Category Archives: Culture

Failure Is The New Black #DisruptHRCayman

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So, last night in the Cayman Islands DisruptHR Cayman went down!  If you don’t know what DisruptHR is, you need to check it out!  It’s the brainchild of my good friends Jennifer McClure and Chris Ostoich. Jen does most of the heavy lifting on this now, and it’s a global phenomenon sweeping across the HR world!

The concept was born from TEDx. You get 5 minutes to present an awesome idea, 20 powerpoint slides that automatically move every 15 seconds. Fast and furious. Alcohol is involved. Anything can happen. It’s the most fun you’ll ever see HR people have!  Contact Jen and bring this concept to your conference or event – it’s a great evening event to open or close a conference, or just to have in your city to energize the HR community!

Don’t think about grabbing DisruptHR Detroit!  I already have bought the franchise, so to speak! If you want in, connect with me and we can discuss a time and place!

I did my DisruptHR Cayman presentation on Failure is the new Black!  Safe to say, I truly believe all of this talk about failure leading you to success is a bunch of bullshit! Failure leads you to more failure, which eventually leads you to give up, not success! But don’t worry about, I’m in the minority, you can still suck up all that failure crap from every leadership guru on the planet!

Was I successful in my 5 minutes?  I don’t know, but you can check it out for yourself at DisruptHR’s website in a week or two. The brilliance of DisruptHR is that they video all the crazy ideas and put them up on the web, so you can’t hide!

Great stuff, check it out. They already have 250 videos of DisruptHR presentations for you to see!

Would You Be Willing To Pay For Interview Feedback – Take 2

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“I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.”

– Howard Marks

Yesterday I wrote a post called Would You Be Willing To Pay For Interview Feedback that caused some people to lose their minds.  I asked what I thought was a simple question: Would you be willing to pay for interview feedback?  Not just normal, thanks, but no thanks, interview feedback, but really in-depth career development type of feedback from the organization that interviewed you.  You can read the comments here – they range from threats to outright hilarity! Needless to say, there is a lot of passion on this topic.

Here’s what I know:

– Most companies do a terrible job at delivery any type of feedback after interviews. Terrible.

– Most candidates only want two things from an interview.

1.  To Be Hired

2. If not hired, to know a little about why they didn’t get hired

Simple, right?  But, this still almost never happens!  Most large companies, now, automate the entire process with email form letters.  Even those lucky enough to get a live call, still get a watered-down, vanilla version of anything close to something that we would consider helpful.

When I asked if someone was willing to pay for interview feedback, it wasn’t for the normal lame crap that 99% of companies give.  It was for something new. Something better. Something of value.  It would also be something completely voluntary.  You could not pay and still get little to no feedback that you get now — Dear John, Thanks, but no thanks. The majority of the commentators felt like receiving feedback after an interview was a ‘right’ – legal and/or G*d given.  The reality is, it’s neither.

The paid interview feedback would be more in-depth, have more substance and would focus on you and how to help you get better at interviewing.  It would also get into why you didn’t get the job.  The LinkedIn commentators said this was rife with legal issues.  Organizations would not be allowed to do this by their legal staff because they would get sued by interviewees over the reasons.  This is a typical HR response.  If you say ‘legal’ people stop talking about an idea.  They teach that in HR school so we don’t have to change or be challenged by new ideas!

The reality is, as an HR Pro, I’m never going give someone ammunition to sue my organization.  If I didn’t hire someone for an illegal reason, let’s say because they were a woman, no person in their right mind would come out and say that.  Okay, first, I would never do that. Second, if I did, I would focus the feedback on other opportunity areas the candidate had that would help them in their next interview or career. No one would ever come out and say to an interviewee, “Yeah, you didn’t get the job because you’re a chick!”

This is not a legal or risk issue.  It’s about finally finding a way to deliver great interview feedback to candidates.  It’s about delivering a truly great candidate experience.  So many HR Pros and organizations espouse this desire to deliver a great candidate experience but still don’t do the one thing that candidates really want.  Just give me feedback!

