Category Archives: Employee Experience

The Rules for Office Romances

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We spend a ton of time at the office and it only seems to be increasing. On top of that, new research says we need to spend more time with co-workers if we want a great employee experience! As HR pros we know what this means, which is usually a lot of unwanted advances by horny dudes who think they have a shot at the hot co-worker, who has absolutely no interest in them at all.

Welcome to the show, kids!

I’ve given out some rules in the past. Everyone on the planet has read my Rules for Hugging at the Office, but Office Romances are a little more complicated than the simple side-hug in the hallway. So, I thought I would lay out some easy to follow, simple rules for Office Romances for you to pass out to your employees as you start asking them to join each other at TopGolf for your employee outing to increase their employee experience:

Rule #1 – Don’t fall for someone you supervise. If you do fall for someone you supervise, which you probably will because this is how office romances work. In that case, get ready to quit, be fired, be moved to another department, and or get the person you’re having an office romance with fired, moved, etc.

Rule #2 – Don’t fall for anyone in Payroll. When it ends, so will your paycheck. At least temporarily, and even then it will be filled with errors from now until eternity. It’s a good rule of thumb to never mess with payroll for any reason.

Rule #3 – Don’t mess around in the office, or on office grounds. Look I get it. You’re crazy in love and just can’t wait until you get home. The problem is the security footage never dies. It will live long past your tenure with us, and we’ll laugh for a long time at you. So, please don’t.

Rule #4 – Don’t send explicit emails to each other at work. It’s not that I won’t enjoy reading them, it’s that I get embarrassed when I have to read them aloud to the unemployment judge at your hearing. Okay, I lied, I actually don’t get embarrassed, but you will.

Rule #5 – Don’t pick a married one. Look I get it, you’re the work spouse. He/She tells you everything. You get so close, you really think it’s real, but it’s not. You’ll actually see this when the real spouse shows up and keys your car in the parking lot.

Rule #6 – Don’t pick someone who has crappy performance. Oh, great, you’re in love! Now I’m firing your boyfriend and you’ll have to pick between him and us, which you’ll pick him, and now I’m out two employees. Pick the great performers, it’s easier for all of us.

Rule #7 – Inform the appropriate parties as soon as possible. Okay, you went to a movie together, not a big deal. Okay, you went to the movie together and woke up in a different bed than your own. It might be time to mention this to someone in HR if there is at anyway a conflict of some sort. If you don’t know if there’s a conflict of some sort, let someone in HR help you out with that.

Rule #8 – If it seems wrong, it probably is.  If you find yourself saying things in your head like, “I’m not sure if this is right”, you probably shouldn’t be having that relationship. If you find yourself saying things like, “If this is wrong, I don’t want to be right”, you definitely shouldn’t be having this relationship.

Rule #9 – If you find yourself hiding your relationship at work, it might be time to talk to HR. We’re all adults, we shouldn’t be hiding normal adult relationships. If you feel the need to hide it, something isn’t normal about it.

Rule #10 – Everyone already knows about your relationship. People having an office romance are the worst at hiding it. You think you’re so sneaky and clever, but we see you stopping at her desk 13,000 times a day ‘asking for help’ on your expense report. We see you. We’re adults. We know what happened when you both went into the stairwell 7 seconds apart. Stop it.

There you go. Hope that helps.

HR Pros: Do you spend more time eliminating negative or creating great experiences? #Greatness19

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While I was out at Influence Greatness this week I came across a great little nugget of genius from the O.C. Tanner Institute. They released their 2020 Global Culture Report and one of the main things they are looking into currently is employee experience. It’s been a super hot topic over the past few years and we still really no so little about it.

What we believe to be true is negative employee experiences are bad. We can all agree on that, right?! At the same time, we also tend to believe that positive employee experiences are good but really worth about the same as stopping a negative experience. So, we (HR pros and leaders) spend a great deal of our time eliminating negative experiences and trying to ensure new negative experiences don’t happen.

The O.C. Tanner study is going to change how we think about employee experiences moving forward!

From the picture above you already know the big finding! Positive experiences outlast negative experiences for a duration of four weeks to two weeks. Meaning, if you have a great employee experience happen to you, it carries over, on average for four weeks, while a negative experience we only carry for about two weeks.

