Category Archives: HR Department of One

The 3 Rules About Kissing Your Boss!

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May 20, 2013 I published a silly little post on my blog called “The Rules About Hugging at Work”. The post might have taken me twenty minutes to write. It was just an idea I got, like thousands of others, I thought it was funny, so I wrote about it. To date, it’s been read over 1 Million times. Huff Post picked it up, it went viral on LinkedIn (I got over 1300 comments), I’ve been interviewed and called, “The World’s Foremost Expert on Workplace Hugging”.

Twenty minutes of writing, a throwaway idea.

Months later I posted the exact same post on LinkedIn’s publishing platform. This was before everyone could publish (remember that), you had to be invited. I got a call from the LinkedIn chief editor offering me access. I didn’t know if it was really anything so I just threw up old posts I had already written but added a few new pieces.

On the Hugging post, I added at the bottom my next post would be: The 3 Rules About Kissing Your Boss! as a joke. I never wrote it. Until five years later I got a message last week from someone who found the hugging post for the first time asking how they could find the kissing post! I didn’t even know what they were talking about!

So, here’s the kissing post! 

It would be easy to dismiss the notion of kissing your boss as something that would never happen. When I say ‘never’ I mean never. I mean honestly do any of us ever feel it would be appropriate to kiss your boss!?

This one is hard for me. I come from a family of huggers and kissers! My father is 73 and he still kisses me on the lips when I greet him or say goodbye. Some folks would find that super weird. Different cultures do different things.

My son was overseas this summer visiting friends in Belgium and it was quite common for new people he met to give him that traditional kiss on the cheek, but he said those same people would not give you a hug or a handshake. This kiss on the cheek greeting is very common in many parts of the world.

In America, you would probably get punched in the face if you tried kissing someone on the cheek you were meeting for the first time! I mean, look, if I don’t know you, I certainly don’t want your germs all over my face! Most Europeans I meet for business purposes in the states who come here often have gotten used to handshakes, rarely do I see one of them do the cheek kiss greeting.

All of this is way different, though, then kissing your boss! Kissing your boss would have to be a special circumstance or special occasion. I’m guessing if you’re kissing your boss one of a few things probably hasn’t happened in that relationship. You’ve probably become very good friends, some once in a lifetime event is happening, or you’ve become romantically involved, in which case, not really your boss any longer!

So, if we can see a time in which you might kiss your boss, the great HR pro in me says we better put some pen to policy and make some rules! Here are my three rules for kissing your boss:

1. No kissing on the lips. Kissing on the lips is slippery slope you can’t put back in the bag! Wants that happens you might as well just get undressed, stuff just got real! We’re going to assume this kiss is not romantic in nature, completely as professional as kissing your boss can be professional!

2. Do not leave moisture on your bosses cheek. Okay, somehow we got down this rabbit hole to a point where I’m kissing my boss on his or her cheek, let’s not make this super awkward by leaving a nice big wet spot on the side of their face. If you’re so excited to be kissing your bosses cheek that you leave it wet, you should be checked into a mental ward.

3. Do not have bad breath. First impressions are critical and even though your boss knows you, your boss doesn’t know the kissing you. Do not go in for that first boss kiss with bad breath! I love Ice Breakers Mints and I have some close by almost always. Why? I can’t stand bad breath. Coffee breath is the worst and I know a lot of you are major coffee drinkers! Guess what? Diet Mt Dew breath smells like a flower garden! Think about that next time go for a fill up at the coffee station at work!

See? That’s how you do it. That’s how the World’s Foremost Expert in Workplace Hugging becomes the World’s Foremost Expert on Boss Kissing. You can’t be a one-trick pony in this world folks, we all need to keep striving on reinventing ourselves. Watch out fall conference circuit! If you see Sackett coming I might have just raised the game!

So, hit me in the comments. What are your rules for kissing your boss!?

Recruitment Marketing Isn’t About Automation

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Look, I love everything Recruitment Marketing (RM). It takes two things I’m very passionate about Recruiting and Marketing and puts them both together. I love the creativity and science behind how do you get someone interested in some thing, more specifically how do we get a person interested in coming to work for us.

Recruitment Marketing technology is pretty freaking awesome! I love it as well. But, great RM isn’t about automation. Great RM is about what originally attracts us to anything.

Great RM boils down to only two things:

1. Do you want me?

2. You don’t want me.

I like to think about RM in dating terms. I’ve been married for twenty-five years so my dating references are a bit dated, but I now have sons who are dating so I get a new perspective.

When you like someone a couple of things could happen. One, they like you in return. This could be great for some, but a turn off for some as well. There are two specific things that happen when we date. We want to be wanted and we want to be pursued. So, the second is they don’t like you, and you don’t know why.

