Category Archives: Culture

T3 – @RocketLawyer

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This week on T3 I take a look at legal benefit provider Rocket Lawyer.  Rocket Lawyer allows your employees to manage, virtually, all of your legal needs online. Employees can create legal documents and legal forms instantly with safe & secure storage, e-signatures and lawyer review.

This is one of many fringe benefit options that an employer can pick up for their employees, like pet insurance, dry cleaning, free lunch, etc.  Some employees will find this service invaluable, and some will never find a use for it.  What I know is HR pros get way to many inquiries from our employees for legal advice and help!

While my employees might like a free lunch, the HR person in me really would like them to have another outlet for legal advice and services!

The one issue that I see happening constantly, and it’s only going to get worse based on demographics, is employees having to care for aging parents.  Rocket Lawyer can help your employees set up power of attorney, ask real lawyers in their state and area about their legal rights and advice in regards to dealing with their parents estates, etc.  This is one issue I just continue to hear from more and more employees on, where they need real legal advice, not my ‘legal’ HR advice!

Rocket Lawyer is not an EAP.  It’s a full blown legal technology that allows employees to take care of a ton of legal documentation on their own for no additional fees.  Handle landlord and rental contracts, Immigration and Visa issues, Pre-nuptial agreements, set up a will, etc. It’s self serve legal services, online, for a few dollars per month, per employee.

The other piece I like about Rocket Lawyer is that as an organization and HR the service is totally separate and confidential.  This takes the burden off you and your organization in dealing with your employees legal issues, but at the same time you are giving the professional support to help them take care of their business.

I was impressed. Great, easy to use interface.  Simple to set up documents online.  The service could easily save your employees thousands of dollars in basic legal fees.  Check them out, and get a demo.  Could be a great add to this years open enrollment plan!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

3 Ways to Turn Down a Job Offer

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The NBA free agent signings took place at midnight EST last night.  The signing period lasts 9 days, where players can negotiate, but not sign, deals until last night at midnight.  One big free agent signing this year is DeAndre Jordan, who was with the LA Clippers last season, and had a verbal, handshake, agreement to join the Dallas Mavericks.

That was until DeAndre decided to change his mind and re-sign with the Clippers, but not tell the Mavericks he was going to do this!  Basically, doing what we see in HR all the time, accepting our offer, only to see the candidate turn around and accept the counteroffer.  The problem with DeAndre was that he never let Dallas know he was going to do this, so they weren’t able to go after another player to replace him!

Not only did he not tell Dallas, he actually tweeted out a picture from his house with a chair blocking the door, to give the implication that his Clipper teammates weren’t allowing anyone to come to his house until after midnight and contract was signed!  Way to keep it classy LA…

So, how should a candidate turn down an offer when they decide to go in another direction?  Here are three ways that are all better than was DeAndre did:

1. Pick up the phone! If you are adult enough to make the decision to accept another offer, be adult enough to pick up the freaking phone and let the other party know that is what your intent is.  You get bonus adult points if you also give them a reason or two of why the other offer was better for you to accept! Do this the moment you have made the decision to accept the other position. Timing is critical for this, as the other organization might have a backup candidate and they don’t want to miss out on this person.

2. Send an email.  Less favorable, and it’s definitely conflict avoidant, but at least you did something to let the organization know.  The plus factor on the email is you have time to craft your message, as some people are not good over the phone in real-time interactions.  Again, give the organization some sort of ‘real’ reason on why their offer wasn’t as good as the offer you accepted.  This will be appreciated, as companies need to know how to get better.  NEVER – give the “it’s me, not you” as a reason. That’s lame!

3. Text message.  I put this one in for the kids. They like texting, but the reality is, this looks unprofessional, and you’ll get know adult points for doing this.  The one way I can see texting being used to turn down an offer is if it is used in conjunction with another form of communication. A quick “just wanted to let you know I will not be accepting your offer. Sorry. I’ll call soon with an explanation”, will work, but make sure you call!

I’m not sure why anyone ever feels it’s okay to accept a job offer, then just decide to not do it, but never communicate back with the organization. This happens more than you think, but I’m always surprised by this mentality of who would think this is acceptable.

