Category Archives: Culture

Is not being anonymous on Glassdoor really a bad thing?

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If you didn’t see it this week Glassdoor got some bad news from the U.S. Court of Appeals:

Glassdoor, an online job-rating site, must unmask anonymous users who posted damaging reviews about a company under investigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ruled Wednesday.

A federal grand jury in Arizona served the Mill Valley company with a subpoena in March, demanding the names and IP addresses of reviewers who wrote on the site that a Department of Veterans Affairs contractor was committing fraud.

 The unnamed company, which administers two veterans health care programs, is under investigation by the federal government for “alleged fraud and abuse.” In court documents, the federal government maintained that there is no other way for it to identify the employees who claim the company was committing the fraud.

Glassdoor, which allows people to post anonymous comments about what it’s like to work at a company, said that unmasking the reviewers would violate its users’ First Amendment rights. But in the Wednesday decision, the court said Glassdoor reviewers have a “limited right to speak anonymously.”

Turns out you can’t go online and destroy someone’s reputation without being held accountable! That’s a very good thing for employers who have for years argued that employees, past employees and people who have never worked there but might have ulterior motives to bash a company online, shouldn’t be allowed to do and say whatever they want without recourse.

You can’t run into a theater and yell ‘fire’! You can’t go online and say a company is committing fraud and not expect to back up those allegations and stand behind them.

My question: Why are we even listening to anonymous feedback, to begin with?

If you had your annual performance review and it was given to you, but you had no idea who it was coming from, would you really listen? “Hey, Tim, we just let anyone in the company make some comments about your performance, hope you like it!” You would totally discredit anything that was said you didn’t agree with because you have no idea where it’s coming from.

Employee reputation sites, like Glassdoor, are basically doing the same thing. Now, if someone put their name and title behind those comments, we all would actually listen to those words with a much more credible ear. Would less people leave comments if they knew it wouldn’t be anonymous? Yes. Would it make the feedback less valuable? No.

I’m a big fan of believing in what someone says when they put their name and personal reputation to the words they want to share. I’m much less of a fan when someone wants to hide behind being anonymous to give me that same feedback.

Okay, I get it, people are fearful of retribution if they say something negative. Can you imagine how that would look if you said something negative and your organization fired you?! That would be even a bigger slam to the organization’s reputation.

One issue I see with anonymous reputations sites moving forward is the whole Google for Jobs schema. GFJ has said that a company’s reputation matters, so they will now include your ‘reputation’ into their algorithm in ranking your jobs. Which means anonymous feedback is going to impact how well your jobs perform on Google’s search results. That sucks!

Do you really want some ex-employee who sucked and got fired, impacting your Google for Jobs search results!? Heck no! It makes no sense that any organization thinks that is a good thing. I say take away anonymity on reputation sites and then hold me accountable to my reputation. Right now, the current system is too flawed in allowing misinformation to be public.

So, I know I’m taking a minority stance on this issue, but tell me why you believe employer reputation sites should allow anonymous reviews?

She Said/He Said is Becoming Even More Problematic for HR!

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“I was harassed!”, said an employee.

What do you do?

The media would have everyone believe that we support this statement and believe this person 100%. It’s very in vogue right now to support claims of harassment 100% without hearing the other side of this story.

Here’s what I know in HR. If I investigated 1000 sexual harassment claims (and I’m probably close to that in my HR career!) about 997 of those claims are completely true! That’s almost 100%, but not exactly 100%, and that’s a problem for HR!

Let’s face it, from the beginning of Human Resources, She Said/He Said has been one of the hardest things for organizations to investigate and get a true story. Very rarely do you get a ‘smoking gun’ in she said/he said allegations. At best, what you get is one side claiming another party is guilty, and the other party claiming it just isn’t like it’s being told.

I think what’s even more problematic is the American legal system of innocent until proven guilty. Right now in America in terms of sexual harassment, you are guilty and we don’t care if you can prove yourself innocent, which you probably can’t because neither side can actually prove guilt or innocence in many of these cases. It’s she said/he said.

What’s more problematic for HR is that these cases change lives in a very major way. If one party is found to be guilty, most likely they’re losing their job and it will be a giant black mark on their ability to get another job. If one party is not found guilty, you have an employee who doesn’t feel supported and probably others in the organization that figure it’s not worth bringing future claims forward.

The world is getting to see famous people go down for bad behavior right now. Most of which is completely legitimate, a tiny portion of which is not. The world is getting a peek behind the HR curtain in what we’ve been trying to deal with for decades, and it’s not pretty or clean. It’s complicated and messy, and it’s really hard to make the correct decision when all you have to go on is one story over another story.

