Category Archives: Diversity

Dad’s Don’t Get Work-Life Balance Empathy

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Max Shireson, the CEO of mongoDB, turned in his resignation this past week.  That announcement in itself isn’t really that big of a deal, CEOs turn in resignations every day.  The reason he turned in his resignation is huge.  I’ll let him tell it in his own words from a letter he sent to mongoDB’s workforce:

“Earlier this summer, Matt Lauer asked Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, whether she could balance the demands of being a mom and being a CEO. The Atlantic asked similar questions of PepsiCo’s female CEO Indra Nooyi. As a male CEO, I have been asked what kind of car I drive and what type of music I like, but never how I balance the demands of being both a dad and a CEO.

While the press haven’t asked me, it is a question that I often ask myself. Here is my situation:

* I have 3 wonderful kids at home, aged 14, 12 and 9, and I love spending time with them: skiing, cooking, playing backgammon, swimming, watching movies or Warriors or Giants games, talking, whatever.

* I am on pace to fly 300,000 miles this year, all the normal CEO travel plus commuting between Palo Alto and New York every 2-3 weeks. During that travel, I have missed a lot of family fun, perhaps more importantly, I was not with my kids when our puppy was hit by a car or when my son had (minor and successful, and  of course unexpected) emergency surgery.

* I have an amazing wife who also has an important career; she is a doctor and professor at Stanford where, in addition to her clinical duties, she runs their training  program for high risk obstetricians and conducts research on on prematurity, surgical techniques, and other topics. She is a fantastic mom, brilliant, beautiful, and  infinitely patient with me. I love her, I am forever in her debt for finding a way to keep the family working despite my crazy travel. I should not continue abusing    that patience.

Friends and colleagues often ask my wife how she balances her job and motherhood. Somehow, the same people don’t ask me.”

When we talk about ‘inclusion’ we aren’t really talking about everyone.  That’s the problem.  We wonder how possibly a woman could handle the pressures of being a CEO and being a Mom, but we never wonder, or even care, how a man handles the pressure of being a CEO and a Dad.   It’s expected a man can do both, we question if a woman can do both.  

There is a cultural expectation, wrongly, that as a man I can be CEO and a Dad and perform just fine. As a woman, I’ll have trouble doing both jobs, because the Mom does more than the Dad.  The mom cooks and cleans and nurtures and schedules and kisses booboos and, well, does everything for the family.  The lazy asshole Dad comes home and waits for the Mom to fix him dinner and his drink.  Really!?! Is that where we are in 2014?

I’m a Dad and a President of a company.  I feel for Max.  My wife does a ton, it can’t even be measured.  I don’t expect her to do everything and help out a ton with parenting when and where I can.  I assume if the roles were changed and my wife was a CEO, I would have to pick up more of her home and parenting duties.

This goes beyond just duties, though, this is about emotional connection.  As a Dad, like Max, why should I have less of a connection as a parent than my wife.  Why do we throw that cultural expectation onto our employees, on to our executives?  As a father I frequently feel failure.  Maybe it’s because I missed being able to have lunch with my son at school.  Maybe it’s because my wife has a stronger relationship with my kids than I do.  Maybe it’s because I trying to live up to a cultural expectation that I should be less of a parent.

No one ever wants to talk about how hard a man has it, trying to be a father and work.  It’s not ‘politically’ correct.  Men have it easier. End of story.  That sucks sometimes.

The 1 Reason You Can’t Find Talent Right Now

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There’s one big reason you can’t find talent right now.  Here it is:

Simple economics plays a huge role in your ability to hire well.  We all like to think we are super star rock star talent acquisition pros, but the reality is we are mostly just pawns in economic cycles.  Sure you can have a great employment brand, and have great recruiting tools, and even have the most talented recruiters money can buy.  But rarely can’t you beat simple supply and demand.

Want to know why you’re struggling to hire right now?  There aren’t enough candidates for the jobs you need to fill.  It’s really quite simple.

We have an extended recession where almost all employee development and employee growth programs got cut to the bone.  No apprenticeships. No internships.  Old people held onto their jobs because of  the recession, while younger people went and found other ways to make ends meet.  The stock market that was in the tank during the recession came back bigger than ever.  The old people now want to retire, and they are in bulk!

