Category Archives: Leadership

Career Confessions of GenZ w/@CamSackett: Maybe You Should Take Our Smartphones Away!

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March Madness is fully upon us. This season unites us all over a love for college basketball or in my case, a love for winning money by googling an article about who the “Cinderella” teams are and somehow winning your neighborhood pool (it’s only happened once). Whether your team is out (sorry Dad) or still fighting (Go Blue!), the close matches between teams can be super distracting to everyone. I know that I was watching a game in class the other day, and I don’t even like basketball that much!

It’s been found that March Madness may potentially cost employers $4 billion in productivity. It’s almost impossible to stay focused when there’s a #16 seed beating a #1 seed! (shoutout to the person running the UMBC twitter). One negative marker of Gen-Z is our ability to be easily distracted or our inability to pay attention to one thing for long periods of time. An average college student’s attention span is somewhere between 10-15 minutes, while most classes are over an hour. Although this isn’t an argument about our screwed up education system, it does open up a conversation about how to best approach the use of things such as cell phones and social media which can be very distracting.

I’ve had a cell phone since I was 10 when a family friend forgot to pick me up at swim practice. Some younger members of Gen-Z have gotten them even younger than me. We have grown up with these distractions around us at all times, and it can be difficult to manage.

I am a big fan of teachers that try to embrace the qualities of Gen-Z rather than fight it. More and more, I see teachers and professors trying to implement activities using cell phones or allowing laptops in class. Although I commend these teachers for trying to work with us, it isn’t working. Every single time I bring my laptop to class, I end up online shopping and missing some important information. The same can be said when cell phones or social media is involved.

Although it seems I’m advocating for an eradication of all cell phones and social media use during work hours, I’m not. Frankly, I don’t really know the rules of cell phones at most offices, but I know that my Dad is pretty quick to respond to my texts during the day. What I am saying is that a healthy encouragement of no cell phone use is a good idea.

I think that something like a station where you could drop off and charge your phone for a period of time could be really beneficial to boosting productivity. When I have to get work done, I’ll go put my phone across my apartment from me and turn it off completely to avoid distractions. Whoever says they are good at multi-tasking is LYING. Whenever my phone lights up, I want to check it and I know you do too.

I don’t have a solid answer for you on this one. It’s a tricky topic that isn’t black and white, but it is important to acknowledge. It is important to remind your Gen-Z employees that they are adults and cell phones aren’t banned like they are in a lot of schools. Also, it is important to remind them that this is a place of work and they are getting paid to do a job, not to sit on their phones and send Snapchats about how bored they are (that’s all that we are doing on Snapchat. I promise!). Let me know what you think in the comments!

 

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

 

3 Ways Employers Should Be Encouraging March Madness!

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For those that know me, I’m a huge basketball fan.  Pro, college, AAU, high school, hell, if you really dig into my past you would probably find me hanging out at some playground breaking down the defense effort of a pickup game between grade school kids.  So, when March Madness time comes around each year I’m like many of your employees.  I’m trying to find the best ways to work and watch basketball, or at the very least stay up on my brackets and see who is getting upset!

With all the hype over the past few years about lost productivity, do to March Madness, in the workplace.  I felt it was my duty to provide HR Pros with some helpful tips and tricks to get your staff to highly productive during this time of year.

Here are my ideas:

1. Put up TVs throughout the office.  Let’s face it, you really only have one or two hoops junkies in the office, and those folks usually spend vacation time to ensure they don’t miss a minute.  Everyone else just wants to see scores and highlights.  They’re a casual fan.  They’re willing to work a perfectly normal day, and will probably be just a productive, if not more, with the TVs steaming all the games in the background.  Plus, if you get a close game or big upset, you’ll get some team excitement in the air.  This also stops most of your staff trying to stream the games on their desktops for the entire afternoon.

2. Call off work those afternoons.  Let’s face it, March Madness is pretty close to a national holiday as we will ever get.  Doesn’t matter if you’re female or male, young or old, what religion you are, we all love the drama and excitement of March Madness.  Just close the office.  Make a deal with your staff to reach certain goals and if they’re met, take them to the local watering hole yourself and have some fun with it.  Employees like to rally around a fun idea.  You don’t have to make everything fun, all the time, but once in a while, it helps to lift productivity.

3. Shut off all access.  Yep, you read that correctly. Have IT shut down all access to anything related to March Madness.  Threaten to fire any employee caught checking scores on their smartphone, or calling a friend to see how it’s going.  Fear!  Fear is a great short-term lifter of productivity.  Whether we like to admit it, or not, it’s true.  If you went out right now into your office and told the entire staff at the end of the day you’re firing the least productive person, you would see productivity shoot through the roof!  You would also see about half your staff, the half you want to keep, put in their notice over the next 4-6 weeks.

The reality is, most people will do business as usual.  While the CNN’s of the world love to point to the millions of dollars American corporations lose during March Madness, it’s no different than so many things that can consume our thoughts in any given day.

I do think HR and leadership, each year, lose out on a great way to have fun and raise engagement during March Madness.  It’s something most of your staff has some interest in, and depending on your city and the schools your employees went to, it can get heightened pretty significantly.

