Category Archives: Employment Brand

THE TOP 20 BRANDED HR & TALENT PROS: MEET Neil Morrison from Penguin Random House UK

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Let’s face it – Fearful of the spotlight and conservative to a fault, HR pros generally aren’t the best examples to look towards when it comes to professional branding. Kris Dunn (Kinetix RPO, The HR Capitalist) and Tim Sackett (HRU Technical Resources, TimSackett.com) think that needs to change.  That’s why they created this series – The Top 20 Branded HR Pros(sponsored by the team at Glassdoor).

KD and Tim searched the globe for HR Pros who used the tools at their disposal (writing, speaking, social and more) to brand themselves in the HR space, but limited the results to actual practitioners in the areas of HR, Recruiting and Talent Management.  No consultants, no vendors. They found out well-branded HR pros who are actual practitioners are hard to find.  

Tim and KD are running the Top 20 they found here on the HR Capitalist and at TimSackett.com.  No rankings, just inclusion in the list and some notes on why.  There are at least 20 well-branded HR Pros in the world.  These are their stories. 

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Let me introduce you to HR Pro Neil Morrison!  I believe Neil is the lone non-U.S. resident on Glassdoor’s list of the Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros.   I’m not sure what that says about the list or Neil, but just a fact when you pull the data we did from Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Writing and Speaking background and overall brand ambassador data, Neil showed up in a big way, all the way from the U.K.!

Neil is the Group HR Director for Penguin Random House in the U.K.  For the U.S. audience that is equivalent to a SVP of HR in America.  So, we have this big HR executive who has found the time to brand himself, and also understand the importance to his career, his profession and his organization.

I know Neil as a fellow Talent Advisor on CareerBuilder’s Hiring Site, where we have both been writing and speaking on live web chats for the better part of a year.  Neil has a great English accent, so I kid him on the chats about how everything he says sounds more brilliant, to my ear, than it probably really is! He knows I’m kidding, because what he says is always brilliant!

Here’s Neil’s player card:

Glassdoor Top 20 - Neil Morrison

On the writing side of the fence Neil is the Kris Dunn and Laurie Ruettimann equivalent of HR blogging in the U.K., dare I say Mr. Punk Rock HR! He was one of the first, if not the first, HR bloggers to grab ahold of the U.K. audience with his smart, witty writing style, and he’s not afraid to tell it like it is.  His blog is called Change-Effect.com where he writes about HR, Talent and Leadership weekly.

As a speaker Neil is active in CIPD (U.K. SHRM type organization) and speaks often to HR professionals all over the world.  He is a true international brand advocate for his organization and CIPD.  Neil has won several awards including the UK’s Most Influential HR Practitioner.  Neil also has the most professional LinkedIn profile pic of any of the Glassdoor Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros!

He is all over the Twitters – @NeilMorrison with over 9,000 followers and 20,000 tweets, sharing his international HR perspective.  The one thing I know about Neil, which is unique to someone at his executive HR level, is that he makes time for those who seek his help.  Neil is a great mentor in HR to so many pros, and truly makes time to give back to the HR community.

What doesn’t Neil do well?  He hates Instagram!  He’s an amatuer photographer. So, Instagram is not something he enjoys to partake.  Which helps to point out, to be well branded you don’t have to do everything, but you do have to do something really, really well!

Congratulations Neil!

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The Top 20 Branded HR Pros is brought to you by Glassdoor, who invites you to attend the Annual Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit on September 25th, where a stellar speaker lineup of industry experts and thought leaders exploring the intersection of employer branding and talent acquisition, the candidate experience and employee engagement. 

Tickets are sold out, but wait!  You can attend the livestream online featuring studio coverage with Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett by registering here (click to register).  Fun and games are sure to be a part of that coverage.

THE TOP 20 BRANDED HR & TALENT PROS: Meet Steve Browne of LaRosa’s Inc.

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Let’s face it – Fearful of the spotlight and conservative to a fault, HR pros generally aren’t the best examples to look towards when it comes to professional branding. Kris Dunn (Kinetix RPO, The HR Capitalist) and Tim Sackett (HRU Technical Resources, TimSackett.com) think that needs to change.  That’s why they created this series – The Top 20 Branded HR Pros(sponsored by the team at Glassdoor).

KD and Tim searched the globe for HR Pros who used the tools at their disposal (writing, speaking, social and more) to brand themselves in the HR space, but limited the results to actual practitioners in the areas of HR, Recruiting and Talent Management.  No consultants, no vendors. They found out well-branded HR pros who are actual practitioners are hard to find.  