Let me give you an example from my own career. I always have wanted to work at Nike. I love their products. I love their brand. I would have been the best employee Nike ever hired! They didn’t want me. That made me want that job even more. Working at Nike is a tough gig to get, which is part of the reason I wanted it.

I did get offers from other organizations that were also great brands. Target was one who offered and pursued hard. Even tried to get me after I turned them down and went to work for Applebee’s. Sent a gift basket to my house before Christmas, 6 weeks after I already started working for Applebees. It felt really, really good to be pursued and wanted by another!

Most of us do the pursuing. If you’re extremely lucky in talent acquisition you have a brand that allows you to be pursued. There aren’t many of these organizations that are wildly pursued by almost everyone. Google, Facebook, Nike, etc. But, we all have a small group of folks who love our brand and organization for whatever reason.

We tend to discount these folks, especially if we have questionable employment brand, to begin with! Why would Charlie want to work here so bad!? Something must be wrong with him! That’s where most TA organizations fail.

If you have Nike’s brand you never question ‘why’ someone wants to work for Nike. It’s Nike! Everyone wants to work for us. If you’re ABC Manufacturing in Wildwood, NJ you question why anyone wants to work for you. It’s crazy, right!? It’s the exact same scenario, one positive, one negative.

All of this has nothing to do with the RM platform you choose. This is about the culture you allow on your TA team. You might not be Nike, but it doesn’t mean you’re not a great opportunity for someone. Leave that up to the person to decide, don’t decide for them!

 

2017 Michigan Recruiter’s Conference is October 25th in Detroit!

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That’s right gang! We’re back and better than ever!

The 2017 Michigan Recruiter’s Conference will take place on Wednesday, October 25th from 9 am to 4 pm in downtown Detroit onsite at our wonderful corporate host Quicken Loans!

Registration is now open – the cost of this event is $69 per person. This is a corporate talent acquisition event, no agency or third party recruiting pros will be allowed to register. It’s not that we don’t love you all, it’s that this is a development event, not a come pimp us with your services event.

Space will be limited, so please register early if you want a seat. You can transfer registration to another person on your team if plans change.

Who’s on the Agenda I hear you asking yourself! Oh, boy did I hit a few home runs this year!!!

SPEAKERS:

Carmen Hudson, Principle Consultant at Recruiting Toolbox, and Co-Founder of Talent42

Shaunda Zilich, Employment Brand Leader at GE

Will Maurer, Global Talent Acquisition, Sourcing Manager, General Motors

Holly Fawcett, Curriculum Development Manager at Social Talent

Margie Elsesser, VP of Talent Brand & Strategy at Quicken Loans 

Mike Bailen, VP of People at Lever and former Head of Talent for Zappos

Killed it, right?!?!

ERE, SHRM, and TEDx wished they had this line up coming to their events!

Thank you to our sponsors for making this happen – Lever and Quicken Loans.  We could not offer this at such a low price without their financial assistance and support! So, support them!

Can’t wait to see you all in Downtown Detroit! Bringing it to the D!

 

 

 

 

I Hate Lists! But Less When I’m On Them…Sackett’s Top HR & TA Influencers of All Time!

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It seems like there are fewer lists out recently as content. Five years ago lists as content were huge! It was the go-to content for every crappy content marketing professional in HR and TA technology. Why? Because they get traffic! People like to see their names on lists, or not see their names on lists and wonder why “he” is on the list and I’m not on the list.

Recently, Engagedly came out with the ‘Top’ 100 HR Influencers of 2017. The list is alphabetical but it also has numbers, so it looks like Uncle Lou Adler is #1 on the most influential list of HR pros for 2017. I’m number 77. Stacey Zapar is #99. Kris Dunn is #26. If you know the alphabet you can almost play a game guessing what number you might be! (Editor question – if it’s not ranked, why put numbers on it?)

So, anyway, I hate these lists, but I hate them less when I’m on them because, well, I’m human. It feels nice that someone thinks you might know something about something and put your name on a list of other people you probably think are smart. The problem with most lists, like this, are that the person putting them together probably hasn’t met or spoken to 97% of the people they’re putting on the list.

The Engagedly list added a ton of ‘influential’ HR people I’ve truly had never heard of! Most are heads of HR for giant Fortune 100 type companies. I’ll say that’s smart. If you want to sell your product to an enterprise buyer, butter up the heads of HR at big companies and tell them how smart and influential they are. That’s just good business!

The problem is ‘these’ people, for the most part, really aren’t influential. Big giant HR is usually vanilla. They use big giant vanilla technology and they do things that are safe. That’s not really influence, is it?

