Hey, gang! I did some TalentTalk videos over at Saba’s Blog!
The one that was released this week is about What should you say to that great employee you have that interviewed for a promotion, but you decided to give it to someone else!?
That’s a toughy, right!? Take a listen:
You can check out all of my other posts on Saba’s blog as well by clicking on this link!
On the Weekly Dose this week I review HRmarketer’s new Brand Advocacy product. If you don’t know who HRmarketer is they are someone you should probably take a look at. They were originally developed as a real-time data and HR industry insights product to help drive HR marketing and media relations campaigns, primarily for the HR vendor community to sell better to all of us (and they still do a great job at doing that!).
What HRmarketer found out over the past years was that they had built most of what an Employment Brand function would need to have a fully automated employee brand advocacy tool as well. Since they already built a brand advocacy tool for vendors, building one for employees was pretty similar with a few changes.
So, what the heck is an employee brand advocacy tool!?
Think of Employee Brand Advocacy the way you think about all those consumer brand you follow socially and love. One of my favorite brands is Nike. I follow them on Instagram, FB, Twitter, etc. If they share cool content, I tend to share a lot of that cool content with my followers. As you can imagine, Nike loves this kind of content share, because it’s coming from a fan.
Now, think about how you can use that with employees with your employer brand.
Not all of our employees love us. Some just like us, or they’re on the path to loving us! We all have a few employees that are truly in love with us! They love us, we love them! If you asked these employees to share some content with their networks, they would in a second! Without even asking why. Remember, they love you!
If you truly want to build and grow your employment brand, you need employee brand advocates! Now, you can do this manually and send a million emails asking for help, then send more emails showing them a piece of content to share, then hoping most will share. You can do that. It’s tough, and it’s hard to maintain.
This is where HRmarketer comes into play by automating the entire employee brand advocacy function for you! It’s like Employee Brand Advocacy on steroids!
What I like about HRmarketer’s Employer Brand Advocacy program:
– It’s priced to get people to test it! You don’t pay by the size of your company, you pay by the number of advocates that use the program. So, you can start small with one group and see how it works, then, as you prove the value, you can expand where you need it. (HR vendors should take note, this is a great pricing model).
– Super easy to create as many employee groups as you want. By skill, by location, by demographics, by hiring a manager, etc. Want more female referrals? Just create a group of all of your female employee brand ambassadors and have this group share content and job openings with their network.
– Advocates don’t have to live inside the platform. Once it’s set up and permissions approved, email reminders of new content go directly to your ambassadors who can then pick and choose what content they share and how they share it. You can also set up mobile and desktop notifications as well for new content.
– It measures the analytics so you have real data on the effectiveness of various content you share. Plus, you can also see which advocates are having the most impact, and figure out how can you leverage these employee ambassadors even more, or even set up rewards.
I’m a gigantic fan of this technology!
If you’re running a large TA shop, an employee brand advocacy program is a must. If you want to do it really well, employee brand advocacy automation is a must. HRmarketer made this platform super easy to use, you don’t have to be techy to use it, and they made it cost effective to test and show your organization the value.
So, I tell you to demo a lot. I know, I love tech and I geek out about this stuff, but this is one you really need to demo if you want to start an employee brand ambassador program, or just have interest in what and how other organizations are using these programs to expand their employment brand. Just demo it, you’ll see!
The Weekly Dose – 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 The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net
Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.
If you didn’t know April 10th is national Equal Pay Day!
How are you spending today celebrating this Ummm, well, holiday-ish thingy?
I have yet to see a company do this, but it would be awesome to see them make all the white dudes come to work and everyone else who is affected by pay inequality actually gets the day off, with pay!
I know, you probably clicked to come read this article because you thought I was going to give you some right-winged propaganda about how Pay Inequality wasn’t real and it was just made up by the left! If that was your thought, you really don’t know me!
Pay inequality is real and I know it’s real because I’ve worked two decades in HR and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve run the compensation reports and sat down with executives to show them the real data we were facing as an organization.
Was it 70 cents on the dollar to men? No, not in my experience, but it was enough to be embarrassing. It was enough to show we had real sexist and racist assholes working for us making pay decisions.
Here’s my take on Pay Equality Day…
We own this as HR. I was once asked to step down and leave a company because I went into the executive boardroom as an HR professional and said, either you pay these women the same as the dudes, or I’ll quit. They took that as my resignation because they were not about to pay the women the same. That’s cowardly leadership, but it proves a point.
We – HR – own this. It’s not hiring managers. It’s not CEOs or CFOs or COOs. It’s you and me.
