleenex Hander-Outer
Employment Brand Manager Professional Work Environment Maker-Upper
Compensation Pro Market Ranger Maker-Upper
Benefits Pro Finder of Benefits I Like Pro
Diversity Manager Developer of United Colors of Benetton Culture
Human Resource Manager Employee Fire Fighter
Human Resource Director People Accountability Officer
Vice President of Human Resources Wizard of People Bull Shit
Chief Human Resource Officer Deepak Chopra of Corporate Leadership

 

What do you think?  Do you have better ones?  Share them in the comments!

5 Things That Scream You’re Not Getting Paid Enough

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I was reading an article recently, it was one of those “Best Places To Work” type of articles.  Since I run a company, I’m always looking out for good ideas on how to take care of your employees without spending a dime – unfortunately – “Best Places” companies that make these lists usually don’t give you these type 0f ideas!   What you get from “Best Places” articles are all the over the top crap – gourmet cat food for your in cube pet-mate, free liposuction for your spouse and discounted tattoo eyeliner coupons.  I would love for my company to be on the top of every single “Best Places” to work article – but we probably won’t.  I care too much about my employees to make that happen.

What?!?

Yes, you read that right – My greatest weakness is I care too much!

It costs an organization a ton of money to make a “Best Places” list – not in actually applying to make the list (oh yeah, they are chosen randomly – you have to apply – the Top 100 Greatest Places to Work isn’t really the Top 100 Greatest Places to Work – it was the Top of the companies that applied for the award Greatest Places to Work), but in doing all the silly crap they do, so they sound like a great place to work.  Many of the best places to work, will never be on a list, because they are spending their time, money and effort – on their employees!

Here are some things that “Best Places to Work” companies and You Not Getting Paid Enough have in common”

1. If you’re company has unlimited gourmet free breakfast, lunch and dinner provided – you’re not getting paid enough.  Cut that crap out and pay me $10K more per year – I’ll bring in my own Greek Yogurt and granola.

2. If your company pays to have your laundry done and your house clean – you’re not getting paid enough.

3. If your company is taking you on luxury vacations and dinners that cost more than your monthly home mortgage – you’re not getting paid enough.

4. If your company spend more on marketing themselves as a great place to work, than on your employee development – you’re not getting paid enough.

5. If your CEO flies to work on a daily or weekly basis – you’re not getting paid enough.

So, how do I show my employees that I care and that we have a great place to work?  I don’t waste money on things that ultimately become a negative when I need to take them away because we aren’t making the money for our shareholders.  All great places to work, eventually become average or crappy places to work – because sustaining luxury programs that you put in place when your doing well – become negatives to engagement when you tighten your boot straps.

Pay your people fairly. Meet their needs as adults. Treat them professionally and with respect.  That’s a great place to work.

T3 – WANTED Analytics

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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 T3 – send me a note.

I love when I get to demo a company and I have absolutely no idea who and what they are going into it!  That was me with WANTED Analytics. From the name I was guessing they were some sort of analytics HR company, like Visier, but I was pleasantly surprised that they were completely different.   The name throws you, but the reality is they are a Sourcing Strategy company, not an HR analytics play.

What WANTED gives you is a complete picture of your sourcing environment, which allows you to build and plan the best strategy to attract the talent you need.  What they deliver, in terms of data, charts and information is completely insane!

A common problem we face in Talent Acquisition is trying to build proper expectations when it comes to hiring with our hiring managers and our executive teams.  Many times, our workforce plan is critical to a successful, or unsuccessful, launch of major programs and products.  It’s critical that we provide a real-life view of the market conditions we are facing, and set realistic expectations with our hiring managers.  WANTED gives you really easy ways to do this, and the ‘arts and charts’ they provide make it easy to consume for those folks you are working with you are visual learners.

You can also use WANTED to do some really cool sourcing using their historical hiring analysis.  This basically gives you a quick look back in the market you’re searching of who was hiring just a few month, to year ago, for the same types of positions.  So?  This gives you an instant sourcing model on where to find your the talent you’ll be going after, and many times provides you with leads you never thought of.

What I really like about WANTED Analytics: 

1. The data set they pull from is stupid big. Over a billion job postings collected since 2005, and 10 Million per week in the US alone, gives you piece of mind that the market data you’re basing major sourcing decisions on is better than you’ll get anywhere else.  This amount of data allows you to get very specific in your sourcing.

2. They’re data source neutral.  Many data companies are pulling only from a handful of sources, and sometimes specifically leaving a source out for competitive reason. WANTED is Switzerland, they pull from everywhere!

3. ATS plugin which allows your recruiters and sources to use this within their native tools, and really gives them the ability to leverage WANTED on an entire never level.

4. Gives Talent Acquisition leadership a tool they really have never had in terms of ‘live’ market data, to assist them in building realistic talent, sourcing and workforce plans. Provides unmatched competitive compensation data, job descriptions and historical competitive hiring data. Global in reach, covering the world’s largest 22 economies.

