Is Time or Money More Valuable?

Posted on November 12, 2019 by Tim Sackett

You might have seen this in the news that Estonia has started experimenting with a new way to punish speeding drivers. Instead of making them pay a fine for speeding, they are giving them an option to ‘take a timeout’ instead for 45 minutes to an hour, right then and there. Which brings up the question, what is more, valuable to these drivers, their time or their money?

From the article:

Drivers caught speeding along the road between Tallinn and the town of Rapla were stopped and given a choice. They could pay a fine, as normal, or take a “timeout” instead, waiting for 45 minutes or an hour, depending on how fast they were going when stopped.

The aim of the experiment is to see how drivers perceive speeding, and whether lost time may be a stronger deterrent than lost money.

Early results of this pilot program are unclear, as it seems that those who can pay the fine will, while those who would be hit harder by a financial fine will tend to take the timeout.

These types of tests are what we should be doing with our own employees within organizations. Everyone has different values of certain things, but we tend to build rewards and punishment programs all the same. Do well and you’ll get a $500 bonus! Or do well and you’ll get an extra day off!

Rarely do we build them where we give people the option – do you want more time or more money as your reward, or on the flip side, for your punishment do you want money or time taken away?

I’ve used both and not one is 100% correct. I’ve had goals set that would reward is something was met, but also if it wasn’t met then the person or team would have to come in and work extra time. I can tell you, no one liked coming in extra to meet their goals. So, making some work extra, for the same pay, seems to be a big deterrent, but also a pretty crappy work experience.

On the flip side, being able to take more time off is really liked by some, but not all. You’ll have some folks who actually really enjoy coming into work, and taking a bunch of extra time off gives them anxiety to be away from the office.

Is there a magic solution?

The one thing I see that consistently has the biggest impact on a positive employee experience in any environment I’ve worked in is simply flexibility. Treat employees like adults and let them integrate their life with their work and make the choices they need to make to make both work as effectively as possible.

Sounds easy, it’s super hard and complicated in real life! Because it’s complicated, we tend to do the opposite and have a bunch of rules, which then just makes it miserable for everyone. I prefer to give the flexibility, but and then take care of the outlier issues that crop up. We believe there will be many issues, but it’s fewer than you think.

One easy way to control for all of this is to have really great, non-subjective, measures of success. The reality is if someone working for me is successful, then they should have the freedom to have the flexibility they desire. What I know is time and money are both valuable depending on the situation you are currently in, and those values can change daily for some people.

Why am I being ‘ghosted’ after I interview?

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Dear Timmy,

I recently applied for a position that I’m perfect for! A recruiter from the company contacted me and scheduled me for an interview with the manager. I went, the interview was a little over an hour and it went great! I immediately followed up with an email to the recruiter and the manager thanking them, but since then I’ve heard nothing and it’s been weeks. I’ve sent follow-up emails to both the recruiter and the manager and I’ve got no reply.

What should I do? Why do companies do this to candidates? I would rather they just tell me they aren’t interested than have them say nothing at all!

The Ghost Candidate

************************************************************

Dear Ghost,

There are a number of reasons that recruiters and hiring managers ghost candidates and none of them are good! Here’s a short-list of some of these reasons:

– They hated you and hope you go away when they ghost you because conflict is uncomfortable.

– They like you, but not as much as another candidate they’re trying to talk into the job, but want to leave you on the back burner, but they’re idiots and don’t know how to do this properly.

– They decided to promote someone internally and they don’t care about candidate experience enough to tell you they went another direction.

– They have a completely broken recruitment process and might still be going through it believing you’re just as happy as a pig in shi…

– They think they communicated to you electronically to bug off through their ATS, but they haven’t audited the process to know this isn’t working.

– The recruiter got fired and no one picked up the process.

I would love to tell you that ghosting candidates are a rare thing, but it’s not! It happens all the time! There is never a reason to ghost a candidate, ever! Sometimes I believe candidates get ghosted by recruiters because hiring managers don’t give feedback, but that still isn’t an excuse I would accept, at least tell the candidate that!

Look, I’ve ghosted people. At conference cocktail parties, I’ve been known to ghost my way right back up to my room and go to sleep! When it comes to candidates, I don’t ghost! I would rather tell them the truth so they don’t keep coming back around unless I want them to come back around.

