Category Archives: Employee Engagement

How To Tell An Employee They Suck

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You have an employee who sucks don’t you?

I know, I know, you’re wondering how I knew that, aren’t you?

Well, you came to this post and we all have employees who suck! (Dear My Employees – this is for effect — none of you really suck! Just everyone else reading this post has employees who suck.)   I’ve been out on the road quite a bit lately meeting with HR pros.  I meet with people under the reason ‘we can’t find talent’, but usually what I find is ‘we can’t get rid of people who suck, so we hire more people to cover up their suckiness’.

Don’t feel bad.  Almost every organization I know has a problem getting rid of people who suck.  We hire people. They become a part of the family.  We find out they suck.  Like your drunk uncle who ruins holidays, these employees are similar.  You don’t stop asking your uncle to come to Christmas, and we don’t ask these employees not to come back to work.  So the sucky employees keep coming to work.

We meet with them and have ‘conversations’ and tell them we need them to “step up” and “reach higher” and “give maximum effort”.  What we never say is “Hey! Stop Sucking!”

We don’t do this because we’re professionals!  Also, we would never allow their managers to say this, that could very well hurt the feelings of these employees who suck.

So, do you want to know how to tell an employee they suck?

Here’s 3 ways you can do it:

1. Send them a personalized cookie with the words “Stop Sucking!” Kind of like a Happy Birthday cookie, but instead replace Happy Birthday with Stop Sucking! For those really outgoing, caring HR Departments you can actually order “Stop Sucking” cookie bouquets that spells this out in letter cookies. How fun!

2. Offer FREE “Stop Sucking” tattoos, but only to them.

3.  Decorate their cube or office door after they leave at night so the next day when they come to work they’ll get a big Stop Sucking surprise!

These also sound ridiculously stupid, don’t they? (except of the cookie bouquet – that’s a good one)

Almost as ridiculous as not getting rid of employees who suck and hiring additional employees to cover up for an employee who doesn’t carry their own weight…

I get it. We don’t hire employees to fire them.  We hire them to productive contributors to our organizations.  The problem is, sometimes we make mistakes.  Sometimes our selection process fails.  Sometimes we make bad hiring decisions.  Sometimes the hire we thought so highly of, sucks.  We usually know it right away, but we give it time, we hate believing what our gut is telling us.

Telling an employee they suck is an awesome experiment, with no downside.  One of two things usually happens when telling an employee they suck. They will either realize you’re right and you can start making departure plans, or they’ll want to show you your wrong and work to demonstrate they don’t suck.  For me, this has really gone about 50/50.  I’m not saying that the employee 50% will stop sucking.  They’ll try not to suck really hard, but at their core they suck.  I love seeing the passion, many times that alone will bring them up to a performance level to at least get by, but rarely do you go from sucking to rock star.

A third thing might happen when telling an employee they suck.  They won’t agree with you. That’s okay as well.  It’s not their call.  You’re the leader.  Your opinion is what counts.  If you feel they suck, they do, for you at least.  Let them go and be ‘great’ somewhere else, like your competitor.

 

 

The Office Halloween Party Rules

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Is your office dressing up for Halloween?

Mine isn’t.  It’s not that I wouldn’t.  Okay, I wouldn’t.  But if others wanted to, I wouldn’t say “no”.  I mean everyone has that one person in their office that’s a little way too excited over Halloween.  I get it.  I have kids.  They lose their minds at the thought of free candy and dressing up.  But you’re an adult, let’s try and keep it together here at the office.

That is why I think it’s important to Rules for your Office Halloween Party.  Here’s mine:

1. Racism theme costumes never go over like you thought they would when you were drunk and came up with the concept. “No, really, we’re going as the black KKK!” Just don’t do it.

2. Anything with ‘naughty’ in the title isn’t work appropriate. Naughty Teacher, Naughty Nurse, Naughty Witch — you get the idea.  The only time this would work is when taking the opposite stance — Naughty Human Resource Manager is totally appropriate.  This costume consists of a cat sweater, hair in bun, long skirt (pants or skort), old lady panty hose and 6 inch pumps. Sexy!

3. Don’t be the ‘guy’ offering “tricks” all day. That’s just creepy.  Also, don’t be the ‘gal’ offering “tricks” all day. That’s just slutty.

4. Anything that interferes with your ability to do your actual job, shouldn’t be a costume selection.  “Well, I didn’t think about how me being a Rubic’s Cube for the day would get in the way to me being a nurse.”

