5 Things You Should Be Doing in June to Prepare for Your Open Enrollment in the Fall

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Tim Sackett

It’s a beautiful day here in Michigan! 75 degrees and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. In the north, we get only a limited time to enjoy summer, so when it finally arrives you better believe I’m taking full advantage! (For, me that’s tending to my flowers and doing some yard work.)

What’s my point? The last thing you probably want to be doing right now is brainstorming ways to prep for open enrollment! But guess what—you don’t have to…Because, while I’m still here in the office, I’m going to do it for you, so you (and I) can spend a little more time enjoying this great summer weather!

Here then is my list of Important OE Stuff You Should Be Doing Right Now:

Schedule employee roundtable meetings to get the feedback you need on the last benefit design. Make it fun. Provide an ice cream sundae station! It will work twofold: you’ll get the feedback you need to start your next design, and people love ice cream! You connect talking about benefits with having a positive experience. Simple psychology is the best psychology!
Do a mid-year follow-up with your benefits broker.They should already be on top of this and begging you to go out to lunch, or golfing, but if they haven’t, remind them. Specifically, this is a great time to look at your brand-name drug utilization and talk about some strategies to increase generic use and reduce this cost to the organization.
Executive cost foreshadowing should be happening right now.At this point in the year, your broker can have a pretty good guess at where your new premiums are going to come in at, and what this might mean to your new benefits design. Schedule a meeting with the C-Suite to give them some insight now, so they’re prepared when budgeting season comes. The best way not to ‘shock’ an executive is to get to them early in the process.
Deliver your own Summer Tips and Tricks communication to your employees on proper benefit utilization!Summer seems to be the time when people find their way to the emergency room when maybe the could have gone to urgent care. These are also a great time to highlight wellness initiatives since we are all trying to get into those swimsuits before vacation! Simple reminders like these save the organization money and keep your most important messages top of mind to your employees.
Schedule an OE marketing session before all the summer vacations start.As benefit pros we spend a lot of time and care figuring out what to say to our employees. What we tend to figure out too last minute is HOW we want to market these changes to our employees. Summer is a great time to not only think about the how—but to play around with some new ideas. What if you texted employees tips about OE on top of emailing them? What if you decided to send postcards to everyone’s homes? Now’s the time to figure out what you want to try—and establish a schedule for getting it done in time.

(Speaking of schedules, if you want even more ideas on what to be doing in June and July for OE, check out this excellent post—What to Do 12-16 Weeks Before OE, by the folks at Jellyvision.)

Anyway, I really do believe you can never be too prepared for Open Enrollment. A little extra effort now will lead to a great experience for you and your team come fall—and let you have more fun this summer, knowing you’re ahead of the game.

5 Instagram Filters That Will Make HR Better at Recruiting!

Posted on June 16, 2016 by Tim Sackett

You know it’s true—you’re a great HR Pro, but you don’t really like to recruit. That’s okay, because you’re good at a million other things your company values.

But here’s the thing: A recent Deloitte report outlined the need for HR Pros to grow their skills beyond what our functional area is traditionally known for. CEOs and division heads are expecting different things from HR, and one of those areas of need is… you guessed it… Talent Acquisition/Recruiting.

(Cue the lighting, adjust the crop and apply the filter—BAM. Insta-recruiter. There’s nothing that an Instagram filter can’t transform!)

The Fistful of Talent crew is back with the following webinar, “Instagramming HR: 5 Filters HR Pros Can Use To Transform Into Better Recruiters“ (sponsored by the good folks at Jobvite). Join Dawn Burke and Kris Dunn on June 29th at 2pm EST, and they’ll hit you with the following goodies:

–A review of why leaders report the need for HR re-skilling and why recruiting rises to the top of the list for HR pros and generalists at all levels.

–Data on how talent acquisition is a key component to achieving results in the modern workforce—including areas that HR Pros love to talk about (employee engagement, retention, etc).

–A breakdown of how recruiting has become more challenging in the last 5-10 years, and why the methods HR Pros have traditionally used to recruit aren’t as effective today.

–5 key strategies that HR Pros can embrace to modernize their approach to recruiting, get better results for their organizations and be viewed as high potential by the leaders they serve. We’ll go over those strategies and tell you how to get started with each of them.