I think most recruiters ghost candidates because they’re over their head in the amount of work they have, and they mean to get back to people, but just don’t have the time. When you’re in the firefighting mode you tend to only communicate with the candidates you want, not the ones you don’t. Is this good practice? Heck, no! But when you’re fighting fires, you do what you have to do to stay alive.

What would I do, if I was you?

Here are a few ideas to try if you really want to know the truth:

1. Send a handwritten letter to the CEO of the company briefly explaining your experience and what outcome you would like.

2. Go on Twitter and in 280 characters send a shot across the bow! “XYZ Co. I interviewed 2 weeks ago and still haven’t heard anything! Can you help me!?” (Will work on Facebook & IG as well!)

3. Write a post about your experience on LinkedIn and tag the recruiter and the recruiter’s boss.

4. Take the hint and go find a company who truly values you and your talent! If the organization and this manager will treat candidates like this, imagine how you’ll be treated as an employee?

How to Impact Company Culture from Any Role

Posted on September 6, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Experiments with organizations

In the past 5-10 years, we’ve seen businesses increasingly experiment with different organizational structures, including “holacracy” and similar concepts like “self-management.” In most organizations, though, hierarchy persists. And while hierarchy has some negative elements to it, by and large, it makes sense. It helps the human brain organize who is responsible for whom, whom to contact for what, and how decisions get made.

As a result of the sheer number of organizations that use a standard hierarchical structure, though, company culture tends to come from the top. The mission statement is usually defined by the founders and revised (if this happens) by subsequent senior leaders. It’s very rare that an entry-level employee would be at the table when cultural contexts are being defined.

It can seem hard to impact your company’s culture from any role on the team, then. But in reality, it’s not as hard as you might think.

First, think of what culture actually is

It’s not words on a sheet on a wall somewhere. It’s not posters of cats hanging from clotheslines in the break room.

It is the living and breathing of that company every day. It’s how work gets done, the process. It’s how people greet each other in the morning, how people interact in that same break room, how conflicts are handled and joyous moments are celebrated. That’s what culture actually is. If you think of it in that way, then everyone automatically is contributing because they are a part of the bigger ecosystem, and their part contributes to the culture just as much as any other, regardless of compensation, decision-making authority, size of office, or anything else.

Think for a second about toxic employees. Even a low-level, toxic employee can greatly impact the culture because other employees want to disengage, work falls through the cracks, and people feel negative about meetings and even coming to work. That’s not a fun example, no, but it’s an example of how any employee, regardless of level and rank, can shift the culture one way or the other.

In the same vein, think of a movie like Rudy. For the entire film, Rudy is the mutt of glorious Notre Dame football. Whether or not he was offsides (ha), he remains one of only two people in Notre Dame history carried off the field by his teammates. Most offices have a Rudy: a spunky, high-energy, committed-to-the-brand young buck at a low level. That office Rudy inspires people to work harder and better. Even small cogs of good and bad can shift a culture.

What you need to do as an employee at your level

You cannot impact culture from lower levels without some form of respect from upper levels and peers unless your impact will be negative. The only path to a positive impact on culture from your level is to be seen as an employee that:

Shows up on time
Works hard
Is always professional
Delivers for clients and customers
Defers when you need to defer
Learns from others

If you are seen as that type of employee, it’s then possible to push the edges a little bit, and:

Speak up more in meetings
Push back on ideas
Attempt to motivate/encourage others
Ask for more responsibilities
Have small pockets of leadership and management

If you try to do the second set of bullet points before establishing the first, the reaction might be negative. Many managers do not like people asking for more until that baseline of professionalism and hard work has been set firmly. Once you have a baseline, you can get more for yourself, and you can contribute even more to the culture of the organization.

Be an advocate

Finally, go to HR to offer your help with recruiting. Often, recruiting is drowning in new requisitions and trying to find time on the calendars of hiring managers, plus the logistics of active searches. We speak often of “employer brand,” and it is valuable, but the recruiting function doesn’t always have the time to strategically manage what that needs to be done. So, go to them and offer to attend local networking events and happy hours to be an advocate for what the internal culture is like. Offer to do peer interviews where applicable and be a “face” of the business. Now, you’re unquestionably impacting the culture because you’re out there in your business’ market, setting the tone of what it would be like to work there. You’re basically doing business development, even if some might think of it only as networking. That’s hugely powerful.

