Category Archives: Compensation

What Kind of Mentor Are You?

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I got asked to be a mentor for someone recently.  It’s not the first time I’ve been asked, but I found myself wondering what ‘Tim Sackett’ as a mentor should look like.  Maybe it’s where I’m at in my career, but I found myself wondering what is it that I could really give someone coming up in our industry.

I would assume anyone asking for a mentor doesn’t really want me to show them how to recruit.  They’ve probably got that down pretty well, at least the basics.  The advanced stuff is probably best taught by some folks much better than me (Glen Cathey, Jim Stroud, Amybeth Quinn,  Paul DeBettignies, etc.).

Maybe I could offer up some help on the employment branding/marketing side on HR and Talent Acquisition.  I’ve had to do that for the last 20 years, I probably know just enough to better than most, but not as good as folks like Laurie Ruettimann, William Tincup, Maren Hogan, Lance Haun and Matt Charney.

I’m just dangerous enough with HR Tech that I could probably help out in that area for sure.  I’ve bought and implemented systems and tools at every stop in my career.  I know the game, but I certainly don’t know it as well at Steve Boese, William Tincup (again), John Sumser, etc.

It could be my mentee could use me for just straight HR generalist knowledge base.  If I know anything, I know a little about almost anything in HR from my stops in my career.  While I love talent acquisition, I really consider myself more of an HR pro.  Probably not as good as Kris Dunn,  Dawn Burke, Robin Schooling, Jessica Miller-Merrell, etc.

Compensation and Benefits, maybe that’s should be my ticket?  Um, no, probably not.  I probably know the least about this area as a whole and Ann Bares is my go to person for all things compensation.

There’s got to be something I’m the best at, worthy of being a mentor.  What about employee engagement?  From small companies to organizations with tens of thousands I’ve had employee engagement as a major measurable, I could do some damage here.   But, again, not as well as someone like Paul Hebert.

Talent acquisition as a function might be something I’m most comfortable with.  In my career, I’ve been constantly pulled into TA no matter what organization I’ve been in.  It’s been the one constant in my career, start in HR, and end up in Talent Acquisition.   Moving an organization from old school, post and pray, to one that hunts for talent is right up my alley. I don’t really know anyone I would recommend over myself on this.

As a mentor I think the most valuable thing I can give someone is the network I’ve built over the years.  It’s something I discovered a long time ago. I’m probably not going to be the best at any one thing, but I can know people who are.  Having the ability to know you need to surround yourself with people who are better than you, especially in areas you’re weak, is the key to having success in any stop you have in your career.

As a mentor I’m probably going to find out what you’re bad at, then introduce you to people who are really good at those things.  You don’t need to the best at everything when you surround yourself with the people who are the best at everything!

Does Job Security Matter Anymore?

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Tower’s Watson released some data recently from a fairly large study of over 32,000 employees and 1,600 HR professionals which ranked critical factors of retaining your employees.   Here are the results:

Not surprising, money pretty much rules as always.  You want me to stay?  Pay Me!

What is surprising is how high up “Job Security” is on the employee side of the study.  For years Millennial experts have been telling us how these young kids don’t care about job security, they care about balance, importance of the work they do, challenging projects, etc.  Apparently, HR got the message, but the kids didn’t!

Studies like this always make me question ‘experts’.  Don’t you get the feeling that millennial experts are really just snake oil salesmen?  Never has a millennial expert said kids care about job security.  “Oh, these kids will work 10-20 jobs in their lifetime!  They are not looking for life time employment.”

So, employers believe job security isn’t important to employees (or probably more truthfully is the fact that employees have very little control over job security), so they push factors like Career Advancement and Challenging Work.  When in reality it’s very Maslow-esque easier than that.  Employees today, much like employees 100 years ago want basically the same thing:

1. Money

2. To know they have a job when they show up in the morning

3.  A chance to move up in the company they work in.

Fairly straightforward.  Fairly easy.  Fairly consistent over time.