Tim and KD are running the Top 20 they found here on the HR Capitalist and at TimSackett.com.  No rankings, just inclusion in the list and some notes on why.  There are at least 20 well-branded HR Pros in the world.  These are their stories. 

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I can’t remember the exact time and place I met Steve Browne in person but I think it was at the Ohio State SHRM Conference.  Steve stands about a foot taller than me, so I saw him way before he saw me!  What instantly struck me about Steve is he has an infectious personality and energy that people are drawn to in a very good way.

Steve Browne is the Executive Director of HR for LaRosa’s Inc. out of Cincinnati, OH.  LaRosa’s is a restaurant chain with about 1500 employees and Steve is responsible for running their HR team.  If you have ever worked in HR in the restaurant and/or retail industry you know Steve is knee deep in the trenches of real HR work on a daily basis! This makes his ability to brand himself and his organization so remarkable.

Here is Steve’s playing card:

Glassdoor Top 20 - Steve Browne

 

Steve is also super involved with his volunteer work at the local, state and national level with SHRM.  Steve has been on various boards for SHRM in the past, but he also is currently running for SHRM’s  Executive Board, which is a very high honor!  Steve also is a frequent speaker on the SHRM circuit, statewide and nationally.

On the writing side of the business Steve is part of CareerBuilder’s Talent Advisors, where he gets to share his real-life HR strategies with a huge audience. Steve also is hugely creative with a weekly HR inspired song he sends out to a growing following. Each week Steve takes a popular song and changes the lyrics to be HR and Talent inspired! He’s been doing this for years, and it’s awesome to see this creativity coming from an HR guy!

Twitter was built for people like Steve.  Over 35,000 tweets and going!  Steve has a huge twitter following where he gets to share all of the latest and greatest HR and Talent content with his followers. Steve has never met a tweet he didn’t like!  Instagram on the other hand might be more of a challenge, but you can’t count Steve out of conquering this medium as well.

He’s an HR’s Pro, Pro.  In the dictionary next to HR Pro there should be a picture of Steve Browne!  As good of an HR guy, he might be a better person. Active in Scouting (his son just received his Eagle Scout rank) and always willing to help whomever might need it.  Make sure you connect with Steve, you’ll be better for it!  I’m super excited Glassdoor choose to recognize Steve for his professional efforts. Congratulations Steve!

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The Top 20 Branded HR Pros is brought to you by Glassdoor, who invites you to attend the Annual Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit on September 25th, where a stellar speaker lineup of industry experts and thought leaders exploring the intersection of employer branding and talent acquisition, the candidate experience and employee engagement. 

Tickets are sold out, but wait!  You can attend the livestream online featuring studio coverage with Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett by registering here (click to register).  Fun and games are sure to be a part of that coverage.

 

THE TOP 20 BRANDED HR & TALENT PROS: Meet Jim D’Amico from Spectrum Health

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Let’s face it – Fearful of the spotlight and conservative to a fault, HR pros generally aren’t the best examples to look towards when it comes to professional branding. Kris Dunn (Kinetix RPO, The HR Capitalist) and Tim Sackett (HRU Technical Resources, TimSackett.com) think that needs to change.  That’s why they created this series – The Top 20 Branded HR Pros(sponsored by the team at Glassdoor).

KD and Tim searched the globe for HR Pros who used the tools at their disposal (writing, speaking, social and more) to brand themselves in the HR space, but limited the results to actual practitioners in the areas of HR, Recruiting and Talent Management.  No consultants, no vendors. They found out well-branded HR pros who are actual practitioners are hard to find.  

Tim and KD are running the Top 20 they found here on the HR Capitalist and at TimSackett.com.  No rankings, just inclusion in the list and some notes on why.  There are at least 20 well-branded HR Pros in the world.  These are their stories. 

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Jim D’Amico was born to work in Talent Acquisition.  He’s the kind of guy who strikes up conversations with you while you wait in line at Starbucks hoping no one will strike up a conversation with you!  The great part of about Jim, is once he does strike up that conversation, you find out you just had a pretty cool conversation!

Jim is the Director of Talent Acquisition at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI.  Jim is personally responsible for branding his TA team, “The Best Damn Talent Acquisition Team on the Planet!”  To back up this assertion, ERE voted Spectrum Health the #1 Talent Acquisition team of 2015.  Jim is also the co-Founder of the Michigan Recruiters Conference, held bi-annually across the state to help other corporate TA shops develop into greatness!