Always remember

Culture might be set in terms of documents by the highest ranks, but it’s lived and breathed by everyone, every day, in cubicles, offices, conference rooms, and on Zoom and Skype calls. You have your impact on it, too, and it can be a massive impact if you’re willing to set your professionalism baseline and put in the work.

It’s imperative that culture be sustainable and permeate throughout the entire workforce. Employee engagement and investment are key factors in creating a culture that does more than coming from the top down. To learn more about company culture, including how to promote an organizational culture that is positive and sustainable, check out King University’s guide What’s All the Buzz About? The Importance of Company Culture.

You can learn the latest in this and other business topics by earning an online MBA through King University. Throughout the program, you’ll study management, research, theoretical systems, quantitative analysis, ethical practices, and more, preparing you to become an effective and strategic business leader in a variety of settings. Designed with working students in mind, their flexible program can fit easily into your schedule, and no GMAT is required.

Company Culture Across Generations

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Tim Sackett

There’s been a lot – A LOT – of discussion in the past few years about all the different generations in the workplace, how dissimilar they are and the challenges and opportunities they create for work. To quickly recap, at present, we have five generations in the workplace, typically:

Silents: Born during and before World War II.
Baby Boomers: Born immediately after World War II up until about 1965.
Generation X: Born in the late 1960s (culture change, Vietnam, etc.) until about the early 1980s.
Millennials: There is some argument here over when this cohort begins, and sometimes 1977-1983 birthdays are called “Xillennials” (mix of “X” and millennial), but generally this is early- to mid-1980s up until the late 1990s.
Generation Z: 1998/1999 region until now-ish.

The exact years will vary a little bit based on which source you use, but these are the big buckets. The important thing to remember is that each of these cohorts is millions of people, so while there’s a tendency to generalize – and we will need to do some of that in this article – the fact is that some millennials are bad at technology, and some boomers embrace technology instantly (both examples going against perception of their cohort). So, above all: Treat individuals as individuals in order to get the best results work-wise.

All this said, we still wonder how the interplay of these five generations impacts company culture.

What might each generation want from the culture of an organization?

Think about it in these terms:

Silents: The ones that are still working have been working for a long time, and they’ve seen an almost uncountable number of changes to how we work. You could argue their biggest cultural focus would be one of respect and, at some level, not wholly disrupting their final work years.
Boomers: They are established in their careers and see the exit ramp. They do want a culture of respect for elders and one where learning can be passed down the chain to “young bucks.” We get very stereotypical around boomers and technology, but in general, if technology is going to improve the org and the business, boomers tend to be in favor of it.
Gen X: This is currently the generation doing a lot of managing and “making trains run,” although it’s possible we’re not promoting them enough in line with all the work they do. They want a supportive culture where process is followed so that work can be optimized.
Millennials: There are a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions about millennials in the workplace. For example, there’s a perception that they don’t work hard and yet consistently ask for promotions. In reality, because they’re less-established in their careers, they tend to be workaholics statistically. They want a culture of learning, and they do want to broadly disrupt how work is traditionally done. They want to see change when change is relevant.
Z: Zers entering the workforce now were in elementary and middle school during the 2008 recession, and they saw how it impacted their parents. They have a different connection to work, understanding that work doesn’t always provide in the way it claims. They want to see different approaches culturally, which means more flexibility for the employees. You could also classify them as a “side hustle” generation, not fully believing in one W-2 job for years and years.

How would this knowledge help you shape work?