In my career I’ve probably had at least a half a dozen people accept jobs, sign an offer letter, then on start day, be a no-show. I find out later they decided to accept a counteroffer, but never communicated anything back to my organization.  This is across multiple industries, multiple companies. I would love to see an industry study of why people think this is an appropriate behavior!

The morale to the story? Don’t be a DeAndre!

The Jealous Girlfriend Interview Technique!

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About a year ago Forbes had an article, Top Executive Recruiters Agree There Are Only 3 True Job Interview Questions, that shared the “wisdom” of a handful of Executive  Recruiters on the only things that you should really have to ask a candidate.  There 3 questions where:

  1. Can you do the job?
  2. Will you love the job?
  3. Can we tolerate working with you?

Simple enough.  Straight to the point, and you can assume for the $75,000 you’re paying, this is probably the extent of their screening as well!

In my Recruiting/HR career it’s probably the single most often asked question I get:

“What are your best interview questions?”

Then, you get to hear their questions. About how Google has some really great ones. Even, how I heard once about a company that asked people if they were an animal which animal would they be? Or, if you only pick one vegetable to eat the rest of your life, would it be carrots?  It goes on, and on. Until you want to vomit!

The actual interview questions have very little impact in the success of the interview.

If you are interviewing anyone with some decent smarts, they are going to be able to ace your questions with little effort.  What is important in interviewing is what you allow the candidate to get away with.  I find that most recruiters and hiring managers to be way (I mean WAY!) to easy when it comes to questioning candidates.  See if this example sounds familiar:

Interviewer: “John, looks like you left your last next to last company in May, but didn’t start your current position until July. Can you explain that gap?”

John: “Sure, you know I was doing a great job and I didn’t see myself moving up in that company, so I wanted to go find somewhere I could move up the ladder.”

Bam! At this point, most interviewers move on to the next questions.  When clearly, John deflected, and someone needs to rip into some Gestapo interrogation tactics and find out what’s really going on.  But they don’t, it would be a conflict, he might think we are rude, and well, we’ll move on…

Follow-up questions to original answers during an interview is a skill in itself.  The only interview questions you ever need are the questions a Jealous Girlfriend asks when you come home on a Saturday morning around 3am.  Shoot, just hire Jealous Girlfriends as your interviewers! They’ll get to the bottom of a candidates background!

The hardest interview I ever had was with a woman that was eventually my boss, who was a former U.S. Army interrogator. It was exhausting! It was painful! It was Awesome! I actually lost my voice (after the 7th hour – True Story!).

She was the ultimate Jealous Girlfriend, in fact, I think she trains Jealous Girlfriends in her spare time.  There wasn’t an answer I could give her that she was satisfied with. She just kept at it, until I would slip and say something I really didn’t mean to. Once she smelled the blood, it was over.

The result? She hired the best talent (excluding me) in the entire organization by far!  Bad hired did not make it past here interviewing technique.

So, don’t worry about having the “best” interview questions. Really any will do. Just don’t accept the first answer you get!

 

Hiring Is About To Get Really Difficult!

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One thing was abundantly clear from speakers and thought leaders at SHRM 2015, hiring is hard, and it’s about to get much harder!

That isn’t good news for any of us in HR and Talent Acquisition. There are two forces that are currently happening that are making hiring more difficult than it has been in over ten years:

  1. Solid economy and job growth.
  1. Baby Boomers leaving the workforce.

This isn’t earth shattering information, we all kind of new this was happening.  The issue is we are now all beginning to feel this in every part of the country and in almost every job category.  This means some things are going to happen, and the top HR and Talent Pros are already preparing for these:

  • Wage Growth: CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson spoke at SHRM on Tuesday and had some great data showing that organizations see wage growth of around 5% in 2015, and similar in years to come. Are you budgeting 5% increases? I’m guessing not!
  • Recruitment Process Challenges: How many steps does it take to apply for a job in your organization?  If it’s more than two, you’ve got problems!  Can someone apply for a job online with your organization without having a resume? Why not?  Matt also showed data from CareerBuilder showing 40% of HR and Talent Pros have never applied for one of their own jobs to better understand the true experience!
  • Technology Challenges: Do you have a way to reengage candidates in your system on a regular basis?  A system that allows you to let great talent know, that you already have in your system, when you have an opening that fits them? It’s called CRM, and only about 20% of companies have technology that can do this important recruitment marketing function!
  • Job Design Challenges: Too many of us are working and designing jobs like we are living in a society that was pre-internet, pre-ultra connected. We still think we need employees sitting in front of us from 8-5pm, Monday thru Friday. If they aren’t sitting in front of us, they must not be working! Indeed shared that 80% of job searches on their site include this single word: “Remote”!  Are you adjusting those jobs that can be flexible?

Those organizations that believe they can recruit and get talent like they have been doing for the last couple of decades are going to fail.  It’s really that simple.  Talent attraction will be a powerful strategic differentiator for organizations over the next decade, like almost no other time in our history.

The good news?  At no other point in our history do have access to the information on how to be successful!  Twenty years ago, doing great talent acquisition was mostly trying stuff and getting lucky.  In today’s world you can learn easily how the best organizations are attracting talent at conferences, on websites, in blogs, webinars, etc.  There are so many sources of this information, that we now have no excuse to improve what we are doing.  We just have to do it!

 

Live from #SHRM15 – S#*t HR Tech Salespeople Say!

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That’s right SHRMies today is the day!  2 pm West Coast time, because you know it’s the best coast, Kris Dunn, and I will be dropping knowledge at SHRM 2015. Our presentation will give you the ins and outs of selecting your next HR and/or Talent technology. We’ll also be talking HR vendor negotiating and give you keep insight to getting the best deal you can!

Check us out, if you’re here.  If you’re not, here’s a little taste of what you’ll be missing:

S#*t HR Tech Salespeople Say and How to Translate It!

“This software/tool pays for itself!”

Yeah, and so does that travel insurance you bought to protect your vacation last year!  This always goes well with another line they throw into the mix, “you’ll save so much money, you’ll be able to put money back to the bottomline of the business”.  If you believe this I’ve got some great land to sell in the Everglades!

“Buy now, before the price goes up in September!”

Every single time I hear this from an HR Tech salesperson I hang-up or end the conversation.  This is the cheesiest, of cheeseball lines that a salesperson can use when negotiating.  If you’re giving me a price in June, but I need a couple of months to get this decision through the proper channels, the price better be the same in sixty days.

“We don’t have that yet, but it’s in a future release!”

You know what else is in a future release?  Their ability to use 3D printers to make real rock star candidates!  Sure that future release might be 100 years down the road, but technically they didn’t lie to you!  If the product you’re looking at doesn’t have the functionality you need now, and it’s critical for you to have it, you need to walk away.  Too many things happen in the tech industry to plan on ‘a future release’ to make the product work for you.

Want some more?!?

We’ve got plenty, stop on down to the live show and check us out.  Kris and I are like the movie Twins, with Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwartzneggar.  He’s the big one. I’m the good looking one! I think that’s how that movie went…

Anyway, it’ll be fun.  If you couldn’t make it to SHRM, hit me with an email, and I’ll make sure you get a copy of the slide deck for the presentation.

Live From #SHRM15 – Everyone Wants Priority Status

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Next week I’ll be speaking at SHRM’s Annual National Conference in Las Vegas with my good friend Kris Dunn.  Come check us out!  Our session is titled: We’re Bringing Techy Back!  It’s on Monday, June 29th at 2pm in rooms N228-N230.

In this session we’ll discuss everything you need to know, as an HR and Talent pro, about selecting your next HR technology, what HR tech companies are saying, and what it really means. We’ll also give you some great tips on negotiating the price! Our hope is to take the fear and confusion of HR Tech and make it simple and clear.  We’ll also have some fun and probably be a bit snarky about the HR Tech industry!

Also, check me out on Periscope (TimSackett) as I’ll be attempting to do some live video feeds from the Expo floor and maybe, just maybe, live from our session at SHRM.  It’s super easy, just download the app to your phone and you can watch whatever it is I’m videoing, live, in real-time. You can also ask questions and make comments.