So, do you think I’m still crazy for wanting to charge interviewees for feedback?

4 Tips for Hiring Candidates Who Have True Grit!

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In our ever constant struggle to find the secret sauce of finding the best talent, many organizations are looking to hire candidates who have grit. What the heck is grit? Candidates who have grit tend to have better resolve, tenacity, and endurance.

Ultimately, executives are looking for employees who will get after it and get stuff done. Employees who aren’t waiting around to be told what to do, but those who will find out what it is we should be doing and go make it happen. Grit.

It seems so easy until you sit down in front of a candidate and try and figure out if the person actually has grit or not! You take a look at that guy from 127 Hours, the one who cut his own arm off to save his . That’s easy, he has grit! Susy, the gal sitting across from you, who went to a great state school, and worked at a Fortune 500 company for five years, it’s hard to tell if she has grit or not!

I haven’t found a grit test on the market, so we get back to being really good at questioning and interviewing to raise our odds we’ll make the right choices of those with grit over those who tell us they have grit but really don’t!

When questioning candidates about their grit, focus on these four things:

  1. Passion. People with grit are passionate about something. I always feel that if someone has passion it’s way easier to get them to be passionate about my business and my industry. If they don’t have true passion about anything, it’s hard to get them passionate about my organization.
  1. Doer. When they tell you what they’re passionate about, are they backing it up by actually doing something with it? I can’t tell you how many times I’ll ask someone what their passion is and then ask them how they’re pursuing their passion and they’ve done nothing!
  1. What matters to them. Different from passion in that you need to find out what matters to these people in a work setting. Candidates with grit will answer this precisely and quickly. Others will search for an answer and feel you out for what you’re looking for. I want a workplace that allows me to… the rest doesn’t matter, they know, many have no idea.
  1. Hope. To have grit, to be able to keep going when the going gets tough, you must have hope that things will work out. The glass might be half full or half empty, it doesn’t matter, because if I have a glass, I’ll find something to put in it!

I’ve said this often, but I believe individuals can acquire grit by going through bad work situations. We tend to want to hire perfect unscarred candidates from the best brands who haven’t had to show if they have grit or not.

I love those candidates with battle wounds and scars from companies that were falling apart, but didn’t. I know those people had to have grit to make it out alive!  I want those employees by my side when we go to battle.

Check out Angela Duckworth’s book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance for more on this subject!

 

 

Gender Neutral Bathrooms Coming to a Workplace Near You!

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Almost everyone at this point has heard of or seen President Obama’s recent letter to every school district in America basically saying that all transgender students should be allowed to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.

While this isn’t an actual law the President did add wording to make school districts feel that if they didn’t follow this guidance, they could possibly lose federal funding. That is big because schools rely heavily on this funding to operate.

As you can imagine, this caused major outrage across America. The Washington Times released a poll that showed the majority of American’s actually are not in agreement with the President on this issue. Also, social media blew up with both sides defending their positions on this issue.

All of this leads to what’s the next step – the workplace!

We all know that if the President is going to take a stand on public schools and gender neutral bathrooms, it’s only a matter of time until government workplaces also are mandated, and then that rolls down to private employers as well.

As HR pros, it doesn’t matter what we believe regarding this position. Like many laws and mandates that happen, what we think about it ultimately is meaningless. What we are going to do about it becomes the true issue we face in getting our organizations prepared and compliant.

Here are a number of things you should be thinking about and starting to have conversation with leadership regarding gender neutral bathrooms:

  • This isn’t a moral or political issue. This is a compliance issue. Regardless, this will be a hot issue to deal with in your workplaces. At one point in our society, the majority of Americans thought it was completely normal that Black Americans should have separate bathrooms. This issue is very similar. You need to think about how you will educate your employees on gender identity.
  • Physical organization design can really alleviate this issue in organizations that can afford a design of private bathroom stalls for all. This becomes a funding and logistical issue. After a hundred years of having male/female bathrooms, moving to a design where you only have one bathroom for all with many private stalls (think much more private than current partial wall stalls) becomes cost prohibitive for most organizations, but ultimately might be the best overall design.
  • For the most part, you will have no issues in this transition. Your employees are adults and this is about having a good understanding of what gender identity truly is. More than likely the issues you will face are bullying from a very few employees who refuse to try and understand this issue. Be swift and strong with how you deal with these outliers. This will curtail future issues.

