Category Archives: Hiring

7 Words Mathematically Proven To Get You More Hires!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

How Technology Saved Recruiting

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This is a rebuttal post to an article on Forbes.com by Liz Ryan titled “How Technology Killed Recruiting“.  For those of you who don’t Liz she is a media personality who use to work in HR back in 1997 for Fortune 500 companies, which might speak to her viewpoints about recruiting and technology.  Liz writes a ton of HR and Recruiting type articles for publications that wouldn’t give me the time of day (Forbes, Huffington Post, Harvard Business Review, etc.), so clearly she is respected.  That is why I decided to react to her article.  She has a huge stage and gets thousands of clicks, so I was perplexed at this attack on corporate recruiting that really has no true basis in 2014.

Liz feels that Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have killed recruiting.  She feels all corporate recruiters do is set a never-ending string of hoops for applicants to jump through, until they are eventually lost in the black hole of a corporate recruiting abyss.  I do think this thought process has merit, 10-15 years ago.  When ATS software first came onto the market they were clearly selling to the corporate HR marketplace.  I can clearly remember sitting in process meetings with ATS vendors and having them show us (corporate HR) how they could make our life easier.  Need more screening of applicants? No problem we can put them through the ropes and only the best will get through!  Then they show you a process flow chart with 67 steps and the rest was history – Liz’s story above.

Today, ATS vendors look at the process completely different (Note: I don’t sell ATS software now, or ever! But I have purchased and implemented 5 systems in my career.).  Now, corporate HR needs the ATS to provide talent fast.  It’s about fewer clicks – how does an applicant let you know they have interest in “1” step, not 67.  Once the talent is ‘sourced’, corporate recruiting can then take them through as many filters as needed to ensure a great hire is made.  This is fairly common practice in the last 10 years of ATS implementations.  Can you still find companies that don’t get this? Yes.  But it’s not the norm in corporate recruiting with today’s ATS. Dare I say ATS vendors asked to set up a 67 step process would probably back out of the deal and refer that customer to their competition, because that will not be a customer you will ever make happy!

Here is why Liz and those who support her argument still carry around this notion of an ATS being a ‘black hole’ for your resume (BTW – I’m wondering when the last time Liz even applied for a job online?).  Candidates make excuses when they are not chosen.  “I applied! And I was perfect for ‘that’ job! But I never heard back.”  I know this because I’ve been the leader of corporate recruiting departments in the last 10 years.  I’ve heard this exact line coming from the cousin of our CEO.  I then had to show our CEO, in fact, three carefully crafted communications that his cousin received from our ATS system as the hiring processes proceeded over two weeks.

Technology hasn’t killed recruiting.  Technology has decreased the time it takes HR to recruit great talent. Technology has increased our retention rates and decreased new hire turnover by giving us better data on which to base our hiring decisions.  Technology has allowed recruiting to be brand ambassadors to our organizations. Technology has allowed most corporate recruiting departments to do ten times more, with the exact same staff it had 10 years ago.  Technology has allowed our employees to be an integral part of our recruiting function by automating employee referral programs. Technology has increased applicant response times by showing us exactly who in our organizations is holding up the process.  Technology has allowed us to fish in candidate pools that, previously, were never possible. Technology moved recruitment out of HR and into one of the most valuable functions an organization can have.

If people are your most important resource.  Your organizations ability to recruit talent, becomes critical to your organizations success. Technology help do that for recruiting. But I don’t write for Forbes, so what do I know.

 

3 Things Parking Lots Can Teach HR

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I read an article last week and found out Parking Lots have their own industry! Just like Healthcare, Banking, Automotive, etc. Parking lots are big business around the world.  I live in a small town in Michigan, the only time we have a parking problem is one weekend in August when we have the annual Ox Roast.  The carneys come to town, we fire off explosives and we eat Ox. God Bless America!