It’s key as HR professionals that we do what is needed to give each employee the benefit of the doubt and investigate to find the truth. To not let positions of power influence our duty and our ethics, and we are brave enough within our organizations to put our careers on the line to do the right thing.

Yes, brave. I had a leader who loved to say, “If you rake shit, it’s going to stink”. In she said/he said cases you’re going to be raking a lot of shit, and it’s going to stink. It takes bravery to see something that is not right and won’t be a popular decision in an organization and do the right thing, but that’s the gig, that’s the profession.

Welcome to the show kids! It’s a tough job, but our employees, all employees, need us as advocates!

What is the right diversity mix of employees for your organization?

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This is a question I think many executives and HR and TA leaders struggle with. SHRM hasn’t come out and given guidance. ATAP has not told us at what levels we should be at with our diversity mix. So, how do we come up with this answer?

Seems like we should probably be roughly 50/50 when it comes to male and female employees. Again, that’s a broad figure, because your customer base probably makes a difference. If you’re selling products and services mostly women buy, you probably want more women on your team.

The more difficult mix to figure is when it comes to race. Should we be 50/50 when it comes to race in our hiring? Apple has taken it on the chin the last few years because of their demographic employee mix, and even as of this week, are still catching criticism for having only 1/3 of their leadership team is female, and only 17% of their entire team being black and Hispanic. 55% of Apple’s tech employees are white, 77% are male.

So, what should you diversity mix be?

The most recent demographics of race in America show this:

  • 61.3% are white
  • 17.8% are Hispanic/Latino
  • 13.3 are black
  • 4.8% Asian

Some other interesting facts about American race demographics:

  • 55% of black Americans live in the south
  • White Americans are the majority in every region
  • 79% of the Midwest is white Americans
  • The West is the most overall diverse part of America (where 46% of the American Asian population live, 42% of Hispanic/Latino, 48% of American Indian, 37% of multi-race)

So, what does this all mean when it comes to hiring a more diverse workforce? 

If 61.3% of the American population is white, is it realistic for Apple to hire a 50/50 mix of diversity across its workforce? I go back to my master’s research project when looking at female hiring in leadership. What you find in most service-oriented, retail, restaurants, etc. organizations are more male leaders than female leaders, but more female employees than male employees.

What I found was as organizations with a higher population of female employees hired a higher density of male employees as leaders, they were actually pulling from a smaller and smaller pool of talent. Meaning, organizations that don’t match the overall demographics of their employee base have the tendency to hire weaker leadership talent when they hire from a minority of their employee base, once those ratios are met.

In this case, if you have 70% female employees and 30% male, but you have 70% male leaders and only 30% female leaders, every single additional male you hire is statistically more likely to be a weaker leader than hiring from your female employee population for that position.

Makes sense, right!

If this example of females in leadership is true, it gives you a guide for your entire organization in what your mixes should be across your organization. If you have 60% white employees and 50% female. Your leadership team should be 60% female leaders.

But!

What about special skill sets and demographics?

This throws are demographics off. What if your employee population is 18% black, but you can’t find 18% of the black employees you need in a certain skill set? This happened in a large health system I worked for when it came to nurse hiring. Within our market, we only had 7% of the nursing population that was black, and we struggled to get above that percentage in our overall population.

Apple runs into this same concept when it comes to hiring technical employees because more of the Asian and Indian population have the skill sets they need, so they can’t meet the overall demographics of their employee population, without incurring great cost in attracting the population they would need from other parts of the country to California.

Also, many organization’s leaders will say instead of looking at the employee base we have, let’s match the demographic makeup of the markets where are organizations work. At that point, you are looking at market demographics to match your employee demographics. Again, this can be difficult based on the skill sets you need to hire.

If I’m Apple, I think the one demographic that is way out of whack for them is female hiring. 50% of their customers are female. 77% of their employees are male, but only 33% of their leadership is female. It would seem to make demographic sense that 50% of Apple’s leadership team should be female.

Thoughts? This is a really difficult problem for so many organizations, and I see organizations attempting to get more ‘diverse’ in skin color without really knowing what that means in terms of raw numbers and percentages.

What are you using in your own shops?

At 4% Unemployment, 2nd Chance Hires are Looking Very Attractive!

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I’m a big fan of 2nd chance candidates. Candidates who were fired, terminated, let go, etc. for many various reasons, most of which come down to wrong job fit, the wrong personality fit with their boss, wrong skill fit, etc.

