Category Archives: Culture

How To Fall In Love With Your Job. Just. Do. This.

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A psychologist, Arthur Aron, came up with a way to get to strangers to fall in love with each other.  His research is fascinatingly simple!  It basically comes down to having the two people sit down facing each other, then methodically going through and asking and answering a set of 36 increasingly more intense personal questions.  This experience gets the individuals to understand each other a highly personal level.

Here are some of the questions:

They start somewhat easy:

4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

begin to increase in intensity:

17. What is your most treasured memory?

18. What is your most terrible memory?

19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?

and continue down an emotional path:

30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

The science behind this study, is if you can honestly answer all 36 questions with this other person, you will probably share more with this one person, and them with you, then you have ever shared with any one person in your life!

So, how do you get someone to fall in love with their job?

Modify the technique and questions between an employee and their direct supervisor. The questions don’t have to all be asked at one time. Strategically, using these questions to drive frank discussions between employee and supervisor over time will get both to truly value and understand each other.

You can imagine how some of these questions would look:

1. Tell me about the job you loved the most and why?

2. What part of this job do you love doing? Hate doing?

3. Who has had the most influence in your life, to this point, and what do they do for you on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?

Here’s the deal, though. It takes two to fall in love! Your managers/leaders have to become as vulnerable as the employee. Turns out HR has very little to do with getting employees to fall in love with their job.  Having strong, understanding relationships at work, have more impact than some silly HR program. But, HR could help develop this employee/leader process!

Crazy. Real conversations with employees. Truly getting to know them. Makes a difference. This isn’t your parents leadership model!

Check out all 36 questions. They could make for some really dynamic ‘date night’ conversations!

A Farewell Tour for an HR Pro

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If you didn’t see it, one of the all-time greats of the NBA, Kobe Bryant, recently announced he was going to retire. Kobe is a personal favorite of mine, because, besides Jordan, he might be the most competitive player I’ve ever seen play.  If you played against Kobe, he hated you. If you played with Kobe, he put up with you! I love me some Black Mamba!

So, Kobe is now on his city by city farewell tour.  This happens in sports all the time for the great ones.  We got to see it last year with Yankee great Derek Jeter.  It’s always the same thing. Each city/team tries to outdo each other with giving gifts and paying tribute to the all-time great player.  Everyone plays nice. Hugs (I like that part). Gifts. Don’t guard me too close so I can make a few plays for the fans to remember me by! You know the drill!

When a HR Manager decides to retire, we never get a farewell tour.  I think we should!  Here’s what an average HR Manager Farewell Tour would look like:

Week #1 – Your benefits vendor invites you out to Applebee’s for a free lunch. Go ahead get the appetizer, the sirloin, and the strawberry lemonade! Heck, throw in a brownie bite. Yeah, in might go over your $25 limit, but this is your tour, no one is going to care you took $28, not $25!

Week #2 – Your HRMS vendor wants to drop off a little something to congratulate you. Looks like a bottle of wine!  (Pro tip: I would ask if it’s alcohol on the front side, then meet them in the parking lot!)

Week #3 – Your EAP vendor dropped off bagels from Panera, with three kinds of cream cheese! Way over $25, but you’re really sharing with the group, so you can divide that out. Pretty safe! (Pro Tip: On your farewell tour, make sure to bring in a toaster into the office, if you don’t already have one – some will always drop off bagels!)

Week #4 – CareerBuilder just wants to send you a little something to say thanks! Also, who’s taking over for you?  CB swag is always great. Pick through the box for the good stuff first, then throw the rest in the break room. It will be gone in no time! (Pro tip: if you spend a bunch with your job board vendor – like $25K+ – you can turn this into a lunch!)

Week #5 – Your ATS vendor called to wish you luck. You just happen to drop the ‘hint’ you can’t wait to go to more movies! It’s a passion of yours! You love going to the theater, but it’s so darn expensive! Theater gift card will be coming soon in the mail!

Week #6 – It’s the employee cake and ice cream social event.  You have to throw this one in, even though, you’ll be the one ordering your own cake and ice cream! It’s your party, make sure you get the cake you want, and not that cheap crap you order for all the other employees who retire!

Week #7 – Save this one for last! It’s time to call on your staffing vendor! Staffing vendors are an easy steak dinner and drinks kind of night. You do this last because you don’t want to come back to the office and look anyone in the eye after this night. Staffing folks can party, and still believe that if they get you drunk you’ll tell them all your secrets. The secret is, we don’t have any!