As leaders and HR pros we need to understand that we will have people who are uncomfortable with this issue for a number of reasons, mostly from lack of understanding and change. You can’t gloss over and ignore this issue, it’s a real issue.

Get on the front side of this. Your employees are already forming opinions and talking about this because of Obama’s letter and their children dealing with this issue in their own learning environments. This is a great time for us as HR pros to be proactive and begin addressing this on our own, in our own way, before it gets mandated and we look like we’re running around with no plan.

 

The Greatest Retirement Benefits You Can Give Your Employees

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My Dad retired this past year. I’m already ‘leveraging’ him for some time. He has so much of it now! It’s like he won the time lotto and he’s throwing it around because he’s got so much of it. “Hey Dad, can I borrow a couple of hours!? It’s a busy week! I need you to pick up the kids!”

I read this article, The Huge Retirement Benefit You Probably Aren’t Expecting recently:

America is reaching a tipping point. Adults in the busiest phase of life, juggling kids and careers, number about 40 million, which is roughly equal to those near and in retirement, who typically have time on their hands. But the number of adults pressed for time is projected to grow slowly, reaching 49 million by 2050. By contrast, the number of retirees with plenty of free time will explode to 88 million, as more and more boomers retire.

When you add it all up, retirees will have 2.5 trillion hours of leisure time to fill over the next 20 years. This free time will redefine their habits and priorities—even their identities. And yet almost no one is planning for this sweeping change, according to a report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Age Wave.

Time is going to be the new currency of future generations. It’s like lake front property, there’s only so much. Unless you live in Dubai and have billions, then I guess you can make new lake front property!

The crazy thing is, organizations aren’t really putting that much effort into figuring this whole thing out. We’re treating it like we’ve treated retirement for decades. “Well, Bill’s retiring, let’s throw him a party, buy him a walker with a horn, and give his work to the new kid.” We aren’t thinking in a new context of what do these ‘new’ folks who are retiring really want?

What I’ve learned from Dad is we in HR are missing some things. Here are some ideas of Retirement Benefits you could offer, but you haven’t even begun to think in this new way of time:

1. Part-time, flexible Mentorships – Some people can’t wait to stop working for your organization. Many feel they’re being ‘nicely’ pushed out, or society makes them feel like ‘it’s time’ to leave. The reality, so many of your retiring employees would love to keep in touch. Help out the new kids. Lead mentor groups on how to deal with customer issues, leadership dilemmas, customer/client feedback, etc. And most would do it for free! They would volunteer their time!

2. Corporate Community Volunteer Programs – Remember, these super valuable, experienced, loyal former employees who love your brand, have a couple trillion (with a T) hours on their hands! Can you imagine how much good will you could leverage in the community if you activated your retirees as volunteers with some direction and leadership!?  It could transform your corporate presence within the markets you serve. BTW – hospitals do a great job at this! There is no reason you shouldn’t be able to do this in your organization as well.

3. C-Suite Bullship Detectors – Your executives don’t always know what’s really going on because they have a bunch of VPs kissing their ass telling them what they think they want to hear. Retirees are a great mechanism to tell your executives what is actually going on, versus what they’re being told. They’re like highly paid consultants, without the highly paid part!  We all need someone without a vested interest to tell us like it is, even when it stings a little. Your retirees would love to do this. Works really well for newer retirees who are still close to the business. Not so well once they get a ways out. You will be shocked at the bond your executives will build with these folks!

Something to think about. How are your new retirement benefits helping your former employees spend and invest their most precious commodity? Time.

