Category Archives: Employee Engagement

What would it take to get you to punch an employee?

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For most HR Pros, the answer might be – “Not much!” if they were joking behind the locked doors of their HR department!

This came up close and personal this past weekend when a college basketball player from Oklahoma State University, Marcus Smart, fell into the crowd during a play in the game and forcibly shoved a fan that made a comment to him that caused him to react.   It’s the first time anyone can really remember a NCAA athlete leaving the field of play and purposely making contact with a fan – in a manner that wasn’t positive.  It happened years ago in the NBA with the now infamous, Malice at the Palace, where a fight broke out between professional basketball players and fans that got completely out of control.

I’m not here to say Marcus was wrong or right.  If the guy said what Marcus said he said, I think the kid should have done more than just shove it, and I applaud his restraint.  If the guy didn’t say what is thought to be said, but some other dumb thing, well Marcus wasn’t living up to his namesake. Either way, Marcus understands that leaving the court of play to shove a fan is wrong, and has said so.  Being in HR, we know that at well.  There is nothing any employee could say to me that would get me to physically assault them.

Okay, that’s lie!  There is all kinds of things that might happen at work that I could justify an employee punching or shoving another employee!

I’ve witnessed employees saying the most outrageous, cruel things to each other.  What usually happens? One, or both, get fired.  It’s pretty easy from the HR side of things.  We can’t have this in our workplace, zero-tolerance, you’re gone.  It’s the easiest termination in the HR game.  In 20 years I’ve never even had anyone come back and try to fight it.  You punch an employee – you get fired.  Period.

I actually don’t agree with this, but it’s what happens in HR.  I think there are times that an employee is completely justified in hitting another employee – and the one who got hit should lose their job!  I had a former employee tell another employee, who was a father that recently had his son die, that ‘he deserved it’, to have his son die.  Beyond cruel.  The guy deserved to get hit, and the father deserved to react.  Legal made me fire him.  I fought it as far as I could, almost lost my job.  There are times in the workplace that an employee should get punched.  Just like there are times in an athletic event where a fan should get hit.  There are no absolutes in HR or life.

What would it take to get you to punch one of your coworkers?

Check out this video – even though it’s parents and a school principal – it totally reminds of how employees act when they are in the HR office. Enjoy.

7 Words Mathematically Proven To Get You More Hires!

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Wired recently worked with OkCupid and Match.com to find out which words were used on the most popular dating profiles on their sites.  Millions of data points were done for this data analysis and they came up with the most popular 1000 words.  What they came up with were the exact words to use in your profile descriptions to get the most clicks.  I’m going to take this one step further and say if these words attract singles to another single, I’m quite certain they would attract a job seeker to a job.  My theory being singles are also job seekers.  Okay, I hear you, just because some words might attract one person to another person doesn’t mean those same words will attract a person to a job – but it might.

It is my belief that we can totally re-write Job Descriptions in a way that is a lot less HR’ish, and much more real, which will make more people want to work in the jobs you have.  My good friend, Kris Dunn, is a master at this over at Kinetix (click through to see some of KD’s work). Here is another one I put together when I was hiring a Recruiter for my staff.   The positive is, it lets us in HR get our ‘creative on’.

Let ‘s give it a shot. I’ll give you 7 categories of words that were mathematically proven to get more dates hires:

1. Active Words: Yoga, Surfing, Surf, hiking, athlete, etc. These words were popular because people want to be associated with things that are good for them. Do you highlight active things you do at your organization in your job descriptions?

2. Pop Culture Words: 30 Rock, The Great Gatsby, Homeland, Arrested Development, The Matrix, The Big Bang Theory, The Hunger Games, etc.  People want to work with an organization that has a personality.  Pop culture references in your JD give you a personality.

3. Music Words: (FYI – some of these could also be considered Pop Culture) – Radiohead, Nirvana, live music, guitar, instruments, etc .Does your organization have a musical preference? Why not?  Maybe you’re a little country, maybe you’re a little rock and roll, either way, it’s alright to let candidates know!