The bigger the organization the longer you can stretch out this tour since you probably have more vendors. It’s your tour, do with it what you will. Just remember, you earned it!

 

HR Pros! You Should Be Going To Court More!

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There’s one thing we as HR pros are pretty consistent on. We never want to go to court! We do just about anything to mitigate risk for ourselves and our organizations.  The first step of HR Club is don’t go to court!

Now, that’s how most HR pros feel.  I don’t.  I don’t believe it’s HR’s job to mitigate risk. I believe it’s HR’s job to advise our decision makers of risk. Of course, if you are a decision maker, in HR, then it’s your job to mitigate risk over what you’re responsible for. All that being said, I’m in the minority of that opinion.

So, why do I feel this way?  It’s all numbers to me. Check this out from FloridaOvertimeLawyer.com:

-In 2014, there were 88,778 Employment Related Charges Filed in the U.S.

-In 2014, from those charges, a total of $372,100,000 dollars was awarded to the winners of those cases.

-That averages out to just: $4,191.35 per case.

Here’s the reality of employment related cases:

-Most cases are won by the employer.

-Employee and Past Employees believe their cases are worth millions.

-Most end up settling for a few thousand dollars.

First, I’m not advising you to not be safe and just go all willy-nilly and go to court!  Don’t be stupid.  Also, don’t allow yourself and your organization to be held hostage by an employee or past employee threatening a lawsuit.  Most you can settle for way less than you can ever believe!

When I first started in HR I was always shocked by how small of amount of money it would take to make ‘problems’ go away, from a legal standpoint. The numbers above say the same thing. Sure, there is always a risk of a big score.  Usually, the companies that get hit with those are truly doing something very bad.  If you’re doing good work and trying to follow the letter of the law, rarely do those cases turn into major scores for employees.

Do you want to go to court? Of course not.  You, also, don’t want to allow your organization to be bullied by an employee who is taking advantage of your fear of going to court.  Judges are really smart people. They see through most con-artists pretty quickly.  I’ve been to court on employment matters a number of times, and each time the judge was fair to my organization, and called out bullshit when they saw it.

Do good work. Do good by your employees. Don’t allow your organization to bad stuff. Trust our legal system will do what’s right.  Don’t allow yourself to be held hostage!

Open Office Spaces Now Suck…But wait for it…

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This just in! Google got it wrong! It seems like we keep hearing that more and more these days. The company that seemingly invited HR and Talent Acquisition keeps getting it wrong. This time, it’s around the open office concept. To be fair to Google, they weren’t the first ones to jump on the open office bandwagon. They just became the poster child for crazy office spaces gone wild. From The Washington Post:

Despite its obvious problems, the open-office model has continued to encroach on workers across the country. Now, about 70 percent of U.S. offices have no or low partitions, according to the International Facility Management Association. Silicon Valley has been the leader in bringing down the dividers. Google, Yahoo, eBay, Goldman Sachs and American Express are all adherents.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg enlisted famed architect Frank Gehry to design the largest open floor plan in the world, housing nearly 3,000 engineers. And as a businessman, Michael Bloomberg was an early adopter of the open-space trend, saying it promoted transparency and fairness. He famously carried the model into city hall when he became mayor of New York,  making “the Bullpen” a symbol of open communication and accessibility to the city’s chief.One more reason we should be allowed to work from home!…

…But employers are getting a false sense of improved productivity. A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem for them and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy. Meanwhile, “ease of interaction” with colleagues — the problem that open offices profess to fix — was cited as a problem by fewer than 10 percent of workers in any type of office setting. In fact, those with private offices wereleast likely to identify their ability to communicate with colleagues as an issue. In a previous study, researchers concluded that “the loss of productivity due to noise distraction … was doubled in open-plan offices compared to private offices.”

But wait for it…

Why is all of this Open Office hating coming out right now? Are open offices really that bad? My own opinion is that the office furniture industry is truly behind all of this anyway. Every decade or so, they need to sell new furniture and the way to do that is to tell executives that a new design will give them magical productivity gains and super happy employees! Just buy our new desk and chair!

I suspect this round of Open Office hating is coming from another corner of the universe. Can you guess?  So, closed offices don’t work. You don’t get collaboration. Open offices don’t work, because you don’t get privacy. So, what are we HR Pros to do?

Oh, I have an idea, came from the corner, of the employees who just don’t’ feel cozy enough at work!  The NEW research says that Working From Home is the real answer to all of our problems!  Yep. Open offices suck because working from home is soooo much better!