Outgoing SHRM CEO Hank Jackson is on the list. Hank definitely has some influence in HR, but he’s also retiring in December, wouldn’t Johnny Taylor, the incoming CEO, be a better selection? Penelope Trunk is on the list. Has Penelope done anything in HR in the past decade? She recently said she was sick of her own advice! That seems influential.

William Tincup, my friend, and a super smart guy is on the list. He’s also on the board of Engagedly. Shocking he made the list…

Like I said, I hate lists, because what I did above is what everyone does when they see these lists. No one is like, “Oh. My. God. Thank you for this list! I had no idea who I should listen to in this space!”

Okay, I’ll stop being a dick. The criteria I would use for a list would be something like: People I have had dinner with and I would pay; People that have taught me something in HR and/or TA and/or Life; People I’ve hugged because I like them, not because I felt like I had to; People I think are smarter than me; People that get it.

Here’s my list of Sackett’s Most Influential HR/TA People of All Time (also the best dinner party ever or the most dysfunctional family get together of all time, and every single person on this list I’ve met in person and probably hugged!):

– Celinda Appleby – Employment Brand expert at Nike, an Awesome smart lady with some sass! 

– Jason Averbook – HR and TA Tech genius, one of the best presenters in the world, first person I forgot to add to this list!

– Chris Bailey – CaymanHRGuy is his claim to fame, but he might be the best person in HR period. Smart, fun, giant heart.

– John Baldino – My HR guy on the East Coast, Smart, Caring, Just good people!

– Kassandra Barnes – HR technology marketing leader, sassy, smart, always open to trying new things.

– Michelle Berg – HR Executive and consultant out of Canada, super involved in HR community, hustler to the n’th degree.

– Josh Bersin – Everyone knows Josh, some dislike him, some love him. I like how he thinks.

– Steve Boese – Mr. HR Tech, #8ManRotation, One of the nicest guys you’ll meet in HR and he really knows his stuff!

– Bill Boorman – The most connected HR/TA guy in the world and always willing to go for a drink. Super kind, super smart.

– Sarah Brennan – One of the most underrated HR/TA Tech minds on the planet, expert home flipper, awesome person.

– Terryl Bronson – Trench TA Leader, my friend from my days at the Bee’s, always willing to help others, world class stick man.

– Steve Browne – Mr. SHRM, nicest guy in HR. The most positive, uplifting HR leader you’ll ever meet.

–  Dawn Burke – HR Leader who flat out gets it, funny, high energy, one of my closest friends in HR, she’s just good people.

– Heather Bussing – The one employment attorney on the list, which means she is my go to for all this stuff, and a damn good writer!

– Johnny Campbell – Ninja. Always looking to move forward. Pushing the envelope of recruiting worldwide. Charismatic.

– Teresa Carper – My VP of HR in my own shop at HRU. Super stud, won’t be outworked, ferociously loyal, brilliant.

– Glen Cathey – Boolean Black Belt Dude. The smartest guy in sourcing you’ll meet who doesn’t believe he’s the smartest.

– Lis Cervenka – Employer branding expert, TA tech executive, great marketing mind, respect the hustle.

– Matt Charney – Brilliant writer, sharp wit, wickedly funny, gets the game better than almost anyone in the industry.

– Joel Cheesman – One of the few ‘experts’ I listen to, truly knows his stuff and isn’t afraid to let you know it.

– Jackye Clayton – Awesome HR/TA Tech knowledge, a better person, funny, my sister from another mister.

– Graeme Close – Professor, best and most interesting wellness speaker on the planet, Nutrition consultant to Olympians & professional athletes.

– Connie Costigan – C.C.! One of the top HR tech marketing and communication executives on the planet, and just a great person.

– Gerry Crispin – The Godfather of Candidate Experience and TA, who I hope to become when I grow up. Life long learner.

– Amy Cropper – Quietly one of the smartest TA minds in the room who doesn’t feel the need to throw it in your face.

– Jim D’Amico – My partner in the Michigan Recruiter’s Conference, passionate TA leader, awesome person, brilliantly funny.

– Paul DeBettignies – Kindest, hardest working TA pro on the planet, always willing to get involved and help, gets recruiting at another level.

– Mervyn Dinnen – Super smart HR writer/blogger out of the UK, always asks the right questions to make you think.

– Kelly Dingee – Sourcing expert to the stars. Kelly can break down sourcing for the masses like no other person in the industry.

– Jim Durbin – Get recruiting and finding talent at a completely different level than 99.9% of the world and can show you how.

– Holland Dombeck-McCue – The Kid! Recruitment marketing genius, under the radar, oh, the places she will go!