5. Dressing up like the boss is always in good taste, but only if your boss doesn’t hate you.

6. If you have to put a sign on to explain what you are, go back to the drawing board.  ” Wait, you see I’m ‘Hard to Get Along With'” Yeah, we got it…

7. If less than half your staff will be dressing up, you need to cancel dressing up.  At that point it’s just sad.

In HR we love our dress code rules and for Halloween parties why should we be different!  What your favorite Halloween party rules at the office?

 

Hiring Friendly

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This past week I was in Myrtle Beach, SC for speaking gig and got to spend some alone time with my wife.  It was my first trip ever to Myrtle Beach.  Here’s my assessment:

  • It’s hard to knock any place that is on the Ocean. Beautiful sand and water.
  • That being said…Myrtle Beach is Jersey Shore South – arcades, cheap beach crap stores and carnival food.  I was somewhat surprised there weren’t signs that said “Welcome to the Guido Vacation Capital of the World!”
  • Oh, and there’s a bunch of golf courses.
  • I saw more dolphins in one place than I’ve ever seen anywhere else.

Here’s the other thing they have – Chick fil a restaurants!  My close friends know this is a weakness I have.  Look I know they don’t like gays, and that upsets me.  It doesn’t upset me enough to stop eating their crack-like chicken sandwiches, but to prove my displeasure with their stance of the gay community, I refuse to purchase their waffle fries. So there!

The one thing Chick fil a does exceptionally well, besides chicken sandwiches, is hiring ridiculously friendly people.  No, you have no idea.  I’ve been to Chick fil a restaurants in countless states.  The one thing I can always count on is the fact that someone will take my order that seems way to happy to be working at a fast food restaurant.  I want to speak with Chick fil a’s HR team to find out what kind of screening they do to hire such friendly folks!

People need to stop concentrating on what Google is doing in HR and start looking into Chick fil a.  I can’t think of one other organization that does this so well, not even the folks at Disney.  If I had to guess Chick fil a probably has gone to only one screener type question:

Is this person ridiculously friendly and happy about life?

Who cares about skills! Just hire super friendly people and your customers will put up with almost anything.  It’s something we don’t want to admit in HR about selection, especially in service type industries, but friendliness might be the most important competency any hire needs to be successful.

If anyone has a contact at Chick fil a please let me know, I now want to know the truth.  How do they hire the nicest people ever?

7 Hard Truths That HR Must Learn To Accept

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In a perfect world we all get a seat at the table,  all of our employees go online and fill out their open enrollment forms on time, and all of our hiring manager give us immediate feedback on each candidate resume we send them.  Unfortunately, none of us live in a perfect world, there are some hard and fast truths in our profession that we have to accept, and by accepting those truths, it allows us to let go and move on with trying to better our organizations each day.

Accepting these truths doesn’t mean we are giving up, and not trying to change our profession, our organizations and ourselves for the better.  Accepting these truths gives us permission to accept our reality, and it allows us to work towards, little-by-little, making the HR profession better.

Here are the 7 Hard Truths HR Must Learn To Accept:

#1 – Focusing on compliance, will never allow you to become strategic.  Operations in our organizations have long known this, and this alone allows them to control most of the decision making power in your organization.  A compliance focused department, will never be innovative, it will never creative, it will never be Strategic.

#2 – Your Performance Management system, will not fix everything.  In fact no system or process will fix everything – we drive a people business – thus we deal with a very nebulous product – people.  As soon as you create a process or implement a system, some hiring manager or employee will find a way to find a flaw in it. It’s OK not to be perfect.

#3 – You’ll never get all the resources you need to do the job you want to do.  People are your most important asset, but shareholders/stakeholders need a return on investment.  Thus, resources are always going to first go to where that return is highest, and sorry but HR isn’t first on the list.

#4 – Your companies Deepest Secrets are only a Tweet away. And your social media policy and lock down of social media sites isn’t going to stop these secrets from getting out, if you have a rogue employee who wants to get them out.  This is similar to the reality of you will probably more likely die on your way to work in a traffic accident, then in a plane crash on your way to vacation – but we tend to worry more about the plane crash.

#5 – Your employees and managers will never fully support themselves on Self-Service Modules. It’s a dream, sold to you by software vendors, and you buy into it because you hate dealing with the daily administration of HR.  No matter what, we’ll always have some of this to do – it also, is OK, it’s not what we do all day, every day – no job is perfect.  Pull up your big boy pants and help them out – you’ll live.

