Category Archives: Employee Engagement

You Can’t Fake Passion

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Just flying back from HireVue’s Digital Disruption conference this week.  This won’t be a post about HireVue’s products.  It’s pretty clear they are the industry leader in video digital interviewing technology (I think it’s funny we can’t call it video any longer, it’s now digital interviewing). This is about their 29 year old, Founder and CEO Mark Newman.

The cool thing about Digital Disruption is that it was a pretty intimate event.  HireVue’s executive team, hell most of their entire company, seemingly was at this event and interacting with everyone.  The event also allowed for a lot of up close and personal time with Mark.  Twice during the conference he got up to speak to the group of customers, prospects, analyst, etc.  Twice he showed why HireVue has been a fast growing success.

You know those times when you’re so proud, so upset, so frustrated, so happy, when you’re on the brink of showing some ‘real’ emotion? Parents I know will know these moments, when your kid does something so incredible you get choked up even telling others about it.  Twice, Mark did this while talking about his company and team.  About his vision for his company, about his vision for his team.  He is a proud parent of HireVue.

For the past three years or so when talking about HireVue with my HR Pro friends, we’ve all wondered aloud what HireVue’s play was going to be.  Do they build out a full platform ATS, HCM, etc.? Do they get bought up by one of the big enterprise plays (Oracle, SAP, etc.)? In my mind it was just a matter of time.  A ‘video’ interviewing company was not going to just make it on it’s own.

I was wrong.  It doesn’t mean that one day HireVue won’t go down one of these paths, but after spending some time with them it is very apparent that Mark and his team (Chip Luman, Kevin Marasco, Ben Martinez, Loren Larsen and Jared Wilks) have much bigger plans in growing and sustaining HireVue as a player by themselves in the Talent Acquisition space.

I’ve got to spend time with a bunch of different CEOs and leadership teams in our HR space, and across a number of industries in my career.  It’s pretty rare that I’ve been around a leader as passionate about his business as Mark, and as engaged in the development of the product moving forward.  It was refreshing, it was cool, it was motivating.  It made me feel less of a leader in for my own company!  And the bastard is only 29! It’s not fair!  What I found out about HireVue at Digital Disruption is that this is a company that is far from being done in ‘disrupting’ our industry.

This is something that is very unique in the HR Tech space, where most companies are just trying to build something fast and sell.  I found a company and leadership team in HireVue that is trying to build something not for today, but for generations.  It’s big goals and big aspirations, and I think they can do it.

How Zappos Ruined Job Posts!

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Zappos made a big splash last week announcing they were no longer going to post their jobs!  From this point forward, or as soon as they can get out of their legacy system, they’ll stop posting their open jobs.  Instead of the good ole post and pray strategy used by the majority of companies worldwide.  Zappos’s Talent Acquisition team will now only proactively search for candidates, build networks of possible candidates and always have a slate or ready candidates available for each hiring manager whenever they have a need arise.  Sounds like the same line we’ve been feeding all of our organizations for a long time, right!?!

The difference is, Zappos can actually do it, you can’t.  You see Zappos is a ‘one-percenter’.  They are one of the very few employment brands who don’t need to post their jobs to get candidates, they have more candidates than they can handle.  They have one of the most engaged employee bases known to man, who refer more great employees like themselves.  Zappos can kill job postings, because job postings, in their environment, actually make them less efficient!  Their Talent Acquisition team is smart and doing exactly what they should to kick their competition to the side – taking advantage of their greatest strengths!

I do wonder, though, isn’t Zappos very big public announcement of ‘killing job postings’ just one very, very big job post!  Ah, employment branding and marketing.  Silly rabbit.

Let’s be clear you are not Zappos.

While you’ll need to keep running your post and pray strategy, I do think there is something valuable to take away from Zappos’s new no job posts posting strategy.  Zappos has publicly shown all HR and Talent shops, you don’t really have to post your jobs!  “What!?! Yes, Tim!  Yes, we do!  You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about!”  Calm down, calm down.  There are a few shops around that will continue to be forced to run job postings do to government contracts, or other ‘contractual’ arrangements, I’ll give you that.  But there is nothing legal, for most employers, that forces you to run job postings.

Most employers can hire whomever they choose. It is a best practice to post jobs, internally and externally, to ensure you are pulling in a widely dispersed pool of candidates, and not opening yourself up to potential hiring biases, or even illegal hiring practices.  But most employers do not legally have to post a job.  And just because you post one job, doesn’t mean you have to post all of your jobs.  That is the big takeaway from what Zappos is doing.