 

Michael J Fox’s Perspective on Co-Workers #WorkHuman

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Michael J. Fox was one of the closing day keynotes at the WorkHuman conference this year, and he killed it like you expect. One of the key takeaways I took from his talk was in regards to all those people you work with on a day to day basis.

Mike Fox laid out two things you should think about when you think about how you interact with your co-workers:

1. Enjoy the people you work with for what they can positively contribute to you and your organization.  This is all about focusing on the strengths of those around you. If you constantly focus on what someone can’t do, you make them miserable and you stress yourself out as well.  People perform better when you allow them to do what they’re good at. When you recognize them for what they bring to the organization, not what they don’t bring.

2. If you can’t enjoy the person you work with, be thankful you’re not them. We are all going to have people in our life that we have to work with that we frankly just don’t like. Could be personality, or skills, or attitude, etc. Mike Fox said you can still find a positive out of this by focusing on the fact you’re grateful that you don’t have their challenges, and by helping those people be the best version of themselves.

I love this philosophy!

Mike Fox was very big on this concept that judging others will get you nowhere. It’s such a big part of culture. I know I do some this myself, and it’s not something I’m ever proud of. The reality is judging others says more about your inadequacies than it does about the persons you are judging. It was a great reminder.

It was a great reminder. In HR and TA we tend to believe ‘judging’ is part of our job description, but it’s not. The best HR and TA Pros I know don’t judge candidates or employees but find what is most useful of those individuals and try and put those people in positions to be successful.

Finally, Mike spoke about fear. Fear others have when they look at him. They look at him expecting to find fear in him and instead see their own fear in his eyes. That statement made me pause. He’s not fearful of his situation. He’s happy life gave him this enormous platform to change lives.

Perspective. We shouldn’t assume we know others based on our own beliefs and fears. Here’s a guy who is facing an uncertain future, but he’s embraced the joy of living one day at a time. The real secret, he didn’t share, is we all are facing life one day at time, he’s just figured it out way before us!

 

Are Happy Employees The Answer? #WorkHuman

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WorkHuman is this week and it’s one of the new transformative conferences on the landscape within the HR industry. The next generation of user conference (WorkHuman is sponsored by GloboForce) which is how do you engage an audience with awesome content and engage your brand without constantly shoving a sales pitch down your throat! WorkHuman has it figured out!

One of the best sessions had to be from happiness researcher Shawn Achor. The former Harvard researcher laid out a compelling argument on why organizations at all levels should be focusing on helping their employees be more happy. He had great examples from organizations that have focused on his research (see video below) that have gotten great results on higher productivity, higher retention and creating an environment that is more human to work in!

The whole conversation got me thinking of the chicken or egg scenario. What comes first an employee who is happy, or a happy employee?  Can you really make an unhappy person happy?

We all have that co-worker that never seems happy. They’re Eyore! Nothing ever goes right for them, nothing will ever be good, they always see the worst in every situation. I believe if you went backwards in their career with your organization, and you could see their interview, you would immediately pick up on the fact this was their core personality!

It makes sense to think that chronically unhappy people are going to be hard to make happy, thus, will probably be less effective as an employee. If as the research shows that happy people are more productive than unhappy people, or less happy people.

All skills being relatively the same, I would bet my career on the fact that if you then only focused on hiring the most happy people, you would have the same results that Shawn speaks of, without all on the ongoing programs.

Happy people, tend to be happy people almost always. It’s their natural zen. It’s where they like to live. Their natural state is to be happy. So, I would theorize that hiring those happy people would have a lasting positive impact to your organization.

Now we just need a great pre-hire assessment that measures someone’s natural level of happiness. I would think Shawn probably has the actual validated questions we could use. It would be nice if he just handed those over and let us started doing this!

Chicken or the Egg. You can try and make your employees happy, or you can hire happy people. Or, you could do both!

