Ford Layoffs – “Hey, stay a few days and say your goodbyes!”

A big announcement yesterday over at Ford where 7,000 or so white-collar workers will be getting laid off. For generations of automotive families, this is really anything new. You grow up knowing about once every ten years, the big autos will do some ‘right-sizing’ or reorganizations. The reality is, and other industries are much different, auto industries hire in good times like your drunk Uncle Lou buys drinks at the bar after he cashes his income tax return check!

In good times, there is nothing better than working in the automotive industry. Everyone gets hired for good wages, bonuses are good, and they throw money around like it’s monopoly money. In bad times, they ‘right-size’ and it’s not targeted, it’s pretty much we need to cut 10,000 people, make it happen!

Ford CEO Jim Hacket said this layoff is different, it’s not, but to prove the point he also said this:

He acknowledged saying goodbye to colleagues is “difficult and emotional.”

“We have moved away from past practices in some regions where team members who were separated had to leave immediately with their belongings, instead giving people the choice to stay for a few days to wrap up and say goodbye,” he wrote.

Wow, really!?! Thanks, Jim!

Honestly, though, it is a bit more humane, right? Basically what you say when you walk someone out immediately during a layoff is this:

  • Hey, you no longer have a job but thank you for all those years of your life and discretionary effort you gave!
  • Also, we don’t trust you, so get the hell out, NOW!
  • Also, if you know of any younger workers who can do what you do, but for 30% less, please refer them to us!

Now, I am not saying Ford is laying off older workers and keeping younger workers. That would be slanderous, and I would never say such a thing! You can look at the data for yourself! It is a bit ironic though how white-collar layoffs tend to impact higher paid, more experienced workers. Turns out experience only matters to a certain salary point, then we are mostly the same in terms of productivity and knowledge.

No, Ford is in a very competitive industry and very fast-changing industry, and while all these ‘more experienced’ workers made us a lot of money, we now need to hire a different set of skills for our next generation of products. We no longer need all these mechanical engineers (true) and we need many more electrical and computer engineering skill sets (also true). Also, we probably need less more experienced finance, human resources, marketing, and operations folks as well, for these new more technical products we are creating.

So, back to the actual layoffs. Do you agree with Hackett (no relation, since my name, is “Sackett” with an “S”, and not an “H” but I see the confusion if you’re dumb) on his layoff approach of treating the Ford employees a bit differently and letting them close up shop and not walk them out immediately?

My take:

This should be an individual management decision. Your manager knows if you’re a terrorists or not. If she believes you can act like an adult and not sabotage anything on your way out, she should be able to make that call. If she believes you’re a problem, she should also be able to make that call on walking you out immediately.

I don’t believe this should be an all or nothing approach. I’ve seen people who have done some very bad things when given the chance to ‘pack up shop” on their way out. When you take the livelihood way from a person, you really don’t know how they’ll react. Some will become desperate and take anything they can get, staplers, information, etc.

Most, the vast majority, will be sad and grieve but also be able to handle this news in a respectful manner, knowing they’ll probably need that manager reference to land their next spot.

Layoffs suck, even when done for the best reasons to save the jobs of thousands of others. They just suck. I feel awful for those Ford employees having to go through this, just as I did for the GM employees who had to go through this at the end of last year. Organizations are living, breathing things, and as such, tend to make the same mistakes as well do in good times and bad.

 

Career Confessions from Gen Z: Texas Tops List for Women Entrepreneurship!!

Did you know that, currently, there are more CEOs named “John” than all women CEOs combined? But fear not! There is hope on the horizon. Texas has recently been named the best state for women entrepreneurs based on several scoring categories.  All your exes live in Texas, and they might be entrepreneurs!

When I first saw the rankings, I expected to see New York and California at the top of the list, yet neither of those states was even in the top three! So, how did our great Lone Star State receive the number one spot? The rankings were measured by the following factors: general business climate, opportunity for women in business, economic and financial health, and livability for women. Not only did Texas score the highest average on these factors, but thanks to Texas’ generally low cost of living, paired up with exponential startup growth, Texas beat out New York and California (Focus).  Additionally, Texas has a progressive political climate in its capital and no corporate income tax.