– Kris Dunn – The OG, my ride or die, simply the single best HR/TA blogger on the planet and my best friend. #8ManRotation

– Ben Eubanks – The analyst from Alabama, and the nicest HR analyst you’ll ever meet! Smart, hardworking, always willing to share.

– Mary Faulkner – HR leader who is always on and willing to get involved, takes no prisoners and one of the few willing to tell it like it is.

– Craig Fisher – Employment brand expert, good people, respects the hustle. Gives back to our community constantly.

– Melany Gallant – HR Tech content marketing guru who is unafraid to try new stuff, which makes her stuff industry leading.

– Joe Gerstandt – Freak flag flier, one of the top D&I speakers/minds on the planet, someone most of us would aspire to be.

– Jamie Gilpin – HR and TA tech marketing executive, started most of the stuff others are doing right now, awesome lady.

– China Gorman – Great leader, period, gets the HR industry better than most, she’s the boss you wish you had.

– Ben Gotkin – Co-founder of ATAP, super passionate TA pro willing to work behind the passion.

– Shane Gray – Tireless advocate for TA worldwide, always willing to help and has outstanding ideas. Hustle times infinity.

– Kevin Grossman – Mr. Candidate Experience, gets HR marketing at a different level than all of us. Super nice dude.

– Chris Harvilla – Super brilliant TA Tech mind and leader, could run any TA shop in the world better than you’re doing it right now.

– Lance Haun – Kind, wicked funny, always helpful, truly understands the industry and how to help make it better. #8ManRotation

– Michael Heller – HR Tech CEO, grinder, an executive who truly works to understand the practitioner’s pain, and that’s rare! He’s good people.

– Maren Hogan – Marketing expert, hustles her ass off, a brilliant writer, so helpful. Never leave your credit card with her. 😉

– Paul Hebert – No one gets recognition, incentives, and employee engagement better than this man. Plus, he’s an awesome hang.

– Chris Hoyt – The recruiting guy, loved by all including my wife who is super hard to win over! I love talking shop with Chris.

– Carmen Hudson – One of the smartest TA consultants you’ll ever meet, has always shared her time with me, Talent42 Co-founder.

– John Hudson – He ran HR for Oprah, fools! Drop mic. Truly an awesome guy, always willing to help, great HR mind.

– Teela Jackson – Recruiting leader out of the ATL, true pro, super funny, gets recruiting at another level.

– Linda Jonas – An Aussie, living in Berlin, who just works tirelessly within the industry. Respect her hustle and willingness to always ask questions to make both sides smarter.

– Matt Jones – Recruiting leader who is an expert in the game, gives back constantly, great positive energy, closer.

– Charlie Judy – HR leader/expert who gives back to the industry constantly, gets workplace culture at a completely different level.

– Micole Kaye – Influencer marketing expert, a millennial who acts like a Gen-X, super high ceiling because she’s unafraid.

– Katrina Kibben – Employer branding, marketing pro, writer, involved. Someone who is always willing to help and give back to the community.

– Kyle Lagunas – My favorite TA/HR analyst, wicked funny, fabulous, will poke fun at his own industry, smart.

– George LaRocque – Always knows where the money is, constantly letting the industry know stuff before anyone else, I listen to him.

– Sharlyn Lauby – The vast HR community loves the HR bartender and so do I, straight talk in a way that doesn’t talk down, she writes for those HR pros in the trenches.

– Madeline Laurano – In a world of puff out your chest analyst, Madeline is a pros-pro who quietly knows more than 90% of the room. Flat out produces great research.

– Jason Lauritsen – Super HR leader, better guy, truly wants to see you be a better you. One of my favorite people in the industry.

– Jessica Lee – The most talented young TA leader on the planet, period. Brilliant mind. Tireless worker. Great spirit.

– Tony Lee – Working constantly to evolve SHRM from the inside, awesome guy, always working to make his business better.

– Steve Levy – Polarizing TA genius who will tell you exactly like it is, even if you don’t want to hear it. Truly knows his stuff.

– Roy Maurer – Expert writer in our space, not a hack blogger like me, kind, giving, always willing to help hacks like me get better.

– Jennifer McClure – The one HR speaker everyone wants to hear and see, self-made, constantly improving, such a good person. Knows what she talks about.

– Trish McFarlane – No one in HR in the past decade has come farther in their career. HR leader, analyst, HR Tech executive.

– Debbie McGrath – Founder of HR.com, she’s forgotten more about this industry than I’ll ever know. Constantly innovating.

– Rob McIntosh – Executive TA advisor that is a top 1%er in terms of knowing more about TA than all of us. One of the few I read and listen to in this industry.

–  Victorio Milian – A better human than you and I will ever be, HR consultant and leader, one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, with a keen eye.

– Crystal Miller Lay – Employment branding and recruitment marketing expert and leader, constant hustle, unapologetic in a good way.