The HR Pros at FOT know you work hard and are good at what you do. You don’t have to love recruiting as an HR Pro; you just have to be good enough at it to ensure it doesn’t hurt your career. With a little editing and the perfect lighting (Nashville, amIright?) you can bring out your inner recruiter in no time.

Click here to join us for “Instagramming HR: 5 Filters HR Pros Can Use To Transform Into Better Recruiters“ on June 29th at 2pm EST, and we’ll show how to ramp up your recruiting game without giving up the things you love to do as an HR Pro!!

REGISTER TODAY!

A very special episode of T3 – Why Microsoft Overpaid for LinkedIn

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Tim Sackett

This week on Saved by the Bell…

Remember those ‘very special’ episodes of your favorite TV shows growing up? When they took a break from their normal sitcom canned laughs to talk about something serious, like smoking in the bathroom, kissing at the school dance, or cheating on a test!

This week on T3 I’ll give you my take on the biggest news to come out of HR/Talent Technology in a long time! Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn sent shock waves across the industry this week. LinkedIn is HR Tech’s favorite punching bag because quite frankly their one of the few super success stories in HR Tech.

Microsoft paid $196 dollar per share for LinkedIn, a massive 50% premium as compared to LinkedIn’s closing price on Friday of $131. That’s the biggest question, why so much?

There is a ton of speculation and we’ll all have fun over the next months and years guessing what Microsoft will do with LinkedIn. History hasn’t been kind to these types of large takeovers. At the beginning, Microsoft has said they’ll let LinkedIn continue to run LinkedIn. We all know that won’t last forever and sometime next year expect to see massive reorganization and layoffs at LinkedIn! That’s just business. When you pay $26.2 Billion for a company, you expect some returns and quickly!

Here’s what we actually know, LinkedIn is in a very unique position in the market, unlike anyone else! Even though 2/3’s of their entire revenue comes from job board type activities (they call them talent solutions), employers still haven’t lost their minds when their employees decide to go on LinkedIn. “It’s only for professional networking!” Yeah, that played well, like five years ago, but now the cat is out of the bag. LinkedIn is full job board 2.0!

I’m not hating! They’re in a brilliant position and one that Microsoft finally found a way to leverage with Office 365. Can you imagine the synergies between the two products? If Office 365 automatically puts the user into a version of LinkedIn, entire organizations will become part of this giant network. If every Office 365 user gets some free premium access to LinkedIn the number of monthly users will skyrocket. We could just go on and on with possible things they could do, all of which will make talent acquisition departments more dependent on using LinkedIn.

Quite frankly I’m surprised it took this long for a major player in the tech space to understand LinkedIn’s unique position within the market. No organization wants their employees on Monster, CareerBuilder, Dice or Indeed. None of them care if their employees are on LinkedIn?!? It boggles the mind that HR and Talent executives don’t get this!

On top of this 60% of LinkedIn’s traffic is coming through mobile, another big win for Microsoft when purchasing what is becoming a full blown social network in LinkedIn. It will be interesting to see how Facebook and Google react. I’ve said all along Facebook could end LinkedIn instantly if it decided to jump into this space. Microsoft might have just kicked a sleeping bear. Facebook has more users, more frequency, and more data. All of which could lead it to open up it’s own ‘professional network’.

Microsoft overpaid for LinkedIn because they have a plan on leveraging LinkedIn’s unique position. Will it work? I don’t know, but it’s going to be fun watching!

Tech Companies Should Move To Detroit!

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Tim Sackett

You might have seen this chart recently over at Business Insider:

We all probably got this. It costs a TON to live in San Fransico! Way too much. You’re crazy if you want to start a tech company in San Fran. So, what do all those super smart folks do? Yeah, stay west coast and just go a bit more north to Seattle, still expensive, but seemingly cheap in comparison to San Fransico!

It’s one of the main reasons Austin, TX became a hotbed of tech startups and headquarters about a decade ago. Relatively cheap to place to live. Access to a major university (Univ. of Texas), which gives you young, talented, tech savvy folks. Nice weather.

Here’s the magical formula to picking a place to house your tech company:

Access to talent.
Place people want to live.
1. Good weather.
2. Hip vibe.
3. Affordable. (not necessarily an important factor – but increasing in importance!)

Give this magical formula, I’ll give you the number 1 destination of new tech startups!

DETROIT!!!!