This really should change our behavior where we spend way more time trying to create peak employee experiences versus eliminating valley, or negative, experiences for our employees. I’m not sure it will, though. Why?

Creating ‘wow’ experiences, peak experiences, for an employee is hard. Many times those great experiences actually happen by chance. Someone does a great job on a project, and from that work, something amazing happens with appreciation or recognition, that wasn’t planned, and “Bam!” a peak experience happens.

It’s easier for us to just keep fighting fires. “Oh, jeez! There goes Mark again hitting on the gals in payroll, we need to shut this down…” Don’t you feel better, now? We stopped this negative experience from happening! Now you can go back to enjoying your normal, daily average employee experience, minus creepy Mark hitting on you!

Stopping negative from happening isn’t great HR, it’s just HR. It’s what is expected. Making great happen isn’t expected, and it’s probably why those experiences stay with us so much longer. The cool part about working to create ‘great’ experiences for your employees is once you start going down that path it becomes easier and easier to come up with ideas and ways to create great. Like every skill, the more you do it, the better and easier it becomes!

The first step is for HR to make the behavior change. No, I’m not saying ignore negative experiences. Do what HR does and stop those, but let’s not linger there. Stop it, move on. Get back to the more valuable work of creating lasting great experiences that will do more to drive the culture we want to foster and nurture.

The data is robust, so it’s hard to ignore. This isn’t some small sample of one workplace. This is thousands of employees over hundreds of work locations and many countries. I love it because it forces me to think differently about what we do in HR and why. What I do know is working to make great experiences sounds like a way better job than putting out fires all day!

Is Your Company a Magnet for Talent? #Greatness19 @OCTanner

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I’m out at O.C. Tanner’s Influence Greatness conference this week and got a sneak peek at their 2020 Global Cultural Report by the O.C. Tanner Institute and it’s loaded with some exceptional findings! O.C. Tanner puts more money into their research than almost any other HR Tech company on the planet, so it’s well worth checking out. This report surveyed 20,000 people and over 12.8 million data points.

The research is based on O.C. Tanner’s model of “Talent Magnets” of which there are six:

  • Wellbeing
  • Leadership
  • Purpose
  • Opportunity
  • Success
  • Appreciation

While every single one of these is important in their own right, they also all work together. Lift one, and you will lift the rest. As you can imagine the highest-rated magnet is Purpose. Having a clear purpose to why you do the work you do has the highest impact on positive engagement.

So often I find people believing their job or their company has no purpose, but everyone does and every organization does. You might not believe in it, or agree with it, but the purpose is there. Part of the being a strong magnet is pulling in others who do believe in your purpose.

Wellbeing is another one that is interesting. On the outside, we see “wellbeing” and we think physical wellbeing, but in reality, in terms of being a talent magnet, it’s probably more social wellbeing that has a bigger impact. It’s something like belonging. Do I feel like I belong here, or that I’m wanted here? Do I feel valued by not only my leader but my peers and co-workers that I’m with every day?

I think we discount how important this is to the retention of all talent. We discount it because it’s really hard to help someone feel like they belong. Many times this comes out on the exit interview as “oh, yeah, Tim, he just didn’t ‘fit’ our culture”. The truth is no one ‘fits’ your culture the moment they walk in, we make them feel wanted, we make them feel like they belong, and then not so magically, they become a great ‘fit’.

One of the shocking findings in the report is the picture above. 59% of your employees would take another job with another company for basically the same job. Same title, same pay, same benefits, believing that it will magically be better. This really isn’t as surprising if you really go through your turnover. Most people leave us for basically the same job at another place, believing it’s something better, but it’s basically the same.

Another piece of data from the report I’m fascinated by is 79% of employees are feeling some level of burnout, from minor to extreme. Burnout is basically chronic workplace stress that isn’t mitigated. Do you know who never had “burnout”? Your grandparents! So, they either were way tougher than we are, or work has changed considerably! I think it’s a bit of both, actually!

It’s a giant report, I’m only scratching morsels from all the data – it’s like 180 pages – I’m not even sure my book was that long! If you’re in HR and leadership this is a must-read to help your organization nurture the culture you want to have.