Don’t Apply to College if You’re White, Middle Class and Male

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I heard a female comedian the other day say one of the truest things I’ve ever heard:

Look, if you’re a white dude, and you’re failing in America, you’re really a failure! You’re like the definition of failure! You can’t be a white dude and complain about how hard life is. If you’re a white guy and you’re failing at life, you’re basically saying, “I can’t find a way to be successful in a society that was built for me.” That’s America.

Which is probably why Trump is trying to make it white great again!

What this comedian was saying is no one wants to hear white dudes whine about stuff. “Oh, it’s so hard to find a job.” “Oh, I can’t afford a house in the richest part of town.” “Oh, I’m not going to be able to retire until I’m 62.” In comparison to real people problems in the world, it all sounds stupid.

Did you hear the whole Kelly and Michael drama that blew up this past week? All said and done, Kelly comes out and says, “My Dad, who drove a bus for thirty years, thinks we’re all crazy!” Privilege, at any level, isn’t supposed to whine about shit.

So, all that being said, here’s my privilege whine:

College Acceptance and Tuition Payment is completely broken! 

My middle son is about to make his college choice. He’s got some great schools that have accepted him. He has some great ones that did not. His dream school was Duke. He also really liked Northwestern, Dartmouth, and UCLA. He has a 4.05 GPA on a 4.0 scale (honors classes give you additional GPA) and a 31 on his ACT (97th percentile of all kids taking this test).  He had the grades and test scores to get into all of those schools.

What he didn’t have was something else.

What is the something else?

He didn’t come for a poor family. He didn’t come from a rich family. He wasn’t a minority. He doesn’t have some supernatural skill, like shooting a basketball. He isn’t in a wheelchair. He isn’t from another country.

He’s just this normal Midwestern kid from a middle-class family who is a super involved student-athlete, student government officer, award-winning chamber choir member, teaches swimming lessons to children, etc., etc., etc.

Basically, he falls into this no-man’s land of what colleges and universities don’t want these days. Male and White.

Can I keep whining? Whatever, it’s my blog – buckle up! 

What is the other something else, from a financial perspective?

He got into Boston College, another dream school for him, and one that wanted him to come and continue his swim career at the Division 1 level. BC also costs $68,000 per year.

Colleges and U.S. Federal Government hate kids who come from families that do the right thing.  What’s the “right thing”?  He comes from a family that pays their mortgage, saved some money for his tuition and put money away for retirement.

Apparently, all those ‘positive’ things, like being financially responsible, are not liked by colleges and the federal government. Colleges and the U.S. Government would have preferred that I didn’t work, let my house go into foreclosure and was in debt up to my eyeballs. If that was the case, both the college and U.S. Federal Government would reward my bad decision making and pay for my son to go to school, fully!

Because he comes from a family that made good decisions, Boston College, and the Federal Government thought it was a good idea for him to pay $68,000 per year to attend their fine university.

My wife and I have spent our son’s entire lives saving for them for college. We sacraficed to basically give them a fund that would pay two full years of tuition and living at a normal state four-year college. The other two years are on their own. We feel they need to shoulder some of that cost to appreciate what it is they’re investing in.

I get it. No one wants to hear about how the middle-class kid can’t go to the super high-end school of his dreams because he can’t afford it.

I’m struggling with this. I’m no different than any other parent who tells their kid when they were little, work your butt off and one day you can go to Harvard! When I should have said, work your butt off, I’ll make awful financial decisions, and then you’ll be able to go to Harvard.

Here’s what I know, and it’s a hard pill to swallow, if my son did exactly what he did (grades, involvement, etc.) and he was Hispanic (or Black, or American Indian, or from a poor country) and I had no money, he would be getting ready to enroll into Duke. But he’s not.

What did he do wrong? He was born into a white family that worked their ass off to give him every advantage in life.

White privilege is a privilege until it’s not. Until a kid’s dream is broken for something he can’t wrap his brain around. Believe me, I understand this goes both ways. I understand there are black kids who don’t even get an interview for a job because some white kid’s Dad already got them the job ‘behind the scenes’. That isn’t right either! In my mind, I don’t see the difference between these two examples.