Well, actually it’s Ann Arbor, which is about a 15-minute drive from Detroit’s International Airport, a Delta hub and one of the nicest airports around. Which means direct flights to almost everywhere. Home to the University of Michigan and great talent pipeline (Michigan State is also 50 minutes away). So, you have two Giant universities and roughly 80,000 students within easy driving distance. A ton of other smaller universities within a 50-mile radius as well (Eastern Michigan, Wayne State, Oakland Univ., Univ. of Toledo, etc.).

It’s super cheap to live. Ann Arbor is a great college city, with access to the bigger Metro Detroit area within a thirty-minute drive. Access to someone of the world’s largest freshwater lakes. Toronto is an easy, cheap flight, or 4-hour drive away.

Okay, you won’t get super nice weather. You’ll get four seasons, midwestern work ethic and so much more for your money you won’t understand why anyone ever went west to begin with!

Oh, I hear you. What about the talent? The Detroit Metro Area is one of the world’s largest engineering centers in the world! You know about all the auto companies, but what you don’t know is that Google has been growing an empire in Ann Arbor for years, and doing it quietly because they don’t want others hoarding in on the secret!

So, yeah, Seattle is way cheaper than San Fransico. You only have to pay 35% of pay towards rent. In Detroit, you only have to pay about 15% of your pay towards rent!

Detroit! The new San Fransico! We even have a bridge!

T3 – @Joberate

Posted on June 7, 2016 by Tim Sackett

This week on T3 I take a look at a piece of technology called Joberate. Joberate’s platform tracks real-time job seeking behaviors of the global workforce by leveraging publicly available social media data. Why is that important? Well, let me tell you!

Joberate’s machine learning predictive analytics platform generates a numerical score called J-Score, which represents a person’s job seeking activity level. In addition to J-Score, the platform performs psychological profiling based on the NLP (Natural Language Processing) of CV’s and Social Data. Think of this J-score like a FICO score for HR. Instead of payment history, you get job seeking history.

Basically, Joberate lets you know which candidates you should pursue and when! This cuts your time to fill, by as much as half. The Joberate platform basically informs you of when a passive candidate begins to become active before anyone knows they’re active.

5 Things I really like about Joberate:

1. Joberate allows you to create pools of candidates to follow and attract, letting you know through alerts when they begin to become active job seekers. This allows you to pick them off before your competition.

2. The J-Index measures the Fortune 500 from an entire corporation behavior, showing you which companies have increased employee attrition, giving you insight to which companies would be easier to target for sourcing.

3. Joberate will also show you the job-seeking behavior of your internal staff. This will allow you to use this data in a number of ways including save strategies for your high potentials. Can you imagine knowing when your best employees are just beginning a new job search, and being able to address it before it goes too far?

4. The Joberate Platform gives you insight from an internal mobility aspect as well. If you know your best employees are looking to make a move, why not just move them on your own!? You don’t even need to mention you know they’ve begun a search, just move them into a new role, and beat them to the punch.

5. Benchmark your hiring managers. The Joberate platform gives you the information to know which managers, by department, have high j-score indexes amongst their team. Why do certain managers turnover more than others? Which managers are in trouble because their entire team is out looking? How can you set them up for success?

Joberate gives you great insight to your turnover risk, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The platform will actually show you a graph by individual of when their job seeking behavior spikes, and it’s scary accurate! Also, your employees have no idea you have access to this information, which allows you to manage it proactively, verse how we do it now, which is to wait for a resignation or find a resume on a job board!

On top of that, it shows you which candidates are most likely be open to making moves and easier to recruit before they’re even on the market. Very cool piece of technology. It’s built for the enterprise level organization. But, if you have thousands of employees well worth taking a look at, the ROI on just being able to manage your turnover alone would be huge!

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

Building HR Service Delivery on a Global Scale – AMEX Edition!

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Tim Sackett

Hey, gang – I have American Express’s VP of HRIS, Adam Krahling, for a cool one-on-one SHRM exclusive where he shares how AMEX built their entire global HR Shared Service delivery model from design through production! This is a free SHRM Webcast with HRCI credits. It’s coming up next week June 8th, Wednesday, at noon EST.

Adam is an awesome speaker, and I’ll be doing my best Oprah impression to interview him and dig out all those hidden secrets!

