Category Archives: Employee Engagement

Does Job Security Matter Anymore?

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Tower’s Watson released some data recently from a fairly large study of over 32,000 employees and 1,600 HR professionals which ranked critical factors of retaining your employees.   Here are the results:

Not surprising, money pretty much rules as always.  You want me to stay?  Pay Me!

What is surprising is how high up “Job Security” is on the employee side of the study.  For years Millennial experts have been telling us how these young kids don’t care about job security, they care about balance, importance of the work they do, challenging projects, etc.  Apparently, HR got the message, but the kids didn’t!

Studies like this always make me question ‘experts’.  Don’t you get the feeling that millennial experts are really just snake oil salesmen?  Never has a millennial expert said kids care about job security.  “Oh, these kids will work 10-20 jobs in their lifetime!  They are not looking for life time employment.”

So, employers believe job security isn’t important to employees (or probably more truthfully is the fact that employees have very little control over job security), so they push factors like Career Advancement and Challenging Work.  When in reality it’s very Maslow-esque easier than that.  Employees today, much like employees 100 years ago want basically the same thing:

1. Money

2. To know they have a job when they show up in the morning

3.  A chance to move up in the company they work in.

Fairly straightforward.  Fairly easy.  Fairly consistent over time.

The question is, can you deliver this as an employer?

HR Emoji Etiquette

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I never was a huge fan of emojis.  I’m probably just too old, and out of touch to really understand.  My emojis consist of basically two: smiley face 🙂 and winky face ;).  Really, I’ve been able to get through my life with these two emojis.  I’ve never truly felt compelled to go beyond these.  I either liked what you wrote = smiley face, or I wanted you to know I wasn’t seriously going to fire you = winky face.

One of my favorite comedy writers is Jenny Johnson and she recently had an article in GQ Jenny Johnson’s Guide to Emoji Etiquette.  It’s brilliantly funny and it gave me the idea that HR should have its own emoji etiquette, so I decided to give it a run.  Here’s what I came up with:

I’m going to fire Fred in Accounting with the creepy mustache:

 (you’ll notice I like my HR ladies to wear a crown!)

We are a no smoking facility:

(also can be used to land planes)

We offer same sex benefits:

Dear hiring manager, I’m going to look the other way at what you just did:

Diversity and Inclusion meeting will take place today and there will be cookies:

A failed random drug test will get you fired:

We love you, you’re our top choice and we want to make you an offer, but you only have so much time to accept:

Happy hour Friday! Yay! But, be cautious, too much drinking with coworkers can lead to romance, and unwanted pregnancies:

Mary in Payroll is acting like she’s sick so she can go get her hair and nails done. HR doesn’t like this!

 Hit me up with your favorite emojis in the comments!

 

 

3 Ways I Make HR Better

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If you’re sitting in your HR office right now reading this, about to create some new HR stuff – stop – your wasting our time (and by “our” I mean all of us employees in the organization).  “Wow, look who woke up on the wrong side of the week!”

It’s not that I don’t think being creative is important. It is, it’s Hugely important.  Being creative in HR just isn’t important.   I know you think it is, that’s because you want to be creative, so you make yourself believe that’s important.  But the reality is, anything you can do, I can do better.  No, not because I’m better than you.  I mean I probably am, but that isn’t the point.  I can do it better because all I’m going to do is take what you’ve already done, and make it better.

In fact I’ll do a few more things while working on improving your thing:

1. I’ll make it cheaper

2. I’ll make it more simple to use

3. I’ll make it fun to do

See! Stop being creative, and just start making things better.

From an article in Fast Company:

The line between becoming a pioneer and a “me-too” flop can be unclear when you’re in the weeds of development. Uncertainty is an easier destination to arrive at than confidence, especially when the truth is, there’s no such thing as making anything that’s really new. Everything is an evolution of something else. But you can make something better. When in doubt, ask yourself if you’d use your new product instead of the market leader’s. If the answer is yes, keep going. If it’s no, then stop and rethink.