Did you see that coming?

There are seven-year-old kids in China making $100 Nikes by candle light, and amazingly their productivity goes up every day! Be careful about getting pulled down the rabbit hole of what next great office design will ‘fix’ your company.  Everyone has an agenda. Your employees who really would rather just work from home. The office supply companies who need to push product. The HR executive who needs productivity increases to show the board or at least, a reason we aren’t getting them!

What is the magical office design after work from home crashes?  I hear working from the beach in Cayman really, really increases productivity!

Sackett’s Guide to Visiting Sydney – Part 2

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Continued from yesterday’s Part 1 post. From my recent travels to Sydney, Australia, here are my ‘take aways’ from my trip. Sydney is great! Make sure to check out my first post as well, otherwise you’ll lose the context of this one! Enjoy.

–Sydney is a walking city. It’s like a mini-New York City, but it’s clean and doesn’t smell like a toilet! Everything seems like it’s a half to a mile away. Not quite far enough to get a cab or Uber, but far enough you’re lazy American ass will get tired.  You don’t see many fat people in Sydney! They are in shape and good looking. 

–If and when I return to Sydney, I’ll find out how to spend more time at Manly Beach! It was $7.50, thirty minute ferry ride to the most beautiful little beach town. Plus, the fairy ride gives you million dollar views of the Opera house and the Harbor Bridge. Great surfing at Manly Beach! It’s such a easy trip over, it’s hard to believe it’s that close to downtown Sydney.

–The Harbor Bridge climb. You can climb to the top of the Harbor Bridge. It will cost you about $250 per person. If you’re afraid of heights this isn’t from you. You get amazing views! I was glad I did it. I wouldn’t pay to do it again. Once you do it, you probably never have to do it again. In hindsight, I would probably spend that $250 on more surf lessons at Manly Beach, or a helicopter ride to see the city and great views of the cliffs along the ocean.

–Shopping. If you like shopping, you will like Sydney. You could spend a month in Sydney and never get to all the shops. Yes, many are tourist traps. Uggs are everywhere. Most are knockoffs of what you get in the states and not as good quality. The good quality ones cost about the same of what you’ll pay in the states. “Uggs” is a generic term in Australia, not a brand name. Uggs in Australia refers to sheep skin shoes and boots.  Most American brands being sold in Sydney are 40-50% more than you can buy in the states. Don’t come to Sydney looking for deals. Sydney is an expensive city for shopping, food, drinking, living, etc.

–It’s awesome to have such a big city like Sydney, with a great costal ocean views so close! We did the Bondi to Coogee costal walk and it was great. About 3 mile walk with amazing views and places to stop along the way. It’s up and down, so be prepared. The 3 miles will feel like 5 miles! Well worth it, about a $20 Uber ride from the city. Both Bondi and Coogee have good places to eat and drink, so you can start the walk from either end. The best pictures happen closer to Bondi.

–Darling Harbor is a cool up and coming entertainment district. Ton of shops and restaurants. Plus, there is also the Sydney aquarium and indoor Zoo. So, you can see all the major Australian wild and sea life without leaving the city. $60 bucks to see both. For another $20 you can get your picture with a Kola Bear. You don’t get to hold it, but you’ll be inches from it. Plus, the zoo keeper let us stay in the area and gave us some awesome insight and let us take more pics with our phones. It was well worth the $20!  You can run through both of these in like three hours.

–The Rocks is another great area down by the Opera House. It’s the original landing spot for the Europeans that came to Australia. Cruise ships come here as well. So, a ton of little unique shops and restaurants. It’s all an easy walk from downtown Sydney, and you can easily waste a half day or more here.

–The Hay Market/Paddy Market is a complete waste of time. It’s basically a giant Chinese knockoff market in what is considered China Town in Sydney. If you’re looking for loads of poorly made, cheap crap, this is your place.  If you love Asian food, this is also a place you might want to visit. Although, you will see great Asian restaurants all over Sydney.

–Toast! First, Australians know how to do bread!  We had the best bread everywhere in Sydney. One funny thing, though, were the number of places that sold “toast”. Yes, it’s what you think. Just a piece of toasted bread. But, unlike in America, it’s not some piece of crappy Wonder bread, it’s a big Texas slice of home-made bread, grilled on a flat top. Usually running about $3.50-5 per slice (I told you this place is expensive!), it was well worth it! I had the Banana Bread at least four times at different places and it was always amazing!  I never did, though, get over seeing ‘toast’ on the menu as a main item in so many places.