4. Calm Words: Ocean, meditation, beach, trust, respect, enjoy, planning, dedication, openness, etc. Words that project a feeling of safety and security. In today’s employment marketplace, don’t discount the value of your jobs based on how calm and secure the work is.  Anxiety is at an all-time high.  Having the ability to say “we’ve never laid off in our history!” could pay you huge dividends.

5. Food Words: Chocolate, cooking, foodie, pizza, sushi, breakfast, etc. Food is a gathering and sharing point in most cultures.  If you do food related things in your work environment it brings all of your people together. Everyone eats. Not everyone will do Yoga or want to watch movies.  Chili cook-offs, company happy hours, Donut Fridays, etc.

6. Descriptive Words: Creative, motivated, confident, driven, passion, awareness, etc. Most HR pros see JDs as a means to an end.  They’re a legal necessity.  We should be looking at them as mini-commercials for our jobs.  I would love to see a company go full video JD – nothing written, just watch our Job Description. 60 seconds of someone telling you what this job is.

7. Spontaneous Words: Tattoos, F*ck, wasted, kissing, puppies, sucking, lucky, etc.  Words that most people would never expect to see in a JD.  This word has absolutely no usefulness in a JD – that’s exactly why we put it in there.  It might not attract an older conservative candidate, but it might be just what a newer generation is looking for.

I’ve never met a senior executive that had a problem with any job description I wanted to write – not matter how bland or how crazy.  That being the case, why do we continue to write JDs that put people to sleep?

 

 

 

3 Reasons Women Make Less Money Than Men

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In the State of the Union speech last week, President Obama spoke passionately about wanting to end the wage discrimination between males and females.  He used the number $.77 in the context of women make $.77 for every dollar a man makes.  Is that actually true?  Probably not, when you look at all the data:

“[Women] still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. A woman deserves equal pay for equal work.”

Hard to argue with that, but the 77-cents statistic does not convey the point.

All it tells us is how the median annual earnings of full-time, year-round female workers compare with that of full-time, year-round male workers.

It doesn’t speak to any of the factors that determine one’s pay, such as the type of job chosen, education, experience, tenure, or hours worked. Nor does it reflect the host of less tangible factors that play a role, such as job performance.

Controlling for those factors would shrink the pay gap considerably in many jobs and in some cases all but erase it.

Does that mean there’s no gender discrimination in pay? No. But teasing out just how much exists is very hard. Assessments will differ depending on what methodologies are used and what specifically is being compared. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research, for instance, estimates that somewhere between a quarter to a third of the 77-cents pay gap may be attributable to discrimination.

But it doesn’t really matter, in my mind, if we are talking about $.23 or $.03 – any difference is too much.  Our reality is there shouldn’t be any difference in pay given all things being equal.  So, why is it that really, today in 2014, have pay discrepancy between men and women?  I’ll give you 3 reasons why we have it, and why it’s going to continue:

1.  HR still does not have enough influence in most organizations to stop illegal and immoral decisions by leadership.  72.7% of HR Professionals are female (based on 2012 BLS figures).  So, in the vast majority of our organizations women are actually in a position to influence this issue.  You would think with such a large number of females in HR this would take care of itself.  But here we are.  I’m not saying women don’t have influence, I’m saying HR doesn’t have influence. Having over 70% of HR positions filled by women, should make, and keep, this a top of mind issue to put an end to.

2.   HR does not train, and consequently discipline, male leaders who over inflated performance of male employees over female employees who are similar or above in performance of their male counterparts. We see this happen all the time, and we (HR) turn a blind-eye to the practices, instead of putting a stop to them.  I think one could easily argue that an over-reaching competency amongst HR professionals in their inability to directly handle conflict, which definitely perpetuates this issue.

3.  Culturally, in America, we want women to make less.  That one hurts, right?  Before you react, think about it.  Who is expected to take off work when a baby is born?  Who is expected to stay home with a sick child? Or on a snow day from school? etc.  All of things attribute to Obama’s $.77 figure.  If 20% take off 12 weeks after childbirth, that has a huge impact to female average wage as compared to male wage!  Also, what about that thing we don’t talk about?  Men who can’t handle being with or married to a woman who makes more than them? You can scoff, but it is a very real thing!  In my career I’ve had to sit with female employees and have them tell me to my face they don’t want a raise, or to take on a new position, because it would cause them to make more than their husbands, and that was a bad thing.