This obviously talks about products, but services and what we offer in HR are very similar.  Is that program you’re developing in HR better than what your competition is developing in HR?  If yes, carry on. If no, make it better.  It isn’t hard. It will take some hard work, but it’s not mentally challenging.  When I see people unwilling to make their HR Shops better, I know one of two things are at play:

1. They’ve given up on the organization, and they need to go, or;

2. They are fundamentally lazy, and need to go.

It’s a painful truth most leaders just don’t want to realize.

Just make it better.

HR Neutrality

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There has been a ton of press around Net Neutrality lately.  Net neutrality is the concept that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication. Companies, like Comcast, stand to make a lot of money based on how federal regulators decide on how to treat net neutrality.  If regulators find in favor of ISPs they can start charging more for faster internet access, basically creating the haves and the have nots of the internet – or the ‘fast lane’ and the ‘slow lane’. 

It’s a basic concept.  Everyone should be treated equal. Big powerful companies and small powerless people.  Or should they?

First and foremost I’m a capitalist.  I like to pay more, and sit in better seats at sporting events.  I pay high taxes so I can live in a better neighborhood and police will actually come to my house when I call.  If I want my internet to come through a firehose instead of a garden hose, I’ll pay for it!

I get it though.  The American Dream is now a ‘dream’ more than ever for most people simply because they’ll never make it a reality.  We are a nation of haves, and have nots, but mostly of have nots.

The concept of neutrality is also something HR Pros take to heart.  We attempt to treat everyone equally.  In many ways this is good. Male/female, old/young, black/white, we have an obligation to treat our employees the same.  But we take it to far.

Net Neutrality doesn’t say some will get the internet, and some will not.  It says some will get the internet faster because they paid to have it faster.  Those who are upset over this issue are upset because they’ll be treated differently.  It’s the same reason HR Pros tend to try and treat all employees the same.  If I treat everyone the same, no one can complain they were treated differently.  Therein lies the problem, your best employees don’t want HR Neutrality!

Your best employees want to be treated differently.  They see Timmy slacking off and not pulling his weight, and they HATE you treat Timmy the same as you treat them.  They want to be treated differently than Timmy.  They want faster internet.  They feel they deserve it.  They feel they deserve to be treated better than you treat your average and below average employees.

So, this begs the question, why is HR Neutrality so prevalent in our industry?  Our leadership doesn’t like either.  Remember, your leaders are leaders because they were once your best employees.  They hate you treat everyone equally as well.  Our employees hate HR Neutrality.  Our leadership hates HR Neutrality.  Yet, we continue to profess HR Neutrality.   Is HR morally better than the rest of our organization?  Or, are we afraid that eliminating HR Neutrality will shine a bigger light upon our own shortcomings as a function?

Either way, I want the faster internet.

The Project Product Reviews: Lunch Balancer

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I get pimped weekly to review products/services/books/etc., and I actually do a bunch of reviews.  I have a couple of rules to do reviews:

1. Whatever it is you want me to review, I need full access.  You want me to review your recruiting tool, give me access to the system and let me play with it. You would be amazed at how many folks won’t allow this!  “Oh, you want to say great things about something I’ve never used?!”  Yeah, that doesn’t work.

2. Book reviews are tough, I just don’t have that much time to get through your boring book.  That being said, if you send me a copy I might try to get through the first chapter.  If you send me a link to an electronic version (i.e., pdf), I’ll never read one word of it.  I’ve bought one e-Book in my life, it was Laurie Ruettiman’s I Am HR, and she had to walk me through how to download it onto my iPhone.

3. If you want me to review a real product, like the one I’m doing below – Lunch Balancer, you have to actually send me the product!  Seems simple, you send me product, if I like it I’ll write about it.  I don’t like, I also might say something about it.  If you never send me the product, I’ll never say anything about it.

4. If a hundred dollar bill somehow slips into the product as you ship it too me, that never hurts your chances of getting reviewed.