Did I mention the 14-hour flight from the states is a bitch! Hit me in the comments with what I missed about Sydney!

Sackett’s Guide to Visiting Sydney – Part 1

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First, let me say, I’m VERY American. This means I like all my American comforts and stuff.  This will help put this post into perspective when you read it.  I recently got a chance to visit Sydney, AUS to speak at HR Tech Fest 2015.  It’s a great HR Tech conference based in Sydney, with great HR and Talent Pros from Australia and New Zealand.

My wife and I stayed for a week after the conference, because if you’re going to make that 14-hour flight from the states, you really need to stay a while. A week wasn’t long enough, but The Sackett’s kill vacations, so we get a lot done in a week.

I read a bunch about visiting Sydney before we went, but it never seems to tell you the really important stuff. Stuff that will cause an American to be uncomfortable, or slightly put off our normal routine while leaving our great country! So, I wanted to share some real tips for anyone traveling to Sydney from America.

Tim’s Tips to visiting Sydney:

–Soda or Pop (Coke, Pepsi, etc.) seems to be hated by Australians.  Soda is super expensive in Sydney. Like $3-5 for a 12 oz can. Plus, you get very limited options. Most places only had Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero or Pepsi Max. That’s it! If you searched you could find Diet Dr. Pepper and Mt. Dew, and a few local sodas, but it’s clear that soda drinking is not something Australians are really into.  Also, no free refills at restaurants! So, you pay $4 for a small glass of Coke, which won’t come close to quenching your thirst or getting you to the finish of your meal! As you can imagine this was a major problem for me! In some bars we went to (during happy hour) the beer was the same price as pop!

–Bar and grill type restaurants are everywhere in Sydney, and most have the same exact type of menu: Burgers, which they use as a ‘title’, chicken sandwiches are also called ‘burgers’. Pizza, thin crust, fresh mozzarella, almost no place had pepperoni. Steaks, which were wonderful everywhere we went (great beef in Australia). Some kind of seafood, also very good and fresh in Sydney!  Almost no Mexican food is available, it’s rare. Asian restaurants are everywhere and in all kinds (Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, Korean, etc.).

–Food is extremely expensive in Sydney. Restaurants, stores, etc. doesn’t matter. Plan on spending a ton to feed yourself. Also, portions are much smaller in Australia then in America. The one thing that was similar in portion size and value was the Fish and Chips, which you can get everywhere, and always good!

–Customer service. People in Australia are extremely friendly, but they have a different attitude towards customer service. Which is basically, help yourself! There is very little tipping in Australia, and wait staff gets paid like $18-20/hr. Not having to rely on tips to get paid makes them indifferent to really waiting on you! Most bar and grill restaurants you have to go up to the bar and order your own food. If you come in and sit at a table, you will sit there forever and no one will come ask if you want something!

–Take Away (takeout) – you will get asked at every eating place if you want to ‘take away’, which means you just want to take your food and leave, not eat at the restaurant. I think this is done because they don’t really want to wait on you! Most locals seemed to take away. The foreigners were the only ones you really wanted full service!

–Television is Australia is weird. First, there news broadcasts are very global. Also, there news hosts actually give their opinion! Sometimes very strong opinion. In the states we just hire models with no opinion to give us our news. Australians love American TV, but it’s not on the networks you think it should be. An NBC show in the states might be shown on ABC or Fox in Sydney, but still have the NBC logo! Also, they will bundle a bunch of reality shows on different networks in the states on one network in Sydney. Plus, they’ll show ‘new’ shows that probably played a few years ago in the states, but also mix in new shows as well.

–There are almost no African or African-American people in Sydney! Like strangely absent! In a week I literally saw 4 ‘black’ people in a city of millions! It was a bit unsettling. This is also weird since it seemed like Australians were really into HipHop culture.  You heard the music and fashion everywhere, just no black faces. I never did figure this out. But plan on not seeing black people, but seeing Asians and Indians who have Australian accents, not their own countries. This will throw you as well. 

Part 2 tomorrow…

2015 Top Post: Sometimes A Job Isn’t Worth It

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I’m on vacation this week, so you’re getting a best of week from The Project. These are the most read posts of 2015 to this point. Enjoy! 

Linds Redding, a New Zealand-based art director who worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi, died last month at 52 from an inoperable esophageal cancer. Turns out Linds didn’t really like his old job and mad hours he spent creating a successful career. Here is what Linds wrote before he died:

“I think you’re all f—— mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a f—— TV commercial. Nobody gives a s—.