#1 all by itself should make us furious with anger.  HR could put a stop to most of this wage discrimination, almost immediately, but we don’t.  It wouldn’t solve the entire amount, but it would make a huge dent in the difference!  I have been apart of trying to tackle this issue with major corporations.  I’ve stood in front of a CEO and showed this person the disparity and the solution.  The cost would be substantial, in the millions, and was told to ‘bury it’ and take care of the most critical outliers. Organizational leadership knows this is happening, they just don’t want to hurt their potential bonuses to stop it.

 

5 Crippling HR Behaviors That Keep Employees From Becoming Leaders

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In HR (OD, Training, etc. – pick your title) we like to believe we develop our employees constantly and ongoing to become the next generation of leaders.  But many times our actions tell a very different story.  We (HR and our Leadership teams) do and say things daily that keep people from truly reaching their full potential.  Self awareness of these behaviors is the key to making sure you are the roadblock to creating great leaders in your organization.

Here are 5 things you are doing to stop leadership development in your organization:

1. We try to mitigate 100% of risk.  Leaders need to understand and experience risk.  It’s part of the growth process to becoming a leader.  If we never allow our future leaders to experience risk, they’ll fail when they finally face it, or will be unwilling to face it, thus missing out on huge opportunities for your organization.

2. We don’t allow our employees to fail.  There are two parts to this. First, we get personal gratification by saving the day.  Second, we have this false sense that ‘great’ leaders won’t allow their employees to fail, so we step in quickly when we see things going south.   We tell ourselves that we need to let our people fail, and failure is good, etc. But we can’t stop ourselves from stepping in when failure is about to happen, or is happening.

3. We mistake what is expected with great.  Words are so powerful.  It’s so easy to say “You’re doing Great!”, when in actuality the correct phrase is probably closer to “You’re doing the exact job you’re paid to do!”  That’s not great. That’s is expected.  You can’t blow hot air up everyone’s butt and think they’re going to get great.  They have to know what great is, and then get rewarded with praise when great is reached.

4. We mistake high performance for the ability to lead.  Just because you’re great at ‘the’ job, doesn’t mean you’ll be great at leading people who do ‘the’ job.  This might be the one behavior that is hardest to change.  All of our lives we tell people the way to ‘move up’ is through great performance.  But it isn’t.  The way to move up into leadership, is to do those things that great leaders do – which does include high performance, but it also includes so much more than just being good at ‘the’ job you’re doing.

5. We are not honest about our own failures.  Developing leaders will learn more about leadership from you, if they know and understand your own failures at leadership.  We all have major failures in our lives, and many of those are hard to share because they are embarrassing, they show weakness, they might still be a weakness, etc. Developing leaders will learn more from your failures about being a great leader, then from any of your successes.

Developing future leaders has always been a critical part of HR in organizations, but we are quickly approaching a time in our history where your ability to develop leaders might be the most valuable skill you can provide to your organization.

(adapted from the Forbes article “7 Crippling Parenting Behaviors That Keep Your Children From Growing Into Leaders“

Newest Employee Benefit – Divorce Insurance!

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You know what happens when you go through a prolonged recession?  Divorce rates drop.

It’s pretty simple economics.  It costs more money to live alone in two separate spaces, then to live together in one.  It cost money to get divorced, you can live in misery together much cheaper!

You know what happens when the economy rebounds and everyone is getting those new shiny jobs!? Divorce rates increase.

It’s pretty simple economics.  Why live with an asshole when you have your own money and can find someone who will treat you like the princess that you are!

Yep, HR Pros it’s that season, the season when you’re going to once again become a marriage counselor.  You should know that with increased employment opportunities come increased desires to finally take that step out of a bad marriage and into the awesome life of online dating and eating Ravoli out of can with your cat at 9:30 pm on Friday night while watching Bachelor reruns.