On to the real Product Review –

Lunch Balancer 

Lunch Balancer contacted me about seeing if I would have interest in reviewing their product.  They offer “nutritionally-balanced portion-controlled meals”, high protein, low carb.  The design is that they’ll actually ship to your office a box that has five meals read to go for about $6-6.50 per meal, depending on which way you go.  They are targeting the health conscious desk jockey that is getting fat by sitting around all day, not moving enough and topping that off by having some sort of super-sized fast food meal at lunch. Basically, they were targeting me! 

The box they sent me looked almost identical to their picture on the website:

lunch balancer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first impression was they sent a box of samples.  The next impression was this was all Hippie/Tree Hugger food, I was not going to like this!  Gluten free, organic, vegan, etc. were just a few of the titles I quickly scanned.  The box looked like a bunch of samples you picked up at a how to survive by eating tree bark convention. But they actually plan out the menu each day, and color code each item so you know which items go for which day.   Here’s what that looks like:

Lunch balancer 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be completely honest, I did the first two meals on two different days, let my staff kill the rest of the food after that.  Here’s my take.

Meal #1 – Turkey sticks, veggie chips, natural almonds and organic mango fruit snacks

Turkey sticks were like Slim Jims, but healthy, but tasted like Slim Jims.  I like Slim Jims, so the experiment to healthy eating was going great!  The 100% veggie chips, made mostly of peas, actually tasted like regular salted chips!  Heck, this was going to be easy!  I’m a little sketchy on almonds that are in a cookie, candy bar or have wasabi spices baked into them, but I have to say these were actually crunchy and tasted good.  The mango fruit snacks were also good.

When I first saw the amount I was going to eat, I thought no way is this going to fill me up, but it did!  Meal #1 done, and I was impressed.

Meal #2 – Protein Pretzels, natural almond butter, multi-grain crackers, roasted chickpeas and Chocolate Macaroons

The protein pretzels had a cinnamon sugar spice on them, and they were really good. The biggest hit was the natural almond butter and crackers. Since I never ate almond butter before I had no idea it was just peanut butter, but made with almonds!  I’m becoming a healthy eater!  The roasted chickpeas were crunchy and salty, and reminded me of the corn nuts you get at gas stations.  The chocolate macaroons, which I left until the end, because I knew those would be good, were absolutely awful! Yep, one miss, they tasted like little mud balls in my mouth.  Again, I was full after eating Meal #2.

I would definitely recommend Lunch Balancer to companies looking to give their employees a healthier option.  It’s fairly inexpensive, and better for you.  When you think about your time, gas and normal lunch expense. $6 per meal is pretty cheap.  Make it healthy on top of that, and it’s a win-win!

Check them out at www.lunchbalancer.com 

Lunch Balancer did not pay me for this review, but they did send me a free sample box to test their product.

 

4 Ways To Find Great Talent on Glassdoor

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The next biggest recruiting play is not LinkedIn, or CareerBuilder, or Monster.  It’s Glassdoor!  But you wouldn’t know that, because you still see them as a place where former employees and zombies go to bitch about your company and bad managers.  It’s not!

Kris Dunn and I are going to show you, in this month’s FOT webinar, how smart companies are leveraging Glassdoor in their recruiting practices to steal your talent, and it’s not the crappy talent you wish would leave!

Yep, Glassdoor is sponsoring this webinar.  Yep, Kris and I made sure they knew we don’t hold back punches!  That, in and of itself, is cool, because they know we speak the truth, and they aren’t afraid of the truth getting out (BTW – we have a lot of companies not willing to do FOT webinars because of this!).

Let’s face it. HR pros have a long history of being uncomfortable with sites like Glassdoor.com. After all, the only people that use Glassdoor.com and sites like it are disgruntled ex-employees that you fired, right?

Wrong. It was wrong 5 years ago, and it’s horribly wrong today. Rather than view these types of sites as a threat, smart HR and Recruiting pros are learning how to use the reputation/rating sites to manage their employment brand, connect with candidates and make better hires.

