Positivity: The New Red Flag in Hiring

I’m trained as an HR pro to pick up on ‘red flags’ in interviewing, in employee behavior, potential turnover risks, etc. Sometimes those red flags are really obvious.  I tease my staff all the time, but missing time on Mondays and Fridays, unexcused time, is a red flag.  It says something about how you feel about work, that you want to extend your weekend. It’s subtle, but in my experience it doesn’t play out well.

My new red flag is Positivity.

First, I’ll admit to you that I’m a mostly positive person.  My normal gauge is set to “things will probably work out in the end”.  I try to be realistic, without thinking the sky is going to fall when something doesn’t go my way.  Life has been pretty good to me. My glass is over half full, and when it’s not, I believe I can find a way to fill it up.

What I don’t buy is the people who are so positive they seem to be telling themselves they’re positive.  I tend to believe if you’re positive, you don’t need to say you outlook is positive, people will hear it and see it in your daily interactions.  Those are the people you get drawn to. They are truly positive people who enjoy the life they’ve created for themselves.

There is another kind of positive person.  This is the person who needs to keep reminding themselves and anyone around them they’re positive. This positive scares me. This positive is a red flag for me.  This type of positive makes me believe you are actually fairly negative, but trying to turn yourself into positive.

Now, I don’t necessarily think that’s bad, someone wanting to change from negative to positive.  I applaud the effort. I also know that most people are hardwired to lean one way.  It’s your personality, and that’s really hard to change long term.

My friend, Kris Dunn, loves to ask applicants about what work experience in their life they enjoyed the most, and which one did they dislike the most. Each tell you something about the person.  A truly positive person will have a hard time finding a place they truly disliked, but they’ll speak a ton about what they really liked. A truly negative person will do the opposite. They’ll go on and on about what they dislike, but move on quickly with their answer about what they like.

Basically, you can fake positivity, and it’s common amongst candidates.  The problem is, you can’t fake it for long, and even if they can fake it, fake positivity can get down right annoying!

I think it’s important to remember that opposite of Positive Thinking isn’t Negative Thinking. It’s Possible Thinking. I want to hire people who are realistic about what is possible. Blind positivity doesn’t last and usually leads to a big fall.  I don’t need the drama in my work environment. Who would have ever thought that positivity would be a hiring red flag!

THE TOP 20 BRANDED HR & TALENT PROS: MEET Neil Morrison from Penguin Random House UK

Let’s face it – Fearful of the spotlight and conservative to a fault, HR pros generally aren’t the best examples to look towards when it comes to professional branding. Kris Dunn (Kinetix RPO, The HR Capitalist) and Tim Sackett (HRU Technical Resources, TimSackett.com) think that needs to change.  That’s why they created this series – The Top 20 Branded HR Pros(sponsored by the team at Glassdoor).

KD and Tim searched the globe for HR Pros who used the tools at their disposal (writing, speaking, social and more) to brand themselves in the HR space, but limited the results to actual practitioners in the areas of HR, Recruiting and Talent Management.  No consultants, no vendors. They found out well-branded HR pros who are actual practitioners are hard to find.  

Tim and KD are running the Top 20 they found here on the HR Capitalist and at TimSackett.com.  No rankings, just inclusion in the list and some notes on why.  There are at least 20 well-branded HR Pros in the world.  These are their stories. 

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Let me introduce you to HR Pro Neil Morrison!  I believe Neil is the lone non-U.S. resident on Glassdoor’s list of the Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros.   I’m not sure what that says about the list or Neil, but just a fact when you pull the data we did from Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Writing and Speaking background and overall brand ambassador data, Neil showed up in a big way, all the way from the U.K.!

Neil is the Group HR Director for Penguin Random House in the U.K.  For the U.S. audience that is equivalent to a SVP of HR in America.  So, we have this big HR executive who has found the time to brand himself, and also understand the importance to his career, his profession and his organization.