Check out Jim’s player card:

Glassdoor Top 20 - Jim D'Amico

 

Jim has 15 years of experience in the Talent Acquisition game, with both domestic and international assignments.  His current role in healthcare supports an employee base of 24,000 and his team will hire over 5,000 in 2015 alone!

Jim’s branding game is anchored around his writing and speaking.  He’s a regular on the ERE speaking circuit, and a frequent contributor to the ERE writing side as well.  Jim also has been active and involved in many local grassroots efforts to support recruiting as a function in the communities he lives.  Most recently with the Michigan Recruiters Conference, but he also has worked on similar projects in West Michigan and Minnesota as well.

Jim is the poster child for being a Brand Ambassador. I mean, seriously, who comes in and names their TA team “The Best Damn TA Team on the Planet!” Jim Does!  That takes a ton of confidence to know that while we might not be ‘that’ yet, we are going to be!  ERE’s award this years solidified the title.

A fun fact about Jim?  He moonlights as a standup Comic!  He also does a ton of volunteer work in around Grand Rapids, MI.  Basically, branding, professionally and personally is who he is.   If you get a chance to catch him on Recruiting/HR speaking circuit make sure you do, he’s well worth it. Otherwise, connect with him on LinkedIn, you can try on Twitter (he’s a not a huge Tweeter), and don’t even try on Instagram!

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The Top 20 Branded HR Pros is brought to you by Glassdoor, who invites you to attend the Annual Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit on September 25th, where a stellar speaker lineup of industry experts and thought leaders exploring the intersection of employer branding and talent acquisition, the candidate experience and employee engagement. 

Tickets are sold out, but wait!  You can attend the livestream online featuring studio coverage with Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett by registering here (click to register).  Fun and games are sure to be a part of that coverage.

 

I’m Uninviting You

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I’m not terminating anyone ever again.

I can’t terminate anyone, because I don’t hire anyone.  I do invite people to join me.  Join me on this journey, on this path. It’s going to be a great trip.  I invite them to be  apart of my family.  Not my ‘work’ family, but my actual family.  I spend more time with my co-workers than I do with my wife and children (in terms of waking hours).  So, when I invite someone to join us, it is not something I take lightly.

That’s why, from now on, I’m not terminating anyone.  From now on, I’m just uninviting them to continue being a part part of what we have going on.  Just like a party.  You were invited to attend, but you end up drinking too much and making a fool out of yourself, so now you’re uninvited. You can’t attend the next party.  I don’t know about you, but when I throw a party, I never (and I mean never) invite someone I can’t stand.  Sometimes couple have issues with this, where one spouse wants to invite his or her friend, but their spouse is a complete tool and it causes issues.  Not in my family, we only invite those people we want to be around, life is too short.

Here’s the deal.  When you invited someone into your family, you usually end up falling in love with them.  It’s that way in business. It’s the main reason we have such a hard time firing on bad performers.  We fall in love with those people we hire.  “Oh, Mary, she’s such a nice person!”  But, Mary, can’t tie her shoes and chew gum at the same time.  So, we give Mary chances, too many chances, and pretty soon Mary is part of the family.  It’s hard terminating part of the family.

I would rather just not invite Mary to attend work any longer.  “Hey, Mary, we love you, but look, we aren’t going to invite you to work.  We’ll still see you at 5pm over at the bar for drinks.”  Sounds so much easier, right!?  It happens all the time.  I use to get invited to stuff, but somewhere down the road the group stopped inviting me.  I might have been a little upset over it, but it didn’t last and I’m still friends with everyone.  Termination is so permanent, it’s like death.  Being uninvited sends the same message, but there’s a part of being uninvited that says “you know what, maybe it was you, maybe it was us, but let’s just face it, together it doesn’t work.”

You’re Uninvited.

Ask Sackett: Mid Career Change

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One of the coolest things that happened when I started writing blog posts eight years ago, is people reach out to you and ask you questions.  Random people you don’t know off the internet asking me for my ‘expert’ advice.  It’s scary, comical and flattering all at the same time!

This week a question came in about how would I go about making a mid-career change from one profession to another.  In this case, the person was wanting to move out of a teaching profession and into an information technology profession.  This individual is about ten years into their teaching career. Went back to school, while working, and got another bachelor’s degree in IT.