I know. I know. You hate being a marriage counselor to your employees.  First, they never will listen to your advice. Second, they will never listen to your advice. But, I think I have a solution for you. Did you know you can now purchase Divorce Insurance for your employees!  I mean what tell an employee that you care so much about their well being that we, your great employer, will help you break up your marriage!? I say nothing!

Trying to get your employees to call EAP and go to counseling is so 1990’s!  Employers who truly care about their employees in the 2010’s get them Divorce Insurance.  Yes, it’s real.  Check it out – DivorceInsurance.com – basically you pay premiums, like all insurance, and in the ‘rare’ case you get divorced, they pay your cash to help with the financials costs of a divorce. It’s like Aflac, but for Love! (Hey, don’t try and steal that now for you commercials DivorceInsurance.com!)

Look if you’re going to talk me into Pet Insurance for your stupid cat, you can definitely talk me into Divorce Insurance!  In fact, maybe we could just set up a cafeteria plan of worthless insurances and let you pick like 2 out off the list as one of the benefits the company will offer you.  “Yeah, I’d like the Divorce Insurance and the Immaculate Conception Insurance.”

Being a former child of divorce maybe one of these companies could come up with “Creepy Step Dad Insurance” – oh wait, they’re in the business of probability.  Probably not a good bet on their part…

 

 

 

How Much Pregnancy Leave Is Too Much?

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So, I’m up north at HRPA 2014 and I’m learning so much about our Canadian HR brother and sisters (like the US it’s still mostly sisters!).  Did you know the maternity leave in Canada is 52 weeks!  That’s one year if your slow at math like me!  And that can be divided in any manner between the mother and father.  Plus, from the peers I spoke to, many get up to 55% of their salary for the entire time they off!

Obviously, the US has FMLA for only 12 weeks. By the way, the women I spoke to, who didn’t know this about the US, were completely shocked by this.  But, I was completely shocked by 52 weeks and 55% pay!

My question to you today is: How much pregnancy leave is too much?

Here are some thoughts I have between the US and Canadian policies:

1. 12 weeks is too short.  52 weeks seems too long.

2. I’m not sure how companies manage, especially those with a large female workforce, it would seem like a huge competitive disadvantage to lose your talent for so long, and still have to pay out so many resources for not having that talent.

3. I wish I would have had my 3 sons in Canada.

4. Should a government force a corporation to pay an employee for a very personal decision?  The company didn’t ask you to have babies, why should they pay 55% of your salary?  How is that decision different than many life decisions we make.  I want to train for an Ironman Triathlon – I expect it will take me 6 months. Pay me for that!

5. Canadians game the system just like Americans!  My Canadian HR peers had the same war stories as my American peers.  One was of a female business owner who got pregnant.  Since she owned the business she didn’t have to claim 52 weeks off.  So her husband took all 52 weeks and got paid 55% of his salary.  The HR person knew this was going on and couldn’t do anything about it.  People are people – given a set of rules, they’ll find ways around them.

I run a company that has had many pregnancies over the years, I hire an age that falls into the perfect age for baby making!  Each time we have one person out for 12 weeks, it’s a stress on the entire team.  I can’t even imagine how we would manage for 52 weeks!  A part of me is glad I don’t have to deal with that.  Another part of me wishes we had better maternity leave in the US.

I don’t know what the perfect number is, I’m sure it’s different for each family going through it.

What do you think?  What is the perfect amount of pregnancy leave?  If you were given the chance to design a plan, taking into account both the employee and the company resources, what would you do?

 

 

Work Clothes That Measure Your Performance

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One of the big things that came out of the CES 2014 technology show is wearable technology.  We already are aware of wearable technology like Google Glass and various bracelets that do everything from working as your smartphone to measuring if your fat butt is moving enough.  I think what CES did this year, though, was to stretch our imagination to what could wearable technology become.

Here’s my idea – work clothes that measure whether or not you’re on task or doing exactly what you should be doing.