I know Neil as a fellow Talent Advisor on CareerBuilder’s Hiring Site, where we have both been writing and speaking on live web chats for the better part of a year.  Neil has a great English accent, so I kid him on the chats about how everything he says sounds more brilliant, to my ear, than it probably really is! He knows I’m kidding, because what he says is always brilliant!

Here’s Neil’s player card:

Glassdoor Top 20 - Neil Morrison

On the writing side of the fence Neil is the Kris Dunn and Laurie Ruettimann equivalent of HR blogging in the U.K., dare I say Mr. Punk Rock HR! He was one of the first, if not the first, HR bloggers to grab ahold of the U.K. audience with his smart, witty writing style, and he’s not afraid to tell it like it is.  His blog is called Change-Effect.com where he writes about HR, Talent and Leadership weekly.

As a speaker Neil is active in CIPD (U.K. SHRM type organization) and speaks often to HR professionals all over the world.  He is a true international brand advocate for his organization and CIPD.  Neil has won several awards including the UK’s Most Influential HR Practitioner.  Neil also has the most professional LinkedIn profile pic of any of the Glassdoor Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros!

He is all over the Twitters – @NeilMorrison with over 9,000 followers and 20,000 tweets, sharing his international HR perspective.  The one thing I know about Neil, which is unique to someone at his executive HR level, is that he makes time for those who seek his help.  Neil is a great mentor in HR to so many pros, and truly makes time to give back to the HR community.

What doesn’t Neil do well?  He hates Instagram!  He’s an amatuer photographer. So, Instagram is not something he enjoys to partake.  Which helps to point out, to be well branded you don’t have to do everything, but you do have to do something really, really well!

Congratulations Neil!

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The Top 20 Branded HR Pros is brought to you by Glassdoor, who invites you to attend the Annual Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit on September 25th, where a stellar speaker lineup of industry experts and thought leaders exploring the intersection of employer branding and talent acquisition, the candidate experience and employee engagement. 

Tickets are sold out, but wait!  You can attend the livestream online featuring studio coverage with Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett by registering here (click to register).  Fun and games are sure to be a part of that coverage.

It’s Okay to Just do HR

If you’re highly active in HR and Talent Acquisition in the social space (read: blogs, sites, pod/video casts, webinars, conferences, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), you might be caught up in this mindset that what you’re doing is not what you should be doing.

You’re being told what you should be focusing on by idiots like me, and thousands of others, most of whom don’t even work in HR or Talent Acquisition at this moment.  That’s not a bad thing, some are brilliant and took their brilliance to the consulting/analyst/vendor side of the fence because the money was better, or the balance was better, or both.  This isn’t a consultant vs. practitioner post.

This is a post to remind you that it’s alright if you just put your head down and do actual HR and Recruiting work for a while.

That it’s okay not to be instituting the next best practice or innovation.

That it’s okay not to be focusing on recreating HR and Talent Acquisition in your organization.

Sometimes we just need to keep the train running down the tracks.  Allow ourselves to catch out breath. Get and build a strong team around us, and get ready for big things in the future.  In the mean time, we just do what we do.

We make sure our employees are doing alright.  Is there anything we can do to help them be better?

We make sure our employees get paid correctly and benefit card works when they show up at the doctor.

We make sure to kick managers in the shin, under the table, when they’re being idiots to their teams.

We make sure new employees have the tools they need when the show up on their first day, and they feel welcomed.

We give bad employees the gift of finding a job they will truly love, by letting them find that job on their own time.

Sometimes when I’m writing I forget what it’s like to have a million priorities in your day, and knowing you won’t get to half of them.  That’s the daily grind in HR and Talent Acquisition.  So, I write about how you should do this or do that, how you should be all innovative and shit, but I get that many days (sometimes weeks and months!) you just need to do the basics.

I’ve been there.  I struggled to just do the basics many days.  When thinking of being the best and innovating seemed so far away from reality that you felt like giving up.