#6 –Fraternization will always happen.  We manage adults (even if they don’t act like adults), and until the end of time adults, put in close proximity of each other, will eventually be attracted – blame G*d, blame laws of the universe, blame your parents – I don’t care.  It’s a fact – deal with it.

#7 – You’ll Never get the full respect you deserve.  This is a function of organizational dynamics.  HR doesn’t make the money, operations makes the money – respect will be given to those who actually keep the doors open and the lights on.  If you got into HR for your deep need for respect, sorry, you picked the wrong career.  On the plus side, we get a lot of conference room cookie leftovers!

How to Talk To Your Young Snot-Nosed Boss

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This isn’t necessarily a unique phenomenon in our society, but as the Baby Boomers continue to age and many taking on non-leader roles within our organizations, these older employees are now finding themselves reporting to bosses much younger than themselves.  Many times these younger bosses have a lot less experience doing the job, make common new leader mistakes and flat out don’t know how to communicate with subordinates that are as old as their parents and/or grandparents!

So, what can an older employee do to help out this situation?

There was a great example of this recently with the payment startup company Clinkle who was founded by 22 year old Lucas Dulpan.  Dulpan needed an experienced COO and found it in former Netflix CFO and much older, Barry McCarty.  The fact of the matter is, Barry has much more knowledge and experience running this type of company than Lucas.  So, how do you deal with is obvious situation? From Jason Del Ray at Business Insider, here’s how McCarty describes it:

Jason Del Rey: What does your role entail?

Barry McCarthy: Well, Lucas is the CEO. I work for him. I want to be unambiguously clear about that. He’ll continue to focus on product and engineering. My primary focus will be everything else.

Jason Del Rey: Do you believe Lucas can be the long-term CEO of a giant payments company?

Barry McCarthy: Absolutely. And if he’s not, then I will feel like I have not served him as well as I could have.

BAM! That my friends is called Servant Leadership.  You support the leader, in this case Lucas, by serving that person with all the positive intent and direction that you can humanly provide.  What McCarty understands, because of his vast experience, is that it’s not about him getting noticed. Those who know the industry will know that he did his job exceptionally, and that is what really matters.

What to know how to best get along with your younger boss?  Stop trying to do their job, and start helping them do their job.  Lift them up, make them the star and everyone will see what you did to make that happen.  You win. Your boss wins.  The organization wins.  Isn’t that really the goal?

Are You An Employee Friendly Company?

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If you were to ask any HR Pro or Executive from any company if they were ’employee friendly’ I can guarantee you 100% of the time, their answer would be ‘Yes’!

But are you really?

I’m sure you would point to your some of your policies to demonstrate to me how employee friendly you are.  You would show me your policy on flexible work arrangements or your personal time off (PTO) policy, maybe even your anniversary policy.  These would prove to me that your truly are employee friendly.

What I wouldn’t see would be policies that aren’t so employee friendly.  Like the policy of only allowing lunch to be reimbursed when traveling if you were with a client (you have to eat lunch when you’re in the office and we don’t pay, this is no different!). The policy that forces someone traveling for the day to come into the office if they get back before 5pm, even thought they left on a Sunday to get to the client location. The policy that forces you to use your PTO when you decide to stay home during a snow storm, instead of trying to make it in to work in dangerous driving conditions. The policy requiring you to ‘sign out’ a laptop to take home to do work at home. The policy requiring a ‘doctor’s note’ when you stay home sick (just what our healthcare system needs, employees coming in with colds).

The reality is, most policies are written in the best interest of the employer.  It’s the employer who writes them, so we can assume that they’ll weighted to ensuring the employer is protected, first and foremost.  Put it this way, we have way too much tax policy/code in our country.  Do you think that is in place to protect you, the individual, or the government and/or the companies that pay billions of dollars to lobby for company friendly tax code?   Companies don’t top being companies when they start writing employment policies.

Employee friendly companies usually have one very common thing — they have few policies.  Treat people like adults.  Do what’s best for all stake holders, employees, shareholders and customers.  Don’t put up with idiots who try and take advantage of your awesome employee friendly policies! That’s the real issue, right?  We have policies because of the 5%.  Hey, one time we had this guy and stole a laptop he used to take home for work.  So, now we have a policy to make sure that never happens again.  If we told people they would get paid if they stayed home when it snowed, people would stay home when there was 1 inch!