Think about that for a second:

1. All employees must wear company issued ‘uniform’

2. Company issued uniform has integrated wearable fibers that not only measure movements, but also give you the exact time and location of said uniform, measure the health of the worker, measure the interactions with worker tools, etc. (Hello Big Brother!)

3. Your systems measure everything to the point you can tell which employee is the most productive, which employee takes too many bathroom breaks, which employee said they were going to deliver a load to a client but also decided to stop and have a refreshing adult beverage on the way.

4. Not only measuring performance and output, but also relaying exact ways that an employee can get better at their job. “Tim continues to drop his arm down to his side after every motion “X”, if Tim would keep his arm at a 45 degree angle he would get 14% more output” – now that is some serious specific feedback!

5. Wearable uniforms could also reduce workplace accidents.  If the clothes new the operator was getting too clothes to a dangerous situation, or forgot to put down a safety gate, the clothes could shut down the system before an accident could happen. That’s really cool!

6. Wearable technology could measure the health of your workers, and deliver warning signs to HR. Have you ever had someone die of a heart attack at your place of business?  I have. It sucks really, really bad to see a coworker die.

Some of this seems Star Wars, super techy, fantasy kinds of things, but it’s not.  Technology is getting very close to begin doing some these things in the next years.  While some will think of these things as intrusive to their privacy, I’m guessing companies and worker’s compensation insurance companies will not.  You want this great job, with great pay and benefits, at our great company, please put on this company issues uniform.

It’s not about control. It’s about becoming better, faster.  For all the training we do, nothing could get folks up to speed, with 100% compliance, faster than your shirt not allowing to continue to do a work around that is dangerous and delivers a less than quality product.

What do you think?  Would you wear clothes that measured everything you do in your job?

 

 

Your Open Office is Killing Your Productivity

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You know what’s funny – everyone, who is anyone, wants to work in a new, cool, ultra modern open office concept!  Organizations are spending billions creating these environments, and now studies are coming out and showing that productivity suffers in open concepts, especially with younger workers and those that love to multitask. From the New Yorker:

The open office was originally conceived by a team from Hamburg, Germany, in the nineteen-fifties, to facilitate communication and idea flow. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the open office undermines the very things that it was designed to achieve…In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than a hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction. Compared with standard offices, employees experienced more uncontrolled interactions, higher levels of stress, and lower levels of concentration and motivation. When David Craig surveyed some thirty-eight thousand workers, he found that interruptions by colleagues were detrimental to productivity, and that the more senior the employee, the worse she fared.

So, why do we continue to design our workplaces around this open office concept?  Here’s what I think:

1. Recruiting.  Young talent likes to walk into the ‘cool’ office.  Executives feel that this is a recruiting advantage and a marketing advantage when customers see a new, ultra-modern office environment.

2. We think we want our office, like we want our homes.  Over the past 2 decades home builders have been ask to build open home plan designs.  We then go to our office which is all cut up into small rooms and think ‘Hey, wouldn’t this be ‘nicer’ if this was all opened up?’

3. Collaboration. Open office design was billed as the next best thing for creativity and collaboration.  It was a theory.  It was never really tested out. Someone had an idea, ‘you know what, if we break down these walls and have everyone in one big room, we’ll be more collaborative, we’ll be more creative”.  Sounds good.  Research is showing us that theory was just that, a theory.

I think for certain aspects the open concept still has merit.  Sales offices for years have been using the open concept with success, in a bullpen environment.  Hear your peers next to you on the phone, and your competitive nature takes over, you get on the phone.  You can feel and hear a buzz in the air in a well run sales bullpen.  I tend to think I’m creative, but having others around me, talking, doesn’t help my creative process.  I hear this from IT and Design professionals as well.  Have you been in a big IT shop or Design house?  Most of the pros where headphones, dim the lights, try and create an environment that the open concept isn’t giving them.

Be careful my friends.  I love the look of many of the new offices, but if it’s hurting productivity and making my workers worse – I’ll gladly give them back their offices!

Employee Narcissism At All-Time High

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Do you feel that our fixation on employee feedback is perpetuating our narcissistic society?