How do I get a position in IT? That was the actual question, but as you can imagine, that question is fraught with complexity!

Here is the biggest problem most people face when making a mid-career job change, they can’t stop working at their current job to get experience working in their new field.

So many people fall into this trap!  You want to change careers, but you’re working and making a decent living, paying the bills, living life.  You go back to school in the evening, taking on more debt to get the education. Still busting your butt during the week in the job you no longer love, waiting to start your new career.

That’s when you first begin hearing things like, “well, you’ll need some experience to work here”, or “we don’t have entry level positions for someone at ‘your level'”.  “At my level?” What does that mean?  It means, organizations aren’t comfortable hiring a 32 year old for a position they usually hire 21 year olds in. Plus, you aren’t comfortable making an entry level wage at this point in your life.

This is why people stay in miserable jobs.  Once you get far enough down a career path, you are really left with few choices.

So, what was my advice?

– Find a ‘free’ internship. Work your regular full time job, then find some hours in your week to work for free in your new field. You have to get some kind of experience in your new field, especially if you’re a mid-career professional.

– Start adjusting your lifestyle to be an entry level professional.  Remember when you were first starting out in that apartment and crappy car? Not going out and drinking cheap beer?  Welcome back. More than likely you will have to make this adjustment. It’s worth it, if you’ll be happy. Embrace it. Less is more.

– Use your current professional connections to begin connecting with hiring managers in the career you want, not the career you have.  You have to start networking like you’re an entry level graduating from college, looking for you first job. But, you have the network that can help you, that no new college grad has!

– Lastly, give your current employer, if possible, a shot at moving you into the position you want.  Many times employers will work with you to gradually move you into the role you want, by giving you some experiences working in the position you want, and gradually transition you out of your current position and into the new one.

Your Company’s History, is History

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Is it important to KFC that Colonel Sanders wasn’t really a real Colonel?

Is it important to suburban teen clothing company, Hollister Co. that none of it’s history is real?

Is it important to your company about how it was started, who started it, etc. You know, the backstory.  Is your company’s backstory important to your business?

We like to believe it is, and I think for some organizations it’s important to their guiding mission. But, let’s face it, for most of us, it’s just a story. Culver’s has tells us some of their story about burgers and frozen custard in their commercials, but let’s face it, I’m not eating their because of their history.  I eating their because their cheeseburgers and ice cream are delicious!  I don’t care if their beginnings were in a prison kitchen, I’m buying!

Most people think like this.

Walmart has one of the best American made beginning of all time, and people hate them! They are arguably America’s biggest success of a company, but since they are no longer a small retailer from Arkansas, and began world domination, we hate them. We hate they became successful, and now sell stuff to us really cheap from China.

I believe it’s great to know your company’s history. Where you came from and how you got started. The problem many organizations run into is that they try to live in that past.  “Well, we started out selling washers, and we need to keep selling washers.” Even though our clients can now buy them overseas for 90% less than what you sell them for. This is why companies go under. This is why so many companies who were once great, are no more.

Your company’s history is valuable if people believe it’s actually a differentiator of your brand and success.  Once it no longer holds this designation, it’s just another old story.

Most organizations put way more value on their beginning, on their history, than is needed.  They do this because usually the person, or people, who were are apart of this history is still around.  This is ‘really’ important to them.  This is their legacy.  It might not be the ultimate legacy of the organization, but it is their legacy, now.

One of the hardest things you’ll ever come against as a leader is moving past your organization’s history, if it becomes a roadblock to moving your organization forward.  For many employees this becomes that one thing they can hold onto as true.  It’s what they know, and it doesn’t change. Creating new history is scary and unknown.  So, employees tend to fight back and hold on to the organizational history hard!

Getting employees to buy into the fact they can create and be apart of your new history moving forward is key to getting past your old history.  Your organizational history is just that, history.  Don’t make your history more than it has to be, especially if it isn’t adding value to your future.  If your history equals your brand, you better make sure that is what people want to buy!

T3 – Life Guides

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This week on T3 I’m reviewing Employment Branding technology Life Guides.  Life Guides philosophy is that pretty much all candidates are Googling you to find out more about your company. In fact, there research shows that 73% of candidates report that they first Googled an employer before applying for a job.