Are Employees Really Upset Over Being Replaced By Robots?

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I think we all want to believe that our employees are freaking out that one day their job, in the near future, will be replaced by a robot. It’s all you hear right now in our space! “A.I. will be taking over 97% of jobs by next week!”

The reality is our employees are not afraid of their job being taken by a robot. But they are afraid!

Turns out, our employees are more afraid of their job being taken by another employee, not a robot! A new study by the Technical University of Munich has shown that our employees are actually more afraid of other people taking their jobs, then by A.I.

The study shows: In principle, most people view it more favorably when workers are replaced by other people than by robots or intelligent software. This preference reverses, however, when it refers to people’s own jobs. When that is the case, the majority of workers find it less upsetting to see their own jobs go to robots than to other employees…

People tend to compare themselves less with machines than with other people. Consequently, being replaced by a robot or software poses less of a threat to their feeling of self-worth. This reduced self-threat could even be observed when participants assumed that they were being replaced by other employees who relied on technological abilities such as artificial intelligence in their work.

Turns out, it’s a huge punch to our gut to be replaced by another human since we compare ourselves to being equal, or better, to other humans, but we can comprehend that technology, like A.I., is actually better than ourselves at many tasks.

“The robot can definitely do parts of my job better than me, but g*d damn it, Mark can not!” 

It makes sense, for the most part, we all have fairly fragile egos. It’s hard for us to comprehend that our employer would replace us with another person because that means we probably suck at our job, or at least, our employer thinks we suck. If I’m replaced by a machine I can rationalize that away. If I’m replaced by another person, that’s a hard one to explain to family and friends.

It’s definitely something to keep in mind as we transition many tasks over to the robots. I think from an organizational behavior standpoint we are very concerned about what our employees will think, but the reality is they’ll probably have less issue with it than if we were shopping their jobs offshore to people who will do it cheaper but are real!

The Employee Walk of Shame

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I’ve lost jobs and I’ve called old employers to see if they would want to hire me back. I’ve usually gotten a response that sounded something like, “Oh, boy would we want you back but we just don’t have anything. Good Luck!”  Many of us in the talent game talk about our employee Alumni and how we should engage our Alumni but very few of us really take true advantage of leveraging this network.

I was reminded of this recently when a friend of mine took a new job.  You know the deal, shorter drive, more money, growing company and oh, boy, just where do I sign!?  The fact was, it was all they said, shorter drive, more money and they were growing, but they forgot to tell him was our operations are broken beyond repair, you will work 7 days a week and probably 12-14 hours per day because of the mess we have, but keep your head up it’s the only way you won’t drown here!

So, now what does he do?

He already had the going away party, bar night out with the work friends with the promises to do lunches and not get disconnected, packed up and unpack the office into the new office.  Let’s face it, big boy, you’re stuck!  Not so fast.  He did the single hardest thing an employee can do he called his old boss after 7 days and said one thing, “I made a mistake, can I come back?”

Luckily for him, his past boss was a forward-thinking leader and so this past Monday he did the 2nd hardest thing an employee can do he made the “Employee Walk of Shame“.

You can imagine the looks from people who didn’t know him well, “Hey, wait a minute, didn’t you leave?” Having to tell the same story over and over, feeling like he failed, like he wasn’t good enough to make it in the new position.

HR plays a huge part in this story because it was HR who can make this walk of shame a little less rough.  Let’s face it, it is different.  You just don’t leave and come back as nothing happened. Something did happen, there was a reason he left and that reason isn’t going away.  A transition back needs to be put into place even though he was gone seven days.  It’s not about just plugging back in, it is about re-engaging again and finding out what we all can do better so it doesn’t happen again.

It’s also about making sure you let those employees who you truly want back, that they are welcome to come back (assuming you have the job) and not just saying that to everyone.  There are employees who leave that you say a small prayer to G*d and you are thankful they left!  There are others where you wish there was a prayer you could say so they wouldn’t leave.

Make it easy for your employees to do the Walk of Shame, it helps the organization, but realize they are hurting, they are embarrassed, but they are also grateful!