The days of the employment brand strategy with scripted photos, smiling faces (just the right amount of diversity!) and PDFs are over.

That’s why we’re going deep on reputation sites like Glassdoor in the July version of the FOT Webinar entitled,“How Smart HR Pros are Becoming Better Marketers – By Using Company Reputation Sites Like Glassdoor.”  Join Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett from Fistful of Talent at 2pm ET on Wednesday July 30th, and we’ll hit you with the following:

– How the the yelp-ification of America—the trend towards consumer-based reviews in almost every area of our economy—is changing the way employees and candidates think about job search and employer brands. It’s second nature for your employees to rate a restaurant, a book or a movie online. That means that employees of all types (not just the ones who want to complain) are more willing than ever to participate in your brand through user review.

– Why the explosion of social media and deep coverage of every aspect of our lives through video and photos is changing the willingness of smart companies to increase their transparency.  Every employee and candidate who interacts with your company is a potential reporter, and they expect you to share the good, bad and ugly about working with your firm openly and honestly. Old versions of employment brands won’t cut it—you”re going to have to give up some control to maximize your brand.

– We’ll cover the 5 Biggest Myths about company reputation sites like Glassdoor and tell you which ones are completely BS and which ones you actually perpetrate by not fully engaging on sites like Glassdoor. We’ll hit the usual suspects here: “The only comments are from the bad employees”  and “The salary data out there isn’t factual,” and tell you why things have changed. More importantly, we’ll cover how you actually may make the myths a reality by not fully engaging on reputation sites.  Think about that last sentence: You’ve got to be in the game to influence the game.

– Last but not least, we’ll give you a 4-step playbook on how to engage on reputation sites and become more of a Marketer as an HR/Recruiting Pro.  It’s true—you wouldn’t have read this far if you didn’t want to learn more about how to use reputation sites like Glassdoor to maximize your company and your career. We’ll help you get started.

The outside world now has a huge say in how your company/employment brand is perceived, whether you engage or not. FOT thinks you should engage.  Join us for “How Smart HR Pros are Becoming Better Marketers – By Using Company Reputation Sites Like Glassdoor” at 2pm ET on Wednesday July 30th and we’ll show you how.

(FOT Note: Glassdoor is sponsoring this FOT webinar. We’re happy to have them as a sponsor and, true to their commitment to transparency, they’re letting us talk about the myths and a lot of other realities HR and Recruiting pros have experienced related to Glassdoor—without restriction. That type of balance makes them a great partner.  Join us and we promise you’ll get a balanced view—no sales pitch—as well as an insider’s guide to how to use sites like Glassdoor to become a better marketer as an HR/Recruiting pro.)

I was fired for taking a 15 Minute dump

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I believe in natural selection.  When the internet when crazy last week because some little known company was only allowing their employees 6 minutes to use the bathroom each day, I didn’t have a strong reaction.  I didn’t care because I know, from experience, companies only do this because they are forced into the position, for some reason or another, or they have horrible leadership. Or, sometimes, both.

This might be the case for Water Saver Faucet Company out of Chicago, but quite honestly, I don’t know. Here’s what we know.  The owner of the company makes his employees swipe in and out of the bathrooms to monitor usage.  Sounds horrific, the internet screamed!  How could anyone do this?! Well, he’s doing it, and in a Teamsters union shop (this could be a post on how far the union has fallen!).

We could argue for days about why this is wrong, but no one wants to argue about why this might be right!

Here’s what we don’t know, but a savvy HR Pro would question before coming to conclusions:

1. Why did he feel the need to install such a system to begin with?

2. How much money is the company losing for excessive bathroom use?

3. Did we try other measures, first, before deciding on this measure?

4. Were employees consulted about this change, before making it?

5. Are we actually breaking any laws by doing this?

6. Are we putting ourselves in a unfavorable recruiting stance, by making this change?

We could go on, and on, but our reality is, there might very well be great reasons to monitor the use of your bathroom facilities at your office.