I don’t have actual numbers, and I wouldn’t believe any study who told me a number because here’s what really happens. An employee gets fired for ‘performance’ because the manager thought the person could do the job, even though the person had never done the job, and both continued to get frustrated. HR puts that down as termination for performance, not poor job fit, or lack of skills, or something else.

Is this person a bad employee? No. Did this person not try hard? No. Did the organization look to move this person into a role they were better suited for? No. It’s just easier to cut bait and move on to another hiring mistake.

The problem most employers are facing right now is at 4.1% national unemployment, almost any candidate that you find out of work is going to have a ‘hickey’. Maybe they require too much money, maybe they don’t have the education you require, maybe they won’t move, etc., etc., etc. We all know the deal. It’s tough sledding finding talent right now, it’s even tougher if you’re looking for someone out of work to fill your job!

That’s why 2nd Chance Candidates can be some of the best hires you’ll ever make, but you need to pick the right ones. Here’s what I look for in 2nd Chance Candidates:

1. A chip on their shoulder. I don’t want them to talk bad about their last employer, but I want to know they feel like they were unfairly evaluated and have something to prove!

2. Job history before the last job. Say what you want, but when taking a flyer on a 2nd chance candidate I find those will more solid work history tend to be the right ones to pick.

3. Willingness to do anything. When you get fired some weird shit happens to you. You get angry. You get sad. You get frustrated. Eventually, you get to a point where you go “I don’t care what it takes, I’m getting back into the game!” Those are my 2nd chancers.

4. The story seems to make sense. I don’t hire a 2nd chancer where the story doesn’t add up. So, you were the employee of the year, last year, then out of nowhere, with no reason, you got fired? Yeah, no thanks.

5. They want to work. You’ve been out of a job for 7 months, and I offer you a job, I only want to hear one thing. “I can start tomorrow!” If you tell me I can start in two weeks, or next Friday, or anything besides “I’ll start working right now if you let me” I’ve got a concern!

People get fired for awful things, but they also get fired over petty things. Being in HR, I’ve been apart of both kinds of firing, and I’m not proud of that fact. It’s super hard to support a hiring manager who wants to fire an employee because basically, the employee cares more than the hiring manager about the work, but I’ve seen it happen!

It’s our job in TA and HR to find out if we’re going to give someone a second chance. It’s not an easy decision. It seems like there’s always a red flag, and it seems that way because there is! The person was let go! It’s now our job to determine was that person being let go going to be a positive for our company, or a negative. I like to think, many of second chancers can be a positive!

But, don’t get me started on 3rd and 4th chancers!

Just a bit of break from the norm…Raising a special kid

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George Springer, the World Series MVP that plays for Houston, has a pretty cool Dad! I tend to like Dad stories. I have a pretty great Dad, and I like to think I’m a half-way decent Dad, but it’s a constant struggle! I think in society we don’t get enough Dad stories, so when this one came up right after the World Series, I wanted to share (the video is 3 minutes):

George Springer, Jr., the baseball players Dad in the video is a pretty great Dad, you can tell! Dad is proud of his son and not because he’s a great baseball player, but because his son is really a whole person.

George Springer, the baseball player, grew up with a stutter and had to overcome that and learn how to turn that ‘disability’ into a uniqueness. As his Dad says in the video “understand this is who you are, this is what makes you special”.

George Springer, the Dad, is an accomplished lawyer in Connecticut, and just a special person as a Dad. I think we all hope, at the end of the day, that we raise our own children like the Springer’s have raised theirs. To be team players. To help others be the best version of themselves. And to accept themselves and their uniqueness for what it truly is, something that makes them special.

Congratulations to George Springer on his accomplishments, and congratulations to his parents for raising a remarkable young man.

 

What Does Talent Taste Like? When Recruitment Marketing Keeps it Real…

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So, have a Coke and a Smile wasn’t good enough, the college recruiting folks in Coca-Cola’s Italian team had to get ‘creative’ and go off script. Here’s how that ended up (hat tip to Jim D’Amico for finding this pic!):

So, I’m not exactly sure from this ad who is tasting the talent. Maybe this is meant to get creepy hiring managers to the university, or maybe it just doesn’t translate to English. But whatever it means the Italian Coca-Cola team doubled down and also dropped in a landing page and hashtag for the event #TasteYourTalent or visit – www.tasteyourtalent.it.   

The site opens up with:

“Allenati per diventare un Champion di Coca-Cola HBC Italia”

Which, when translated means:

“Train to become a Champion of Coca-Cola HBC Italia”

I’m not sure if that is training to be a champion of sexual harassment, but whatever it is I’m interested in seeing how it all turns out!