While this is great news, it also opens the conversation of how we can improve the climate for women in business even more. Women in business, whether they live in Texas or Maine still face challenges. For instance, did you know that on average, women receive 45% less capital than men when applying for business loans? (fitsmallbusiness.com) Consider this, of all the investing decisions from venture capitalist firms, 94% of these decisions were made by men- one of whom probably is named John. So, while the business environment for women is improving, we still depend mainly on men to invest in our ideas and pursuits.

Recently, I attended a presentation hosted by Suzi Sosa, co-founder, and CEO of Verb Inc., a leadership software company. In her presentation, Ms. Sosa discussed her struggles as a woman in the business world. She told us when she was looking for funding for her company, her mentor suggested she change her hair, put more makeup on, and dress more “femininely”. She also disclosed that several married men who invested in her company propositioned her romantically afterward. She told us she felt pressured to change the way she looked and acted in order to “fit in” to man’s perception of business. In response to this, Sosa brought to light the fact that women need to help each other out more in order to shift this perception.  Sosa described her attempts to find new investors through her female connections in the Austin area, all of whom politely declined for fear it might make them look unprofessional in their respective business circles.

To clarify, I am not writing this as an attack on men, quite the contrary. I am writing this as a call to action to women. The business climate is changing for us, and for the better. However, if we truly want to be on par with men, we need to start by being more confident in our own abilities.

As a junior in college, I have started to notice not only fewer women in my classes but also less participation from them; we don’t ask as many questions and we don’t give our input as much as our male peers do. College should be a healthy environment for women to learn to trust their business guts and to question the status quo. But, whatever the reason might be, we as women are less participative in business classes, which then transfers into the greater business world. While this may sound like a bit of a bummer, the good news is we have the power to change it. It is time that we, as women in business, start speaking up, ask more questions, and learn to trust our guts.

The climate is shifting in our favor, and self-confidence is key. However, self-confidence alone is not enough for us to break through the glass ceiling. It seems that women in business are continually pitted against each rather than encouraged to help one another. If we want to be seen as true equals in the business sphere, we need to invest in each others’ ventures, bring fresh faces into our business circles, and not be afraid to advocate for our own ideas. I’m grateful for Texas and its opportunities for women in business, but there’s always room for improvement and for more women CEOs.


Elena Moeller is currently junior at the St. Edward’s University and Intern of all trades for Proactive Talent in Austin, Texas. Being born and raised in Minnesota I grew up playing hockey, riding snowmobiles, and fishing. One thing you should know about me is that I have never been labeled as shy- I live for getting to know new people and learning new things. This has enabled me to travel the world, become fluent in Spanish, and live in Milan, Italy where I learned a bit of Italian! I find I am happiest at work when I am able to spark my creativity and create something that is useful for our company but is also an entertaining read.

It’s International Women’s Day! Is Your CEO Female? #ReferHer #BalanceForBetter #IWD2019

6% of CEOs in the S&P 100 are female. 50.8% of the population is female.

I’m not super at math, but that seems like a disconnect, right?

Today is International Women’s Day and a young lady (Tatiana Hollander-Ho) reached out to me this week. She’s an entry level marketing pro for The Ladders, 2018 grad from NYU and she said, “Hey, you have a passion around women in the workplace and I want to get this #ReferHer going and make a difference. Can you help?” (FYI – go connect with her – she’s going to be a great one in our industry!)

I can do what I do, which is write about and socialize it and support it! #ReferHer is an awesome idea. We need to refer more women to leadership positions, period.

I’m not one of these dudes who just goes out and flies the female flag because it’s the politically correct thing to do. I’m also not one that buys into the bullshit studies that say “Female CEOs return better financial returns!” – those are bad studies with flawed data – you can’t run a regression on companies run by women and the financial performance and call that good data.

There might be a correlation, but there is absolutely no causation. If you believe in those studies, you also believe in the study that says if your name is Mike and you’re over six foot and you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you will have higher financial returns than anyone else, not named Mike. Those two studies say the exact same thing.

That’s the problem, right!? You see it, right!? You can’t just throw out garbage and expect smart people not to get it and just blindly support females. The opposite actually happens. Smart people see that and go, that’s not what that says, so now I don’t buy any of it. Smart people – both women and men.