– Jessica Miller-Merrell – The queen of HR/TA blogging, HR/TA tech expert, constantly pushing forward, challenges the norm.

– Danielle Monaghan – The only head of TA for a giant corporation I’ve ever met you will tell you exactly how it is, publicly. So awesome!

– Neil Morrison – HR Executive out of the UK. Might be smartest HR dude on the planet. Great writer and thinker. I’m love listening to him.

– Kevin Mullins – HR Tech marketing executive, flat out ‘gets it’, a driving force behind WorkHuman, had great vision.

– Shannon Pritchett – Worldwide sourcing leader, Ms. SourceCon, super smart and willing to give back to the community.

– Laurie Ruettimann – Friend. Original HR blogger with snark and sass, showed everyone else how to do it. Mentor of mine. Smart beyond our industry.

– Tim Sackett – Like I said, I hate lists, but I hate them less if I’m on them!

– Lars Schmidt – HROS co-founder, Fast Company author, employment brand strategist who is super nice, helpful and giving.

– Robin Schooling – Trench HR leader, blogger, an awesome lady who just gets HR at a level most will never get to.

– Jason Seiden – Branding genius, overall genius, one of the few people I shut up and listen to when they speak. Always has great ideas.

– Mary Ellen Slayter – Content marketing expert, good people, knows where the bodies are buried in our industry and can use that knowledge to help her clients.

– Leela Srinivasan – Top 3 HR/TA Technology CMOs on the planet who also never invites me to her events. She’s smart that way.

– Marcus Stewart – HR professor at Bentley Univ., best friend since junior high, the single smartest person I know.

– Matt Stollak – The only HR professor on the planet who has been able to make the transition into mainstream HR writing. Sparty. #8ManRotation

– Mark Stelzner -HR advisor to the who’s who of HR leaders on the planet. Might be the person in HR who can fix you the fastest, and he’s just a great guy.

– Will Staney – TA consultant, industry expert, always willing to give back and work to make the industry better overall.

– Bret Starr – Marketing genius who doesn’t believe he is. Nice dude, great leader. Some of the best ideas on the planet.

– John Sumser -Brilliant dude, industry guru respected by all, one of the few who will ask the toughest questions and get the answers.

– Ronda Taylor – HR marketing expert, Twitter hashtag guru, constantly helping others get better at the game.

– Ron Thomas – Global HR leader, tireless industry advocate, awesome person, your guy on the ground in Dubai!

– William Tincup – Part of my tribe. Great sense of humor I’ve ever met. Smartest guy in our industry. I envy his mind. He’s my go to on most things in life.

– Ambrosia Vertesi – Exceptional HR leader who is wise beyond her years, HROS co-founder, creative with a great sense of humor.

– Jess Von Bank – Tireless industry sales executive who is in constant hustle mode, not constant sales mode.

– Jeff Waldman – Social HR Camp founder, constant industry advocate north of the border, brilliant TA mind.

– William Wiggins – Exceptional HR Leader, one-half the great Wiggins-Hudson duo, one of the funniest HR pros I know.

– Mike Wood – Marketing leader for Globoforce, never stops, behind the force that has become WorkHuman, one of the good guys!

– Stacy Zapar – Constant hustle. Super talented TA leader. Uses her skill sets better than anyone on the planet. Beyond nice.

– Shaunda Zilich – Employment brand leader at GE, can build a motor cycle, thinks about EB completely differently than everyone else!

Okay, I know I’ve forgotten about fifty people, so I apologize to all those friends and smart people I’ve left off this list! Also, I know it’s not in perfect alphabetic order. Look it’s my list, I can arrange it any way I want!

Damn, this list thing is harder than it looks!

 

 

The Questions Leaders Ask When Great Talent Leaves

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Employee Turnover is a major problem in the majority of organizations, and it’s going to get worse. The economy might not continue to be as strong in the near future as it has been, but it doesn’t look to be any major downturn as well. Plus, demographics are playing into the job seekers favor with so many people retiring.

I’ve never been too concerned with low performers leaving my organization. I do have an issue with hiring managers telling me a performer is average or above, then when they leave the ‘new’ story comes out about how that person was a piece of garbage and now we are ‘better’ off that they left. Wait? What? You said this person was solid, but now they’re awful?

This happens all the time, especially in organizations that segment and track turnover by performance and hold managers accountable to this metric.

For me, I think the best organizations at controlling turnover are the ones where the leadership asks certain questions when they see their best talent leave. The ones that really dig into the reasons and not allow a middle-level manager make up a reason. The ones that have a documented ‘save’ strategy in place.