As I get ready to take off to Vegas I started thinking about checking in to my flight and hoping I’ll get a good status so I can find some space in the overheads and not have to wait at baggage claim.  I hate the concept of priority status, because I hate the way it ‘classes’ individuals.  I get it. Delta wants to take care of those passengers who are most loyal. I actually like that part.  After that, it all becomes a little hairy!

First comes the needs of those who need extra time and help boarding. Usually, elderly, injured and families with babies and strollers.  I’m fine with this, but the family thing has gotten out of control. I mean, look, your kid can walk by themselves, you don’t need extra time! You’re just gaming the system.  If I was smart I would befriend a really old person and offer to carry their bag!

First Class is next. Okay, they pay the most, I can buy into that.  I’m a capitalist. I can fit my brain around that.

Next, comes those skymile frequent flyer types.  Again, I’m all for loyalty programs, and would argue these folks should probably get on before first class, but they are both getting on early, so all have no real issues.

This is where all hell breaks lose.  Seating Status 1, or 2, or 3, etc.

There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason behind the rest of us get on the plane!  They claim that ‘zone’ seating is done back to front, but if you’ve flown anytime recently you know that isn’t true.  You can buy into zone 1 if you want to pay a little extra to jump on early, but not as early as about 50% of the plane listed in the above classes.

Basically, Delta has created this entire system where people just all push towards the gate and wait for their zone, but try and get in early on their zone. It’s chaos!  And their is no reason for it.

Can you imagine if you did this with your employees or candidates?  It’s dysfunctional at best, and creates ‘fans’ who end up hating you at worst.

I fly about 12-15 times per year, not anywhere close to the real frequent travelers I know.  But each time I question the boarding process and what a bad process it is, on all airlines, not just Delta.

What’s a better way?  I like the pure capitalist play of seating by ticket price! Those who paid the most, get on first, all the way down to those who paid the least or got ‘free’ travel with miles. I’m even willing to have this take longer. It might not be ‘better’, but at least I can justify why I’m getting on last!

See you in Vegas.  Make sure you hit me up on Twitter (@TimSackett). I would love to meet you in real life while I’m at SHRM, unless you’re creepy, then please hit up Kris Dunn (@Kris_Dunn)!

The #1 Way to Communicate Success of a HR Change!

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Adobe recently changed their annual performance review process of the traditional once-per-year review to a more modern design of having frequent feedback throughout the year:

So, based in part on ideas crowdsourced from employees, Morris and her team scrapped annual evaluations and replaced them with a system called Check In. At the start of each fiscal year, employees and managers set specific goals. Then, at least every eight weeks but usually much more often, people “check in” with their bosses for a real-time discussion of how things are going. At an annual “rewards check-in,” managers give out raises and bonuses according to how well each employee has met or exceeded his or her targets. “Managers are empowered to make those decisions,” says Morris. “There is no ‘matrix.’ HR isn’t involved.”

A big change for any organization, for sure, but that’s not what this post is really about.  You see, Donna Morris, Adobe’s Sr. Global VP of People and Places could have easily just said it’s been a great success and shared stories from employees and hiring managers about how much they loved it. She could have shared retention metrics and employee engagement scores to show its success, but she didn’t. What shared did was absolutely brilliant! She shared this:

Getting feedback in real time, so everyone stays on track and is pulling in the same direction, has helped make Adobe’s 13,000 employees far more productive, Morris says. Adobe’s stock price has increased from about $30 to over $80 since Check In began.

Drops mic, walks off stage.

You want to really communicate the success of HR change, tie it to direct financial outcomes!  Yes, it’s a major leap to say “Check In” created $50 per share of shareholder value.  Let me say that again, MAJOR LEAP!  In fact, I don’t even think you could scientifically correlate this one HR change to the raise in shareholder value, but she did!  What she did would be similar to saying global temperatures have risen 3 degrees on average since they started making Krispy Kreme donuts, so Krispy Kreme is responsible for global warming!

You see, success of a major program has little to do with fact, and ton to do with perception.  Here is a senior HR executive who gets it.   She wants to do other cool and innovative stuff at Adobe, and now she has her big-win to go back to when someone pushes back that it won’t work, or it’s not needed.   In the minds of Adobe employees, this program has increased shareholder value, and we need to listen to her other ideas!