There are a few different ways:

First, treat individuals as individuals. We mentioned this above, but just because someone is 28, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have a millennial mindset. Their mindset might be akin to a boomer. So, deal with people where they are.
Learning is paramount. With the possible exception of Silents, every generation wants to learn, especially because work is changing so quickly. Unfortunately, organizations haven’t been great at prioritizing learning over the years. Consider different modalities, like video learning, auditory learning (podcasts about your culture, interviews with executives, etc.), session learning (standard with slide decks) and experiential learning (seeing how trucks are unloaded at a warehouse). Make learning a priority because the need for it cuts across all generations culturally.
Mentors/training. Because you have two established generations, two younger generations, and one squarely in the middle, you should create opportunities for each to impart wisdom to another. Host Friday afternoon sessions about hobbies outside of work. Have millennials teach boomers about chatbots, and boomers teach Z about professionalism. Create a constant exchange of ideas between generations, and have the knowledge move in different directions.
Constant assessment. Ask every generation what they think about the work, the projects, processes and the overall culture. You don’t need to ask every day (overkill) but try to ask once a month to get a pulse for how your employees are feeling. Break that information down by age cohort to see which cohorts are feeling least-connected to the culture of your business. What could be done to get them re-engaged? You might have an abandoned cart strategy for your e-commerce side, right? Well, now we need an abandoned employee strategy. If Gen X is disconnected, is it time to promote them more, for example?

Overgeneralizing about the existing generations can lead to navel-gazing, and navel-gazing can lead to non-impactful decision-making. But if you prioritize learning and treat everyone as an individual while constantly assessing how people feel about working for you, you’ll put yourself on the path to designing a culture that works for everyone, regardless of age.

Other aspects of company culture

What each generation wants from their company differs, but every employee wants to work in a culture that is supportive and consistent. To learn more about how to promote an organizational culture that is positive and sustainable, check out King University’s guide What’s All the Buzz About? The Importance of Company Culture.

With all the benefits of great culture, it’s easy to see why focusing on it is a must, but it’s also a challenging task. It’s imperative that culture be sustainable and permeate throughout the entire workforce. Much thought is still being put into how to do that, and all companies must customize their approach.

Leaders Secretly Hate Succession Planning!

Posted on August 20, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Do you want to know what you’ll never hear anyone on your leadership team say publicly? Well, let me stop before I get started, because there are probably a ton of things leaders will say behind closed doors, off the record, and then open the door and say the exact opposite. Welcome to the PC version of corporate America.

One of the obvious, which always causes a stir is veteran hiring. I’ve written posts about Veteran Hiring many times, in which I state that companies will always, 100% of the time, publicly say they support veteran hiring, but behind closed doors they don’t really support veteran hiring. At best they want to offer veterans their crappiest jobs, not their best jobs.

If they did truly support veteran hiring, we would not have a veteran hiring crisis in this country! If every organization who claims they want to hire veterans, would just hire veterans, we would have 100% employed veterans! But we don’t. Why? Well, it’s organizational suicide to ever come out and say we don’t really want to hire veterans. The media would kill that organization. Yet, veterans can’t get hired.

Succession planning is on a similar path. Your leaders say the support succession planning. They’ll claim it is a number one priority for your organization. But, every time you try and do something with succession planning, it goes nowhere!

Why?

Your leaders hate succession planning for a number of reasons, here are few:

1. Financially, succession planning is a huge burden on organizations, if done right. Leaders are paid on the financial success of your organization. If it comes down to Succession Planning, or Michael getting a big bonus, Succession Planning will get pushed to next year, then, next year, then, next year…You see Succession Planning is really over hiring. Preparing for the future. It’s a long term payback. Very few organizations have leadership in place with this type of long term vision of success.

2. Leaders get too caught up in headcount. We only have 100 FTEs for that group, we couldn’t possibly hire 105 and develop and prepare the team for the future, even though we know we have a 6% turnover each year. Organizations react. Firefight. Most are unwilling to ‘over hire’ and do succession in a meaningful way.

3. Leaders are like 18-year-old boys. They think they can do it forever! Again, publicly they’ll tell you they’re planning and it’s important. Privately, they look at some smartass 35-year-old VP and think to themselves, there is no way in hell I’ll ever let that kid take over this ship!

So, what can smart HR Pros do?

Begin testing some Succession Planning type tools and data analytics in hot spots in your company. Don’t make it a leadership thing. Make it a functional level initiative, in a carve-out area of your organization. A part of the organization that is highly visible has a direct financial impact on the business, and one you know outwardly has succession issues.