This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.

Countless late nights and weekends, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and anniversary dinners were willingly sacrificed at the altar of some intangible but infinitely worthy higher cause. It would all be worth it in the long run…

This was the con. Convincing myself that there was nowhere I’d rather be was just a coping mechanism. I can see that now. It wasn’t really important. Or of any consequence at all really. How could it be. We were just shifting product. Our product, and the clients. Just meeting the quota. Feeding the beast as I called it on my more cynical days.

So was it worth it?

Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling.”

When faced with death, I wonder how many of us will look back on all the time and effort we put into our career and will feel the same?

That all being said, sometimes I think a job might be worth it as well.  Here’s the other side of the coin.  I frequently see articles and blog posts, recently, written by people who have given up their careers to travel the world.  It  all seems so glamorous and adventurous. Until you realize you had a career and job to pay for all those glamorous adventures! From Adweek, “The Couple Who Quit Their Ad Jobs to Travel the World Ended Up Poor and Scrubbing ToiletsThe uglier side of a year-long creative journey”:

 “You remember Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger, the South African couple who quit their agency jobs this year to travel the world anddocument the experience. It sounded like a dream, and the lovely Instagram photos have made it look like one.

But halfway through their year-long odyssey (they’re currently in Athens, having traveled 25,000 kilometers so far), they’ve posted a reality check on their blog—a post titled “Why We Quit Our Jobs In Advertising To Scrub Toilets”—in which they share “the uglier side of our trip.” It turns out that following one’s dream—while working odd jobs in exchange for room and board—involves a lot of dirty work, and more than a few tears.

“The budget is really tight, and we are definitely forced to use creativity (and small pep talks) to solve most of our problems (and the mild crying fits),” Cartell writes. “Don’t let the bank of gorgeous photography fool you. Nuh uh. So far, I think we’ve tallied 135 toilets scrubbed, 250 kilos of cow dung spread, 2 tons of rocks shoveled, 60 meters of pathway laid, 57 beds made, and I cannot even remember how many wine glasses we’ve polished.

“You see, to come from the luxuries we left behind in Johannesburg … we are now on the opposite end of the scale. We’re toilet cleaners, dog poop scoopers, grocery store merchandisers and rock shovelers.”

We work for a reason. Your reasons might be vastly different than my reasons, but we all have reasons. I hope if I look death in the face I won’t regret my choices to work and create a successful career. I’ve missed my fair share of school events and sporting events that my kids have participated in. I’ve missed many of their most joyful and sad moments. Those I already regret. What I won’t regret is that I work to allow my family to have so many of these moments.

I lived poor.  I lived with a single mother who wasn’t quite sure how she was going to pay for dinner that night. I work because I never wanted my family to feel this anxiety.  Sometimes a job is worth it, sometimes it isn’t.  It’s all up to you to decide, though.

What Would It Take To Get Your Employee To Leave You?

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Anthology (formerly Poachable) came out with a fun survey recently that polled where current employees of some of the hottest tech companies would go if given the chance.  The results are interesting and really speak to organizational fit, and the appetite for risk, in the employees you hire.

On the outset, I would assume any talented person working at companies like, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Facebook or Google would be willing to accept a job at another tech firm, given the opportunity, location and pay are all that they are looking for.  Turns out that the employees at each of these organizations have a particular career taste when it comes to possible change, take a look:

Microsoft: 74% would prefer to go to another Public Company, only 32% to an early stage startup. (this limits the competition you’re up against, right?)

IBM: 72% to a Profitable Private Company, only 23% to an early stage startup.

Apple: 62% would prefer well-funded startup, or the same 62% to a public company, only 28% to early stage startup

Oracle: 69% to a public company, only 29% to early stage startup.

Amazon: 75% to public company, only 35% to early stage startup.

Google: 73% to well-funded startup, 45% to early stage startup and only 59% would want a public company.

So, what does this mean?  All those startups looking to attract folks from big tech companies might want to rethink your sourcing strategies! While some organizations like Google and Apple have employees with a higher tolerance for risk, most big tech companies are filled with non-career risk takers.

Organizational fit is so critical to making good hires, and most of us tend to overlook the risk appetite of the employees we are hiring versus the risk culture of our own organization.  This can be vetted out in an interview process, or even with an assessment, but we just forget about it most of the time.