If HR allows a hiring manager to make an offer to any candidate for less than others are being paid in the same role, and we don’t stop that, we own it!
If you don’t stop it, or you believe you can’t stop it, you can quit and go to work for an organization that respects all their employees. If you don’t, you are now complicit in pay inequality. You are now the problem, not the hiring managers, and not the executives.
Now, should you quit and give an ultimatum like I did? Hell no! I was young and stupid.
What I should have done is approached this with a plan and a solution to fix our problem. If at that point, I was told we didn’t have a problem, or we would not be fixing this problem, then I have some decisions to make. My solution was to change employees salaries now or I’m going to throw a fit. That doesn’t work in the real world of budgets, and stock prices, and, well, life.
It took us a lot of time to get into this position, you don’t get out of it overnight. In hindsight, here’s what I should have done to fix our pay inequality issues:
1. Discover the importance of this issue with the leadership team and our legal team. I can do a lot of things, but if this is considered a non-issue by both my executive team and my legal team, I’m not getting anything done.
2. Stop all new pay equity issues. I might not be able to change the past, immediately, but I can definitely ensure no new issues come in the door!
3. Make a plan, with finance, on how you recommend we solve historical pay equity issues, and request an audience to dual-present this plan on this issue with myself and finance. By doing this, I would have known what we can actually do financially and have the buy-in already from those writing the checks.
4. Discover who my true offenders are, and deal with these folks first. In my experience, pay equity issues rarely are equal across an organization. It’s usually small pockets of hiring managers and locations that are doing bad things. “Well, Tim, we’ve always paid the ‘gals’ a little less because they tend to leave and have babies!” Oh boy! Even after coaching, discipline, etc., I don’t allow these folks to make compensation decisions. They lost this responsibility for a long time.
5. Develop and run quarterly or monthly reporting and ensure your leadership and legal team are aware of your progress.
6. Tell your employees what you’re doing.
Pay equity is an HR issue. HR owns it.
We are now responsible for what happens in our organizations when it comes to compensation because we all have been put on notice. If you don’t take this responsibility then you shouldn’t be in HR.
There is a phrase that is often used in a number of contexts, the phrase is:
“Stay true to the game”
I’ve always almost seen it used when talking about sports, and almost always in basketball. But I’ve seen it used across pop culture for decades.
“The game” is that thing you do. Maybe it’s sales. Maybe it’s accounting. Maybe it’s basketball. My ‘game’ is recruiting. Third-party, corporate, RPO, the vendors that support recruiting, we are all in the same game.
“Stay true” well that’s a little more difficult to define for each of us. What does it mean to ‘stay true’ to recruiting?
If you pull out recruiting and think about what does it mean to ‘be true’ to anything. Think about that one thing you’re most passionate about. How are you ‘true’ to that passion? How do you think about it? How do you ensure it’s number one in your life? What do you give to that passion to demonstrate it’s your truth?
I think this helps to start paint the picture of what being true to recruiting is all about.
My game is recruiting. If I’m true to my game there are things I need to do. Here are some of things I do to stay true to my game:
– Consume anything about recruiting I can get my hands on.
– Network with people in recruiting at all levels that are better than me.
– Take calls and notes from others in the field who want my knowledge and share constantly.
– Constantly think and act in a way that will raise my game.
– Understand that being true to recruiting is a choice. My choice.
If I’m going to be true to my game I need to constantly search for ways to raise my game and raise the game overall as a profession.
I’m a busy guy (aren’t we all!). I run a staffing company (HRU Technical Resources). I write every day and share freely with the community. I wrote a book (The Talent Fix). I volunteered and I’m on the board of the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP) as the President-Elect, and I run the Michigan’s Recruiter’s Conference each year.
At the same time, I constantly push my team to leverage the latest and greatest recruiting technology on the planet, and push them to be life-long learners of sourcing and recruiting. I’m sure that isn’t the easiest environment to work in. But, I’m staying true to the game.
It’s Monday. You have a choice to make today. Do you stay true to your game, or not?
Do you even know what your “game” is? If you do, congratulations, you are already on a great path! A powerful path! Knowing what game is yours is more than half the battle. Once you find it, the work to stay true isn’t work, it almost becomes an obsession of sorts! In a good way!
So, my challenge to you this Monday is simple. In the comments below, tell me what your game is. Then, tell me what you’ll do this week to stay true to your game! Go.
Hey gang!
I’m on the road this week at the Greenhouse OPEN. What’s Greenhouse? It’s one of the top ATSs on the planet – but you already know that if you read my blog!