If you live in a big city, you probably get to deal with the parking lot industry on a daily basis. Like most industries Parking is finding ways to use technology to make themselves more profitable and more efficient.  From PandoDaily:

According to a 2011 IBM survey, drivers globally spend an average of nearly 20 minutes per trip in pursuit of a parking space. Despite this colossal waste of time, the concept of pre-booking parking prior to arriving at a destination is still nascent. Most people continue to drive around searching for a spot, either on-street or off-street, typically unaware of what parking inventory is available to them. In a perfect world, they would not only know what spots are available at any given time, but also be able to compare the price, location and amenities of those available spots, to find the one that suits them best…

Over the next few years, parking will undergo a shift that will be a tipping point for the industry.  Some of the changes we may see include a single source solution that combines off-street and on-street parking availability at the time you need it. Or it may include urban mobility solutions that will focus on getting consumers from point A to point B to point C, whether that involves taking a car, public transit, biking, or walking. Parking facilities will also integrate relatively low-cost technology solutions to streamline and better the customer experience through the smartphone and the connected car. Lastly, demand-based pricing will become a tenet to parking, maximizing revenue by matching driver to the right space at the right time at the right facility.

1. On Demand Talent – Parking lots have figured out that you don’t need all parking spaces all the time.  You usually need them for peak times, and then they stay unfilled for most of the other times. Example: Monday through Friday 8am to 5pm will be at or close to 100% full, while Saturday and Sunday will remain mostly empty.  HR, especially in the US, will eventually have to decide do we really need all these employees all the time, or just during peak times.  Billions of profitable dollars are wasted hanging onto employees that organizations don’t need all the time.  European markets already use far more numbers of contractors to help with this problem. The US market is slow to adopt, mainly do to historical hiring practices.

2. True Pay for Performance. Parking figured out if you want the spot right next to the stairs or elevator, versus one all the way on the back of the parking deck, certain people will pay more for this space.  Organizations should be willing to truly pay more for better, measurable talent.  HR is a major roadblock to this, maintaining a banded compensation system that does not truly reward the best talent.  Not the best talent you have, but the best talent in the market.  Those few employees who can truly make a difference as an individual contributor.

3. Talent Sharing – Parking lots have figured out if they work together in reporting open spaces, their customer base will benefit and ultimately they will benefit.  Why don’t we share employees across like minded work?  Because in HR we are to lazy on how to figure this out.  But if my building is right next door to another company and we both have a need for developers, why couldn’t we share these skills?  It would take work to make it work from a legal, pay and benefits standpoint, but it isn’t something that can’t be done.

 

3 Reasons Women Make Less Money Than Men

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

5 Crippling HR Behaviors That Keep Employees From Becoming Leaders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Happens When You Write A Letter to Your Employee’s Parents?

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For years I’ve been preaching to HR and Talent Pros all over the country that the easiest, cheapest and most effective way to increase engagement and loyalty in your employees is to write their parents a thank you note.  Now, the CEO of Pepsi, Indra Nooyi, has come out and admitted to doing this with her direct reports. From the Fortune article:

I became CEO in 2006, and it was a matter of some pride to my family, but not too much. So I went home to visit my mother in Madras, in India, and stayed with her. And she woke me up at 7 o’clock and said, “Come on, get ready.”  I said, “I’m on vacation, how about noon today?” She said, “No, people are coming to visit, so get up.”

So she made me sort of dress up and sit there, and then a steady stream of third cousins, fifth cousins, 20th cousins, three-removed, all started to show up. And each of them would walk into the house. They would sort of look at me and say, “Oh, hello,” and then go to my mom and say, “You should feel so proud that you brought up this daughter, and you brought up your child so well.”

So, this was not about me.  This was about what a good job my parents had done in bringing me up. It dawned on me that all of my executives who worked for me are also doing a damn good job, but I’d never told their parents what a great job their parents had done for them.  I’d never done that.

And I thought about my kids and I said, “You know what?  If I ever got a report card on them, after they’re 18, I would love it, because in the U.S., once they turn 18, we don’t get report cards.  We pay their tuition, but we don’t get their report card, right?”