You can usually see it on a person’s resume. Conservative company, conservative company, conservative company, oh hey, come interview over here with us at ‘our pants are on fire’, you’re going to love it! No, they won’t, but they might be attracted to the fire initially, and seem very interested.  The problem is, they’ve already shown you who they really are, you just aren’t listening!

Career ADHD: Is Employee Tenure Still Important?

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I keep getting told by folks who tend to know way more than me that employees ‘today’ don’t care about staying at a company long term. “Tim you just don’t get it, the younger workforce just wants to spend one to three years at a job than leave for something new and different.” You’re right! I don’t get it.

Payscale recently released survey data showing that the average employee tenure is sitting at 3.68 years.  Which speaks to my smart friends who love to keep replacing talent. I still don’t buy this fact as meaning people don’t want long term employment with one organization.

Here’s what I know about high tenured individuals:

1. People who stay long term with a company tend to make more money over their career.

2. People who stay long term with a company tend to reach the highest level of promotion.

3. People who tend to stay long term with a company tend to have higher career satisfaction.

I don’t have a survey on this. I have twenty years of working in the trenches of HR and witnessing this firsthand. The new CEO hire from outside the company gets all the press, but it actually rarely happens. Most companies promote from within because they have trust in the performance of a long-term, dedicated employee, over an unknown from the outside. Most organizations pick the known over the unknown.

I still believe tenure matters a great deal to the leadership of most organizations.  I believe that a younger workforce still wants to find a great company where they can build a career, but we keep telling them that is realistic in today’s world.

Career ADHD is something we’ve made up to help us explain to our executives why we can no longer retain our employees.  Retention is hard work. It has real, lasting impact to the health and well-being of a company. There are real academic studies that show the organizations with the highest tenure, outperform those organizations with lower tenure.  (here, here, and here)

Employee tenure is important and it matters a great deal to the success of your organization. If you’re telling yourself and your leadership that it doesn’t, that its just ‘kids’ today, we can’t do anything about it, you’re doing your organization a disservice. You can do something about it. Employee retention, at all levels, should be the number 1, 2 and 3 top priorities of your HR shop.

When Should You Retire?

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We tend to believe retirement is an age thing. Well, once you turn 65, it’s time to retire! Do you know where ’65’ actually came from? Most HR pros will probably guess it, it’s when America instituted social security insurance back in 1935.

The U.S. Government, in 1935, didn’t even use any science to determine 65 years old.  At the time, the national railroad pension retirement age was 65, and about half the state pensions were the same (the other half were 70), so 65 years old was chosen. Way less red tape back in 1935! Can you imagine the government trying to make that decision today!?

So, you turn 65 and you’re supposed to retire. In 1935, that probably was fairly accurate. The actual life expectancy in 1935 was only 61! So, we built social security knowing most people would not live to receive it. Today, life expectancy is around 79 years old!  As you can imagine, 65 years old is no longer a realistic retirement age.

I’m currently 45 years old.  It’s my belief that I have about 25 years left to work and save for my retirement. I’m assuming I’ll work until I’m at least 70.  70 years old today doesn’t seem like 70 years old when I was a kid.  My parents are now in their 70’s and they don’t seem ‘old’. I mean they’re old, but not like they can’t do anything old.  Both could still easily work and produce great work if they wanted to.

All of this should change how we look at succession planning in our organizations, but we still use 65 as the ‘expiration’ date of when someone no longer seems to have value. “Oh, you know Tim, he’s going to be 65 next year, I’m amazed he can still stay awake all day!”

65 in 2015, is not the same 65 we saw in 1935!  The health and physical wellbeing of those two people are worlds apart in difference!

Succession Planning needs to catch up with this difference.  HR needs to lead this charge.  Part of this change starts with us changing the language and numbers we use when describing retirement.  Regular retirement age needs to start at 70 years old, at a minimum and move up from there.  We need to eliminate 65 years old from everything we write and speak.  It’s just no longer valid or accurate.

Once we push this date out, we can then start to plan much more accurately to what our organizational needs will truly be.  Next, we need to have frank conversations with those who we believe are reaching an age where they want to retire and have real conversations.  HR pros have been failing at this for years!  It’s actually not against the law to ask an employee what their retirement plan is! It should be against the law that you don’t ask this question!

If an employee knows that you are working with them to reach their goals, and you let that employee know that ‘hey, we need you for another five years’, most will actually happily stay on the additional time.  My Dad worked in a professional job until he was 72, and they wanted him longer! Don’t ever underestimate the power of being wanted. As we age, that desire to be wanted just increases!

So, I’ll ask you. What age do you think someone should retire?