Tinker. Get people involved. Have conversations. Start playing around with some things that could have an impact in terms of development, retention, cross-training, workforce planning, etc. All those things that constitute succession, but instead of organization level, you are focusing on departmental level or a specific location.

Smart HR Pros get started. They don’t wait for the organization to do it all at once. That will probably never happen. Just start somewhere, and roll it little by little. Too often we don’t get started because we want to do it all. That is the biggest mistake we can make.

Just do some HR today!

Posted on August 19, 2019 by Tim Sackett

If you’re highly active in HR and Talent Acquisition in the social space (read: blogs, sites, pod/videocasts, webinars, conferences, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), you might be caught up in this mindset that what you’re doing is not what you should be doing.

You’re being told what you should be focusing on by idiots like me, and thousands of others, most of whom don’t even work in HR or Talent Acquisition at this moment. That’s not a bad thing, some are brilliant and took their brilliance to the consulting/analyst/vendor side of the fence because the money was better, or the balance was better, or both. This isn’t a consultant vs. practitioner post.

This is a post to remind you that it’s alright if you just put your head down and do actual HR and Recruiting work for a while.

That it’s okay not to be instituting the next best practice or innovation.

That it’s okay not to be focusing on recreating HR and Talent Acquisition in your organization.

Sometimes we just need to keep the train running down the tracks. Allow ourselves to catch our breath. Get and build a strong team around us, and get ready for big things in the future. In the meantime, we just do what we do.

We make sure our employees are doing alright. Is there anything we can do to help them be better?

We make sure our employees get paid correctly and benefit card works when they show up at the doctor.

We make sure to kick managers in the shin, under the table, when they’re being idiots to their teams.

We make sure new employees have the tools they need when the show up on their first day, and they feel welcomed.

We give bad employees the gift of finding a job they will truly love, by letting them find that job on their own time.

Sometimes when I’m writing I forget what it’s like to have a million priorities in your day, and knowing you won’t get to half of them. That’s the daily grind in HR and Talent Acquisition. So, I write about how you should do this or do that, how you should be all innovative and shit, but I get that many days (sometimes weeks and months!) you just need to do the basics.

I’ve been there. I struggled to just do the basics many days. When thinking of being the best and innovating seemed so far away from reality that you felt like giving up.

That’s when I would tell myself, “Today, I’m just going to do HR”. Focus on what I’m good at. Focus on what I can control. Make it to the next day, where just maybe, that day would allow me to get better.

Bad is Stronger than Good in HR!

Posted on August 15, 2019 by Tim Sackett

I spoke at a conference recently and one of the things that came up during my presentation was a conversation around “Must Do Moves”. Must do moves are those things in your organization that you grab a hold of, as an HR leader, and make sure they happen.

I asked the group a question:

Do you have anyone in your organization that you need to get rid of?

100%, all hands raised up immediately, “Yes!” If you work in an organization that has a decent employee size, let’s say 100+, you almost always have a least one or two folks you would be better without. (for the record, my staff is less than 100, and I don’t have anyone I need to get rid of, they all rock! Don’t hate, I just follow my own advice!)

As HR Pros we hear about this in meetings with your executives and hiring managers, “Oh if we could only replace John, we would be so much better!” My point to the HR Pros in the audience is this is a value item that we can own in our organizations. Must do moves. Especially those moves that make our organizations stronger, need champions in HR. When it comes to staff moves, we are that champion.

What we realize, but many of our hiring managers fail to realize, is that Bad is Stronger than Good, when it comes to employees. We hear all the time “Addition through Subtraction”, and yet we struggle in our organizations to make this happen. Most likely this happens in your organization because you are trying to make your hiring managers, manage, and have them make this decision.

When in reality they have made the decision and they told you. They hate conflict, even more than you do, and this was their cry for help. Take it and run with it, make it happen. It’s the one thing in HR we are all really good at, process and planning. Put a plan together to get rid of your Bad and make it happen.

I didn’t just say go fire that person. That’s not a plan. Well, it is a plan, but not a very good one. I said make a plan to get rid of the bad. That means working with the hiring manager to determine timing, back-fill options, sourcing, recruiting, progressive discipline, all that good stuff, but make it happen. Really, make it happen! Executives like doers!