It’s a question I thought of recently and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.  On one hand, I truly believe we have a major issue with narcissism in our society that is getting worse, not better.  I also believe giving feedback to employees, on the work they do, is very valuable and needed to have a strong workforce.

So what gives?

We are told Annual Employee Evaluations are broken and not enough.

We are told you must give feedback to your employees frequently throughout the year.

We are also told that we have multiple generations that have gotten ‘hooked’ on feedback, like a junky is ‘hooked’ on crack.  You get up and you put up a selfie waiting for your ‘followers’ to comment, to ‘like’, to give you a fix.  You get to work, one more selfie – just a quick hit.  Out to lunch, with my bestie, just one hit before I return to the office.  Okay, it’s late afternoon, I’m going to need a little more to make it until 5pm, hello bathroom selfie, you’re my savior. Look at me! I’m home, bottle of wine selfie should at least get me through the evening.

Is it a stretch to compare the desire for social feedback to our desire for work feedback?

Here’s what I know.  The more feedback you get, the more feedback you desire.  If that is the case, is your new constant feedback evaluations at work creating a monster that you’ll never be able to satisfy?  I feel like by solving one problem (lack of feedback), HR is helping to cause, or at least sustain, a bigger problem we are facing with an employee culture that is becoming overwhelmingly narcissistic.

Maybe the bigger question should be, what are we going to do with rampant narcissism that is running amok in our organizations?  Have you created Anti-Narcissism training yet in your organization?  If so, what does that entail? I’m thinking it must have some sort of aversion therapy elements (post a selfie and you get a shock from you desk chair!). Or maybe a little  public shaming, which doesn’t seem to work on Narcissist, they actually like it – ‘oh look, someone is talking about me!’

I’m not sure what I dislike more in HR – employees who spent all of their time trying not get noticed, or employees who spend all of their time trying to get noticed!

 

 

 

 

5 Top Regrets of People Leaving a Job

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Being in my line of work, I get to hear from a ton of people who have left jobs.  One of the questions I like to ask people is to give me one thing they regret about leaving a certain position or company.  You might think that most people would find this hard to answer, but I’m always surprised at how quickly people can answer this question, and the fact that no one ever answers it with “I have no regrets.”  I use this question to help me understand a candidates level of self-insight.  If a person can look back on a job, and say you know what, the company might have sucked, but I could have done ‘this’ better, that’s someone who gets it.

Here are the Top 5 Regrets people have when leaving a job:

1. “I could have done better.” I like people who can come out and say, I just didn’t do enough.  It’s usually followed with reasons why, lack or resources or tools, etc. But it shows me they have a desire to be successful at anything they do.

2. “I should have made more work friends.”  I talk to a lot of people who have been at a company for years, and after they leave they realize they weren’t really close to anyone.  They realize they miss some of the people, but never really put in the time to establish enough of a relationship to carry it beyond just a working relationship.

3. “I didn’t let the executives know what I was really thinking.”   This happens to so many people. Even when leaving they somehow justify to themselves that it won’t matter, so they never share what they really thought of so many things.  While some of it might not matter, there might have been a great idea or change in there that could have a positive impact to the organization.  Yet, they walk away with it unsaid.

4. “I wish I would have celebrated my accomplishments more.”  You know what happens when you celebrate your accomplishments?  People begin to notice them as accomplishments.  Those things turn into positives for the organizations.  People are drawn to you and want to be a part of what you’re doing.  Celebrations, real celebrations, make a closer bond between you and your coworkers.

5. “I wish I never would have left.”  (or “I left for the wrong reasons.”)I hear so many people say these words – “I loved that job!”  My next question is – “Why did you leave?”  It’s always followed by a reason, promotion, more money, different location, etc.  After they left, they found out how much the job they had, was a really, really good job that they loved.  I always caution people from leaving a job, especially when they tell me they love the job.  Don’t discount loving your job.  It’s hard, really hard, to find jobs you love.

The beginning of the year is always a good time to reflect on your regrets from the prior year.  I know many people who took on new positions in the past year.  I always love to find out how the new gig is going, but I also love to ask about what they regret about leaving, and I’ve never disappointed by the response!