Why Do We Have Chronic Low Performing Employees?

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Do you guys want to know a little secret?  You know how I like hanging out with smokers because they have all the cool inside information before anyone else?  Your chronic low performers have a similar skill.  It’s kind of like information.

Chronic low performers are really good at being low performers!  They’ve figured it out!  They’ve figured out how to do the bare minimum, without getting fired, and you still pay them for showing up and continuing to give you low performance.  If that isn’t a skill than I don’t know what skills are!

Let that marinate a little on your mind.

The only reason you have a chronic low performer, is they’ve figured out how to master low performance.

All of us have chronic low performers.  We’ve shot them a million times behind closed doors but never pulled the trigger when the door was open.  I can distinctly remember having conversations about a certain manager when I was at Applebees at 6 straight calibration meetings over 3 years and heard stories about him before I’d come into the organization.  He just was good/bad enough to keep hanging on.  One meeting we’d be short, so he’d make it one more session. Then next meeting we’d have some idiot do something really bad and “Mr. Chronic Low Performer” lives to suck another day!  The next meeting it would be some other lame reason.  Each time just squeaking by.

Think about all of the people you’ve ever let go. They usually fall into 3 – 4 groups:

1. Bad Performer/bad fit from the start (you shot them early)

2. Good Performer did something really stupid (you didn’t want to fire them but you had to)

3. Layoffs (decision above your pay grade)

4. Chronic Low Performers (hardly ever happens, they do anything really stupid, personally you don’t hate them)

We have Chronic Low Performers because they make it easy for us to keep them.  They say the right things when we tell them they need to pick it up or else. They’re ‘company’ people, all except for actually adding value part.  They give you no major reason to let them go, all except for not really doing that good of a job.  They always seem to have a semi-legitimate reason for not performing well.

I always wonder how much money chronic low performers have cost organizations vs. the good/great performers we had to let go because they pushed the envelop a little too far and we had to fire them.  My guess is the low performers win hands-down.  You could have a great salesperson who is constantly fudging his expense reports or a chronic low performer in the same role. Who would you take?

You don’t have to answer, you do every day.  You take the low performer.  “Well, what do you want us to keep the thief!”  No. But I’m wondering if great performance can be rehabbed?  I know Chronic Low Performance can’t.  My guess is good/great probably can.  Just a thought.

So, why do you have chronic low performers?  It’s not that you allow it. It’s because you just found out what they are really good at!

How do you tell an employee they need “development”?

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I’ve been doing a video series over at Saba Software called Talent Talks for the last year or so. Yesterday they put up the latest video where I discuss how does one of your managers tell an employee they need development. Let’s face it, most of our employees think they’re awesome, so being told ‘you need development’ isn’t always a positive uplifting conversation!

Telling an employee that they need development is an area that can easily lead to resentment, hurt feelings and any number of things that would create tension in employee-manager relationships. Telling an employee they need development is difficult; this is a tale as old as time.

Telling an employee, “you need to be developed” with the intention of improving their performance might sound like “you’re not good enough” to the employee. Leaders are hoping these conversations will help the employee prosper in the organization, but this can’t happen if the employee starts off thinking “I’m not good enough” So, how can a leader approach this conversation with positivity and courtesy?

Normally to prepare for the development conversation as a leader, you would benefit from already having asked your employee “do you really want to be developed?” By asking this question, you know the level of commitment and dedication your employee has in their role. These answers will tell you which employees are worth developing, as well as prepare employees for the development process.

Click here to watch the video (it’s like 3 minutes and worth it!)

It’s Super Hot outside, do I need to come to work?

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With all the heatwave stuff hitting the news this week I’m assuming someone has gotten this request. I get it, if you’re working outside, this could be dangerous! I’m not talking to you!

I’m talking to the moron who works a job inside, but somehow they think it’s too hot outside to get their butt to work and work in air conditioning! The true HR pros know what I’m saying!

I’m in the north, in Michigan, so we get this when it gets super cold in the winter. Again, if you work outside, super cold is dangerous so it’s a concern for us as HR pros and leaders. If you work inside, what you’re really saying is “yeah, I hate to work. I hate this job. I hate this company. I’m trying to figure out anyway not to come to work…”

Nope! You don’t need to come to work! In fact, you don’t ever have to come to work again. You. Are. Fired! (Like “fire” Fired with hot flames, beat it!)