The Greenhouse OPEN is basically their user conference, where Greenhouse users and those considering using Greenhouse come together as Talent Acquisition Pros and Leaders to experience great recruiting related content from a corporate TA point of view.
I love attending conferences with great TA content, and Greenhouse has done a really great job growing this conference to 1,000 participants. You know it’s good TA content when it doesn’t matter if you use Greenhouse or not, to get a ton out of the sessions.
Also, being that Greenhouse is designed for corporate TA, and not having third-party recruiters in the room, you really get a ton of great sharing and conversation taking place between attendees.
Here’s some cool stuff I learned:
– Some organizations are using very specific, un-produced video, to source candidates! How? Instead of sending a candidate a blind email or text, the recruiter takes their iPhone and records a quick video to the specific person they want and sends them the link to watch. “Hey Tim, I found you and want to talk to you about…Here’s why you would be great…Etc.” The response rate from the organization using this is super high, as you can imagine.
– Organizations are worried about Recruiter Experience! You know what, you do not want your hiring process to suck for candidates. We all get that 100%! But, what about your recruiters? Does it suck to work as a recruiter in your environment? If it does, that might be worse for your organization in attracting talent, then if your CX sucks. We tend not to even give this concept of Recruiter Experience any thought at all, but we should!
– Across all industries, text response rates from candidates are running 70%-ish, in all kinds of roles from hourly to salaried, tech to healthcare. Texting candidates keep coming up as either something organizations can’t live without, or something they are not using, and don’t want to use. I find this really strange, as it seems like it’s a form of communication that everyone is using. Being able to have etiquette and rules of engagement are important.
– Not all employee referrals are created equal. Great employees are more likely to refer great referrals. Bad employees are more likely to refer bad employees. You don’t want bad referrals, so it’s best to have a program that allows you to segment and know who is providing you with your best referrals. Manually, this is difficult, but with technology like Greenhouse and Teamable, you can start to get a real sense of who should be referring more in your environment.
I’m going to keep advocating that you find ways to spend more time with other TA pros and leaders. We learn from each other when we are in safe, and encouraging environments to share. Does that have to be at a conference in New York? Nope. It’s great if you get the chance, but you can also start or find local outlets for groups of peers to get together.
I love that Greenhouse and others are showing the industry the way, and I thank them for bringing so many great and giving TA pros together. Such a powerful way to learn and develop as a professional!
I use to think the title ‘HR Partner’ was played out and it probably was for a time. There was a point a few years ago when every HR Pro had to change their title from HR Manager, HR Director, etc., to HR Partner. It always made me feel like we were all apart of a bad cowboy movie, ‘Giddy up, Partner!’
I’ve actually grown to really like the “Partner” in the title of an HR Professional. While many HR Pros just changed their title, I’ve met some great ‘Partners’ in HR who have changed their game, to match their title change.
What makes a Great HR Partner Great? Here are 5 things I think makes them game changers:
1. Great HR Partners know your business. Now, wait. I didn’t say they ‘knew their own business’, they know the business of who they support. But wait, there’s more! They know the business of who they support, the way the person or team they support knows it. Say what?! It’s not good enough to know the business of your organization. You have to know how those you support know and support the business.
That could be different, based on the leader. One leader might be ultra-conservative in their business practices, another risky. A great HR Partner knows how to support them in the way those they support, want to be supported – while still being able to do the HR part of their job.
2. Great HR Partners have a short-term memory. Great baseball pitchers don’t remember one pitch to the next. Each pitch is new. Each pitch has a potential for success. If they remembered each pitch, the last one, that was hit for a home run, would cloud their judgment about the next pitch.
Great HR Partners are willing to change their mind and try new things. They don’t carry around their experiences like a suitcase, pulling them out and throwing them on the table each time those they support want to try something new. Don’t forget about your failures, but also don’t let your failures stop you from trying again.
3. Great HR Partners allow risk. A great HR Partner is able and willing to accept that organizations have risk. It is not the job of HR to eliminate risk, it is the job of HR to advise of risk, then find ways to help those they support, their partners, to achieve the optimal results in spite of those risks. Far too many HR Partners attempt to eliminate risk and become the ‘No’ police. Great HR Partners know when to say “No” and when to say “Yes”.
4. Great HR Partners don’t pass blame. If you are a great HR partner and you work with great partners, you will all support each other in the decision making process. A great HR Partner will never pass blame but will accept their share as being one of those who supported the decision to move forward.
This doesn’t mean you become a doormat. Behind closed doors, with your partners, you hash out what there is to hash out. When the doors open – all partners support the final decision that is made. A Great HR Partner will have the influence to ensure they can, and will, support that decision when those doors open up.