Take note HR Pros!  If you get this opportunity, you take it 100% of the time! Because you won’t get it often.  How do you communicate your success of a HR program?  Wait until you have favorable financial data in your organization, then connect the dots for people!

Do Demotions Work?

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Quietly, Brian Williams returned to NBC last week. Not in his usual spot of nightly news anchor, but in a demoted spot, for less pay:

The embattled former NBC Nightly News anchor has been demoted and will receive reportedly less money in his new role, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Williams is being replaced by Lester Holt, who took over for him after he was handed down an unpaid six-month suspension for making factually incorrect comments and “misremembering” details spoken about on-air.

The newspaper reported that Williams will receive “substantially” less money when he returns to the network as a breaking news and special reports anchor for MSNBC, a division of NBC. He had been making at least $10 million a year for the last five years.

It begs the question, do demotions work?

They certainly aren’t popular. Both, employers and employees, dislike demotions.  Employers feel like if they demote an employee they are just giving them notice to go find another job.  Employees feel like a failure and that the organization is probably just trying to push them out the door. In my experience demotions rarely work.

What kind of demotions work?

There are times when you promote a good worker into a new role, a promotion, and both you and the employee think it will be great, but then it ends up not being great. The employee can’t handle the new role, you did a bad job preparing them, there were other organizational issues at play, whatever the reason, it’s not working. This happens more than you realize, but we usually just end up firing the employee for performance, or they see the writing on the wall and take off before you get a chance to shoot them yourself.

I always find it ironic when I hear about this type of turnover. I’ll ask, “was this person a good, solid employee before they got promoted?”  The answer is always yes.  They wouldn’t have gotten promoted if they weren’t. So, then, why did this person have to be a turnover statistic? Why couldn’t we figure out how to get them back to a position where they were productive and successful again?

Modern organizational theory doesn’t allow for this.  We don’t believe that a person will ever want to go backwards in their career. Once they have been promoted, they will not want to go back into a position they had prior, and they definitely don’t want a pay cut!  We assume this to be true. Also, it might be true in many cases. So, we take a ‘good’ employee and terminate them or let them just go away on their own.

I think the only way you make a demotion work is if you set it up within your organizational culture that this ‘demotion’, going back into a very important role in the company, is something that happens here.  We want to challenge people, and sometimes those challenges won’t end well.  That’s okay, we still love you, and respect you, and we want to get you back on a path of success.

This conversation has to happen, not after failure, but before the person is ever promoted.  That moving along the career path here, at our organization, isn’t just up, it’s down, it’s sideways, etc.  We are going to constantly want to get you into a ‘role’ of success.  Yes, failure happens, but we will want to get you back to success as fast as possible.

The reality is, people don’t stay around if they’re failing.

Brian Williams is damaged goods, so he accepted the demotion.  He’s talented. He’ll get back on the horse, show his value, and then he’ll go someplace else.  NBC is giving him an opportunity, but this kind of demotion doesn’t usually end well, for the employer.

What Not To Eat: Work Edition

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We are constantly bombarded in the media about what we should be eating and what we shouldn’t be eating. Just last week the FDA came out with it’s new ban on Transfats starting in 2018.  While this is a good thing for the health of our society, it’s just one example of how we are being told what to eat and what not to eat.

While I don’t want to get into an argument here about whether or not you should be eating more protein, or fruits and vegetables, etc. I do want to give you some insight into foods you just should never eat at work.  Here’s my list:

1. Bananas.  No one wants to say it, so I will. There’s no good way to eat a banana at work and not have some fourteen year old comment come out. Male or female, eating a banana just isn’t a good look for anyone at the office.  I know, I know, you just break off small pieces and it’s fine.  It’s not. Stop it. Eat that home before coming in. (Also see: Twinkies, foot long hot dogs, those cream filled long john donuts, a full carrot)

2. Beanitos Chips.  The name pretty much tells you why.  Really, any “Beanito” product isn’t a good office product if you’re within fifty yards of a co-worker.  Yeah, they taste great, I’ll give you that!  But, an hour down the road we hate you, and that Fabreeze isn’t helping.