The question is, can you deliver this as an employer?

The Search For The Smartest Employee

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Yo! I’m on vacation this week, don’t try and come rob my house, it’s a ‘staycation’!  I’m going to run some oldies but goodies so I can let my creative juices focus on Gin and Tonics. Here you go:

I couldn’t sleep the other night, probably because of the 14 Diet Dews I had throughout the day, but I had an Epiphany while staring at the ceiling in the dark.   I figured out a way for HR Pros to find the Smartest Employee in their Company!  It isn’t a complex algorithm or a set of cognitive assessment tests – it’s a simple matrix – but it’s very effective.  Now, you might be asking yourself:

 “Why do I need to find the smartest employee in our company?”

Which would be legitimate – unfortunately at 2 a.m. I didn’t ask myself that same question – I just thought I came up with some crazy Einstein type shit!  But, like most things I deal with, I can come up with a plausible argument to why it’s important to find the smartest people in your company.  My reasons:

1. Smart people have the potential to do smart things.  In an organization you want to make the right decisions – usually dumb people don’t.

2. Smart people usually know other smart people. In an organization you want to get rid of your dumb people, and hire more smart people.

3. Smart people know the fakers.  Organizations make people selection mistakes, it happens all the time, don’t be embarrassed, just don’t let one decision turn into another by keeping a mistake.  Smart people know your bad hiring mistakes, because they can read through the B.S.

Now for the Matrix!  Like I said it’s simple – which is also why it’s genious, because anyone can do it.  It goes a little something like this (hit it!) –

First Step: down one side of your matrix list your employees by level of responsibility. Most responsible at the top, down to the least responsible at the bottom.  Some of these you’ll just have to do the eyeball test on, and slot people as you see fit – don’t get to worked up over this – just get the most responsible up top, the least down low – the ones in the middle don’t matter anyway.

Second Step: Across the top of the matrix list total compensation of each person to the corresponding column.  For the most part you should end up with a sheet that shows the most responsible person in your organization, making the most money, and slowing but surely working your way down to the least responsible, least amount of money.

Third Step: The Smart Employee Search.  Here’s where the rubber hits the road!  Now, look at your matrix and find the highest paid employee, with the corresponding least amount of experience.  Boom! You just found your smartest employee.

I told you it was easy!  This person has figured out how to, relatively, make the most money by having virtually no responsibility.  Say what you want – but that is one smart person!  You need to pull that person in and find out how to get them more engaged into your daily operations.  Don’t take this as a joke – dumb people don’t figure this out – you just don’t fall into a highly paid, low or no responsibility job – you have to work to get there.  Don’t underestimate this person’s capabilities – because guess what – everyone else has!  That’s why your working your butt off until 6pm, and they’re out the door at 3pm going to their golf league – for about $4000 less than you make. They’re going home with no stress, while you’re on your 4th therapist – this year.   They love coming to work – you have a hard time pulling yourself out of bed.

I love these employees – I try to hang with them, learn from them – I feel like I’m an anthropologist learning about a forgotten species – they intrigue me so.  A word of caution though – don’t try and capture and change these employees – don’t try and be “smarter” than they are – and change their job or their scope or their pay.  Remember, they’re smarter than you – you’ll just frustrate yourself as they find another position – doing even less for more!

5 Retention Fixes – No Money Down

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I love SMB HR shops (SMB – small/medium sized businesses) for a number of reasons, but none more than for the simple fact, smaller sized HR shops are forced to be more creative because of less resources.

Creativity and SMB HR shops, remind me of my Grandma. Grandma grew up in the depression.  People who grew up in the depression have creativity skills to burn!  They had so little, but found ways to fill their life with so many things.  Lack of resources didn’t stop them, it unleashed their creativity!  Creativity is the most underrated HR skill out their for high performing HR shops.