Let’s face it.  Zappos’s operations is mainly a call center.  They sell shoes over the internet and on the phone.  They are customer service, and the best customer service job option known to man.  They are in Vegas which has thousands of crappy customer service jobs.  If you’re good at customer service in Vegas,  you’ll eventually want to work at Zappos.  They have no need in posting call center jobs!!!

You probably have similar issues.  When I worked at a large health system we had no need to post openings for cafeteria workers and lower level positions.  We had people contacting us daily wanting those jobs.  Yet, every time we had an opening, we would post the job and have to deal with hundreds of applicants.  Our ‘legal’ department made us do this.  It was do ‘reduce’ potential risk, of which, was almost zero to begin with!  It was stupid.  It made us do more work.  It wasn’t needed.

Zappos has put the entire Talent Acquisition industry on notice.  To stop doing stupid stuff, like posting jobs you don’t need to post.   If you think you can get away with not posting any of your jobs, well, good luck to that.  You’re not Zappos!

The micro-blog post, after the blog post:

You know what really pisses me off about this announcement from Zappos!?  For the next 3 years I’m going to have to go to conferences and listen to people like Stacy Zapar and Mike Bailen tell us how Zappos is changing the recruiting world! Ugh! More Zappos HR conference speakers…didn’t we already go through this with them?  Oh, yeah, I wrote about it, like three years ago and Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, actually commented on the blog post – that was really cool!  Check it out here!  How Zappos Ruined HR! 

P.S. Stacy and Mike if you guys ever want to speak together at a conference just let me know – I’m willing to ride that Zappos gravy train out with you for the next three years!

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.

 

Apparently, It Is All About The Money!

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To have highly engaged employees who must do what?

Come on. Come on.  What have you been told for the last 10 or 20 years?

I’ll give you the synopsis:

1. Recognize solid performance

2. Provide challenging and meaningful work

3. Give frequent feedback

4. Give employees a voice in decision making

5. Flexibility

Apparently, that’s all bull shit!  From the folks who teach other companies how to become Great Places To Work, Quantum Workplace, released a study last week that show from your most engaged employee, to your least engaged employee, they really only care about one kind of recognition — MONEY!  Here’s the chart:

engagement pic

Fascinating research, check out their white paper, it’s one of the better ones I’ve read in the past five years!

Also, it looks like your personalized pleather portfolios aren’t the bang for the buck you hoped for either!   That’s alright, neither is the spin you’ve been fed the past 20 years about people getting super psyched for additional responsibility, or the annual holiday party or summer family picnic.  All the crap blows as well.  You know what doesn’t blow?  MONEY! Yeah!  So, I’m really, really the best employee, with great performance?  Great! SHOW ME THE MONEY!

Also, you leaders who think your team just wants some words of praise, motivation and encouragement?  No they don’t.  They want you to hand out $100 bills, and shut your stupid mouth!

So, why have you been told a great big lie the last 20 plus years?

Advising leadership that all they have to do is hand out more money doesn’t really sell well!  Also, most companies are horrible at pay for performance.  They are unwilling to truly pay for great performance, and kick bad performers in the teeth with nothing.  We want to reward greatness with 5% and show those bad performers how serious we are by giving them a 1% increase! Take that bad performers!

What do you think gang?  What’s is your most important form of recognition?  Are you sure?  Or, are you just telling yourself that lie?

 

 

Should You Know Your Bosses Salary?

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It’s an age-old question.  Should organizations make their salary information public in-house amongst the employees?  In a era of transparency, it’s really the one thing most people still disagree on.  The higher up the chain you go, unless your in a publicly traded company, than it’s public anyway, the less likely you’re willing to want this data to be public within your organization.  The lower you are in an organization, the more you want this information.

Why?

At its core this notion of wanting to know the salary information of those around you is all about trust.  It really speaks to the human condition, and it’s quite ironic!  The higher you go up in an organization, the less you trust those lower than you.  The lower you are, the more you trust those above you are making the right decisions.  You could argue this. Sure many people at low levels don’t ‘trust’ management.  Yet, they still show up to work each day, and grind it out for $14.23/hr.  Those at the top are making 6,7,8 figure incomes, and jump around from position to position.  Who is more trusting?