Add in sites like Glassdoor and LinkedIn, and you can imagine that 100% of candidates are probably checking up on you in some sort of fashion. So, the big question is how do you get a transparent, real version of who you are out to potential candidates?  They won’t believe the marketing you put on your own career site, and you might not want them to listen to disgruntled employees on Yelp type site. This is where Life Guides fill in the blanks.

A Life Guide is information about certain position you choose in your company that can be displayed on your career sites, social media feeds, etc. The employees who actually in the job are the ones who fill out the information about the actual job, environment, interview tips, true career path, what it’s like working day to day, etc.  You can have individual Life Guides for the same job in different locations as well, knowing this sometimes changes based on location.

5 Things I really like about Life Guides:

1. Life Guides give your candidates some real information to help them decide if you’re the right fit for them, and if so, more information on how to actually succeed at getting the job.

2. Filling out Life Guides has a secondary benefit for your employees in the way of positive engagement.  When your employees write about their actual experiences, it gives them a positive outlook on their job, their company and their career.

3. Life Guides help you control your brand. Unlike other ‘transparent’ sites Life Guides does keep the control of the message in the hands of the organization and HR.  HR has edit capability. Is this fully transparent?  No, but I like that! I want transparent light! Like the aging movie star who uses fuzzy filters to make themselves look younger. I want the truth, just the best looking version of truth I can get!  To Life Guides credit, they recommend to their clients not to edit, but sometimes, especially for English as a second language employees, it might be necessary.

4.  There is some gamification components with badges and such to help encourage your employees to get active with Life Guides, and also use their Life Guides as a portfolio for their own career advancement.  Life Guides sees their client employees linking their Life Guide responses in their LinkedIn profiles.

5. It’s really inexpensive, and super easy to use, and takes just minutes to complete on both the HR end, and the employee end.

If you’re concerned about your employment brand and want to leverage your great employees to help share your true brand, give Life Guides a look.  The demo takes thirty minutes or less, and they can show you some great examples of how some of their current clients are using their solution.

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

The New “Radio” Job Ads

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Have you listened to an actual radio station lately?

I’m guessing you probably haven’t. You see radio, as a media consumption, is down to 12% of your total consumption, from 19% in 2009.  One big change during that same period, is that a large number are switching to from 25% in 2009 to 55% today. Also, listening off various Apps on your smartphones, in your car, have increased to 35% today. In 2009, it was under 5%!

We are changing the way we consume music and talk programs.  Radio used to be a solid medium to advertise jobs. Especially, those jobs in the service sector, skilled trades, etc.  The advantage of job advertising on the radio was that the radio station had great data on their demographic of listeners. Age, location, gender, income, etc.  This meant you could select fairly accurately who was listening to your job message.

Today, over 140 Million people are listening to Pandora and Spotify.

No longer when entering an office building do you hear the local ‘easy listening’ station, with about 20 minutes of commercials per hour.  Now, you usually hear some version of internet radio, and usually that means Pandora or Spotify.

So, what does this mean for HR and Talent pros who still want to advertise their jobs on radio?

I think there is a huge opportunity, depending on your hiring demographic, to test using Apps like Pandora and Spotify to market your job openings.

Think about the advantages you could get using internet radio for job postings:

– They have similar demographics as traditional radio, plus you can get more targeted by location. Pandora and Spotify take user information to target local advertising, for unpaid subscribers.  Let’s say you have a major competitor in Lincoln Park, IL.  You want to advertise in just that market, and those users who self-identified to be in that market.

– The advertising model is based on impressions, so you can say I have a $100 per day budget, and only want it to run for 5 days. The ads will stop once he limit is hit. If it’s not hit, let’s say your advertising in a small market, the money comes back to you.  So, this type of advertising is fairly inexpensive, as compared to traditional radio and other formats.

– The audience is going to skew millennial and younger.  For those looking to hire in that demo, it’s not a guarantee, but the numbers don’t lie.

Truth be told I haven’t done this, but I would love to hear from someone who has tried this medium for job advertising.  What I know is that there is a huge audience, and almost no employers are advertising in this space.  That means one of two things: 1. It’s ripe for some great, cheap hiring; 2. It’s a total bust.  I don’t think it’s a total bust.  I think it’s just something people haven’t thought of, yet.

Let me know if you try it, and what your results are!

Hiring Is About To Get Really Difficult!

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One thing was abundantly clear from speakers and thought leaders at SHRM 2015, hiring is hard, and it’s about to get much harder!