Having worked in big HR shops the one thing that frustrated me most was sitting around in large meetings, trying to figure out how to “fix” retention – and listening to all the ways and how much money it was going to cost.  In the end I always came back to, if we just take all this money we are going to spend on the “fix” and just go out and hand to the employees, we probably won’t have a retention problem.  Large HR shop folks don’t like to hear that!  So, for you SMB HR shop folks out there, with little or no money to spend on increasing your retention, I came up with a few ideas you might want to try before you go spend all that budget money on programs with little return.

No Money Retention Fixes:

Fire the manager with the lowest retention.  You have the data, you know who is turning people over. Your organization needs to send a message that managers, not HR and not the CEO, are responsible for retaining talent.  This has to be the first step!  Your leaders have to have a clear understanding it is their job to retain their employees, and it’s your job to hold them accountable for it.

Measure it by Department, and post it publicly for all to see.  No, don’t just share it in meetings.  Post it up in the lobby, down the halls, everywhere!  Then just wait.  It will almost change overnight.  No one likes to be at the bottom of any list, and have everyone know it.

Fire your worst performers – then use that money to compensate your best employees more.  It’s a wash.  Your worst employees aren’t helping your productivity anyway, and your best will appreciate the increase, appreciate you noticing the bad people were taking away from the team, and they’ll give you more discretionary effort.  The result – same cost (actually less if you factor in benefits, taxes, etc.) more productivity, a little less headcount.

Have your senior leadership talk about retention publicly, constantly.   That which gets measured will get changed, that which gets measured and has the eye of senior leadership will get changed much quicker!

Institute a “Save Strategy” for employees who want to leave.  Save Strategy? If an employee puts in their notice, have them go meet with your CEO and explain to her why they are leaving. You’ll be amazed at the results and how many people will change their minds.  Some people just want to know you care, and sitting down for some one-on-one with the CEO, shows that a whole bunch. Plus, it’s much cheaper than finding their replacement!

 

Would You Pay A Candidate To Interview?

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Last week I got my ass handed to me for daring to consider that those who interview with a company, should pay for interview feedback.  Not just normal interview feedback, like thanks, but no thanks, but something really good and developmental.  Most people think that idea is bad.  Interview feedback should be free.  It’s not that I really want to charge people who interview a fee to get feedback, it’s just I think we could do so much better in terms of candidate experience, but we have to get out of our current mindset to shake things up a bit.

This all leads me to the next idea (hat tip to Orrin Konheim @okonhOwp) what if companies paid interviewees for their time?

Cool, right!?

We’ve built this entire industry on shared value.  Organizations have jobs, candidates want jobs, let’s all do this for free.  What happens when the equation isn’t equal?  What if candidates didn’t want your jobs?  Could you get more people to come out an interview if you paid them?  How much would it be worth?  It’s a really cool concept to play around with, if we can get out of our box for a bit.

Let’s say you’re having a really, really hard time getting Software Developer candidates to even consider your jobs and your organization.  It’s a super tough market, and you just don’t have a sexy brand.  You also don’t have the time to build a sexy brand, you need the talent now!  How much would it take to entice great candidates to give you an hour?  $100? $500? $1,000?  What if I told you I could have your CIO interviewing 5 top Software Developers tomorrow for 5 hours for $5,000?  Would you do it?

I hear the backlash of questions and concerns already forming in your head!

– People would just take the money, but not really want the job!

– How would you know these people were serious?

– Why would you pay to have someone interview when others will for free?

– Did you get hit on your head as a child?

– This might be the dumbest idea since your idea last week.

When we think about really having a great candidate experience, shouldn’t compensation be a apart of the conversation.  For most interviews you’re asking someone to take time off work, losing salary, time off, putting themselves at risk of their employer finding out, etc.  At the very least, you would think that we might offer up some kind of compensation for their time.  I’m not talking about interview expenses, but real cold hard cash, we appreciate your time and value it!

If you started paying candidates to interview, do you think you would get and have better or worse interviews?