If you manage ‘the exception’ through policy, you’re really good at bad HR.  You are not employee friendly.  I blame unions for most unfriendly employee policies, because unions will take everything to the letter of anything written (and I like to blame unions for the downfall of American manufacturing, the economy and Santa Claus not bringing me presents once I turned 13).  Common sense is thrown out the door.  You said in paragraph two that employees should use their judgement when coming in if they feel road conditions are dangerous, and Mr. Smith felt like 1 inch of snow is dangerous, so you can’t fire him and you have to pay him.  Mr. Smith stayed home because of bad road conditions 27 times in the past 3 months.

So, are you employee friendly?

A New Way To Retain Employees!

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(I just returned from the 2013 HR Technology Conference where I got to see all the latest and greatest HR technology, and speak to some wickedly smart people.  So, for the next week or so, my plan is to share some of the products and insights I gained from this experience. So we are clear, no companies I write about have paid me to write about them.  I requested Diet Mt. Dew be delivered and no one brought one.  Enjoy…)

I swear last product I want to talk about from HR Tech!  This one is near and dear to my heart because it’s about employee retention!  I know boring right!  No sexy, stealthy way to find talent or Jedi Mind Tricks to get your staff to perform better, just good old solid how the hell do we keep our people from leaving!  HR to it’s core.

The company is BlackBookHR, there new product is called Sense and it won best new HR Tech product of 2013!  I continually referenced them as BackDoorHR (because deep down I’m a 12 yaer old boy at heart).  I’m sorry about that Chris Ostoich, the Founder and CEO of BlackBookHR.  Chris is a really great person, with a really great story.  He’s one of those guys you route for. He couldn’t really even afford to have a booth at HR Tech, but won the prize for best product anyway! (He told me he could afford a booth, but thought there were better ways to spend the money – he’s right!)  Also, he brought his Mom out to Vegas to see him get the award!  Pure Midwest, baby!

Sense is a software which sets an engagement baseline for your entire staff.  Don’t worry that takes about 5 minutes for your employees to complete.  Then, each week Sense goes out and within 30 seconds re-measures to the baseline of each employee (through an email interface and quick point and select questions).

Here’s a quick example: An original question might be — “My company gives me the tools and resources I need to do great work?”  On a scale of 1 to 10 I say, “Yep, they do at an 8”.  Everything is going great at an 8, then a few months later my boss tells me he’s cutting some tool out of my budget I rely on.  That Friday Sense asks me the same “tools and resource” question, but this time I answer “1”.  The system ‘senses’ something went wrong with my engagement, and that I could be a flight risk, so HR is told.  HR then determines how to elevate this to my supervisor, or do they handle it themselves. Pretty cool!

Sense also does one other very cool thing and shows you how an employee influences within your organization.  Not all employees are created equal.  Some have major influence and connections, and one of those employees leaves, usually others follow.  Sense will show you who those employees are in your organization as well!

Beyond cool, is that some very big Fortune 500 types have been using this and the metrics show that it actually works.  Like reducing many percentage points off your turnover works!

How did Chris know this idea would work?  He lived it!

Chris isn’t from HR or even from IT.  He was a finance dude who had a feeling he could easily be talked into leaving his current company.  He saw others like him, and thought there is a way to stay connected and at least giving the company a chance to hang on to him, and show him some love, on those times when he was most vulnerable to leaving.  Long story short, he shared his idea with his company, and they listened, and they told him to get his ass back to work!   He did, on his own, building Sense!

Check it out – quickly!  Sometimes the simplest ideas and products have the biggest impact to our bottom line.   I have a feeling Sense won’t be around as a stand alone product for long.  My guess is Oracle, SumTotal, Halogen, SuccessFactors, etc. will come knocking on Chris’s door and offer him a huge pile of cash to integrate it into their own suite.  It’s that good.

Cool New HR Tech…that you might even be able to afford

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(I just returned from the 2013 HR Technology Conference where I got to see all the latest and greatest HR technology, and speak to some wickedly smart people.  So, for the next week or so, my plan is to share some of the products and insights I gained from this experience. So we are clear, no companies I write about have paid me to write about them. Enjoy…)

Here’s a run down from the HR Tech Conference Expo:

BambooHR: Tagged as your “1st HR system” or “we love you, if you use spreadsheets as your HR system” – Ben Peterson, the CEO, was by far the coolest and nicest and real CEO (and maybe person) I met all week at HR Tech.  They don’t like to use ‘HRIS’ because small and medium sized businesses and HR shops don’t even really know what that means.  BambooHR is an easy to use HR system and nicely designed, for a very, very cheap price.  Don’t let the price scare you off — cheap, in this case, doesn’t mean they try and a one-size and process fits all perspective down your throat – they’ll customize for you – and still be cheap!  If you are looking for your first HR system, or to up grade your old system, and you don’t look at these guys, you should be fired as an HR professional.