Whole Foods company shares salaries of all of their employees within their walls. You can find out the salary of anyone! From Business Insider:

Whole Foods co-CEO John Mackey introduced the policy in 1986, just six years after he co-founded the company. In the book, he explains that his initial goal was to help employees understand why some people were paid more than others. If workers understood what types of performance and achievement earned certain people more money, he figured, perhaps they would be more motivated and successful, too. 

“I’m challenged on salaries all the time,” Mackey explained. “‘How come you are paying this regional president this much, and I’m only making this much?’ I have to say, ‘because that person is more valuable. If you accomplish what this person has accomplished, I’ll pay you that, too.'”

Beyond making compensation data available to all employees, Whole Foods also has its managers post their store’s sales data each day and regional sales data each week. Once a month, Whole Foods sends each store a detailed report on profitability and sales at each of the chain’s locations. In fact, in the late 1990s the widespread availability of so much detailed financial data led the SEC to classify all of the company’s 6,500 employees as “insiders,” according to a 1996 story by Fast Company.

“Oh, Tim, but that only works at a great company like Whole Foods!”  I hear you saying!
Yeah, you’re probably right.  It takes a strong, positive culture to handle this type of information being out in the open.  It takes extremely good leadership to handle the challenges coming in from average and weak performers believing they should get what someone else is getting.  It takes a great Talent Acquisition team to hire the right people who have the maturity to work in an organization that has this much trust in their employees to handle such delicate information.   It takes co-workers trusting one another, that each one is adding value to the corporation, and respecting the value each brings.
So, should you be able to know your bosses salary?  Probably not.

Can I Be Completely Honest?

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“Can I be completely honest with you?” is a phrase usually followed by some sh*t you don’t want to hear.  We talk about this concept a bunch in HR.  We need to tell our employees the truth about their performance.  We work to coach managers of people on how to deliver this message appropriately.  We develop complete training sessions and bring in ‘professional’ communicators to help us out on the exact phraseology we want to use.  All so we can be ‘honest’ with our employees.

Can I be completely honest with you?

No one wants you to be honest with them.

They want you to tell them this:

1. We like having you work here.

2. You’re doing a good job.

3.  You are better than most of the other employees we have.

4. We see great things coming from your development, and you’re on target for promotion.

5. Here is your annual increase.

Now, that might actually be ‘honest’ feedback for about 5% of your employees.  That means you will be saying a different version of honest to the other 95% that won’t like you being completely honest.

That is why talent management is really hard.  No piece of software will help you with this one fact.  Most people don’t like honest.  The cool part of this is that most managers don’t like to be honest. It’s uncomfortable. It causes conflict.  Most people aren’t comfortable telling someone else that they have some issues that need to be addressed, and most people don’t take that feedback appropriately.  You tell an employee they have ‘room for improvement’ and they instantly believe you told them they suck and they’re about to be fired.

So, as managers, we aren’t completely honest.  We tend to work around the truth.  The truth is we all have things we need to get better at, and it sucks to hear it out loud.  If someone tells you they welcome this feedback, they’re lying to you and themselves.  Those are usually the people who lose it the most when they are told the truth.  People who tell you they want honest feedback will believe you’re going to tell them ‘honestly’ they’re a rock star.  When you say something less than ‘rock star’ they implode.

So, what’s the honest solution to this?

Say nothing.  Set really good metrics. Metrics that show if a person is performing or not.  Make sure everyone understands those metrics.  Then, when the employee wants feedback, set down the metrics in front of them, and shut up.  Don’t be the first to talk.  The employee will give you some honest feedback if you wait.  Which will open the door to agree or disagree? Otherwise, you’re just working on subjective.  Subjective and honest don’t go well together.

But, you knew that. I really like having you stop by and read this.  You do a great job at your job. You’re certainly better than all those other readers who stop by and read this.  I’m sure you’re on your way up!

 

Homing From Work

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This might be the phrase for 2014.  Every year we get stupid business phrases that become part of our lexicon:

  • “Use it or lose it!”
  • “Necessary Evil”
  • “A seat at the table”
  • “Thinking outside the box”
  • “Silo Mentality”
  • “At the end of the day…”

For 2014 I’m calling it – “Homing from Work!”

Fast Company released an infographic recently that had some interesting facts about how, especially in the U.S. (I have to say stuff like that now, because I have this international audience, which in itself is funny since the most international I’ve ever gotten is Canada and Mexico! Which I don’t really even consider international, they’re more like Northern and Southern suburbs of the U.S.) , workers are working more hours, and feeling like they have a healthy work/life balance.  Since 2011, there has been a 30% increase in the number of people working more than 9 hours per day, and 80% of white collar workers feel they have a solid work/life balance.