I can picture this entire creative process playing out in the TA department at Coke Italy. “Hey, we need a great theme for our next university recruitment event! What do you guys have?”

“The Real Thing!” – did it. 

“Coke is it!” – did it.

“The Coke Side of Life!” – did it. 

“Taste the Feeling!” – did it. 

“Taste the Talent!” – Wait! What!? What did you just say!? That is f’ing brilliant. We’re recruiting talent. Coke tastes great! Taste the Talent! Go spend $3 million Euros and make that happen!  

Do you want to know what’s great about blogging? You just can’t make this stuff up! The bar for entry into Recruitment Marketing is apparently very low. Stay thirsty my friends.

Do you LOVE someone you work with?

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Almost two decades ago Gallup research came up with the Q12 of employee engagement. Basically, twelve questions you could give your employees to measure their level of engagement. Soon after, a multi-billion dollar industry was born and everyone in leadership and HR started to worry about how we could get and keep our employees engaged.

I thought most of it was crap and still do. Engagement for me is like watching a puppy chase it’s tail. They will never catch it, and if they do, it’s pretty unsatisfying after a while! Employee engagement is the same thing. I’m not saying you want disengaged employees, but where does it end, or does it ever end?

Once you go down this path of ‘training’ your employees you will do stuff to keep them engaged, they will continue to need stuff just to stay at that same level of engagement. Offer a kid a cookie and he’ll do what you say. Give a kid a million cookies and he loses interest in cookies.

The one piece of the Q12 I like is the question:

“I have a best friend at work.”

It’s pretty simple and straightforward. If you have a best friend at work, you’re more likely to want to stay at that job. I mean, heck, you’re best friend is there! What’s better than going to work each day with your best friend!? Not much!

Now, take that concept one step further. Instead of a best friend, do you ‘love’ someone at work? Imagine how you would support a coworker that you love!? It would be off the charts!

That’s what I love about the photo above from the World Series with Justin Verlander and Jose Altuve. For those who don’t know, Justin Verlander is a pitcher who came to Houston from Detroit this year at the trade deadline. So, Justin was very new to the team, but much needed if they want to win the world series.

There’s a long history of superstars coming together on a team and it not working out because egos get involved.

Jose Altuve is the best and most popular player in Houston. He’s a superstar. Justin Verlander is one of the top pitchers in baseball, in history. He’s a superstar. Want to know how one ultra-high-performing player welcomes another ultra-high-performing player and makes sure ‘culture’ and ‘ego’ will not be an issue?

Just look at the photo!

In an interview, Jose Altuve was asked about Justin Verlander and he said, “I literally love Justin Verlander”. Verlander was told what Jose said and had these shirts made up. These are two dudes who get it!

Care. More.

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My wife loves a super funny scene from the moving “Knocked Up”, here’s the scene:

“Care more!” My wife and I laugh at this because this one scene defines most marriages with kids!

I like “care more”. I want those I work with to care more. To care as much as I do. Care more about what we do. Care more about each other. Care more about your own development. Care more about our customers.

Care more!

Here’s the problem with ‘Care More!’ You’re assuming those around you don’t care more. Think about that for a moment. What if it was you being told to ‘care more’?

Feels like an insult, doesn’t it?

As leaders, we constantly feel like we care more about everything than all of those who work for us, but that’s just not true. It feels that way because we are surrounded by people who also care, but we are caring about different things at different times.

I’m surrounded by great people at my company, HRU Technical Resources, who are constantly caring more, but often it’s just not that we are aligned on our caring! I’m caring about something one day, and they also have things they are caring about. Some days we are all caring about the same thing, some days we are caring about different things.

When I first started as a leader in my career I would have high frustration over ‘care more’. I wanted every single person who I worked with to care as much as I did about the exact same things that I did. Let’s be honest, this is a behavior that still crops up for me from time to time!

What I’ve learned, is that almost every person that I have worked with does care more. The key is understanding what they care about, letting them know that I understand what they care about, and also have them know what I care about. I think this alignment lets all of us help each other.

Most employees working for you want to ‘care more’ about something. It’s not my job to judge what they care about, but to support them in caring more for what is important to them, not getting them to only ‘care more’ to what’s important to me.

That’s my key to great leadership and a happy marriage! Understand what others care more about. Help them care more. Don’t judge what someone else is caring more about. Let others know what you care more about so they aren’t assuming or guessing what you care more about.

The people I don’t want in my life are those who don’t want to care more about anything. I have no room for that!