Now you want to hire because business is back!  You have new positions to add. You have old employees leaving you with all of that knowledge, and you haven’t seriously tried to grow an employee in a decade.

It took you 10 years to get to this point.  It’s going to take you more than increased job board ads and new ATS to get you out of this.  Here are few tips to get you through a Candidate Driven Marketplace:

1. Start growing your own now. No, it’s not a short term solution. But you must realize your problem is both short and long.

2. Get comfortable with stealing talent from your competitors and anyone else. Also, they’ll be stealing from you.  Welcome to the show.

3. Upgrade your recruiting staff, yesterday.  Yeah, I like Bonnie to, but she can’t really recruit.

4. You have to get your organization to understand your reality.  Like Hillary said, “It takes a village”.

5. Learn the concept “Total Talent” and get comfortable with it.  The rest of the world already has.  The U.S. is a decade behind.  Total talent is the concept that an organization has many avenues of talent: direct employees, consultants, contract employees, temporary employees, part time, job share, etc. No longer should you even want just ‘direct’ employees.  Smart talent acquisition strategy incorporates all levels of talent, not just one.  Unless your name is Bonnie.

There Are Only 5 Real Jobs

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For those who didn’t see this last week the former NBA great and round mound of rebound Sir Charles Barkley made this comment:

“We got great lives. Why would we be miserable? Like, I’ll tell you, there’s five real jobs in the world: teacher, fireman, policeman, doctor, and somebody who’s in the armed services. Those are five real jobs.” 

For those who don’t know Charles he makes outlandish statements all the time, that’s why he gets paid more now to be a commentator on TV than he probably ever got paid to play basketball. But his statement got me to thinking, how many ‘real’ jobs are there really!?

First, you have to define ‘real’ job.  Charles believes talking about basketball on TV is probably not a ‘real’ job.  It doesn’t really add value to peoples lives further than to those who enjoy watching basketball and listening to other people talk about it.  So, it would seem that for a job to be real, it must have some value further than entertainment purposes.

Doctor’s add value beyond entertainment, but so do nurses and dentist and physical therapists.  So, are not those other health professionals ‘real’ jobs?  If we had no nurses, could doctors, theoretically, do what nurses do? Yes. Okay, so a we add another element to determine ‘real’ job. It’s a job no one else can do, but that profession could do the other jobs if they had to.

Teacher. You don’t have doctors without educators. Someone has to teach the kids to be doctors.  So, teachers are for sure a real job.  Could a teacher be a doctor?  Now, we are starting to run in circles.  Not all teachers could be doctors, some just wouldn’t be smart enough.  So, beyond, doctors and teachers, it would seem like there needs to be someone who just is simply brilliantly smart.  We don’t really have a job title for just smart guy or smart girl.

I will say fireman, policeman and armed services all seem to have a very similar skill set.  I would lump them into all one job – people savers.  That gives us really 4 jobs: Teacher, Doctor, Really Super Smart Person and People Savers.

Is there any others?

I’ve got one I think most people won’t even consider.  Sales Person.  Think of all those ‘jobs’ we have that are really just sales: Politicians, Clergy, most business professionals, educators, etc.  Our reality is that we need to people to sell us on stuff.  If no one sells, we all just sit around and wait for stuff to happen. Politicians sell us on the importance of change. Our religious leaders sell us the need to be good and get better.  Educators sell us on the importance of learning.  We are constantly being sold something.

So, for my money, there are 5 Real Jobs in the world:

1. Teacher

2. Doctor

3. Really Super Smart Person

4. People Savers

5. Sales People.

What would you consider a ‘real’ job? Hit me in the comments.

Naked and Afraid HR

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Have you guys seen the TV show Naked and Afraid?  It’s brilliant!  It’s basically a survivalist show where they take a man and woman and put them in some godforsaken place, with one tool each (knife, fire starter, etc.) and no clothes. That’s right, just like the day they were born, they only get to wear their birthday suit!  21 straight days naked with a person you have just met the first time, in horrible conditions you wouldn’t want to be in clothed, let alone naked.

Initially, you go, there is no way I’m sitting down in the mud and sticks and bugs and letting them crawl up my…well, you get the picture. You actually don’t get the picture, because they blur out the actual naked parts, accept butts, you see a lot of butts in Naked and Afraid.  I’m not completely sure why or who decided butts were fine to look at on normal cable TV but no pencils or vajayjays, but I guess we have to have limits.