Rant over. Colleges are going the route of corporate America. White guys are bad, everyone else is desirable, do whatever it takes, at any cost, to make sure this happens. Well, unless, your old, corporate America doesn’t like older people either, no matter what color or gender you are – but that’s a rant for a different day!

Hit him in the comments and tell me how out of touch I am, then remember this is all about a 17-year-old boy with a dream. A dream he worked his ass off to achieve.

Death of the Millennials

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I was at a conference recently and one of the keynotes actually gave a presentation on how to work with millennials. I thought to myself, “how 2009 of this person to do this!” I’ve vowed at this point to never sit through another presentation on millennials in the workplace. Millennials are now dead to me.

Just as Baby Boomers, GenXer’s, GenZs, The Founders, etc., are all dead to me. All of us are people. All of us are in the workplace. All of us have to work together and get along. Focusing so much on one group over another just perpetuates dysfunction and confusion. I actually heard executives talking about kids graduating high school and believing they also are ‘millennials’. Just stop!

That all being said, IBM came out with an infographic about the myths, exaggerations and uncomfortable truths of millennials, last week, which sparked my little rant. I wanted to share these five myths and add some commentary:

1.Millennials’ career goals and expectations are different from those of older generations.

Turns out we all still, for the most part, want the same thing. Good job. Good pay. Stability. Don’t buy into the hype that any of your workers want to jump around from company to company. They don’t.

2.Millennials want constant acclaim and think everyone on the team should get a trophy.

Again, every generation wants feedback and told they’re a rock star, even when they’re not. As we age, we start to gain a little better self-insight that we might suck. When we’re young we think we’re awesome, even when we’re not.

3.Millennials are digital addicts who want to do everything online.

I have 8 aunts who are all in their 60’s, pushing their 70’s, all of whom spend most of their day on digital devices gaming and on social sites. This is the world we live in. My Mom would rather order a pizza online then pick up a phone. Welcome to modern day life.

4.Millennials, unlike their older colleagues, can’t make a decision without first inviting everyone to weigh in.

No one wants to be the one who made a decision that went wrong. In most corporate settings all workers play the CYA game by sharing decision-making responsibility. We all say we want to make decisions until we’re actually given that responsibility, then we turn into bowls of jello on the floor hoping we didn’t ruin our careers!

5.Millennials are more likely than others to jump ship if a job doesn’t fulfill their passions.

Guess what? Young people today have a ton of debt. That means you have to work and make money to pay down that debt. Then you decide to buy a house, get married, have a litter of puppies, etc. Passion is awesome. If you get a job you’re super passionate about, good for you, you’re winning at life. 99% of people will work in a job they like, make decent money, pay their bills, and probably will be passionate about other parts of  their life. I think they’re winning as well.

For the record, the last Millennials entered the workforce two years ago. Can we start talking about these snotty-nosed, spoiled brats who are beginning to enter the workforce right now with their Snapchatting and their video and their ability to brand themselves and never-ending gaze to the glow of their smartphone!? They’re calling themselves “The Founders”.

Go have fun with that. They named themselves…

I Miss Old School Employee Training Videos!

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Remember the bad 80’s employee training videos?  When I was at Applebee’s we had a series of sexual harassment training videos that would never fly in today’s politically correct world!

These videos were part 70’s porn, part creepy uncle and 100% pure gold. I couldn’t ever play them without laughing out loud.  They were so bad, I couldn’t believe someone actually got paid to put these together, and the scenarios were so far fetched that made the employees think we must believe they were complete idiots!

All these videos really did was waste time until we could get you to sign a piece of paper that you were trained on what sexual harassment was, and if you ever did any of this stuff, you would be immediately fired. Classic CYA HR!

Just this week, by buddy Jim D’Amico the VP of TA at Signature Health, sent me the link to this pure gold Employee Safety training video. We all need more friends like Jim! Enjoy! (BTW – you’ll love it, if you’re a Walking Dead fan!)