5. Really pretty Heat Maps!  Let’s face it, hiring managers and executives love arts and charts, and heat maps, and WANTED knocks this out of the park.  Critical in delivering the message you want. Plus, from the sourcing perspective, none of these charts are ‘flat’, everything is click through. This was super power.

WANTED Heat Map

 

For those interested, WANTED Analytics isn’t super expensive, and you can definitely make it back on sourcing alone, although, the TA executives will love it for forecasting and planning.  1 user will run your around $12K, 10 users $24K.  For big shops, a tool like this easily pays for itself. SMB players will probably have to justify it more specifically.

Surge Pay

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My friend Laurie Ruettiman wrote about Uber’s Surge pricing recently.  You know, when Uber basically is super busy, so to advantage of this time, they up their prices to meet demand. Do you really want a ride?  Okay, that will be twice the amount as normal!  It’s basic economics of supply and demand.  No one really seems to mind all that much, people get it.  There are more people who need rides than their are rides available.  I’ve got more money than you, I really want a ride! Welcome to America.

Someone commented on her post about companies doing this with wages.  It was tongue in cheek, but I wonder…

Think of those times when ‘Surge Pay’ would really be welcomed!  Like the last time you were at the DMV and had to wait 3 hours to get your license renewed and you watched the state employees seem get slower and slower as the line grew longer and longer.

Surge Pay to the rescue!  Hey, Joe, step it up, bust through this line, and we’ll double your pay!  Do you think that would work?  I bet it would.  There are so many jobs that are like this.

When I was in college I worked at a movie theater. For about 45 minutes before a show started you worked your butt off! Then, you got a nice one hour and forty-five minute ‘break’ where you prepped for the next rush.  Do you know how many people skip the popcorn line at the movies because they don’t want to wait in that long line!?  A lot.  And it’s basically all margin! If you doubled the kids salary shoveling popcorn for those 45 minutes, you would probably get a lot of extra effort.

We get stuck in our ways.  We don’t do something like Surge Pay because we feel ‘it all works out in the end’.  We’ll just take the amount they should be paid and spread it out over 40 hours.  It all works out, Tim, relax!  But it doesn’t.  People in these types of jobs get use to working one speed, and it’s not on ‘high’, so productivity during rushes gets hurt.

It’s really an easy concept.  Find the hard, crappy part of jobs.  The ones you have a hard time feeling with productive workers, and do surge pay for those times you most need it.  Can’t find anyone to cover the Saturday evening shift, it’s now on surge pay! Who wants to make twice or triple what they normally do to work Saturday night!? You’ll find some folks for sure!

I know, I know, you call this ‘shift premium’, but guess what your 10% shift premium isn’t working! You want your second and third shift to be as good as first.  Surge pay is your answer!  You want to Timmy to sell more popcorn. Hello, Surge Pay!

Who knew Uber could solve your compensation issues!

 

Why Your Best Performers Make Horrible Leaders

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We all make this mistake, and we’ll continue to make this mistake.  It’s the same old story.  One of your employees performs really, really well, and because of their performance you move them out of the position they are in and put them in a leadership position. Then, they fail and become a lousy performer.

The best companies in the world make this mistake, and keep making it.  The worst companies make this mistake as well, and every other company in between. We can’t stop ourselves, it might be the largest single failure of business in the history of the world, and we can’t stop ourselves.

I like sports and it’s easy to make this analogy with sports.  Larry Bird, one of the all time NBA greats, couldn’t handle being a head coach.  But he was one of the top basketball players of all time.  He couldn’t take that those players he was coaching weren’t as good as him, couldn’t do the things he could do. He couldn’t understand this.  For him, it was easy…

Great performers are great because they do or have something no one else does.  It might be superior work ethic, it might be G*d given talents.  Regardless, they have perform better than everyone else.  Therein lies why they struggle to become great, or even marginal, leaders.  They can’t understand why you can’t do the same thing. I did it. What’s your problem!?

We take our best and brightest and we ‘reward’ them with management positions.  We believe this is what they really want.  In reality most don’t actually want this.  They really love what they are doing, shown by the tremendous performance they are giving you.  And, as an organization we want to reward that great performance, but we have structure and the only way we can really reward them, to give them more money, the big money, and the big title, is to promote them.

So, we promote them.

And we hope. We hope they’ll be one of the few who can make the transition and not be a total failure when it comes to leading other people, but rarely does it really happen.  Usually, it’s just a slow death of another great performer into the mediocrity of leadership.

A few organizations are beginning to just stop this.  They leave their great individual performers in position and just pay them like they would pay a leader. They give them a leader title. But what they don’t do, is give them people to manage!  They reward them for truly great performance, and put them in a position to keep performing great.

Your best, most talented person is worth more than your average leader.  But we struggle with this because it doesn’t fit nice and neat to a compensation pay band, or any job description we have in our HRMS system. We feel this undeniable desire to force people into positions we know they won’t do well in, because it makes us feel better when we pay them more.  Justification of value.  We value leadership more than great performance. That’s 1950 talking.  Stop listening.