That doesn’t sound right, does it?!

Well, there’s a bit more!  93%! Yes, 93% of workers take care of personal business and family needs during their work day, while at work.  63% increase in surfing and shopping online – more women than men! Surprise, surprise. If you make over $100,000 you’re more likely to exercise during your work day. Workers under 30 are 76% more likely than workers over 50 to visit social networking sites while at work.

Now, that sounds about right!

“Homing from work” is nothing more than what it’s always been, but now we have a term for it!  Basically, you have some personal stuff that needs to get done, but you can’t do it after work or the weekend, so you do it at work.  It’s been going on since the 9 to 5 was invented!  The one thing you need to be aware of, though, is it works both ways.  If you want to “Home from Work” that’s cool, but don’t give me grief when you need to take a call from home or catch up on something during the weekend.  It’s not either/or, it’s both.  You can’t do one without an expectation of other.

I know you’re checking into Facebook at work. I know you’re booking your airline tickets for your vacation at work. I’m fine with that, but don’t act like I owe you something if you need to work an extra hour one night, or put in some hours from home.  Hoomie don’t play that.  Go ahead and home from work, just know that it comes with an expectation of working from home.

5 Traits of Lousy HR Leaders

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The things you can always count on in life are: death, taxes and a lousy HR leader in your organization.  I think I saw that on a t-shirt at SHRM National one year!  The reality is, HR leaders are selected a little different than most leaders in our organization.  Most leadership is selected this way (right or wrong):

1. Perform really, really well

2. Get promoted into a position of leadership, whether you can lead or not.

I call this ‘Best Performance Leadership Selection’.  This is the selection process for leadership by roughly 97% of organizations worldwide!  You’re great at your job, you will be great as a leader.  Pretty sound selection process, right!?

HR leaders are selected almost the same, but with a slightly small difference:

1. Have really long tenure in the HR department at your organization.

2. Get promoted into a HR leadership position.

Sound familiar?  I call this ‘I’ve Been Here The Longest Leadership Selection’.  This is the selection process for HR leadership in roughly 97% of organizations worldwide! You might be great at your job, but we don’t really care, you’ve been here longer than anyone else in HR so now you’re the leader!

Sometimes reading what we do, in black and white, is depressing…

The problem with this type of HR leadership selection (besides the painfully obvious things) is we usually end up with lousy HR leaders.  Here are the traits of really lousy HR Leaders, just so you know if you have one or not:

– Rely on Faulty Metrics to make Major HR Decisions, and fail to track results. Well, we’ve been using time to fill and turnover for the past 20 years here, why would we stop!  Also, let’s keep using these subjective measures to determine if we are successful, because, well, hey, they’re subjective and at the end of the day I want to show our executives we are successful, whether we are or not.

– Not Championing Weighted Risk.  Lousy HR leaders love to cover their own ass more than any other single thing they do.  In HR we advise of risk, and give opinion on how to move forward.  Lousy HR leaders will not champion risk at any level, for fear it might come back on them.  Organizations take risk every single day. It’s not HR’s job to eliminate risk, it’s our job to champion appropriate risk and be all in with our business partners.

– Not Having the Tough Conversation.  Most leadership fails at this, but HR can’t.  We have to be the coaches for all other leadership in our organization.  If anyone knows how to have a tough conversation, it has to be HR.  Yet, most fail at this miserably.  Lousy HR Leaders are superficial and shallow in their opinions and directions, and don’t seek clarification on things in the organization that people are leaving to assumption.

– Not Aligning their Vision with the Organization’s Vision.  This is a definite sign of lousy leadership.  If your group, department, function leader can’t create a vision at their level that aligns with the organization, they have no direction.  Another sign of lousy leadership is when your leader just uses the organization vision and can’t break it down to a functional level.  This is just flat out lazy.

– Not being able to Lead Employees Equally Different.  Yes, all employees are created equal.  That doesn’t mean that all employees are treated equal. There is a fine line between treating everyone the same, and making people feel equal.  I want all my employees to feel like no one is better than another, but we also have to have a fundamental organizational understanding that at certain points and times some employees must be treated differently, for the good of the organization.  Lousy HR leaders are uncomfortable with this concept because it’s easy to just fall back on ‘we treat everyone the same.’