Here are some of the questions I ask myself when great talent leaves:

  1. Is there anything I could have done to keep this person with our organization? Why wasn’t that done?
  2. Was there anything the employee asked for to stay but we couldn’t deliver?
  3. What would have had to take place to keep this employee with us?
  4. Can we get this employee to return to us in the future?
  5. What was the ‘real’ reason this employee left?
  6. Did we ask this employee what it would take to keep them with us? What was the answer?

I’m a firm believer that you can talk anyone into staying with your organization. I’m also a firm believer that the ‘studies’ that tell you people who accept a counter offer will leave in 18 months anyway are completely wrong and out of date!

What I’ve found in all my years of doing this is that for about 50% of people who tell you they’re leaving, small things can keep them and ultimately they actually want to stay, but someone else showed them some love, and that feels so good to be wanted by another! The other 50% probably have a larger issue that is harder to solve, but if you work really hard it can get done.

One issue organizations with high turnover face is they let each other off the hook with turnover by giving each other excuses. “Yeah, Tim used to be good, but lately, he’s been awful.” “Well, it’ll hurt losing Mary, but we weren’t going to keep her happy for long.” “George is our best sales person, but he was holding other back that can be great as well.”

To control turnover leadership needs to change this narrative and stop the excuses for every single turn. The one caveat I allow is documented bottom performers that are on a plan. That’s good turnover, but it better be documented, or it’s bad turnover. Leadership owns this and it starts with tough questions about their own behavior that led to the turn.

If you get to this place, turnover will stop being a problem, and start being an opportunity.

Disrupt HR Detroit! September 27th – Tickets On Sale Now!

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DisruptHR is coming to Detroit!!!  

I’m pretty excited about it and I’m part of the great team that’s putting this event together. The date is September 27th with registration starting 5:30 pm and the event starting at 6 pm at the Garden Theater in midtown Detroit. The tickets are only $25! We should be done around 8 pm. Food and drinks. A ton of networking and laughs! REGISTER HERE! (we do anticipate this will sell out – we have limited seating)

What’s DisruptHR Detroit? 

It’s fun and fast 5-minute presentations/talks by HR and Talent pros. Powerpoint presentations of twenty slides where the slides automatically change every 15 seconds. It’s done in a TEDx-style format and the speakers are there to challenge how we think about HR and Talent, or maybe to just to poke some fun at the profession we all grind at every day.

Want to speak at DisruptHR Detroit?

Our goal is to have 12 speakers for this first event. We already have some folks who have applied and we welcome everyone who has the interest to apply to speak. It’s super simple! Follow this link and submit your idea! The DisruptHR Detroit team will pick 12 great ideas and save the others for our next Disrupt!

Why should I come to DisruptHR Detroit?

First, I’ll be there as the Emcee! I mean who doesn’t want more Sackett in their life!?!

Second, if you are passionate about our profession of HR and Talent Acquisition, this is the one place on the planet you should be to be around like mind professionals and leaders within SE Michigan!

Third, there’s a great chance you’ll take back to your organization some great ideas from the speakers and from the conversations everyone will be having about the topics!

What does a DisruptHR talk look like? 

Here’s me doing one so you can get a flavor:

Failure Is The New Black | Tim Sackett | DisruptHR Talks from DisruptHR on Vimeo.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign Up! 

See you there! This is going to be so great! The first 200 people who sign up get a personal hug from me!!!

Now That’s What I Call HR! Vol. 1

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So, if you’re a regular reader of this blog you know of my friend Chris Bailey, is a Brit expat who is running PWC’s HR consultancy in the Caribbean, and he lives in Cayman. Yeah, Chris has the one job on the planet that every HR pro in the world wants! And, he’s an awesome human being.

Chris also is an integral part of the team that puts on the annual Cayman HR conference. It’s like your normal state level SHRM conference, except that it’s completely awesome, in Cayman, Chris, and the team go so far overboard on making sure they run a great conference, if you run an SHRM conference, you’re now going to feel bad about yourself!

Why?

Chris and the team at Cayman Island Society of HR Professionals (who by the way have like 30 people going to SHRM national this year!) made their own musical album of HR songs for the conference! It’s on iTunes! You can buy the full thing for like $5.94! They had to create their own record label to actually get the album on iTunes! What the hell did you do for your HR conference!?

I’ll give you a review here of each song on the album since I’m clearly a critic of everything and I actually listened to Now That’s What I Call HR, Vol. 1 (insinuating there might be a Vol. 2, God help us all!):

Track 1 – HR Stars – Les Mis – Chris Bailey lead vocals – If you’re a Broadway musical fan of Les Miserables, you’ll instantly know the tune of this remake of Stars with HR lyrics in place of the original brilliance by Claude-Michel Schonberg, whom I’m sure never could foresee this happening! To Bailey’s credit, he’s probably more of a classical Broadway singer than he is a pop singer!