That isn’t good news for any of us in HR and Talent Acquisition. There are two forces that are currently happening that are making hiring more difficult than it has been in over ten years:

  1. Solid economy and job growth.
  1. Baby Boomers leaving the workforce.

This isn’t earth shattering information, we all kind of new this was happening.  The issue is we are now all beginning to feel this in every part of the country and in almost every job category.  This means some things are going to happen, and the top HR and Talent Pros are already preparing for these:

  • Wage Growth: CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson spoke at SHRM on Tuesday and had some great data showing that organizations see wage growth of around 5% in 2015, and similar in years to come. Are you budgeting 5% increases? I’m guessing not!
  • Recruitment Process Challenges: How many steps does it take to apply for a job in your organization?  If it’s more than two, you’ve got problems!  Can someone apply for a job online with your organization without having a resume? Why not?  Matt also showed data from CareerBuilder showing 40% of HR and Talent Pros have never applied for one of their own jobs to better understand the true experience!
  • Technology Challenges: Do you have a way to reengage candidates in your system on a regular basis?  A system that allows you to let great talent know, that you already have in your system, when you have an opening that fits them? It’s called CRM, and only about 20% of companies have technology that can do this important recruitment marketing function!
  • Job Design Challenges: Too many of us are working and designing jobs like we are living in a society that was pre-internet, pre-ultra connected. We still think we need employees sitting in front of us from 8-5pm, Monday thru Friday. If they aren’t sitting in front of us, they must not be working! Indeed shared that 80% of job searches on their site include this single word: “Remote”!  Are you adjusting those jobs that can be flexible?

Those organizations that believe they can recruit and get talent like they have been doing for the last couple of decades are going to fail.  It’s really that simple.  Talent attraction will be a powerful strategic differentiator for organizations over the next decade, like almost no other time in our history.

The good news?  At no other point in our history do have access to the information on how to be successful!  Twenty years ago, doing great talent acquisition was mostly trying stuff and getting lucky.  In today’s world you can learn easily how the best organizations are attracting talent at conferences, on websites, in blogs, webinars, etc.  There are so many sources of this information, that we now have no excuse to improve what we are doing.  We just have to do it!

 

The #1 Way to Communicate Success of a HR Change!

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Adobe recently changed their annual performance review process of the traditional once-per-year review to a more modern design of having frequent feedback throughout the year:

So, based in part on ideas crowdsourced from employees, Morris and her team scrapped annual evaluations and replaced them with a system called Check In. At the start of each fiscal year, employees and managers set specific goals. Then, at least every eight weeks but usually much more often, people “check in” with their bosses for a real-time discussion of how things are going. At an annual “rewards check-in,” managers give out raises and bonuses according to how well each employee has met or exceeded his or her targets. “Managers are empowered to make those decisions,” says Morris. “There is no ‘matrix.’ HR isn’t involved.”

A big change for any organization, for sure, but that’s not what this post is really about.  You see, Donna Morris, Adobe’s Sr. Global VP of People and Places could have easily just said it’s been a great success and shared stories from employees and hiring managers about how much they loved it. She could have shared retention metrics and employee engagement scores to show its success, but she didn’t. What shared did was absolutely brilliant! She shared this:

Getting feedback in real time, so everyone stays on track and is pulling in the same direction, has helped make Adobe’s 13,000 employees far more productive, Morris says. Adobe’s stock price has increased from about $30 to over $80 since Check In began.

Drops mic, walks off stage.

You want to really communicate the success of HR change, tie it to direct financial outcomes!  Yes, it’s a major leap to say “Check In” created $50 per share of shareholder value.  Let me say that again, MAJOR LEAP!  In fact, I don’t even think you could scientifically correlate this one HR change to the raise in shareholder value, but she did!  What she did would be similar to saying global temperatures have risen 3 degrees on average since they started making Krispy Kreme donuts, so Krispy Kreme is responsible for global warming!

You see, success of a major program has little to do with fact, and ton to do with perception.  Here is a senior HR executive who gets it.   She wants to do other cool and innovative stuff at Adobe, and now she has her big-win to go back to when someone pushes back that it won’t work, or it’s not needed.   In the minds of Adobe employees, this program has increased shareholder value, and we need to listen to her other ideas!

Take note HR Pros!  If you get this opportunity, you take it 100% of the time! Because you won’t get it often.  How do you communicate your success of a HR program?  Wait until you have favorable financial data in your organization, then connect the dots for people!