Naked and Afraid is a HR dream TV show!

HR and organizations constantly put people together and force them to interact.  Naked and Afraid is almost the same thing, accept we make our people wear clothes per your dress code policy.  What you find in Naked and Afraid is usually very sexiest to begin with.  The guys want to take on this role of protecting the female (and they over act like seeing this woman naked is having no impact on them, I’m sure their blooper real is awesome!).  The females they get are usually bad-ass outdoorsy types, so they can usually take care of themselves.  After about ten days of hardly any food and water, usually one of the parties breaks down mentally.

This is the point my wife likes to point out, that it’s usually the man who loses it mentally.  For what ever reason, under nourished the men tend to break down faster than the females. While the guys do a lot of the heavy lifting of building shelters, rafts, etc.  It’s usually the women who can get them right in the head, and get them to finish line before tapping out and giving up.  Like I said, HR folks will love this show!

What this shows does is strip away everything between male and female and put them a completely level playing field.  They aren’t in competition, in fact, those that do best usually show the best team work, and really dig into each strengths to make it through the 21 days.  Just one man and one woman with only their skills to get them to survive.  I wonder how much better our own organizations would be if we could strip away all the B.S. we deal with and let people stand on their own merits!?

Naked and afraid shows you that each person, male and female, has their own strengths needed to survive. While one might possess enough of all these strengths to do it on their own, usually they don’t.  Our organizations have gender issues.  These issues are rooted in hundred’s of years of male domination, and the ingrained belief strong leaders are primarily male. This show demonstrates this is truly false when all things are equal.

Having a bias is the new black.  Like saying you know you have biases somehow exalts you of this weakness.  It doesn’t. In HR we allow our leadership to have a gender bias, and we help perpetuate it by not forcing change.  Naked and Afraid points this bias out in a not so subtle way and you get to see butts!

Nursing Moms Seen As Less Competent

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Yo! I’m on vacation this week, don’t try and come rob my house, it’s a ‘staycation’!  I’m going to run some oldies but goodies so I can let my creative juices focus on Gin and Tonics. Here you go:

Have something to admit.  I’m a bit of an expert in regards to Nursing Mothers.  “Really”, you say.  Let me explain.  I’m in a fairly small office, 20 or so employees on a daily basis – about 70% female.  The interesting part is that in the last few years, I don’t think we’ve gone a day when we haven’t had a nursing mother on our staff.  The women keep telling me it’s something in the water – I keep yelling at our water softener rep – and yet it hasn’t changed.  That being said – I was somewhat shocked when I read a report out of the Wall Street Journal titled “Nursing Moms Seen as Less Competent” in which spoke of a new study claiming people perceived nursing mothers as lower performers than their peer group. From WSJ:

In one of several experiments testing attitudes toward breastfeeding, 60 students were told they’d be forming general impressions of other people, based on a brief meeting and reading of a short profile. Each met a woman whose profile described her as a married  transfer student and psychology major. During the course of the experiment, this woman—actually a confederate of the researchers— checked her voicemail and played out loud a friendly message that varied in one way: It expressed understanding that the woman wanted to push back a social event because she had to go home to 1) breastfeed her baby; 2) give a baby a bath (emphasizing her motherhood but not breastfeeding) ; 3) change into a strapless bra (emphasizing the sexuality of the breasts); or for an unexplained reason.

The students rate the “breastfeeding” woman lowest of the four on overall competence, workplace capabilities, math ability – and also whether they’d hire her, if they were in a position to do so.

So, what does this tell us?  Clearly that those 60 students at Montana State University are idiots – but beyond that – probably someone who has no concept of breastfeeding probably shouldn’t be taking a perception survey on cognitive competence based on whether someone breastfeeds or not!   From my in-depth experience with breastfeeding here’s what I know:

  • The women who were/are nursing mothers who have worked with me – work their butts off and usually have to endure uncomfortable, at best, and embarrassing conversation with idiot male co-workers when trying to do what is best for their child, and still be productive and professional.
  • Work as hard or harder than their co-workers, because they know they are taking extra time out of their work schedule to take care of their lactation duties, and don’t want to be seen as not pulling their weight.
  • Are usually more on task with their work, because they value their personal and professional life balance more than most workers, who don’t have the same life challenges of working and raising a family.