…I wrote to them and I told them the story of my going to India and what happened with my mother, and I said, “therefore I’m writing to thank you for the gift of your son, who is doing this at PepsiCo, and what a wonderful job this person is doing.”  I gave a — it was a personal letter for each family member.

And it opened up emotions of the kind I have never seen.  Parents wrote back to me, and all of a sudden, parents of my direct reports, who are all quite grown-up, and myself, we had our own communication.

And one executive, I remember, he went home and he said to his mom, “you know, my boss is really giving me a tough time.” And his mom told him, “Nuh-uh, not about her.  She’s my friend!” 

Okay, I know this will not work 100% of the time.  There will be times, when an employee of yours has had a very bad relationship with their parents, and this kind of ‘engagement’ practice will not be welcomed.  I would still argue, those times are rare.  One of things this exercise forces a leader to do is to ensure they at least know their direct reports. IF that is the case, you would know which reports would not want this to happen, and you adjust accordingly.

Read the full article. Nooyi takes it one further step and talks about retention and talent attraction.  Image you are in a heated talent fight for a certain type of person. The candidate interviews with your firm, as well as others, and you all make offers.  Which company will the candidate choose? Nooyi has made calls to parents of candidates, telling the parents why this position, with Pepsi, is the best fit.  Now, she has the parents also helping her recruit!  Powerful stuff, visionary leader who really gets it!

Would your CEO write thank you letters to your employee’s parents?

Bad Hires Worse

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I wrote this 2 years ago.  It still rings true.  I still need to be reminded of this.  I still run into examples of this monthly. Enjoy.

If I could take all of my HR education, My SPHR and 20 years of experience and boil it down to this one piece of advice, it would be this:

Bad Hires Worse.

In HR we love to talk about our hiring and screening processes, and how we “only” hire the best talent, but in the end we, more times than not, leave the final decision on who to hire to the person who will be responsible to supervise the person being hired – the Hiring Manager.   I don’t know about all of you, but in my stops across corporate America, all of my hiring managers haven’t been “A” players, many have been “B” players and a good handful of “C” players.  Yet, in almost all of those stops, we (I) didn’t stop bad hiring managers from hiring when the need came.  Sure I would try to influence more with my struggling managers, be more involved – but they still ultimately had to make a decision that they had to live with.

I know I’m not the only one – it happens every single day.  Everyday we allow bad hiring managers to make talent decisions in our organizations, just as we are making plans to move the bad manager off the bus.   It’s not an easy change to make in your organization.  It’s something that has to come from the top.  But, if you are serious about making a positive impact to talent in your organization you can not allow bad managers to make talent decisions.  They have to know, through performance management, that: 1. You’re bad (and need fixing or moving); 2. You no longer have the ability to make hiring decisions.  That is when you hit your High Potential manager succession list and tap on some shoulders.  “Hey, Mrs. Hi-Po, guess what we need your help with some interviewing and selection decisions.”  It sends a clear and direct message to your organization – we won’t hire worse.

Remember, this isn’t just an operational issue – it happens at all levels, in all departments.  Sometimes the hardest thing to do is look in the mirror at our own departments.  If you have bad talent in HR, don’t allow them to hire (“but it’s different we’re in HR, we know better!” – No you don’t – stop it).   Bad hires worse – over and over and over.  Bad needs to hire worse, they’re desperate, they’ll do anything to protect themselves, they make bad decisions – they are Bad.  We/HR own this.  We have the ability and influence to stop it.  No executive is going to tell you “No” when you suggest we stop allowing our bad managers the ability to make hiring decisions – they’ll probably hug you.

It’s a regret I have – something I will change.  If it happens again, I won’t allow it.  I vow from this day forward, I will never allow a bad hiring manager to make a hiring decision – at least not without a fight!

Job Seekers Still Mostly Offline!

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I was sent some research recently from Whale Path, a business research company, that was looking at how employers really find their employees.  What they found might surprise many within the Talent Acquisition space.  Their research found that a majority of employees under the medium U.S. wage scale (around $50k per year) actually found their jobs offline!

Does this jive with your hiring?