I’ve worked for great women. Strong women who are great leaders. These women, in my opinion, had many traits that most of the male leaders I’ve worked for didn’t have. In most cases, these traits made them leaders employees wanted to follow, not forced to follow.

We have this awful bias that says white dudes over six feet make better leaders. It’s literally been drilled into us for 100 years. Look at the Presidents all the way up to Obama and after. White dudes over six foot have nothing buy stature. We are betting that the trait of stature is the most important thing for running a high functioning organization. It’s insanity, right?

The reality is we can solve this. We can. Not overnight, but little by little.

It starts with flooding your leadership ranks with women. That means we have to give opportunities to women to move into leadership in ways we haven’t before. We have to develop Women Leadership Councils in our organizations who can tap on the shoulders of female employees and invite them in and mentor them into leadership roles. We have to purposeful about doing this. It won’t happen organically, we’ve been waiting for a hundred years for it to happen organically.

So, how do you start?

It’s super simple!

Step 1 – Tell your c-suite you are starting a Women’s Leadership Council in your organization and you need their support. 100% will give their support because if they don’t the backlash would be tremendous.

Step 2– Be inclusive, not exclusive. If a woman in your organization shows any sign of potential leadership you pull them into your council.

Step 3– Focus on hard leadership skills, not soft skills. Give them the inside information around how the company makes money or doesn’t make money. Show them how to budget and write a budget. Teach them how to performance manage. Show them how to balance themselves for great success. Show them how to support each other in this drive upward.

Step 4 – Make your C-suite come, present, participate, and watch. They need to see your smart females in action.

Step 5 – Draft your high potential leader internal mobility charts and scoreboard it publicly within the c-suite. Tell them the minimum goal is 50/50. Show it to them monthly.

Step 6 – Make female leadership goals/hires part of your c-suite annual bonus. At least 30%.

It can be done. This isn’t hard. But it has to be purposeful.

Check out LinkedIn’s Gender Insights Report as well it’s loaded with great information on helping solve this problem!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @PowerToFly

This week on The Weekly Dose I review the D&I technology platform Power to Fly. Power to Fly is a recruiting platform used for connecting people with companies committed to building more diverse and inclusive environments. 

Founded in 2015 by two females who were named one of Fast Companies most creative people in business. The original concept was to connect women with remote jobs (which it still does). From that PTW learned many organizations also wanted and needed gender diversity in their in-house teams as well. Today it’s not only women but all underrepresented talent in the marketplace. 

The original concept of being a marketplace to connect one type of candidate with companies isn’t new, but Power to Fly definitely come at this from a different angle than most. While you can post your jobs on their site, which has over a million profiles of female candidates, Power to Fly focuses more on community events and interactions, both in-person and virtual. 

Power to Fly hosts in-person networking events hosted by client(s) companies to bring women in a specific marketplace together. These interactions help females and underrepresented candidates build a network of their own to leverage as they grow their careers. 

These live events bring together upwards of 200 women and are sponsored by some of the largest brands in the world, but can also be leveraged by a handful of employers in a market coming together to co-sponsor together. Power to Fly has found females are much more likely to apply to your jobs after attending these events (and the research into gender-specific applies echoes this as well).  The likelihood of apply from those attending these events rose 60% after attending. 

Power to Fly also holds virtual events with top Female executives and thought-leaders allowing women to ask live Q&A to help them in their career. Giving anyone a chance, in an ultra-safe environment, to ask questions they probably wouldn’t or don’t even have access to a mentee to ask. 

I love the concept. Traditionally, men clearly have had so many built-in networking advantages to aid their career path. Building out these networks for females and underrepresented candidates is a must and long overdue. 

If you are looking to add diversity into your talent pipelines Power to Fly is definitely something to check out. Job postings, live events, and virtual events, the power of their community is their real strength.  It’s women helping women in the most positive ways! 


The Weekly Dose – 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 tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

You’re Banned From Changing My Mind…at Work!

Did you see Facebook’s internal announcement to their employees about banning an employee’s ability to change the mind of a co-worker about Politics and Religion? I think I need to use these for my family get togethers!