When you put value to something, i.e., an interview, people tend to treat it as such.  Now that interview that they might go, might not go, becomes something they have to prepare for, because, well, someone is paying me to do this.  To interview.  I’m guessing if you paid your candidates to interview, you would get a higher level of candidate, and have a higher level of success in hiring.  It’s just a theory, wish I had the recruiting budget to test it out!

Apparently, It Is All About The Money!

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To have highly engaged employees who must do what?

Come on. Come on.  What have you been told for the last 10 or 20 years?

I’ll give you the synopsis:

1. Recognize solid performance

2. Provide challenging and meaningful work

3. Give frequent feedback

4. Give employees a voice in decision making

5. Flexibility

Apparently, that’s all bull shit!  From the folks who teach other companies how to become Great Places To Work, Quantum Workplace, released a study last week that show from your most engaged employee, to your least engaged employee, they really only care about one kind of recognition — MONEY!  Here’s the chart:

engagement pic

Fascinating research, check out their white paper, it’s one of the better ones I’ve read in the past five years!

Also, it looks like your personalized pleather portfolios aren’t the bang for the buck you hoped for either!   That’s alright, neither is the spin you’ve been fed the past 20 years about people getting super psyched for additional responsibility, or the annual holiday party or summer family picnic.  All the crap blows as well.  You know what doesn’t blow?  MONEY! Yeah!  So, I’m really, really the best employee, with great performance?  Great! SHOW ME THE MONEY!

Also, you leaders who think your team just wants some words of praise, motivation and encouragement?  No they don’t.  They want you to hand out $100 bills, and shut your stupid mouth!

So, why have you been told a great big lie the last 20 plus years?

Advising leadership that all they have to do is hand out more money doesn’t really sell well!  Also, most companies are horrible at pay for performance.  They are unwilling to truly pay for great performance, and kick bad performers in the teeth with nothing.  We want to reward greatness with 5% and show those bad performers how serious we are by giving them a 1% increase! Take that bad performers!

What do you think gang?  What’s is your most important form of recognition?  Are you sure?  Or, are you just telling yourself that lie?

 

 

Should You Know Your Bosses Salary?

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It’s an age-old question.  Should organizations make their salary information public in-house amongst the employees?  In a era of transparency, it’s really the one thing most people still disagree on.  The higher up the chain you go, unless your in a publicly traded company, than it’s public anyway, the less likely you’re willing to want this data to be public within your organization.  The lower you are in an organization, the more you want this information.

Why?

At its core this notion of wanting to know the salary information of those around you is all about trust.  It really speaks to the human condition, and it’s quite ironic!  The higher you go up in an organization, the less you trust those lower than you.  The lower you are, the more you trust those above you are making the right decisions.  You could argue this. Sure many people at low levels don’t ‘trust’ management.  Yet, they still show up to work each day, and grind it out for $14.23/hr.  Those at the top are making 6,7,8 figure incomes, and jump around from position to position.  Who is more trusting?

Whole Foods company shares salaries of all of their employees within their walls. You can find out the salary of anyone! From Business Insider:

Whole Foods co-CEO John Mackey introduced the policy in 1986, just six years after he co-founded the company. In the book, he explains that his initial goal was to help employees understand why some people were paid more than others. If workers understood what types of performance and achievement earned certain people more money, he figured, perhaps they would be more motivated and successful, too. 

“I’m challenged on salaries all the time,” Mackey explained. “‘How come you are paying this regional president this much, and I’m only making this much?’ I have to say, ‘because that person is more valuable. If you accomplish what this person has accomplished, I’ll pay you that, too.'”

Beyond making compensation data available to all employees, Whole Foods also has its managers post their store’s sales data each day and regional sales data each week. Once a month, Whole Foods sends each store a detailed report on profitability and sales at each of the chain’s locations. In fact, in the late 1990s the widespread availability of so much detailed financial data led the SEC to classify all of the company’s 6,500 employees as “insiders,” according to a 1996 story by Fast Company.