Every major HR project has its challenges but, when you add in the global perspective, those HR projects just got exponentially more challenging! For large organizations in the banking and insurance industries, these projects also have the added complexity of major regulations and laws that change from country to country. This webinar will assist you in understanding where most organizations fail from a global perspective, how to launch and get a project like this off the ground, and how to ensure your organization is successful in the long run.

The global transformation of HR is upon us, and American Express is leading the charge. Come learn how AMEX’s HRIS team helped lead the company into this new frontier and what strategies and design it incorporated from country to country.

Adam Krahling, vice president of Global HRIS for American Express, and I will dig into the American Express case study on how the company expanded HR service delivery globally. Learn how a large organization like AMEX moved its HR operations forward on a global scale, the impact it had and the step-by-step process they used to ensure success.

You’ll be able to post your questions and thoughts on bringing your HR service delivery project into the modern era. –

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!

The Right To Disconnect From Work

Posted on June 1, 2016 by Tim Sackett

Did you hear that France is trying to pass a law that would allow workers to disconnect from the office without fear of disciplinary action? Here’s some more on the proposed bill:

The “right to disconnect” legislation, which would go into effect in 2018 if passed, would require companies to encourage employees to turn off phones and other devices after they leave work…

The law reflects the sense in France that white-collar workers in the digital age are vulnerable to burnout.

Technologia, a risk analysis firm, found that 3.2 million French workers were emotionally exhausted from work and at risk of developing burnout symptoms like exhaustion and chronic stress.

“It is a real problem,” said Yves Lasfargue, a sociologist who specializes in teleworking. “Twenty years ago, before emails had been invented and we could not reach colleagues, we would have to go and knock on their doors. Traditional courtesy teaches you to abstain from disturbing people. With these new tools, this form of courtesy has totally disappeared. This is why we need to legislate.”

“Traditional courtesy”.

Two things at play here. First, there’s no doubt that our new hyper-connected world is causing people to work in ways we could never have imagined twenty years ago. Most white collar jobs currently have no ‘unplugged’ off the clock hours any longer. People are connected from the moment they wake until the moment they go to sleep, many even getting up during the night when they hear notifications coming in on their devices.

That’s a problem. That’s an organizational problem because we will see burnout at a faster rate than ever before. I am starting to hear about organizations that are shutting down email servers at 6pm and not turning them back on until 5am, trying to force their employees to shut it down and refresh, even shutting down during the weekends. It’s a drastic step, but one some organizations feel is the right one.

Secondly, is this concept of traditional courtesy. This 1950’s idea of not disturbing someone who is at home for the evening. Most everyone in the workplace has no understanding of this concept. We don’t come home at 5pm to a wife and kids sitting down for a hot meal the ‘Mrs’ cooked all afternoon. Our society has completely changed from this “Leave It To Beaver” idea of how our lives should look.

Still, I hear this courtesy issue come up many times when speaking with corporate talent acquisition pros. Well, we don’t want to make calls to people after 6pm because ‘they’ don’t like it. I still call bullshit on this! People don’t like getting calls after 9pm, otherwise, we’ve been conditioned by telemarketers to expect calls up until 9pm.

People don’t like being bothered at home with stuff that doesn’t have value to them! If you call them about a great opportunity, they would rather take that call from home, than from work. This has nothing to do with courtesy. If someone has decided to ‘unplug’ for the evening, they simply won’t pick up your call. You believing this is a courtesy issue, is an excuse not to be an effective recruiter!

So, what say you? Should there be laws on the books encouraging people to shut it down at night? I think our new world has given us more flexibility to work in our own way. I personally like that I can work when I need to. Do I need to ‘unplug’ more, especially around my family? There is no doubt. But don’t take my flexibility away from me!

T3 – 100 HR & Talent Technologies You Should Know Right Now!

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Tim Sackett

My good friend William Tincup (@WilliamTincup) is probably the single smartest person I know in the HR and Talent Technology space, worldwide! That’s saying a lot because this space is filled with smart men and women.

At HR Tech Fest a couple of weeks ago, William made a comment on stage that there is roughly 21,000 HR and Talent Technology companies in the world. Seems like a number I can’t even get my head around – I might know 200 or so!

To prove his point, William quickly put together 100 of the hottest companies on the market and shared them on LinkedIn. Since most of you don’t visit LI but once or twice a month, I wanted to share them here as well.