An internal memo was leaked (God Bless internal memo links) from Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer on some new workplace rules that Facebook is putting into effect immediately on all communication channels, and they are:

  1. Don’t insult, bully, or antagonize others
  2. Don’t try to change someone’s politics or religion
  3. Don’t break our rules about harassing speech and expression

Sorry workplace trolls at Facebook, your Employee Experience just took a major blow! (BTW “Workplace Trolls” is a great podcast name)

As you can imagine I have a few thoughts on this!

My actual first reaction to this had nothing to do with “the rules”, but had everything to do with who was communicating this message! Why is this coming from the CTO and not the CEO or CHRO? Definitely different than most organizations.

This tells me one of two things: 1. The CTO made these up on his own; and/or 2. Facebook’s leadership team wanted to make this seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal, so let’s not have it come from the CEO or CHRO, which normally would handle formal employee communications like this.

This is a bit of an employee experience course correction that I think we’ll start seeing in many organizations over the next couple of years with a softer economy. In an ultra-low unemployment economy the inmates run the asylum.

As we back to a bit of normal unemployment environment, employers will focus less on becoming a playground you get paid to attend, and more of a ‘back to work’ mentality. You shouldn’t have time to berate Billy all day because he worships Pokemon. Get your a$$ back to work!

Over the past couple of years with #MeToo and Trump, our workplaces have become littered with landmines of employee strife. We want and value inclusion, and at the same time this increases the communication issues and the need for rules like Facebook are instituting.

So, what do you think? Does your workplace need to adopt rules like this?

Can we talk about the Kevin Hart Academy Award thing!?

If you haven’t seen or heard, comedian Kevin Hart was asked to host the Oscars. It’s a big deal for an entertainer to get that gig, 25-30 million viewers big! After it was announced, some news outlets ran some stories about some homophobic tweets that Kevin did in 2009, 2010, and 2012.

The tweets are definitely insensitive. If you had an employee sending out those tweets, you would have a problem on your hands. Kevin is a comedian, and he truly believes he was being funny. He hasn’t sent tweets like that for the last five+ years.

The Academy asked Kevin to apologize. Kevin said he already apologized for those tweets and that is old business. The Academy said apologize or step down. He stepped down. He then went on Instagram and explained himself and why he wasn’t apologizing –

“I chose to pass, I passed on the apology. The reason why I passed is that I’ve addressed this several times. This is not the first time this has come up, I’ve addressed it. I’ve spoken on it.”

Hollywood Reporter did a poll of over 2200 adults and asked what they thought and here were some of the results:

  • 42% of viewed Hart as favorable, 14% viewed the Academy as favorable. (the rest in the middle)
  • 56 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “An old social media post does not represent the person who posted it and has no influence on my opinion of someone.”
  •  44 percent agreed with the sentiment, “Social media posts are a form of expression and influence my opinion of someone regardless of how old the post is.”

GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said of Hart’s stepping down, “Hart’s apology to LGBTQ people is an important step forward, but he missed a real opportunity to use his platform and the Oscars stage to build unity and awareness.” I agree with Ellis, I would have loved to see Kevin come on and use his humor and influence to show people who he truly is and what he stands for.

This is some real life stuff.

We have employees. We have friends. We have family. We ourselves have said things and posted things for any number of reasons that we might probably don’t stand behind, but it catches up to us and now someone makes to make a big deal about it. There is a ton of learning here. I love comedy! I can put what a comedian says in the context that it’s a joke and it might be 100% the opposite of what they truly believe.

There’s a big part about Comedy is about pushing the line of what we feel is acceptable. We hear someone say something on a comedy stage that you would never hear in public and shock and awkwardness makes you laugh, not necessarily because you believe the statement, but because of how ludicrous it is.

What Kevin Hart does on Twitter is very different from what we see from other non-comedians on social media. That’s a huge difference, but Kevin doing it makes some feel they can do it. Again, it’s been a long while since he’s done this, and I think the Academy was wrong in not standing behind Kevin and saying, “Kevin has addressed these past tweets and apologized in the past, we won’t ask him to do that again, the Kevin we know and love is a man of…” That’s all that had to happen, and all of this would have gone away.