Blissbook: “Employee Handbooks to Smile About”.  I know, I know — Tim, you’re talking handbooks!?  Here’s the deal.  They have a super cheap, super cool UI (user interface — BTW, no one at HR Tech talks English, they only talk tech).  So, you can put your handbook online and add video, and hyperlinks and all kinds of stuff, and they make it really easy.  Don’t think PDF of your handbook on your careers site, it’s more than that.  Think of it as a cultural narrative of your organization having it’s own website.  One issue I see them having, the examples they show are really cool and hip.  So you think you can do the same thing, the problem is content isn’t easy to write to be cool and hip.  If you aren’t creative, neither will your Blissbook.

SumTotal: SumTotal is like BambooHR, if BambooHR was a gigantic enterprise total HR solution for your business.  Let’s be clear, SumTotal is a big company, like Oracle, ADP, SuccessFactors, etc. Big companies have the resources to do some really cool things, and Sum Total did that this year.  They added the industry’s first Context-Aware user experience. What’s Context-Aware?  You know when you go online to a store and look at a really nice pair of shoes you want, you put it in the cart, but last second you decide, I just can’t get these today.  We all do it.  Context-Aware marketing is the Ad a few days later on the side of another site you’re reading where those exact same shoes you were looking at pops up and now are 10% off!  How does this work in an HR system? Let’s say you have an employee who is not reaching their sales goal.  SumTotal’s new addition will recognize the employee is missing their goal, and without prompting or any HR or manager interaction at all recommend a training course for this person to take to better help them make their goals and maybe even a mentor in the company they should speak with who could help them become better at their job.  I don’t do this justice — trust me, it was super cool!

Work4Labs:  Work4 does Facebook recruiting, in an industry where no one has really figured it out yet (do you hear that Facebook?).  Work4 makes an solution that makes it really easy for companies to get their jobs posted on their company Facebook page and help them navigate, very easily, how to search for talent on Facebook’s Graph Search.  Also, they do this for a rather cheap price!  (Cheap meaning the cost of one or two headhunting fees, so you can see a very quick ROI)  Matthew Brown, Head of Product and co-Founder, might be 24 years old, which also helps let you know these guys get Facebook!

WePow: Formerly known as Wowser.  WePow is a video interviewing platform.  They’re really good at branding.  They gave out royal blue Converse Chuck Taylors at their booth and had pairs for all the big name pundits in our industry: Kris Dunn, Steve Boese, Gerry Chrispin, John Sumser, William Tincup, Laurie Ruettimann, etc.  Those kinds of things make a splash and get a good buzz going about their product.  Apparently, I’m not a big name in the industry, I didn’t get a pair of shoes (which is really the only reason they get mentioned here!).  Also, apparently, they are “like HireVue” when I asked their booth crew what they did.  Thanks HireVue for being so good at marketing you now have become the Kleenex of video interviewing.

YouEarnedIt:  New up and coming awards and recognition firm, designed around delivering a product that small and medium sized businesses can use.  Think Achievers, for smaller companies, and a lot less money.  Much more accessible for smaller companies because you aren’t forced to purchase their catalog of merchandise/awards which usually carry an industry standard 20% markup.  They do have that as well, but much more cost effective than the giants in the industry.

More next week – I’ve got two companies – one really well known and one hardly anyone knows doing some really cool things!

The #1 Isssue At Every Organization

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(I just returned from the 2013 HR Technology Conference where I got to see all the latest and greatest HR technology, and speak to some wickedly smart people.  So, for the next week or so, my plan is to share some of the products and insights I gained from this experience. So we are clear, no companies I write about have paid me to write about them. Enjoy…)

There are a few things we just come to know as fact in organizations.  If you were to ask anyone, at any level of your organization to come up with just one issue they have at their organization, hands down, without a doubt, across all organizations, the number one issue would always be communication!

Before I traveled to the HR Technology Conference, Halogen Software asked me to complete a Myers-Briggs Assessment (MBTI).  It had been many years since I did one, and they wanted to show off some upcoming additions to their talent suite and how they are utilizing MBTI to address the communication gap found in all organizations.  Halogen didn’t tell me anything about what to expect, so my guess was they were going down some lame path of using my Myers-Briggs in some sort of new selection functionality, but what I found was really something completely different and awesome!