Mailbag Question: Should Our Receptionist Hug Clients?

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So, yes, I’m the “World’s Foremost Expert on Workplace Hugging” so it seems appropriate that this week I would get the following question from a reader:

Dear World’s Foremost Expert on Workplace Hugging, 

My boss asked me to do something this week and before I did it I wanted to ask an expert, like yourself, and get some other opinions. The situation is our CEO has asked me to ‘tell’ our front desk receptionist that she will now be required to hug each client that comes into our office. Our CEO feels this will create a more welcoming and friendly environment for our clients. What are your thoughts on doing this?

Thinking this doesn’t right in Middle America! 

Yes, this was an actual exchange that I had this week! I made up the name, but everything else is as accurate as I can make and still protect the innocent!

So, in 2017, a CEO of an actual, successful company, wants “Mary” the Receptionist to start hugging every client that comes to the office. Wow. Right? Just, Wow!

Here’s my response:

Middle America,

First, being a hugger, I actually understand where your CEO is coming from. When I go into a business and I’m met with a friendly (natural, unforced) hug. I feel very welcome! When I’m down south, I seem to get more hugs than if I’m on either coast or in a big city. So, part of me actually understands the psychology behind this request.

That being said, I have one question for your CEO (and I encourage to ask this question): “If Mary leaves as your receptionist, and you hire “Mark” to replace her, will your CEO still want “Mark” to go and hug every client?” I’ll take make a ‘big’ assumption here and say, no, probably not!

This is a very quick and simple way to point out how harassing this action would be viewed by normal people. If you decide to go down this path of making hugging an actual work requirement, you will end up in a lawsuit at some point!

Okay, I’m a hugger, so let me tell you how you get most of what you want, without the lawsuit! Go hire a natural hugger to man your front desk and never discourage this behavior! You’ll get most of what you want, especially if your CEO and others mirror this hugging behavior to every client they meet in front of this person.

Good Luck,

Tim The World’s Foremost Expert in Workplace Hugging!

I love HR because of this very real, innocent question. You never actually know what the heck you’ll walk into each day, and there is no way of planning for the insane things that happen!

Have a great Friday HR Pros! You deserve it!

You almost never go wrong when hiring pretty people!

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What do you think of, in regards to smarts, when I say: “Sexy Blond model type”?

What about: “Strong Athletic Jock?”

What about: “Scrawny nerdy band geek?”

My guess is most people would answer: Dumb, Dumb, Smart – or something to that context.

In HR we call this profiling and make no mistake, profiling is done by almost all of our hiring managers.  The problem is everything we might have thought is probably wrong in regards to our expectations of looks and brains.  So, why are ugly people smarter?

They’re Not!

Slate published an article that contradicts all of our ugly people are more smart myths and actually shows evidence to the contrary. From the article:

Now there were two findings: First, scientists knew that it was possible to gauge someone’s intelligence just by sizing him up; second, they knew that people tend to assume that beauty and brains go together. So they asked the next question: Could it be that good-looking people really are more intelligent?

Here the data were less clear, but several reviews of the literature have concluded that there is indeed a small, positive relationship between beauty and brains. Most recently, the evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa pulled huge datasets from two sources—the National Child Development Study in the United Kingdom (including 17,000 people born in 1958), and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in the United States (including 21,000 people born around 1980)—both of which included ratings of physical attractiveness and scores on standard intelligence tests.

When Kanazawa analyzed the numbers, he found the two were related: In the U.K., for example, attractive children have an additional 12.4 points of IQ, on average. The relationship held even when he controlled for family background, race, and body size.

That’s right HR Pros, pretty people are smarter.  I can hear hiring managers and creepy executives that only want “cute” secretaries laughing all over the world!

The premise is solid though!  If you go back in our history and culture you see how this type of things evolves:

1. Very smart guy gets a great job or starts great company and makes a ton of money

2. Because of success, “smart guy” now has many choices of very pretty females to pursue as a bride.

3. “Smart guy” and “Pretty bride” start a family which results in Pretty-Smart Children. Did you pay attention to basic genetics in biology class?

4. Pretty-Smart Children grow up with all the opportunities that come to smart beautiful families.

5. The cycle repeats.

Now, first, this is a historical thing thus my example of using a male as our “Smart guy” and not “Smart girl”. I’m sure in today’s world this premise has evolved yet again. But we are talking about how we got to this point, not where are we now.  Additionally, we are looking at how your organization can hire better.

So, how do you want to hire better employees?  That’s easy! Just hire more pretty people!