That’s when I would tell myself, “Today, I’m just going to do HR”.  Focus on what I’m good at. Focus on what I can control.  Make it to the next day, where just maybe, that day would allow me to get better.

It’s okay for you to just do HR today!

 

What Happen When Everyone Thinks They’re An Outlier?

My friend, Laurie Ruettimann, made a comment to me the other day, in regards to HR and Talent Blogging to the affect of, “everyone thinks they’re an outlier, Tim.”

She’s right.

It’s partly that people who blog, like me, are fairly high the narcissism scale.  We tend to believe that what we say and how we say are different than what others say and how they would say it.  It’s not, but that’s how we think.  Hold up.  Let me stop using “we”, because I’m quite certain this nice little HR and Talent blogging community hasn’t chosen me to speak!

I tend to believe anyone could say what I say if they decided they wanted to.  They just decide they would rather read my opinion, than go out, half-crazed and share their opinion on everything in the industry.

She is also very wrong.

There are very few Outliers in the HR and Talent blogging community. So, this point is mostly irrelevant. Just because someone thinks they’re the Pope doesn’t make them the Pope. It makes them crazy.

Outliers in blogging aren’t just people saying things first, or differently.  They are people who are saying things of interest.  They are helping to change the way the profession works.

I take a look at the work of Glen Cathey does and say, holy shit, I need to get better! He’s an Outlier.  I take a look at how Kris Dunn explains performance management in a real context to real HR pros, that I can grasp, that I can take back to my hiring managers and make real change without having a PhD. He’s an Outlier. I take a look at how Laurie challenges how I deeply think about a subject, and sways my opinion to be more open about how others think. She’s an Outlier.

The concept is when everyone believes they’re an outlier, no one is an outlier.  I don’t buy that, because I know the truth above. There are true Outliers.  There are a few brilliant people who shape opinion and slowing get an industry to move in other directions.

So, guess what?  You’re not an Outlier.  You think you are, but you’re not.  Sorry. Buy a helmet, life sucks sometimes.

 

Get Your Employees to Stop Sleepwalking Through Open Enrollment

Hey gang! I’m doing another SHRM Webinar to help you get your employees more involved in this year’s Open Enrollment, and give you some of the background to what frustrates them the most, along with some tips on waking them up!

Do way too many of your employees default into exactly the same plan they chose the year before…just because it’s easier? Is their reluctance to even consider making changes to their benefits costing them — and your company — serious money?

If so, you’re going to love the advice I have to offer about waking up your benefits sleepwalkers in this lively one-hour webinar.

Specifically, you’ll learn:

  • Why the same old, same old is so appealing to people, and how to make change seem less intimidating
  • Smart ways to deal with the blowback you might get if you take away a plan option
  • Why employees find making benefits decisions so dang hard – and how you can help alleviate their stress
  • What you can do to jolt your benefits sleepwalking employees awake once and for all

In short: if you’ve ever struggled to get employees to embrace a new plan or to take any action at all during open enrollment, this is the webinar for you!

August 20th at 2pm EST – just in time for your afternoon nap on the East Coast, and your lunch nap on the West Coast!

Free Webinar (Sponsored by SHRM and ALEX) –  How to Get Your Employees to Stop Sleepwalking Through Open Enrollment—And Help Them Make Better Decisions! 

REGISTER HERE! 

Bathroom Monitor: The Newest HR Pro Title

I love HR.  I’m always on the lookout for the next latest and greatest HR title, so this is an exciting day!  The WaterSaver Faucet Company in Chicago, a great Union town, decided to add “Bathroom Monitor” to the duties HR is now responsible for. Check it out:

“If you work at WaterSaver Faucet Company, when you gotta go, you might not want to go.

The Chicago company installed a new system that monitors bathroom breaks and penalizes employees who spend more than six minutes a day in the washroom outside their normal breaks.