I want to hear from you on this super hot Friday! Hit me in the comments!

Have you, or do you expect, getting some calls today from any of your employees asking if they need to come to work because there is a heat emergency on the news!?!

Enjoy the Nelly cut!

Life is better when you have cheerleaders!

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I’ve got some great friends in my life. People who support me in my professional field. I’ve got cheerleaders that are on my side hoping I succeed in everything I do.

Do you have cheerleaders? Do you have a cheerleader?

I think if you have one your life is richer. It’s not about who has the most cheerleaders, but I do think it is critical for your success to have a cheerleader or two in your life.

What’s the role of a cheerleader in your life?

  • Support you in the community when you are not present.
  • Support you in your professional and personal positive endeavors. Sometimes in person. Sometimes from afar.
  • Pick you up when you are having a hard time picking yourself up.
  • They believe in you, and they’ve let you know they believe in you through their words and actions.
  • To let you know what you do matters. Maybe only to one other person, but it still matters.

Just because someone is your cheerleader doesn’t mean you need to be their cheerleader. I have people in my life that I cheer for, that they don’t cheer for me. It doesn’t mean they dislike me, it’s just they aren’t one of my cheerleaders, and that’s okay. I also have cheerleaders that I don’t return the favor for, again, not because I don’t cherish them, I just don’t know them enough to return that favor.

I think cheerleaders get a bad rap in our society. Why would someone want to stand on the sidelines and just cheer for someone else? Go do it yourself!

Yeah, I get that, but also what’s wrong with wanting to help someone else succeed? It’s a very selfless and endearing feature to want to help others succeed and cheer them on in their success. I don’t think cheerleaders get enough credit for what they do. When a team loses or an individual loses, people feel bad for them, but no one feels worse than those who cheered them on the most.

Here’s what I know.

I’ve been in places in my life when it felt like I didn’t have any cheerleaders in my life, and I’m in a place where it seems like I’ve got a tremendous amount of cheerleaders in my life cheering me on daily.

Life is way better with cheerleaders.

DisruptHR Detroit 3.0 Speaker Applications Now Being Accepted!

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For those who don’t know, I’m involved with DisruptHR Detroit with an amazing team of HR pros and leaders, and we are putting on our 3rd event on Thursday, September 19th at 6 pm.

Great DisruptHR events start with Great content and we are now Accepting Speaker Applications for DisruptHR Detroit 3.0!

Due Date is August 2nd!

Tickets for this event will go on sale on August 5th and we’ll announce the full slate of speakers and the agenda on August 9th.

The location of DisruptHR 3.0 will be downtown Detroit at The Madison. Click through to the DisruptHR Detroit site for more information.

Who makes a Great DisruptHR Speaker? 

Anyone with a passion for HR, Recruiting, People and pushing the envelope around what, why and how we do what we do every day in the world of work!

We especially love practitioners of all experience levels. You don’t know have to be a twenty-year vet to be great at DisruptHR! You can be an HR pro in your first year on the job. It’s all about passion and ideas!

So, what makes a great DisruptHR Talk?

  1. It’s 5 minutes – so you better be tight around what your topic and idea is!
  2. 20 slides that move every 15 seconds – you don’t control this, we do. So you better practice!
  3. No selling products or services – Yes to selling ideas and passions!
  4. Make us feel something – laugh, cry, anger – have a take and be proud of that take!
  5. We see and feel your passion.

We’ve built DisruptHR Detroit to be a supportive hub of HR and Recruiting. We want people to come and challenge us, but know you’ll be rewarded with an audience that will support you and cheer you on. These talks aren’t easy, and we get that! The audience gets that!

How can you speak at DisruptHR Detroit 3.0?

APPLY to Speak it’s easy! It’s a great development opportunity for those looking to get on stage and have some professional experience speaking. You actually get a professionally produced video of your talk that you can use as evidence of your ability. It’s also a great networking opportunity with the Detroit metro HR and Talent community!