Here are some of the actual stats from their research:

– Only 7% of jobs paying $25 per hour or less are filled through online sources

– Personal referrals account for 46% of hires for positions paying less than U.S. median income, up from 41% in 2008

– Craigslist was cited by more than half of businesses as a low-cost resource for finding employees.

We tend to believe everyone is online.  We then believe since they are online, they must be looking for jobs online.  Do you know why you believe this?You’ve been told to believe this, over, and over, and over, through great marketing by companies who are selling online hiring solutions.  We see Monster.com and CareerBuilder ads on the Superbowl.  We are bombarded with emails daily about easy, fast ,cheap hiring solutions.  We see constant media reports about the growth of LinkedIn.  We are told everyone will be searching for a job on their phone, you MUST have a mobile solution. Yet, we don’t actually know anyone personally who applied and got a job on their phone.  We are conditioned to believe everyone must be searching for a job online.  Marketing is so strong, you don’t even know it’s happening to you.

But they aren’t.  At least millions and millions and millions of our potential employees aren’t searching for job online.

They’re finding jobs like your grandparents found jobs.  They are networking, they’re letting their friends and family know they’re looking, they’re letting the members of their church and synagogue know they’re looking, they’re letting their bowling buddies know they’re looking.  Eventually, someone refers them to a job, and they get hired.  We tend to thing we’re all just trying to hire professionals for $100K jobs, but we aren’t.  Most of the hiring done in the U.S. is for positions under $50K, and most of your budget is being spent on tools that don’t attract these individuals.  Individuals that don’t need a resume, they just need to fill out an application, because they have people who will vouch for their skills.

Interesting research, much of it we don’t normally focus on.  What are you spending your hiring budget on today?

The Bigger You Are, The Smaller You Need To Act

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Do you know why most restaurants fail?  They don’t do anything really, really well.  There are a number of new burger chains popping up all over the country who are doing great.  These chains have decided to have only a few menu items, but do each of those items better than anywhere else. You can get a burger, fries, shake and a soda. That’s it.  Small, focused, the best you’ll ever taste – each item.

I work with a lot of big companies, and the hiring managers love me!  You know why?

I’m small (okay, I walked into that one!).  My company is small.  When you’re small you do a number of things that most big companies don’t do.  Here’s a short list:

  • You take full responsibility (no one else around to blame)
  • You’re responsive to everything (or you go out of business)
  • You’re in the know of what needs to be done
  • You say ‘Yes’ to almost everything
  • You treat the business like it’s your own

I meet with a lot of HR executives who work for big companies and almost 100% have the same issue.  They feel like their department doesn’t have the credibility and influence it should.  They are concerned that their department’s reputation is that of a roadblock and not of a valued partner.  They don’t know how to get the organization to view them differently.

It’s really easy.

Big HR departments have to act like they are small HR departments.  While their is a business necessity to have specialist in large HR shops, everyone must act like they are generalist.  Leaders have to make sure that it’s known that lack of response, lack of solutions, lack taking full responsibility to ensure someone gets the answer they need will not be tolerated, at any level, within their HR shop.

Hiring managers, executives, individual contributors, etc. only want to hear one thing when they call HR – “Yes, we’ll take care of it, right now”. Not an endless loop of we can’t do it, I’m not the person, I’ll try and find out, I don’t know, call such and such, etc.  Small shops don’t have this luxury. If they would say these things, they’d be out of job, because they wouldn’t be needed.

The key to great HR in a big HR shop is to act small.  Yet most big HR shops work really, really hard on trying to be big.  When you act small you get very good at pinpointing what is really important and getting that accomplished.  You do this because you just can’t do everything, you don’t have the resources.  By doing a few things really, really well, your organization knows what they can’t count on you to deliver.  Large HR shops try to do everything, and usually do it all really average, or below average.  They are trying to do too much.  Don’t get bigger, get smaller – smaller on your focus, smaller on your deliverables, smaller on your accomplishments, but make those things world class.

Work Clothes That Measure Your Performance

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

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

Think about that for a second:

1. All employees must wear company issued ‘uniform’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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