And NO those breastfeeding Moms I work with in no way made me write this post!  (how’s that gals?)

 

Because I’m Happy!

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I was fortunate enough to see Shawn Achor recently speak on Happiness at HireVue’s Digital Disruption. His TEDx talk is one of the most watched ever, and is completely fascinating to me as a HR Pro, check it out. What strikes me from his research is how so many of us have sold ourselves a false dream and promise. Traditional thought leadership has told us for decades, work hard, do well, reach your goals, then, you’ll be happy.

Shawn’s research blows up most traditional thoughts on this. Happiness isn’t created via you reaching some goal or end. You are either a happy person or you’re not, this completion of a dream isn’t going to make you happy. We see this constantly in employment. “Once I become VP I’ll be happy!” The promotion comes and the person finds out that happiness didn’t come with the title and pay increase.

As HR Pros we do this same thing with engagement. We need to increase engagement, so we need to find ways to get our employees to be more engaged. It could easily be argued, from Achor’s research on happiness, that you are either an engaged type of personality, or you’re not. Meaning, nothing you do as a HR Pro or leadership team is going to have much effect on overall engagement of your employees. This goes back to selecting people who have a predisposition to be engaged to begin with. It’s the chicken and egg scenario of what comes first.

The cool thing is, though, if you’re unhappy, or unengaged, you can actually make yourself.  And if you’re an HR Pro charged with increasing this, you can help your folks out in becoming happier as well.  You can’t make them happier, but you can show them a path to help themselves become more happy. Achor recommends the following 5 things:

  • Jot down three things they were grateful for. (make sure it’s 3 different ones each day!)
  •  Write a positive message to someone in their social support network. (keep it to two minutes to draft this out and send)
  •  Meditate at their desk for two minutes.
  •  Exercise for 10 minutes. (Cardio -get that heart pumping! )
  •  Take two minutes to describe in a journal the most meaningful experience of the past 24 hours. (actually write it down)

Shawn recommends dedicating yourself to doing these five things for 21 days straight (habit forming time frame).  It takes about 15 minutes and the level of happiness increases people get from doing this is off the charts in Shawn’s research at Harvard.

One of the key takeaways from Achors research at Harvard is that Happiness has a positive effect on every single measurable business outcome (higher revenue, higher profit, higher margin, higher retention, etc.).  Every. Single. One.  As HR Pros we focus so much on ‘engagement’ and I wonder if we might be better off just focusing on happiness!

I Had To Work

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“I had to work!” – 84 year old Barbara Walters on NPR, talking about her retirement this week from TV.

For those who don’t know, I run the company my 67 year old Mother started, with help from my 84 year old Grandmother, over 30 years ago.   I was raised and influenced by two women who had this same philosophy — “I have to work”.  My Mom was a single mother, raising two kids.  My Grandmother was married, but was raising 5 girls and she needed to help my Grandfather supplement prom dresses, makeup, hair salon appointments, etc.

The only time you hear this phrase, it’s usually coming from a woman. I don’t say that with negative connotation.  It’s just one of those statements, in our culture, you usually hear from an older female who ‘had’ to work because they didn’t have a man paying the bills, for whatever reason (divorce, never married, death of a spouse, etc.).  It’s very common for single mothers, of which, Barbara Walters was, thus her comment.

She had a child to raise, and she was the first woman to make it in major network news.  She had a male partner who hated working with her, she cried almost daily, privately, in her dressing room, because of how this person treated her. But, she had to work.  She was working in a time when women were not welcome in her chosen field.  She broke down barriers for all those talented women we see today in network news.

There’s a big difference between “I had to work” to “I want to work”.  It’s wider than the Grand Canyon.   “I had to work” speaks to desperation and being uncomfortable.  I think it also speaks to the great successes we see from females who have to work versus those wanting to work.  If they were given the choice of working or not, they never would have went through the tough times, pushed themselves further than they ever thought possible.  Quite frankly, most would have given up, if they had other means of living and not having to work — that’s just life. But they didn’t, they had to work.