“The HR woman literally goes through every person’s bathroom use and either hands out a reward or discipline,” said Nick Kreitman, an attorney for Teamsters Local 743, which represents 80 workers at the plant, which coincidentally manufactures taps and other sink fixtures.

Employees who don’t use extra breaks get a dollar a day while others who exceed more than one hour in a 10-day period will get a warning, which can lead to termination, he said.”

Now, you probably think this is where I’ll rant about how being a Bathroom Monitor isn’t strategic and demeaning to HR Pros. But, I’m not. In this case, workers are getting what they have asked for.

If you act like a child, employers are forced to treat you like a child.  Adults use the bathroom for reasons G*d intended. Children use the bathroom for that reason and about a hundred others.  Have you ever spent time in an elementary school!?!  I have.  I taught elementary aged children.  The bathroom is a place to go when you’re bored in class to waste time. The bathroom is where mischief happens.

Watersaver HR is doing what is has to, to solve an employee problem it is having.  Employees were taking an advantage of unlimited bathroom breaks that the employer had given to them.  It wasn’t everyone, but it was enough that Watersaver felt the need to make changes.  Employees can still take a bathroom break any time they need, but once a certain amount of time is taken up over a ten day period, it starts to become a disciplinary issue.

Do I agree with this type of strategy? No.

Here’s how I would have handled it.  I would have had the managers who were having issues with a few employees taking too many bathroom breaks, get rid of those employees who were abusing the privilege of unlimited breaks.  I would have sent the message, that we don’t put up with childish behavior.  We want adults to work here.

You know what? The other employees, the majority, also want to work with other adults.  They would have applauded this. Because adults hate when they are working their butts off and others, doing the same job, are goofing off.  We are talking about medical need here.  We are talking about adults who don’t want to work for the money they are being paid. Those people have to go bye-bye.

That’s the type of strategy I would have rather seen Watersaver take.

I’m Uninviting You

I’m not terminating anyone ever again.

I can’t terminate anyone, because I don’t hire anyone.  I do invite people to join me.  Join me on this journey, on this path. It’s going to be a great trip.  I invite them to be  apart of my family.  Not my ‘work’ family, but my actual family.  I spend more time with my co-workers than I do with my wife and children (in terms of waking hours).  So, when I invite someone to join us, it is not something I take lightly.

That’s why, from now on, I’m not terminating anyone.  From now on, I’m just uninviting them to continue being a part part of what we have going on.  Just like a party.  You were invited to attend, but you end up drinking too much and making a fool out of yourself, so now you’re uninvited. You can’t attend the next party.  I don’t know about you, but when I throw a party, I never (and I mean never) invite someone I can’t stand.  Sometimes couple have issues with this, where one spouse wants to invite his or her friend, but their spouse is a complete tool and it causes issues.  Not in my family, we only invite those people we want to be around, life is too short.

Here’s the deal.  When you invited someone into your family, you usually end up falling in love with them.  It’s that way in business. It’s the main reason we have such a hard time firing on bad performers.  We fall in love with those people we hire.  “Oh, Mary, she’s such a nice person!”  But, Mary, can’t tie her shoes and chew gum at the same time.  So, we give Mary chances, too many chances, and pretty soon Mary is part of the family.  It’s hard terminating part of the family.

I would rather just not invite Mary to attend work any longer.  “Hey, Mary, we love you, but look, we aren’t going to invite you to work.  We’ll still see you at 5pm over at the bar for drinks.”  Sounds so much easier, right!?  It happens all the time.  I use to get invited to stuff, but somewhere down the road the group stopped inviting me.  I might have been a little upset over it, but it didn’t last and I’m still friends with everyone.  Termination is so permanent, it’s like death.  Being uninvited sends the same message, but there’s a part of being uninvited that says “you know what, maybe it was you, maybe it was us, but let’s just face it, together it doesn’t work.”

You’re Uninvited.