The company claims they lost 120 hours of productivity in May alone to unscheduled bathroom breaks. In a shop where they already get one 10 minute mid-morning break, a lunch break and a 15 minute afternoon break.  At which time they can use the restrooms as freely as they would like.  The six minutes of bathroom break monitoring is for unscheduled breaks.

This still sounds barbaric for so many of my HR friends.  Many of which have never worked in a union shop.  I have.  I played the union game.  I’ve spent time in the bathroom for long periods with nothing to do, but not wanting to build another pallet or haul more material. So I hid out.  By the way, I was showed how to do this during my union mandated 3 weeks of supervised training, for a job that took me about 30 minutes to learn.  I was showed when to go, where to go, and how much time I could stay without repercussions.  I was also showed where I could go to play cards, smoke, sneak outside to my car, etc.  It was a ‘great’ training program!

Should someone who physically has to use the restroom ever feel like they can’t or they’ll use their job?  Absolutely, not.  Should employees who take advantage of ‘using’ the bathroom to get out of work? Yes.  But that is so hard to prove! So, what do you do?  In this case, leadership decided to limit access.  Will it work? Who knows, but it got the point across to the workforce that someone is watching.

 

 

The 1 Problem with Posting on LinkedIn

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LinkedIn made me internet famous for a day with my 11 Rules for Hugging at Work.  That one post got me a gig on Huffington Post, has gotten me speaking gigs and has gotten me clients at HRU.  My immediate reaction on the back channel to my close friends was “Holy Sh*t! This LinkedIn publishing thing is a game changer!”

Of course, my friends are smarter than me, and they said, slow down.  It’s great if you an “LI Influencer”, because they promote your posts out to millions of potential readers.  But, as they open the publishing ability out to everyone, let’s see what will happen.

I was in the first roll-out of 20,000.  Now everyone and anyone can’t publish on LinkedIn.  You know what?  My friends are smart.

I don’t know if you noticed, but the content stream on LI has turned into Twitter.  There is so much content, you can’t even begin to start to digest it, let alone find really good stuff.  That was my initial hope.  Oh boy, this is going to be great!  I will find all kinds of new and interesting voices! In reality, what has happened is I can’t find anyone, because there is so much crap that people write, I find myself unwilling and unable to put in the time to get through it.  So, I’ve given up.

I even have given up writing on LI’s platform, because I figure the same thing is happening to everyone else, that is happening to me.

The 1 Problem with posting on LinkedIn is that they’ve allowed too many people to post, to often.  It’s become spam.  It’s become to much to digest.  While their original concept of “Influencers” was great, the new concept of open access, I believe has blown up on them. More content does equal more clicks, I’m sure.  But, too much content just equals more garbage for their members to sift through.

There’s a great lesson here for leaders.  If you have something that works great and is getting great results, sometimes more of that one thing doesn’t equal better.  It equals worse.  As with most things in life, less is more.

5 Ways HR Pros Can Get Back Up After Being Knocked Down

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Almost weekly I get a message from a HR or Talent Pro from around the world who has gotten their ass handed to them in some way or another.  Maybe they tried making a necessary change in their organization and got shot down by an executive.  They gave some wrong advice to an employee, and now legal is beating them up.  They didn’t move fast enough in making a decision, so the decision was made for them. They did everything they could do to get an candidate to accept and offer, just to have the candidate turn it down, then the hiring manager makes one call and they accept.

The stories are always different, yet, always the same.  They are feeling beaten up, broken down and just flat feeling like they’ve chosen the wrong profession.

I can always relate with their stories.  Every HR Pro has been through these types of issues.  Sometimes in HR it feels like these are ‘always’ the issues and the job will never get better.

I believe there are 5 things HR Pros can do to pull themselves back up and prepare for another day.