5. Great HR Partners don’t wait to be asked. A great partner in any capacity is going to support those they support with every skill they have available to them. In HR we have people skills – so when those who we support have issues, we offer up our ideas on what we can do to help the team. Great HR Partners don’t stop at HR advice! In a time of brainstorming and problem solving the idea that goes unshared, is the worst kind of idea.
I might not know operations, and I will say that up front, but I’m going to put myself out there and tell my partners that eliminating the rubber grommets on bottom of the widget is a bad idea, because while it saves us $.13 per unit, it also makes our product slide around and that ultimately will piss off the customer.
Being an ‘HR Partner’ has very little to do with HR. Those you support expect you have the HR expertise. What they don’t expect is how great of a ‘partner’ you can be. Great HR Partners focus on the partnership, not on the HR.
Have you heard of the dating concept called, “Stashing”?
Here’s the Urban Dictionary definition of stashing (editor’s note: you know you’re about to read a great HR post when it starts with a definition from Urban Dictionary!):
“Stashing is when you’re in a relationship with someone and you refuse to introduce them to your friends and family; mostly because you view the person as temporary, replaceable, and/or you’re an assh@le.”
There are other reasons you might ‘stash’ someone. Maybe you know your friends and family would approve of this person, so you stash them because you still like them, but you don’t want to upset your friends and family. Maybe you’re worried your friends might try and move in on this person themselves, so you stash them.
But, usually, stashing has more to do with there is something about the person that embarrasses you, most likely because you’re a shallow, horrible person, so you stash this person you’re in a relationship with. On the leadership side, stashing actually takes the exact opposite effect.
Leadership Stashing
Leadership stashing is when a leader purposely makes sure one of their direct reports doesn’t have a high profile, so that other managers within the same organization won’t know you have a rock star on your team and then try to steal them to their team.
This happens all the time, especially within large organizations!
Here’s how it works. I’m a leader of a group, my name is Tim. A year ago I hired Marcus right out of college. Your basic new hire grad. Green as grass, just like every other new graduate. I quickly came to understand that Marcus had ‘it’. He was a natural. I know Marcus will easily be better than me in the near future if he’s not already better than me.
As a leader, I’ve got a decision to make. Keep Marcus stashed on my team and reap the professional benefits, or position Marcus for promotion, in which I’ll probably lose him off my team. With Marcus on my team, I exceeded all my measures last year, and Timmy got a big bonus. So did Marcus.
When asked in leadership meeting what I’m doing with my ‘team’ to exceed all my measures, I let everyone know some of the ‘new’ leadership accountability strategies I’m using, and how it really comes back to setting great measures and then holding your team accountable to meeting those measures. Marcus, specifically, doesn’t come up.
Am I a bad leader?
Yes, and this is happening in every organization on the planet.
We love to frame this around, “well, Marcus just needs some more seasoning, and I’m the right person to give it to him”. “Marcus is young, and not quite ready.” “Under my leadership, Marcus is thriving, but under some of these other yahoos, who knows what might happen.”
The right thing to do is obvious and simple. My group is doing well, I let the organization know, it’s a team effort, but you all have to know, I hired a rock star, and we need to get Marcus on a fast track to leadership. That’s the right thing, but it’s not as easy as it sounds when you’ve been struggling to climb your own ladder.
What we know is leaders stash talent.
It’s our job as HR pros and leaders to find that stashed talent and elevate that talent within the organization. If we don’t, that talent will most likely leave because being stashed sucks in life and in your career.
I love the concept of questions that will truly show you who someone is. We’ve gone through a long history of asking basic interview questions that don’t really get to the heart of anything. “So, Timmy, tell me what you would like to be doing three years from now?” Okay, well, sitting on a beach drinking margaritas sounds better than this. How am I doing? Did I get the job?
For my interview questions, I really want to understand how someone thinks. What are their true motivations? What gets them up in the morning? It might not be the job I have, in fact, I hope it’s not the job I have because that would be depressing. I don’t get up in the morning for the job I have, I get up because I’m a grown-ass man with a responsibility to take care of my family. I really like my job, but my job is not my motivation.
So, what’s my new favorite interview question? It’s simply this:
So, with the latest data scandal at Facebook, did you delete your Facebook account?
I ask, then I shut up and wait for an answer.
What am I looking for? I’m looking for people who aren’t so naive and fragile that a data breach on a free platform that they willingly signed up for wouldn’t cause them to freak out.