Track 2- Stars Original Les Mis – Chris Bailey lead vocals – Didn’t get enough of track 1, here’s another minute of the same stuff! Yep, instead of two minutes of Chris, you get three. Buckle up. For some reason, iTunes shows this track as the most popular which I can only surmise means Chris’s Mum downloaded five times.

Track 3 – Don’t Stop Believing HR – Elisa Brown & Chris Bailey lead vocals – Popular Journey remake and everyone’s favorite karaoke go-to song! We get to meet the great vocals of Elisa Brown who is awesome, and we get more of Chris destroying a song I’ll never listen to the same again.

Track 4 – HR State of Mind – Elisa Brown lead vocals – My favorite song of the album is only you don’t have to hear Bailey! Also, crafty lyrics and a great voice by Elisa. Rewriting a popular song with HR lyrics is super hard, just ask Steve Browne!

Track 5 – HR Baby – Chris Bailey lead vocals – This is actually the song that started it all for Bailey and company. Chris first performed this song at the CISHRP conference in 2015 – “If there is a problem, yo, check out HR we’ll resolve it – Ice Ice Baby” – a remake of the famous Vanilla Ice song, this is Bailey in his natural habitat.  It was a must for the album!

HR Baby By Chris Bailey from CML TV on Vimeo.

Track 6 – Vacation – Matt Brown lead vocals – hip hop, mixed up song that’s all fun and HR – great conference kick-off song. Pretty sure they CISHRP went to a local producer for this one to add a little more HR excitement to the album!

Hat tip to Chris and Elisa for putting themselves out there for the good of HR! We need more people like this in our lives.

HR conference organizers around the world, you’re on the clock.

Do you really want to get better?

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I’ve been writing about HR, Talent, and Leadership every day going on seven years. If you go around telling people you know something about something, guess what? They’re going to ask you to tell them about something, specifically as it relates to their circumstance.  So, I get asked my advice quite a bit about talent and HR issues people are facing.

There is a bucket of questions I get asked that fall into the same type of category.  These questions all have to do with how do we ‘fix’ something that isn’t working well in their HR and/or Talent shops.  How do we get more applicants? How do we get managers to develop their people? How do we fix our crazy CEO? Etc.

I used to go right into how I would solve that problem if I was in their shoes.  Five minute solutions! I don’t know anything about you, or your situation, but let me drop five minutes of genius on you for asking! It’s consulting at its worst! But it’s fun and engaging for someone who came to see me talk about hugging and my dog for an hour.

I’ve began to change my approach, though, because I knew, like they knew, they weren’t going back to their shops and doing what I said.  The problem with my five minutes of genius, was it was ‘my’ five minutes, not theirs.  It was something I could do, but probably not something they could do.

Now, I ask this one question: Do you really want to get better? or Do you really want to change?

Right away people will quickly say, “Yes!”  Then, there is a pause, and an explanation, and sometimes from this we get to a place where they aren’t really sure they really want to get better or change.

That’s powerful!

We all believe that ‘getting better’ is the only answer, but it’s not.  Sometimes, the ROI isn’t enough to want to get better. Staying the same is actually alright.

We believe we have to fix something and we focus on it, when in reality if it stays the same we’ll be just fine.  We’ll go on living and doing great HR work.  It just seemed like the next thing to fix, but maybe it actually is fine for now, and let’s focus on something else.

Many times HR and Talent pros will find that those around them really don’t want to get better, thus they were about to launch into a failing proposition, and a rather huge frustrating experience. Better to probably wait, until everyone really wants to get better.

So, before you go out to fix the world, your world, ask yourself one very important question: Do you, they, we really want to get better?  I hope you can get a ‘yes’ answer! But if not, the world will still go on, and so will you.

Scared Straight – OFCCP Style!

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Being a parent of three boys I’ve always been a fan of the theory behind “Scared Straight”! Your kids don’t listen to you, they’re getting in trouble, just send them down to the local prison and have them meet with some inmates! I mean what could go wrong?

In adult life, we don’t have many ‘scared straight’ opportunities. Maybe you painted the front door of your house the wrong color and the subdivision council sent you a strongly worded letter of compliance. Maybe your dog dug up your neighbor’s flowers and she left a handwritten note in your mail box looking for reimbursement, and to be taken off your holiday cookie list. Or, maybe it’s a cease and desist letter from a big HR Tech company’s lawyer telling you to stop saying ‘they suck’ on your blog.

For the most part, it’s hard to get scared straight as adults!