My suggestion is to demo one of these companies each week for the next 50 weeks. One hour of development per week, 50 hours total. Any of us can do this. Pick out the ones that make the most sense to you, in your role. This will change you professionally. You’ll be smarter. You’ll see what your competition is doing. You’ll begin to think more strategically. Yes, just be looking at, and better understanding the technology that is shaping your profession!

Yes, just be looking at, and better understanding the technology that is shaping your profession!

This list is alphabetical. None of these organizations are paying me (yet). If you’re not on it, but want to be, connect with William on the Twitters and just ask.

Name || Category || Twitter
ActivTrak || Workforce Management || @activtrak
Adepto || Sourcing & Recruiting || @goadepto
Allay || HR Information Systems || @heyallay
Anthology || Sourcing Technology || @Anthology
AppLearn || Learning Management || @applearntv
Arctic Shores || Candidate Assessment & Testing || @arctic_shores
AskNicely || Employee Feedback || @asknicely
Beamery || Candidate Relationship Management || @beameryhq
Benevate || Wellness Management || @benevate
Bizimply || Workforce Management || @bizimply
Blendoor || Candidate Assessment & Testing || @blendoor
Boon || Employee Referrals || @Go_Boon
Brand Amper || Employee Advocacy || @brandamper
Butterfly || Employee Feedback || @bttrflapp
CareerArc || Outplacement & Alumni Technology || @careerarc
Click Boarding || Onboarding Technology || @clickboarding
Clinch || Candidate Relationship Management || @clinch
CloudMills || HR Information Systems || @CloudMills
Conspire || Sourcing Technology || @goconspire
Continu || Learning Management || @continu
Craft || Sourcing & Recruiting || @craftdotco
day100 || Sourcing & Recruiting || @dayonehundred
Echovate || HR & Employee Analytics || @echovate
Elevated Careers || Employment Website || @elevatedcareers
Elevator || Sourcing & Recruiting || @elevatorco
Empinfo || Workforce Management || @empinfo
EmployStream || Recruiting Operations || @employstream
Engagedly || Performance Management || @engagedlyInc
Fairsail || HR Information Systems || @fairsail
FirmPlay || Employment Branding || @FirmPlay
Flexy || Employment Website || @weareflexy
Fuel50 || Career Mobility || @careerengager
GapJumpers || Candidate Assessment & Testing || @gapjumpers
gr8 People || Recruiting Operations || @gr8PeopleCorp
Happie || Video Interviewing || @gethappie
Hey Taco! || Total Rewards / Recognition || @heytacoapp
HighGround || Engagement Tools || @HighGroundHQ
Hiregrid || Candidate Relationship Management || @hiregrid_io
HiringSolved || Sourcing Technology || @hiringsolved
Honeit || Recruiting Operations || @honeit_inc
Honeypot || Employment Website || @honeypotio
HourlyNerd || Contingency Workforce Management || @HourlyNerd
HROnboard || Onboarding Technology || @HROnboard
Hyphen || Employee Feedback || @HyphenApp
Impraise || Employee Feedback || @impraise
Interviewed || Candidate Assessment & Testing || @interviewedteam
iRevü || Employee Feedback || @Engagiant_iRevu
JobAdder || Candidate Relationship Management || @jobadder
Joberate || Recruiting Operations || @Joberate
Jobsuitors || Employment Website || @jobsuitors
JobzLab || Employee Referrals || @jobzlab
Jopwell || Employment Website || @Jopwell
Jostle || Collaboration Technology || @JostleMe
Kaleo || Learning Management || @kaleosoftware
KinHR || HR Information Systems || @kin_hr
Launchpad || Video Interviewing || @launchpadhq
Lensa || Candidate Assessment & Testing || @lensahr
Lever || Applicant Tracking || @lever
LifeGuides || Employment Branding || @lifeguidesme
Limeade || Wellness Management || @limeade
LineHire || Employment Website || @linehire
LiveHire || Recruiting Operations || @livehireme
Lytmus || Candidate Screening || @lytmusio
Macromicro || HR & Employee Analytics || @macromicrollc
Mattermark || Sourcing Technology || @Mattermark
MentorCloud || Coaching & Mentoring Technology || @MentorCloud
Meritocracy || Employment Website || @Meritocracy_is
MOVE Guides || Career Mobility || @moveguides
Nimble || Candidate Relationship Management || @nimble
Nudj || Employee Referrals || @nudjhq
OrgVue || Workforce Planning || @orgvue
Pathgather || Learning Management || @pathgather
Peakon || HR & Employee Analytics || @peakonteam
PeopleDoc || Case Management || @peopledoc_inc
PeopleGuru || Workforce Management || @Peopleguru4HR
Phenom People || Recruiting Operations || @phenom_people
Pocket Recruiter || Sourcing & Recruiting || @PKRecruiter
Pomello || Engagement Tools || @pomello
Prophet || Sourcing Technology || @turboprophet
Pymetrics || Candidate Assessment & Testing || @pymetrics
Qwalify || Sourcing Technology || @qwalify
Recroup || Recruiting Operations || @recroup
Recruitee || Candidate Relationship Management || @recruiteehr
RecruitEm || Sourcing Technology || @cleverbiscuit
Recruitics || Recruiting Operations || @recruitics
Reflektive || Performance Management || @reflektive
Reflik || Employee Referrals || @ReflikInc
RelinkLabs || Recruiting Operations || @relinklabs
Relode || Applicant Tracking || @relodetools
Sapling || Onboarding Technology || @saplinghq
Shiftboard || Employee Scheduling || @shiftboard
showd.me || Learning Management || @showdme
Sity || Talent Management & Development || @sityapp
Skeeled || Candidate Relationship Management || @skeeledHR
Skill Scout || Recruiting Operations || @skillscout
Skillio || Employment Website || @SkillioInc
SmashFly || Candidate Relationship Management || @smashfly
Snaprecruit || Recruiting Operations || @snaprecruit
SocialTalent || Sourcing & Recruiting || @socialtalent
Somewhere || Employment Website || @Somewhere
Switch || Employment Website || @getswitch
Syndio || HR & Employee Analytics || @syndioinc
TalentBrowser || Applicant Tracking || @TalentBrowser
TalentGuard || Talent Management & Development || @TalentGuard
TalentIQ || Recruiting Operations || @talent_iq
TalentObjects || Sourcing & Recruiting || @talentobjects
TalentSky || Employment Website || @talentskyinc
Tasytt || Onboarding Technology || @tasytt
Textio || Employment Branding || @textio
TextRecruit || Sourcing Technology || @TextRecruit
The Good Jobs || Employment Branding || @thegoodjobs
Traitify || Candidate Assessment & Testing || @traitify
trovvit || Learning Management || @Trovvit
TrustSphere || HR & Employee Analytics || @trustsphere
Underdog || Employment Website || @UnderdogJobs
Unitive || Applicant Tracking || @weareunitive