I think the concept of “having to work” speaks to how many people become successful.   Given only one choice — to work — people find ways to be successful because it’s the only option.  We always think people want options.  So, we try and give people as many options as possible.  But this probably hurts their ability to be successful, because having options gives them outs when they fail, or even begin to fail.  If you only have one option, work this job, or basically become homeless, you probably work the crap out of that job!  You make sure you don’t fail.  Your ability to become successful rises exponentially when you have fewer choices, not more.

In today’s society, unfortunately, single Moms have become the norm.  Thirty and forty years ago that wasn’t the case. These women had to fight to survive at a different level.  This isn’t to take away from single Moms today, that’s still a mighty struggle to make it.  I just know those women who came before them had the equal pressure of not being welcomed in most fields which would allow them to make a salary to raise a family!

I wonder if we will ever get to a point, culturally, where men will be heard saying the statement “well, I had to work” in the connotation that its considered normal for them to stay home and be caregivers, homemakers, etc., while their spouse takes off to the office.  I can’t even imagine.

 

Is Gen Z Going To Be Worse Than Millenials?

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Is Generation Z (those born between the years 1995 – 2009, of which I own 3) going to be worse than the Millenials?  I guess to answer that question you first have to put this into some perspective.  First, you would have to think of the Millenials as a wasted, or under performing, generation.  Then, you would have to believe that Gen Z will probably follow down a similar path.

Short answer? Yes.

Gen Z will be worse than the Millenials.  Just as the Millenials were worse than Gen X, and Gen X and than the Baby Boomers.  That’s how this goes.  The youngest generation is always the worse!  By generation, you get better with age, or at least your view on generations get better.  It’s a simple concept.  When a generation is nothing more than whiny, snot nosed, rude kids, they’re all a train wreck.  Then they get older, more mature, actually do something with their lives, and amazingly become a generation of substance.

So, yes, Gen Z will be worse.  As will Gen Alpha, which comes after Gen Z and those kids are 3 and 4 years old and already a waste of space on this planet!

Does that make you feel better Millenials?  You’re no longer the worse generation to grace Earth.  Now, it’s Gen Z.  Congratulations, you can now start writing blog posts and books about how to communicate with these crazy Gen Z kids.  Know one understands them, it’s totes cray. With all their selfies and their hashtaggy things, they are going to way worse than those trophy sucker Millenials!

I’ve decided for the 2015 SHRM National Conference I’m going to submit a presentation on how to speak Gen Z.  HR Pros need this valuable information!  I need to come up with a title that completely says Gen Z, but also is very vanilla and safe, so not to scare off the HR ladies in Gen X and beyond.  I think I might go with “#GenZProbs(>_<)” — what do you think?  No, that will never fly with SHRM Gestapo.  It has to say boring, yet strategic.  Safe, yet cutesy.

I don’t know.  My brain doesn’t really work in those contexts!

Let’s crowd source this.  Give me your best Gen Z title for my 2015 SHRM National Preso.  I’ll reward the winner, which will include an inappropriate hug.

Are You ‘Entitled’ To One Mistake?

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Current NBA LA Clippers owner, Donald Sterling, got in a heap of trouble for making racist statements that were caught on tape.  The NBA is going to kick this guy out of being an NBA owner, and it’s probably about time, as he has a history of just being racist.  He doesn’t want to stop owning the Clippers, so now he’s trying to do all he can to save what he can, and possibly still hang on to the team and not be forced to sell.  What is an 80 year old racist NBA owner to do?  Why go on CNN with Anderson Cooper!

Sterling is doing PR to try and get the public on his side, which is a colossal waste of time, but when you’re a billionaire you do silly stuff. Sterling believes we should all forgive him for making one big stupid mistake.  This is his exact quote from the interview:

“Am I entitled to one mistake, am I after 35 years? I mean, I love my league, I love my partners. Am I entitled to one mistake? It’s a terrible mistake, and I’ll never do it again,”

First off, this isn’t Donald Sterling’s first mistake.  He has a history of being a bad guy.   The one mistake argument doesn’t work well for him.  But should it work for anyone? That really is the question for all of this.

Should someone, like one of your employees, get a second chance?