3. Sushi.  I love sushi.  The one problem with sushi is similar to bananas, you have to open your mouth so wide that you look gross eating it!  Sushi is a bad date food of choice as well, it’s just not a good look.  Any time you have to shove something the size of a golf ball into your mouth in one bite, you’re in trouble.

4. Raman Noodles. Again, love noodles, but I don’t want to see or hear you eating them. The slurping of noodles, while respected in Asian countries, is not respected in my office.  I don’t want to hear you eat, or slurp.

5. Anything cooked in the microwave in the break room that stinks up the entire place. Usually, this means fish. While it tastes great, fish does not smell good warmed up, and lingers.  I actually have a policy in our employee handbook at HRU that if you cook fish in the microwave you get fired.

6. Microwave Popcorn.  I actually love the smell of fresh popped popcorn! I worked in movie theaters growing up and can kill a large bucket by myself. The problem is, most people can’t quite grasp the concept of cooking popcorn in a microwave.  You have to watch it, listen for it. You have about a three second window to get it out before you have incinerated microwave popcorn. You just can’t push the “popcorn” button on the microwave and walk away, that is a recipe for disaster!

7. Any Vegan Food that looks like poop. Vegan’s know what I’m talking about. Let’s face it, most vegan food is gross and tastes like dirt, but God bless those people, they’ll probably live a lot longer than I! Like into those great 90s and 100s years! Yeah, can’t we all wait for those years…

What are the foods you don’t think people should eat at the office? Hit me in the comments!

*Shoutout to Jacks in my office for the idea for this post!

 

Too Small, Too Slow, To Succeed

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Regular readers of this blog know I’m a huge Michigan State fan, and a basketball fan. So, this week, when the Golden State Warriors won the 2015 NBA Finals I was excited.  Not because I’m a big Warriors fan, although I do love their style of plan, but because former Sparty, Draymond Green, is on the Warriors and played his butt off!

Three years ago Draymond was the National Collegiate Player of the year, then he got drafted in the second round.  Normally, a player reaching that level is a for sure lottery pick, but DayDay was told he was too small, too slow, didn’t have enough skill to play in the NBA.  What they didn’t measure was his ability to lead and his heart to win:

CBSSports.com’s Zach Harper captured Green yelling to his mother, Mary Babers-Green, “Mom, they told me I can’t play in this league!”…”That’s what they said,” Green said postgame. “I won the national player of the year award in college. Consensus all-American. I made every single first-team all-American [team] that you could possibly make. And I was a second-round pick and a lot of people said I could never play in this league. Too slow, too small, can’t shoot well enough, can’t defend nobody, what does he do well? He doesn’t have a skill that stands out. I got heart and that’s what stands out.”

Constantly, throughout the playoffs you heard the Warrior players and coaches say that Draymond was the heart and soul of this team.

That’s the secret sauce to hiring.  You need to hire more employees like Draymond Green.

Employees who appreciate the opportunity they’ve been given.  Want to prove to everyone they are better than other think, but confident in their own abilities.  Willing to work harder than almost everyone else to make it happen.

Sounds easy, right!?!

It’s not, it’s almost impossible to find individuals that have those traits and also fit within your culture!  The Warriors got lucky.  Second round picks in the NBA are throw away picks, most of those players never make an NBA roster.  You can get lucky as well.

Most of the traits you are looking for can be screened if you’re looking for them. The problem is we are usually screening for two or three main criteria when looking at candidates: Do you have the skills for the job? Are you willing to accept the salary we have for this job? Are you ‘hickey’ free? If yes to all three, move forward to hiring manager.

This is where we fail. Things like heart and passion and desire are the differentiators that make someone success. You still need to have the skill, but all skills being close, you then need the intangibles.  Too often we choose someone based on their skill was slightly better.  Once you get to a certain point in skill, a little more skill doesn’t make that much of a difference.

At that point you want to look someone who has a chip on their shoulder. Something to prove. To show the world, yes, I can do it.

“Mom, they told me I couldn’t play in this league!”  Said the man holding the championship trophy.