VibeCatch || Engagement Tools || @vibecatch
VisaNow || Workforce Management || @VISANOW
Vitru || Candidate Assessment & Testing || @govitru
WayUp || Employment Website || @wayup
WebClipDrop || Candidate Relationship Management || @webclipdrop
Weirdly || Candidate Assessment & Testing || @weirdlyhub
Wellocity || Wellness Management || @wellocity_us
Whil || Wellness Management || @WeAreWhil
WhoKnows || HR & Employee Analytics || @whoknowsinc
Wirkn || Video Interviewing || @getwirkn
Wonolo || Contingency Workforce Management || @Wonolo
Workable || Applicant Tracking || @Workable
Workboard || Performance Management || @WorkboardInc
Workshape || Sourcing & Recruiting || @workshape_io
WorkTango || Employee Communications || @work_tango
WorkXO || Employment Branding || @WorkXO
Zoomforth || Employee Advocacy || @zoomforth

T3 – The New Crap from HR Tech Conference Season

Posted on April 26, 2016 by Tim Sackett

By using “Crap” in the title I’m guaranteed to get at least 3 emails this morning unsubscribing from my blog!

You still with me? Hey, gang! What’s up!?

I’ve been to three conferences in the past two weeks and have gathered a bunch of new HR and TA tech I will be talking about in the coming weeks, but I need to spend some time and write all of this stuff up. Before I do that I had to first share some major themes coming out of the HR Tech space that you should keep an eye on.

1. Customization!

Historically, great HR and TA functions were built on great processes. Those processes were put in place to treat everyone and everything, exactly the same. If you would ask an HR or Talent pro to change or adjust their process, you might actually lose your life!

Now, all of this started because treating everyone and everything as unique, special unicorns takes a ton of work, and it’s extremely complex. We don’t have that kind of capacity, so we had to lock it all up in tight processes, to ensure things got done on time, and were accurate.