In the HR world this is almost a daily dilemma that is faced.  On one hand you want to say, “Yes!”, shouldn’t everyone get a second chance.  But, as HR Pros know, many times, we don’t give employees a second chance.  Of course, there are reasons of why you wouldn’t give a second chance.  Like the Sterling case, you know of a history of prior bad decisions, coupled with this evidence, you make the call to say, “Nope! No second chance!”

This is what makes HR tough.  I’m not a big believer in the concept of ‘setting precedent’.  Which means basically using a previous example to guide a decision.  HR people (notice I didn’t say Pro) love to use this concept to make tough decisions, easy.  “Well, we fired Jill when she was late three times, so we also have to fire Bill!”  No, you don’t!  Now, you might have some risk, but unless the cases are completely the same, you’re just trying to take the easy way out!  Maybe Jill was late without excuse. Maybe Bill showed evidence of going to extraordinary lengths to make it to work and just couldn’t.  Just because you made one decision one way, doesn’t mean you always have to make it that way.  That’s uninformed and naive.

You get yourself in trouble when you start making decisions differently, for similar circumstances, based on things like gender, race, etc.  That’s when you get yourself into problems.  But if Bill was a much better performer than Jill, should I give him another chance? That’s the decision I need to make with my business partners. But to go and just say “No” we need to fire Bill, doesn’t make a well informed partner.

What about true first time, one mistake, issues?  Does someone ‘deserve’ a second chance?  I tend to believe it’s all based on context.  Mess up a major presentation because you didn’t crunch the data correctly, and we don’t get the sale.  Okay, I’ll give you another chance.  Forget to turn off the power to a machine when you’re finished, and a coworker gets badly injured because of it. You’re fired.  Second chance decisions on contextual.  Donald Sterling didn’t mistakenly become a racist in a conversation once.  He should be done forever. The NBA’s main ’employee’ is predominately African American.  He’s a racist.  I have enough of the context.

 

Profiling Diversity Hires

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Entelo, a recruiting technology company, recently launched a product called Entelo Diversity. To be honest, I had to look up what Entelo actually did.  I had heard the name, but I couldn’t have told you if they were an employee engagement company or an ATS – turns out they’re neither! They’re a recruiting play, inasmuch, you have needs that are hard to find, their product claims to help you find those needs (I’ve never used it, so I not telling you it works or doesn’t).  This new product, apparently, helps you find Black People! Or Women. Or Black Women. Or a half Black-Asain Women, who used to be a man. I’m not sure, for sure, I haven’t used it, I’m just going on their press release.

Here’s what I know, that most Talent and HR people lose their freaking minds over.  It’s not a bad thing to have a product or service that can specifically find you a certain kind of diversity.  I know. I know. That makes you really uncomfortable!

“TIM! People will use those products to discriminate!”

They might.  I can’t stop that at your organization.  I can stop that at my organization!

The products just find what you want.  If you need more female recruits for your hiring pool. Bam!  A product like this will help you.  If you need more shades of color within your organization. Bam! A product like this could help you build a rainbow in your organization.  If you have a hiring manager who only wants to hire young white guys in your organization. You need to address that!  But don’t blame a recruiting product.  You own that one!

I hear the same criticism every time I show a new group how to recruit on Facebook.  There are really cool options where you could search on females, 22 years old to 28 years old, who graduated with an engineering degree from Stanford. That’s is awesome, right!?   I need more young female engineers from Standford in my engineering department! But I can also search 31-45 year old white male engineers from Stanford as well.  Oh, well, that’s not so good, right?  Wrong.  What if your entire staff was black female engineers!  While highly unlikely, you would still need to add some diversity to that staff.

This isn’t about tools getting more powerful and precise to what you are looking for.  This is about those using those tools, usually Talent and HR Pros, ensuring that your organization is doing the right things to get the best hiring pools possible.  Too many Talent and HR Pros run away from using these tools, and it only shows their own ignorance for what true diversity and inclusion is.

Smart Talent and HR Pros know what their organizations are lacking, and they’ll work to fill those needs with the best available talent.  Sometimes that means you need to get very specific on the diversity side.  Sometimes it means you don’t.  Great Pros work to always have the correct balance for their organization, their demographic and their stakeholders.

(Editor’s Note: Ha! That’s funny, you all know I don’t have an editor.  Just so we are clear, Entelo did not compensate me for this post, but if they want to send me Diet Mt. Dew, I never turn that down.)