“Oh, Tim, but that only works at a great company like Whole Foods!”  I hear you saying!
Yeah, you’re probably right.  It takes a strong, positive culture to handle this type of information being out in the open.  It takes extremely good leadership to handle the challenges coming in from average and weak performers believing they should get what someone else is getting.  It takes a great Talent Acquisition team to hire the right people who have the maturity to work in an organization that has this much trust in their employees to handle such delicate information.   It takes co-workers trusting one another, that each one is adding value to the corporation, and respecting the value each brings.
So, should you be able to know your bosses salary?  Probably not.

Attention Employees: Get Healthy, Or You’re Fired.

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(I’m on vacation, I originally posted this on Fistful of Talent in August of 2009 -way before Obamacare, but still rings true!)

I love companies that have had enough and aren’t going to take it anymore (Network clip). I also love listening to the workers, of said company, complain about how their company is “being intrusive” because they are being “forced” to take care of themselves.  The Wall Street Journal has an article entitled When All Else Fails: Forcing Workers Into Healthy Habits that uncovers the latest employer, AmeriGas Propane Inc., which gave its employees an ultimatum: get their medical checkups or lose their health insurance.  Isn’t that wonderful!?  Here is an employer who loves its people so much, they want to make sure they are going to be healthy and actually survive to collect their paycheck. Talk about employee engagement.

So, what is wrong with this?  Well, let’s just hear from one skeptical AmeriGas employee:

“Dennis Price Sr., a 48-year-old propane-truck driver in the company’s Warrenton, Va., office, says he was “a little shocked” by the idea at first. “I thought it was an invasion of our privacy,” he says. Mr. Price had never gotten his cholesterol checked, and generally avoided doctors.”

Sounds like he’s taking his god-given-all-American right to be unhealthy – nothing wrong yet. What say the unions?

“Labor officials say they object to the idea of mandated health tests. “This is a personal health matter,” says Gerry Shea, assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO. “To bring it into the workplace and tie it to benefits is inappropriate. It’s like Big Brother.”

Sounds like more god-given, all-American wisdom – boy I can smell the apple pie cookin’! What about management?

“Despite these efforts, Mr. Katz (VP of HR) and benefits director Carol Guinan found themselves in April 2007 chewing over some unpalatable numbers. Besides annual health-expense increases of 10% or more, the company, which self-insures its health plan, had paid more than two dozen insurance claims in the previous year for amounts greater than $100,000. Its workers had high rates of diabetes and heart disease.

 

The program, dubbed Operation Save-A-Life, was unveiled in August 2007 and took effect the following January. Each worker received a DVD at home to explain the effort and discuss cost and health statistics. One fact: AmeriGas employees younger than 60 were dying of natural causes at nearly three times the expected rate for that age group based on actuarial data.

 

AmeriGas estimates that more than 90% of its workers have gotten the required exams. Use of cholesterol drugs rose 13.6% in 2008 from a year earlier. For diabetes drugs, the increase was 7.7%, and for asthma medications and blood-pressure medicines, it was 7.4% and 2.5%, respectively.”

Damn management – they always have more to say and have all those fancy numbers!

The article, also, points out two specific examples of the screens catching one employee’s breast cancer, self-admittedly, earlier then she ever would have caught it herself. Also, the screens caught another employee who had liver disease and was able to reverse the effects by early detection.

I know there is a gray area here where companies can go overboard, but in today’s competitive world for talent, you can’t tell me that most companies aren’t trying to do the right thing.  Is making your employees go get a health screen a bad thing?  Probably not. Is firing them because they have high cholesterol after the screen a bad thing? Depends on their performance…  Just kidding… the fact of the matter is we have a broken healthcare system and most employers have to do something to reduce costs. So they can either interview under the precursor “does this person look young and healthy”, or we can allow them some slack to help make their own workforce a bit more healthy.

3 Reasons Women Make Less Money Than Men

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

How Much Pregnancy Leave Is Too Much?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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