They like doers that get rid of Bad in our organizations. We own the Bad people in our organizations. Any time you have a Bad person in your organization you need to take on the persona, “this Bad person is my fault and I’m taking care of it.” Bad is Stronger than Good, so you have to fight hard against Bad.

Want to look and be better in HR? Own the “Must-Do Moves” in your organization.

DisruptHR Detroit 3.0 – Limited Tickets On Sale Now!

Posted on August 14, 2019 by Tim Sackett

DisruptHR Detroit is coming back to Downtown Detroit on September 19th from 5:30-8: 30 pm. Once again we want to give a big shout out to Quicken Loans and the HR and TA teams of Quicken Loans for hosting this great event onsite at The Madison!

We changed things up a bit this year – still great speakers (see the list below) and still great food, drinks, and fun – but we are going smaller, more intimate, can we say a bit more Disruptive! On top of this great, cool venue (that is literally across the street from Tiger Stadium) we have the founder of DisruptHR, Jennifer McClure, making a celebrity speaking appearance!

Here’s the deal though, we can only fit 150 folks into the venue! We’ve already sold half those tickets! Last year we sold 300+! So, if you want to come this year, you better be quick and go buy your tickets! We will sell-out and I apologize in advance, but there’s no way for us to increase seating capacity for this event. The cost is $30 per ticket, which includes the speakers, food, drink & parking!

DisruptHR Detroit 3.0 Speakers:

– Becky Andree: SOS! I am Drowning in Complexity

– April Burton-Welch: HR Perspective: Let’s Be Fair, Firm & Consistent

– Adam Klug: Texting Candidates – You’re Not Doing It, but You Should!

– Jennifer Laidlaw: Your Training Did Nothing!

– Jill Melton: Words Can Kill – Words Can Heal! Choose Wisely

– Clarene Mitchell: Don’t be shy…Create Your Own Digital Footprint!

– Greg Mood: Jerry Springer-type HR Stories!

– Joan Morehead: What’s your brand of IPA, and it’s not about beer!

– James Reid: Employment Issues: Drugs Sex Money Rock’n Roll

– Michelle Snay: Show IT the love, HR!

– Jennifer McClure: (She’s surprising us with her title!)

We would also love to thank our sponsors for this event:

Headliner –

Ultimate Software

Food and Drink Sponsor –

Marsh & McLennan Agency

Gold Sponsors –

Silver Sponsors-

Background Check Central

3 Steps to Getting Sh*t Done!

Posted on August 5, 2019 by Tim Sackett

There are times when I struggle to get things done. I’m a really good starter of things. I love starting projects! I can always see how I want it finished (a little shout out to Covey – Begin with the end in mind). But like most things you start, eventually things get bogged down, and getting them over the finish line can be hard.

It’s probably why most projects fail, it gets tough, so we stop and move onto the beginning of something else because that’s fun and exciting. I’ve learned this about myself over the years and I do two things to help myself. First, I surround myself with people who have a great resolve to getting things done, the type of folks who don’t sleep well at night because they know there was that one glass left in the sink, and they should really get up and put in away. I love these folks, they aren’t me. I hire them every time I get the chance. I even married one of those types, she makes me better!

Second, I force myself to not start something new, until I finish what I’ve already started. This can be annoying, I’m sure, for those around me because sometimes projects have to go on hold while you wait for feedback, or other resources, etc. This makes me antsy and I like to get things finished!

I was re-introduced recently to a quote from the novel Alice in Wonderland that I think really puts in perspective what it takes to get something done. The quote is from the King of Hearts and it is quite simple:

“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

Your 3 Steps:

1. Begin

2. Go till the end

3. Stop

We make it much harder than that but it really isn’t. I like simple stuff, it fits into my mind quite well. It might be the best advice I’ve gotten in a really long time. I don’t need pre-planning, or post-project assessments, or update meetings, or budget reviews, or a project charter, etc.

Naive? Probably. But, sometimes you just need to Begin, go to you come to the End: then Stop.

The Employee Walk of Shame

Posted on July 31, 2019 by Tim Sackett

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!

The Tim Sackett Project

TA & HR Expert, Dad, Backup Point Guard on my over 40 men's team

Category Archives: HR Department of One