The OFCCP is probably the biggest scared straight organization for HR. Worse then employment attornies for sure! I get threatened to get sued by employees daily, that’s no longer a fear, but DO NOT tell me the OFCCP is on the phone!

It used to be the OFCCP only followed up on complaints and such. You have an extremely low chance of a ‘random’ OFCCP audit. That’s all been changing because of big data. Turns out, someone at OFCCP shows them how to run a basic statistical analysis of the data you send them on your applicants and who you hired.

Check out this chart from ERE and Nicole Greenberg, Esq. (go read the article Nicole does a fantastic job and is the first person in history to make an OFCCP  article that is interesting!) 

So, this data is from a company that had to pay $1.7 Million because they discriminated in not hiring Asian candidates. No one complained that they were discriminated against. OFCCP just looked at the data and said, “Hey, if 77% of applicants are Asian and you only hire 14% of those, you’re being discriminatory in your hiring practices!”

This should scare you straight, like immediately! Especially if you work in a company that has government contracts!

Of course, how the OFCCP is doing this is fraught with bad data interpretation. Just because 77% of my applicant pool is Asian doesn’t mean I’m being discriminatory in hiring. What if, for 77% of those Asian applicants who applied for Front End QA Engineer actually had a degree in accounting and no IT background!?

Doesn’t matter, you are now in an audit that is going to uncover some stuff! Most likely with numbers that far apart, you’re going to have a hard time arguing you’re not at least a little discriminatory in your hiring!

Nicole smartly points out that the government’s own contracting language forces many companies to be discriminatory in hiring in some aspects. Most government contracts require those working on the contract to be U.S. citizens. So, you could have the numbers above in the chart, being following the requirements on the contract and not hiring foreign nationals, and the OFCCP would still find you discriminatory in hiring! Welcome to the American Dream!

So, consider this a heads up. Go run your numbers. Find your hot spots in your organization and address them.

Hyperlocal Hiring

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The BLS reports that 80% of hourly workers live within 5 miles of where they work. Snagajob’s 2017 State of the Hourly Workforce survey found that 70% of our hourly workers refuse to commute more than 30 minutes to work. When you take a look at your own total workforce, my guess is you’ll find the vast majority live very close to your place of employment.

Blue collar, white collar, it doesn’t matter. People would prefer, for the most part, to live fairly close to work so they don’t waste a ton of time commuting. Commuting hours are for the most part one of the biggest drags on balance. Sure you can be productive on your commute, but it’s not really what you would prefer to be doing!

I’m wondering what it would be like if an organization started “Hyperlocal Hiring”? What if you only hired people who were willing to live within 1 mile of your place of employment? Maybe 2 or 3 miles, but not more, the idea is you could walk or bike to work in a reasonable time.

I know of some local government services that already require this in certain positions. I knew a Fire Chief who worked for a city and one requirement of the job was he had to live within the city limits. This was a rather small town, so he was within that 3-mile distance for sure!

Play along with me for a second!

We already know that the millennial and GenZ workforce like to work for companies that have community involvement. If your employees work in the communities they live in, it makes it pretty easy for organizations to truly support their local community. High engagement equals longer tenure, increased productivity, etc.

The Advantages of Hyperlocal Hiring:

– Hyper-short commutes give employees better work-life balance

– Living close to co-workers build more natural, deeper relationships (if you have a best friend at work…)

– Working and living in the same community gives you a stronger tie to both, increasing tenure.

– It would seem the living/working in close proximity would drive a stronger culture as well.

Okay, I know you’re already poking holes in this theory, but just imagine this for a few minutes on the positive side. It could be extremely cool!

I’m sure an organization with 10,000 employees couldn’t pull this off as it would be super difficult and expensive to have housing for 10,000 employees in a mile or two radius of your place of employment. SMB organizations, on the other hand, could use this as a huge advantage in hiring and attracting that younger workforce. Of course, this also works better in urban settings, but I could imagine a billionaire building their own city!

Dan Gilbert, Quicken Loans founder, basically went up and bought much of downtown Detroit and then moved this headquarters there. 5,000+ employees, modern company, downtown Detroit! If you don’t know the area, you either live a mile or two from the headquarters, or you drive out 30 miles to the suburbs.

There’s nothing that stops you from making a proximity of where someone lives a condition of employment. As long as it’s contractually agreed to up front, you would be fine. You can’t go tell someone they’ll be fired unless they move closer to your office, but new hires coming in can have this condition.

I know most of us would say, well, you’ll limit your candidate pool, so you just can’t do this. That’s my point! I want to limit my candidate pool to others who share this vision with me. To work and build a community in a micro-community with all of us involved! Yeah, Hippies! Come join the commune, but in a very modern, free-will, capitalist sense of being!

What do you think? Would you ever want to be Hyperlocal employee?