Are you Great at Faking it?

In our zest to have high employee engagement, HR has once again outsmarted itself.  Follow the logic:

1. High Employee Engagement is a desired measure.

2. HR creates programs to drive Employee Engagement upwards.

3. Employee Engagement thresholds are reached with said programs.

4. HR needs more.

5. If we ensure every new hire comes in ‘loving’ their job/company/industry – we will ‘pre-buy’ some of the engagement measure.

6. Only hire people who ‘love’ our job/company/industry.

7. Candidates have brains.  “Oh, you only hire people who ‘love’ your job/company/industry”

8. Candidates now become really good at ‘faking’ their ‘love’ for your job/company/industry.

9.  Employees are smart to – “Oh, you mean if our ‘engagement’ score comes back higher, you’ll stop making us do these stupid team building exercises?”

10. Employees become really good at ‘faking’ it.

Being male, I was never good at faking it.  I’m Popeye – “I am, what I am, and that’s all I am”.   Fast Company had a solid post on why “Faking Enthusiasm” has become the latest job requirement. From the post:

“Timothy Noah wrote in The New Republic about how Pret A Manger requires its employees to master “Pret behaviors,” such as “has presence,” “creates a sense of fun,” and “is happy to be themself.” Yes–in order to sell you a bacon sandwich, employees must be fully self-actualized. And the amount that they touch fellow-employees is considered to be a positive indicator of sales, not a red flag for sexual-harassment lawsuits.”

It’s such a slippery slope.  Every action we take in leadership has consequences – some of which we know, some we don’t know until they happen.  The best leaders thoroughly try to anticipate these consequences their actions will create.   Requiring employees/candidates have high levels of enthusiasm might seem like a really great idea – but you better have authentic ways of measuring, or you’re just setting yourself up to fooled by those who ‘get’ the game.

Ultimately time and pressure always win out.  Given enough time and/or enough pressure an individuals true colors will show.  This is why it’s important to job requirements that are actually needed.  Authentic enthusiasm is not needed for high performers in most jobs.  Trying to hire for it can create some negative hiring scenarios when time and pressure take their tolls.  Is it great to have enthusiastic employees? Yep – it sure is.  I love being around those employees.  Do I set out to hire that ‘skill’ as a requirement – no – I have great even keel employees as well.  While I might not stop and interact with them as often – they are just as good as the enthusiastic ones.

Here’s what I know. If you’re hiring for a skill that can be faked – candidates will attempt to fake it, if they really want to work for your company.  How do you combat this – eliminate as much subjective stuff as you can from your selection process.  One other thing, if you do decide you need that high-energy personality, understand that personality just doesn’t come when you want it – it’s a person’s core – you get it all the time – there’s no light switch when you decide you’ve had enough.  I see hiring managers all the time that want a ‘certain personality’ – so we find it for them – only to have that same hiring manager come back 6 months later complaining it’s too much!

Your Leaders Secretly Hate Succession Planning

You want to know what you’ll never hear anyone on your leadership team say publicly?  Well, let me stop before I get started, because there are probably a ton of things leaders will say behind closed doors, off the record, and then open the door and say the exact opposite. Welcome to the PC version of corporate America.

One of the obvious, which always causes a stir is veteran hiring.  William Tincup and I were just talking about this last week, in regards to a correlation he was making about organizations and succession planning.  I wrote a post about Veteran Hiring a while back, in which I state that companies will always, 100% of the time, publicly say they support veteran hiring, but behind closed doors they don’t really support veteran hiring.

If they did, we would not have a veteran hiring crisis in this country! If every organization who claims they want to hire veterans, would just hire veterans, we would have 100% employed veterans! But we don’t. Why?  Well, it’s organizational suicide to ever come out and say we don’t really want to hire veterans.  The media would kill that organization. Yet, veterans can’t get hired.