Technology is changing all of this for both HR and TA! The great technology of today allows you to customize your processes and policies by employee, so the employee gets an experience unique to them, and you don’t have the pain of trying to track it all.

The HR and TA Leaders of the future are not about one great process. They’re about delivering customization to the masses. Not customization of software! That’s still the devil and will break your new shiny toys!

2. Analytics Gone Wild

It appears that HR and TA analytics are still as big as ever, even though it also seems like the understanding of these continues to be at an all time low! So many systems. So many possible analytics. The Data Science folks love it. The HR and TA folks are lost.

We now have more analytics. I can’t say we have better analytics. We continue to struggle as a community, primarily because we all continue to do our own thing, which really only means something to us, and not anyone else.

What would really help this whole analytics nightmare would be one common version of the truth? Here are the analytics we almost all agree will move the needle, and here’s a common way we are all going to measure these.

I will say the predictive analytic models that are coming out, are very impressive, and within five years almost all major companies will be using these to anticipate turnover, determine job fit, etc. The science is unbiased. We are forever biased. Something needs to change.

3. We’re still scared of Saas

We actually aren’t scared of Saas software. Most of it is really great tech, and we love it. We are still scared that Saas is a big lie and these systems and their Open APIs still won’t work together well. So, we continue to think we need big bad giant full suit enterprise level systems.

This is usually some of the worse tech on the market as a whole, and even within these systems, there are major issues with the modules working together. Eventually, we are going to have to trust these Saas plays and their misunderstood Open APIs and see if what they claim to do, they can really do.

I have a feeling you’ll be pleasantly surprised. But, like everyone in technology loves to say, “No one ever got fired for hiring IBM.” Until they did…

Maternity/Paternity Plans in 2016 #HRTF16

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Tim Sackett

Hey, gang! I’m at HR Tech Fest in Washington D.C. and so far there has been some exceptional content and keynote sessions!

One of those keynotes was given by Jim O’Gorman who is the SVP of Talent and Organization at Hulu. Jim spoke about the organizational evolution of Hulu going from startup to becoming a teenager. What I loved about the entire presentation was he works for a big brand, but he shared real world HR issues they have faced and how the solved them.

You don’t always get this from major brands. You usually get this very washed, clean view of how great everything is and perfect they are, and you leave really learning nothing. Jim gave solid ideas and examples of stuff any of us could do in our own shops!

One great idea he had was sharing their Maternity and Paternity programs that Hulu has recently put in place, and the challenges and results. Ironically, Dawn Burke and I just had this same conversation about her own HR shop and the challenges they have had with instituting a modern maternity program.

What does this have anything to do with an HR Technology conference!?

That’s the cool part. Jim, and Hulu, used their HR analytics and technology to prove that developing a new Maternity/Paternity program would increase engagement, loyalty and retention. The money it was going to cost, would come back in spades by the increase in these other metrics.

Sure it was the “right” thing to do, but it also have to make financial sense to the organization.

The Hulu program gives the primary caregiver 20 weeks of pay (12 weeks in a row – think the traditional FMLA time that is required but with pay), and 8 weeks of pay that can be used as transition time. These 8 weeks is to be used to slowly transition those primary caregivers back into their work life.

Primary caregiver is defined as birth mother, same-sex parent who is going to primary caregiver or father if the father is going to be the primary caregiver.

On top of this, the secondary caregiver in Hulu’s program, traditionally the father, also gets 8 weeks of paid leave to use as they need to support the primary caregiver. That means a secondary caregiver can decide when this time needs to be used, within the first year of life of the child.

Hulu’s philosophy was we can’t build just one maternity/paternity program because everyone’s situation is different. It has to be flexible for all of our arrangements. Each family is different and unique, and if truly want this program to deliver our desired outcomes (increased retention, high engagement, and loyalty) we need to develop a program that is customizable for each person.

“Customizable”!? HR? Benefits? Policies? Wait, that sounds different!

Sounds pretty cool to me. Sounds like the future of HR to me.

Combine great ideas with what our employees actually want and need with technology and organizations can make great things happen!

Check out HR Tech Fest – it’s their first year in the U.S., and they put on a really great conference. No detail was forgotten, the content was world-class and the attendees were highly engaged! I’ll be back!

The Tim Sackett Project

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

Category Archives: HR Technology