I think he and the Academy missed an opportunity to speak about this on one of the largest stages around. To bring awareness to a subject that hurts many people. 14 and 15-year-old boys still use “gay” as a negative when joking candidly with their friends because they don’t hear from people like Kevin Hart saying that it’s not a negative. Finding ways to make jokes using negative phrases and turning them into positive phrases, and yes it can be done and it can be funny.

I do not think something you posted on social media should follow you around for years if you’ve addressed and apologized for it, but it does, and it will. The cost of education at every age is super expensive. Kevin found out how expensive it can be at a very high level.

What do you think?

Your EEOC Job Posting Statements are Hurting Your Diversity Hiring!

Employers discriminate in hiring. This is a fact. It’s been a fact for generations. It’s the main reason anti-discrimination statements show up on job postings. That and it’s the law for Public employers and Government contractors who are required to have these statements. Many private employers use these as well to show they don’t discriminate in hiring.

For fifty years we’ve seen these statements on job descriptions and job advertisements. Recently, two Economists from the University of Chicago did a study looking at the impact of candidate behavior when these statements are added to a job posting and their findings were shocking!

In their study, the two economists posted advertisements for an administrative assistant job in ten large American cities. Of the 2,300 applicants who expressed interest, half were given a standard job description and the other half were given a description with an equal-opportunity statement promising that “all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, colour, age or any other protected characteristics”.

 

For racial minorities, those who received the pro-diversity statement were 30% less likely to apply for the job—and the effect appeared to be worse in cities with white majorities (see chart). In a follow-up survey, the prospective applicants said the statement prompted worries that they would be token diversity hires.

30% Less Likely To Apply!!! 

What the what?!?!

This isn’t a study that was done decades ago. This was done in the past twelve months!

So, what should we do? 

One thing the study found that had a positive impact on increasing diversity application is to show your senior executives, including your CEO, talk in a ‘real’ transparent way on the impact that diversity has on your organization.

No, not some overly-produced puff piece about how we are all part of the same rainbow. Include video on your career site with your CEO telling stories about how D&I isn’t just a marketing tactic, but how it’s really impacted the organization in a positive way.

Have diverse employees ask the CEO question that gets to the heart of where D&I is in your organization. Don’t be afraid about keeping this conversation open and maybe a bit uncomfortable. The more real, the more candidates will understand that you’re really trying to make a difference.

If you really want to make sure you’re not missing great minority applicants who are skipping even applying to you, embed these videos right into your job postings!

Don’t think that when you put an “EEOC” statement at the end of your job posting is letting a diverse candidate pool know you’re a great place for them to work. They don’t buy it! You have to be better than that!

“Overqualified” is Just another word for Age Discrimination

Had a really talented lady reach out to me the other day. 49 years old, college grad, great portfolio of work. She has been interviewing and is being told she is “Overqualified”.

There is some truth about her being called this. She does have more qualifications than the position requires, but she fully understands what the job is and she wants to do that job, with no notion of wanting to do more than that job, unless her performance shows she’s capable of moving up and the company needs her to move up.

“Overqualified” is just another way to say “Hey, I think you’re too old to work for me!”

Tell me I’m wrong! Give me all the reasons someone is “Overqualified” for a job they want to work at and understand what the job specs are?

I’m a Heart Surgeon but it’s a stressful job, so I decided to take a step back and just do some Cardiac Rehab work. Still get to work with heart patients, but it’s a less stressful workload and pays a heck of lot less, you need less education to do that job.

Am I overqualified to do Cardiac Rehab if I have experience as a heart surgeon? Only if you tell me I am! It’s a job I want, and I have the skills and desire to do that job, so I would say I’m quite qualified to do that job, not overqualified.

TA pros and hiring managers say someone is overqualified when they’re too stupid to come up with another reason about why they don’t want to hire someone who has great experience and more years of experience.

“Oh, Tammy, yeah, she’s overqualified to work in that job. I mean she wouldn’t be happy long-term reporting to me, and I mean she has more experience than I have!” Oh, she told you that? “Um, no.”

I constantly run into retired people who aren’t ready to retire and want to keep doing valuable work. They have great skills and knowledge, but 32-year-old Steve won’t hire them because Steve believes they won’t take his direction. That’s a Steve-issue, not the candidate’s issue!