Succession planning is on a similar path.  Your leaders say the support succession planning. They’ll claim it is a number one priority for your organization. But, every time you try and do something with succession planning, it goes no where!

Why?

Your leaders hate succession planning for a number of reasons, here are few:

1. Financially, succession planning is a huge burden on organizations, if done right.  Leaders are paid on the financial success of your organization. If it comes down to Succession Planning, or Michael getting a big bonus, Succession Planning will get pushed to next year, then, next year, then, next year…  You see Succession Planning is really over hiring. Preparing for the future. It’s a long term pay back.  Very few organizations have leadership in place with this type of long term vision of success.

2.  Leaders get too caught up in headcount.  We only have 100 FTEs for that group, we couldn’t possibly hire 105 and develop and prepare the team for the future, even though we know we have 6% turnover each year.  Organizations react. Fire fight.  Most are unwilling to ‘over hire’ and do succession in a meaningful way.

3. Leaders are like 18 year old boys. They think they can do it forever!  Again, publicly they’ll tell you they’re planning and it’s important. Privately, they look at some smartass 35 year old VP and think to themselves, there is no way in hell I’ll ever let that kid take over this ship!

So, what can smart HR Pros do?

Begin testing some Succession Planning type tools and data analytics in hot spots in your company. Don’t make it a leadership thing. Make it a functional level initiative, in a carve out area of your organization.  A part of the organization that is highly visible, has direct financial impact to the business, and one you know outwardly has succession issues.

Tinker. Get people involved. Have conversations. Start playing around with some things that could have impact in terms of development, retention, cross training, workforce planning, etc.  All those things that constitute succession, but instead of organization level, you are focusing on departmental level or a specific location.

Smart HR Pros get started.  They don’t wait for the organization to do it all at once. That will probably never happen.  Just start somewhere, and roll it little by little. Too often we don’t get started because we want to do it all. That is the biggest mistake we can make.

HR Never Wins the Dress Code Game

You probably saw this last week when the internet got all hot and bothered over a 17 year old girl who worked at JC Penny got sent home for a dress code violation. She tweeted out a picture of herself dressed in JC Penny bought ‘career’ apparel that she was wearing at the time (see pic above). The only place where I see this being dressed appropriate for work is probably Hooters, but you know me, I’m super ultra conservative right winged nut job, so what the hell do I know…

Many wanted were angry over what they saw as a double standard, although I’m not sure what that double standard is. I would have been more upset over a 17 year old boy wearing this outfit to work than the girl!  I would have sent both home, so there goes your double standard.

The real issue here is that JC Penny labeled this outfit ‘career apparel” to the customers, but didn’t find it career appropriate for their own associate. If JC Penny is labeling this outfit on their shelves appropriate work wear, why is it inappropriate work wear for their own employees?

Well, I have some reasons:

1. It’s tight and revealing for the average customer of JC Penny.  The average age of a JC Penny shopper is 103 years of age.  The last thing an old person wants to see is a fourth of July wannabe stripper.  That’s knowing your customer base.  I’m sure if she was working at Hot Topic, she wouldn’t have been sent home.

2. There a difference between marketing and operations.  Just because marketing is calling something ‘career appropriate’, doesn’t mean your HR and Operations folks will feel the same way.  Welcome to the reality of working in a corporation. People aren’t always on the same page, and that is a bad thing.

3. 17 year olds have no ability to understand the broader picture of the corporate politics at play here.  It’s too bad someone couldn’t have better coached this young lady on how to handle this situation to have a better impact for herself and fellow employees. Going nuclear wasn’t the best option for her.

4. HR never wins when it comes to dress code, because of these kinds of issues.

HR should give up the dress code policy whenever it’s an option and let your operations team own it. They know their customer base. They know their work environment. They know their employees.  Let them build a dress code that works for them, and trust they’ll do what’s right for the organization.  I’ve done this three times in my career, and all three times it worked out wonderfully, and I didn’t ever have to deal with dress code ever again!