1. Shed The Shame: “shame is a toxic form of fear,” says Scott C. Hammond, a clinical professor of management at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. So, often in business we make a bad decision or something we are responsible for fails, and we feel shame and embarrassment.  For some reason HR Pros feel we need to be perfect.  We don’t.  We have to be good, good is not perfect.  We don’t expect any other employee to be perfect.  You shouldn’t expect that from yourself.

2. Don’t Lose Hope: Hope gives us this promise that there is something better ahead.  A better day, a better project, maybe just a better cup of coffee.  Whatever it is, you can’t lose hope that better is always a possibility.  I always look at business as one large experiment. A test.  I hope it will be successful, but like any test, it might fail.  The cool thing about running experiments and tests in HR is you give yourself this hope that the next one will be better, because you now know at least one way not to do it!

3. You Have So Many Choices: In HR there are so few things we actually control.  That is why it’s so important not to forget and understand the choices you actually have.  I spoke to a person just yesterday who felt like they had ‘no choices’. After about 15 minutes of conversation he had completely changed his perception because we came up with at least 10 choices! Choice #1, you can always go and work somewhere else. Always. Might be different position, different money, different location, but you can.  In my career I made the choice once to take a position making half of what I was making. HALF!  It worked out just fine. I found out I could live with less house, less car, and still be happy – much more happy. You have choices.

4. Ask For Help: Most proud HR Pros don’t want to ask for help because they don’t want to appear weak or incapable.  The fact is, most people actually like to help and it makes them feel valuable.  Leaders like to be asked for help. They don’t see it as weakness, they see it as their time to earn their money. Yes! Someone finally needs someone my expertise! We try and tell ourselves this isn’t the case, but it’s not.  I’m always amazed at the positive response I get from people when I ask for help.  It might be hard for you to believe in our cynical world, but most people actually like helping others!

5. Be Willing To Reset:  If you get knocked down, having the ability to ‘reset’ and start again is huge.  Many times we feel like all is lost, when it’s really just knocked off the tracks for a moment.  Take a breath.  Put what happened into proper perspective and get back on track.  Resetting is a powerful way to get yourself back to work and back to your positive self.  Alright, that didn’t go well.  Let’s see where we are, what we still have that is usable, and how we can make this thing fly moving forward.

adapted from Fast Companies “How Resilient People Stand Back Up When Life Knocks Them Down”

The Worst HR Advice I’ve Ever Given

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A few days ago this thought came to me: “What is the worst advice I’ve ever given anyone?’  Usually in a case like this the first thing you think of, is usually correct!  In my case, I came up with a number of things right away, none of which really seemed like the worst advice, and more of me making fun of what other people think is ‘good’ advice. Here’s a sample:

1. Don’t be afraid to fail.

2. Follow your passion!

3. Don’t play office politics.

4. Yeah, go get that Master’s in HR!

5. Just keep it to yourself, I’m sure no one will find out.

See what I’m talking about?!  All of the above statements have been shared as good advice, but I tend to think of them as terrible advice.

Then it came to me. The worst advice I have ever given to an employee in my HR career.  Here it is:

“Just wait and see what happens…”

This advice was given to an employee who really wanted a different position in the company, outside of their department.  It was going to come open because we all knew the person in the position was going to get promoted. I was early in my career, and believing our ‘process’ would help this person out.  Just wait, I thought, and once this person takes their new position, you can post for the their old position.  How naive I was.

The person who got promoted had a ‘plan’.  That plan had nothing to do with my process, or the employee who was wanting that position.  The plan did have the old employee putting one of his buddies into his old position, and seemingly everyone knew of this plan but me.  This was the day I learned that everyone has a plan, and in HR it’s really my job to know what those plans are, and manage expectations early.

The person I told to wait, now didn’t trust me, and truly believed I knew what was going to happen.  The reality was, I should have known, so I really couldn’t blame the person for being upset with me.  My own bad advice probably taught me more about HR than almost anything else I have ever learned in the profession.  As soon as you hear of possible moves, you better get involved.  Waiting to see what happens usually ends up with stuff happening, without you knowing!