By the way, this isn’t a young-to-middle-aged guy problem, women are just as bad! Turns out we all love to discriminate against old people, equally!

Tech companies are the worse. Creative companies are the second worse.

Tech companies believe only young people know technology. Creative companies think the only people who buy products and services are 26-year-olds on Instagram and Snap.

“Tim, you just don’t get it. I don’t want to hire someone who is going to retire in 5 years!” What’s your average tenure at your company? “4.2 years” Yeah, having someone for 5 years would really suck for you!

I had a hiring manager tell me this once when he interviewed a person who was 52! “I need someone who is going to stay long term!” Um, 13-15 years isn’t long term?! You’re an idiot!

I find telling hiring managers “You’re an idiot!” is super effective in getting through to them, and cutting straight through to their bias. It has worked 100% of the time in my career. It really works across all biases.

So, now tell me, why don’t you hire someone who is ‘overqualified”?

DisruptHR Detroit 2.0 – September 20th! Tickets Available Now! #Detroit #DisruptHR #HRParty

Detroit Metro HR and Talent Peeps!

We’re back!!!

On September 20th in Midtown Detroit, DisruptHR Detroit 2.0 will be taking place onsite at our host Quicken Loans! The cost to attend this event is $30 which includes some great food and drinks, an exceptional list of speakers, and great prizes!

Here are our 2.0 speakers for this event:

Speakers for the 2018 DisruptHR Detroit 2.0:

Tina Marie Wholfied

Don’t Fear The Peacocks! Embracing Organizational Change through Diversity

Melissa Fairman

Make Work Suck Less! 

Melanie Stern

Hiring for Culture Fit Not Add

Becky Andree

CODE RED!  Leadership Development has flatlined!

But I have a Defibrillator!

Kimika Garrett

Planning with a Twist

Danielle Crane

Nobody Smokes in Church

Kat Hoyer

Stop trying to make your employees Happy

Josh Schneider

The Tingly Feeling Compass

Michelle Clark

The Power of Purpose – Stop Sucking the Life Out

of Your People!

Chris Groscurth

Hustle Smarter: Future-Ready Human Resource

Leaders

Iris Ware

They said we couldn’t do it, but we did!

Cody Grant

The Dynamic Art of Job Descriptions

Not only will this event be awesome, but this year we added an “After Party” to take place onsite for continued networking with peers and friends!

DisruptHR Detriot 1.0 had over 200+ participants and it was a sellout. This event is almost half sold already, so get your tickets today!

Register for DisruptHR Detroit! 

 

DisruptHR Detroit Speaker Applications Now Being Accepted!!! But, you probably can’t handle it! #8Mile

Look, I just like being honest. This isn’t DisruptHR Brentwood or DisruptHR Nantucket! This is Detroit! We do real HR in the D!

Come on, just be real with yourself for a moment, you can’t handle Detroit. It’s okay, you’ll do fine at DisruptHR Sun City. Just slow down and do some tour stops before you come to Detroit!

You see, we actually make stuff that sells for money in Detroit. We have employees who get their hands dirty. We have to live in snow and cold for six months out of the year, which tends to leave us a little less likely to be willing to consume your weak B.S. When you come to DisruptHR Detroit, you better bring it!

Alright, I hear you feeling yourself. You just might be ready to hit 8 Mile and the rap battle that is HR in Detroit. DisruptHR Detroit will take place on September 20th onsite at Quicken Loans awesome event space in the heart of downtown Detroit.

Want to speak at DisruptHR Detroit? (what you need to know) 

– It’s 5 Minutes, 20 slides, the slides automatically move every 15 seconds (this is not something you can change!)

– If you’re a vendor you try selling your product in the 5 minutes, we’ll Gong Show your ass right off the stage!

– DisruptHR is about emotion – make us laugh, make us cry, make us angry, make us motivated. Just make us feel something!

– There will be over 250 HR and Talent Pros in the audience cheering you on. (FYI – many in the audience will be drinking!)

– You will get a video recorded, professionally produced copy of your presentation!

Apply to Speak at DisruptHR Detroit!