By the way, my MBTI was ENTJ (What the what!? Don’t you love acronyms!) Basically, ENTJ, is one of 16 possible Myers-Briggs profiles of an individual and one of the most rare.  ENTJ is an executive profile, they get things done, they make decisions quickly and move forward.  Yep, that’s me.  My good friend, Kris Dunn, also took the assessment and was profiled as an ENTP.  Only one letter difference separates us, so basically we are the same in many ways: quick thinking, extroverted, creative, well read, etc. The one letter difference means I like to get things done and KD likes to talk about getting things done! 😉

Why do I bring Kris into the mix of this communication tool that Halogen added to their product?  Because communication happens between two or more people.  The reason all organizations have communication problems somewhere in their organization is because we try and solve communication individually.  “It’s Tim’s problem, he’s just a bad communicator.”  “Our managers don’t know how to communicate.”  “Our executives don’t know how to communicate.”  Halogen found out a way to put a tool in the face of every single person in your organization that helps them become better communicators, with every other single person they work with!

What Myers-Briggs does is not only show us how we are from a personality standpoint.  It also shows us how we like to receive and give information.  Halogen has integrated the assessment within their product, but took it a few steps further from a development standpoint and it allows you as an individual to compare your type to a co-worker’s type.  So, I’m having trouble getting along with Kris.  I go in, compare my MBTI type with Kris’s type, and the software gives me ideas and examples of how I can better communicate with Kris. Simple and effective. As a manager this is awesome, because I can now see how do I communicate with my team on an individual basis.  It was really powerful, and I didn’t see anything else like this being done from any other company.  It was one of the cooler advancements into an existing product I saw at HR Tech this year.

I can’t tell you how many times I meet with company executives who are looking to try and make their organizations better, or their leaders better, and it always comes back to communication and them wanting me to help them make individuals (or their organization as a whole) better at communicating.  The problem is, and which MBTI points out, this isn’t a one-way problem.  It’s two-way!  Want to solve your communications issues?  Find out how you get both sides to communicate like the other wants.

 

 

 

The Slowest Generation Ever!

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Here’s a quick little experiment to take in your office or department:

1.     Rank everyone by performance – first to worst.

2.    Rank everyone by how fast they can actually run.

3.    Check for correlation.

I’ll be honest, I have no idea if there is any correlation, it’s just a feeling I have.  People who tend to move fast, tend to be higher performers in my 20 years of HR Experience.  Also, there was a recent article out in the Wall Street Journal that examined how 25-35 year olds have been slowing down in endurance races as compared to prior generations at the same age.  From the article:

“They’re just not very fast. “There’s not as many super-competitive athletes today as when the baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s,” said Ryan Lamppa, spokesman for Running USA, an industry-funded research group. While noting the health benefits that endurance racing confers regardless of pace, Lamppa—a 54-year-old competitive runner—said, “Many new runners come from a mind-set where everyone gets a medal and it’s good enough just to finish.”

Now, a generational battle is raging in endurance athletics. Old-timers are suggesting that performance-related apathy among young amateur athletes helps explain why America hasn’t won an Olympic marathon medal since 2004.

Of the two Americans who won marathon medals that year, one—Deena Kastor, who is now 40—was the top finishing American woman at the marathon World Championships in Moscow last month. The other—38-year-old Meb Keflezighi—was the top American male finisher at the London Olympics marathon last year. Hunter Kemper, the 37-year-old winner of last month’s Chicago Triathlon, remains arguably America’s top triathlete as he aims for his fifth Olympics.”

So, how did your experiment work out in your office?  Does speed correlate to higher performance? If so, are your youngest employees faster or slower than other generations in your workplace?  Competitiveness, and incoming generations of kids who are all use to just ‘participating’ versus ‘winning’ might also have an impact to this as well.  This lack of competitiveness probably has more of an impact than anyone really understands.  More from WSJ:

“After finishing last month’s Virginia Beach half marathon in the top 2% of the 50-54 age group, Brendan Reilly was shocked to find he’d made the top 1% of the overall field—despite running 27 minutes slower than the personal best he’d set more than two decades earlier.

“I wasn’t thrilled,” said Reilly, a sports agent in Boulder, Colo., adding that “races are turning into parades.”

Is your workplace a race or a parade?