I’m looking for candidates who would go, “no, why would I?” They would describe the process of signing up for Facebook, knowing they were getting value out of something they never paid a dime to use, and knowing that came with a cost. That cost? It’s your data.
I’ll tell you, that isn’t the only right answer. The other answer I would accept is, “Yes, I did, and I also deleted LinkedIn, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, etc. I deleted these because I was tired of using free platforms that I know manipulated me and take my data, and I finally got to a point where I didn’t want that to happen any longer.”
Either answer, I would be good with. Both answers show me that the candidate has a pretty good head on their shoulders to understand how the real world works. The same kind of head my grandparents had. No one gives you a free lunch. If you’re getting a free lunch, there is an expectation that you’ll be giving the person paying something, eventually.
If the candidate did delete their Facebook profile, then went right out to Twitter to announce it, then, well, that’s an answer to. It’s not the answer I’m looking for in a candidate I want working for me. I don’t need employees who are shocked by the basic realities of life. It was free, but it cost billions of dollars to make. How do you think they’re paying for it?
Oh, I just love the perfect interview question! Designed correctly, it can give you such great insight to an individual! So, what’s your favorite interview question?
Every year, American employees leave 430 million vacation days up for grabs. (If you were wondering, that’s 1,178,082 years of unused vacation every year.)
Or in other words, way too much time.
We already know Americans are by and large workaholics. But still, if you own a small business, there are some days you should definitely give off to your employees. And it’s helpful to know what that mix of days should be.
That’s where I come in. I’ll show you how to build your own paid holiday schedule for your small business, using benchmarking data as our trusty guide.
Let’s start with the main question on your mind: How much time off do people normally get? An average full-time employee in a small, privately-owned business in the U.S. receives about 7.6 paid holidays per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number also breaks down even further:
While that’s the average, other studies have shown most employees report getting about nine paid holidays per year. Think about these benchmarks as you decide on the number that will work best for you business.
There are no federal laws requiring employers to give PTO, but most companies offer it anyway. Why? Because it’s a must to attract and retain great employees. In fact, PTO is the second most important benefit to employees, right after health insurance.
Now, onto the next layer of the paid holiday puzzle: Choosing the actual days you give off.
Click through this link to my Gusto post to get the rest of this riveting content!
No, really, I promise, it’s good stuff! Have I ever steered you wrong?
Or, is this just the reality of workplaces today, in the world we live in with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements?
That’s the question I was asking myself this week when the Wall Street Journal reported that a group of female employees at Nike circulated their own survey about workplace behaviors. Here are some details from the Quartz at Work article:
According to The Wall Street Journal, the developments were precipitated by an employee-led survey circulated among women at the company. It reportedly asked respondents about inappropriate behavior by men at the company and gender inequities more generally.
Sources told the paper that Parker eventually learned of the survey, which led to a recently completed six-month formal review of company culture. Then, last week, employees learned that Nike brand president Trevor Edwards, widely considered Parker’s likely successor, would step down in August, while one of his top lieutenants, vice president Jayme Martin, was terminated immediately. According to the Journal, the two men “protected male subordinates who engaged in behavior that was demeaning to female colleagues.”
So, before I give you my opinion, I have to tell you I’m a complete Nike fanboy! My first pair of Nike’s happened around the 6th grade when I was in high school the first Air Jordan’s were released. I saved my money all summer to get my first pair (by the way, I came home from college to find my Dad mowing the lawn in these same shoes, believing since I left them in my closet I no longer wanted them!). I’m not a complete sneakerhead, but I’m a wannabe sneakerhead for sure. I love Nike, as much as anyone can love a brand.
I believe Nike’s culture is fine. It’s probably better than most places to work in the world by a great deal. I feel this way from people I know who work there and feedback I hear in HR circles. Nike is not Uber, by a million miles.
I think this shows that every workplace, no matter how good, still has some things we need to clean up. Should female employees at Nike have to circulate their own survey to deal with poor workplace behaviors? No. But, understand that Nike, over most companies, hires emboldened, powerful women. That means this isn’t surprising. The surprising part would be that these women didn’t take action.
I’m not sitting in Nike, so I don’t know if the response that happened was right, or enough. On the outside looking in, it seems like the senior leadership team handled this appropriately.
In the past, I can only imagine how this would have been handled, but my guess is it wouldn’t have been with a senior leader leaving the company, it probably would have been a lot of coaching these female employees around the appropriate way to lodge a complaint, followed by many of these females eventually leaving or being pushed out.
That was the old HR/leadership playbook. That playbook no longer works.
I would love to hear your opinion on this real HR issue and how it was handled by a very visible brand? Hit me in the comments!