For the record, I’m not picking Michigan State.  I want to with all my might, but I’m nervous that my bracket mojo would work the opposite, so I’ll pick someone else, and feel awesome when Sparty wins and I lose my bracket!

 

Are HR Conferences Responsible for Ensuring You Connect? #UltiConnect

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So, this week I’m out at Ultimate Software’s annual customer conference called Ultimate Connections. They do a great job with their conference, and like their software, they’re willing to change quickly and try stuff.

A couple of things happened while I was here and it got me thinking about what the true value of any conference is we attend. Of course, the easy answer is always – it’s about connecting with peers and learning! But, then you show up at the conference and you talk to know one, you ask no questions, and you’re back in your room by 8 pm.

Ultimate Connections has peer networking time, but like many conferences, they make these sessions, with activities, based on the size of similar organizations. This is brilliant for a number of reasons because you now will make some really good connections and share your pain and successes, and down the road when you have a question you now have a handful of people to reach out to!

Speaking of questions. You know that awkward time at the end of conference sessions when the speaker says – “So, any questions?” and you hear crickets, or that one person who will ask, “Is the powerpoint deck available?”

Ultimate figured this happens to everyone so what’s a better way to increase engagement? How about you give the session attendees a phone number to text your questions to throughout the session!? It’s simple and you can’t believe how many questions come in. As a speaker, you bring a partner who can filter similar questions and now you have some real dynamic Q&A to go along with your session!

Conferences, for the most part, are all fairly similar. You get some great content, some average, some cool keynotes, some parties, a vendor show, etc. The reality is the best conference you’ll ever attend is the one where you remember actually connecting with real people, and you maintain those connections.

That will be a great takeaway for the Ultimate team in how can they continue the great connections beyond the conference with their customers. Not only is a super value-add for the attendees, but it also ensures higher retention when you can build your professional network because of the technology you’re using.

So, as the HR conference season gets into full swing, challenge yourself to force yourself to make connections with people you don’t know and build that network!

HR Blogging is about making HR Connections #UltiConnect

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An HR friend of mine, Cheryl Nelson, and I are out at Ultimate Connections, Ultimate Software’s annual user conference. I twisted her arm to get her on video because she just started writing her own HR blog after reading hundreds of my posts!

Cheryl’s new blog is called “Kolor Me HR” check it out. Cheryl is a real-life HR leader/Pro who is in the trenches every day. I love when practitioners take up writing because that’s when you really learn that we are all in this together!

Cheryl said she was nervous about doing this video, but said, “Amazing things happen when you say Yes!” She even wrote a post on that concept! I love it! I think you’ll agree, she was great!

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Foresight – Workforce Planning Tech

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Today on the Weekly Dose I review workforce planning technology, Foresight.Foresight is billed as the world’s first Recruitment Forecasting technology.It creates an accurate forecast of hiring need across a specified tactical time frame.

About once a year I’m completely shocked and surprised by a technology and this is the case with Foresight. I told the Foresight team, and I’ll tell you, this is the most impressive piece of HR Technology I’ve seen in a long time!

Foresight was built by some corporate talent acquisition professionals that got sick and tired of putting out fires. What we know if TA has very little control over workforce forecasting it comes from hiring managers, CFOs, CEOs, etc. So, they built a technology that kept that in mind, and got them out of fighting the recruiting fires of ‘we need to hire 100 engineers in thirty days’, ‘oh, wait, we need to layoff 300 now instead’, ‘check that, hire 1,000 total across all functions’!

What I like about Foresight:

– The platform sends out an internal email to each hiring manager from the executive explaining what needs to take place, and takes them into the systems and walks them through a very short forecasting process (15 min.) set of questions (executive can also speak to the team via video as well).

– The process takes them through the main areas of: headcount planning, known active recruiting, potential growth needs, and interns/apprenticeships. Calculates everything in a roll-up, and gives the organization a predicted recruitment path for the next twelve months.

– Hiring managers have to follow the system, they can’t skip steps or change. They can leave comments to explain, but they have to put in something.

– Executives get updates on hiring managers not completely their forecast.

– The platform works off live, real-time data, as a position gets filled, everything is updated, someone leaves, another update. Real current recruitment needs are at your fingertips, across your entire organization. Update forecasts can be sent out monthly, quarterly, up to the organization.

– After hiring manager puts in the forecast, there is an approval roll-up that takes place, so when it all comes back to TA, the department is ready to go with full approval.

Basically, anyone in the organization, from TA leader to hiring managers, to executives, can get a list of every single role being recruited for and when that role needs to be filled.

I’m in love with this from the simplicity of how it works to how if used consistently it becomes a cultural driver around your talent strategy. Everyone is onboard and in the know of what’s going on. Clearly, this is an enterprise level technology. You probably don’t need forecasting tech if you’re hiring 100 employees a year, but 500-100,000 hires, across multiple locations and countries, you need this.

Well worth a demo if you find yourself in a very typical TA role of constantly starting and stopping, and not really having a great idea around what the organization needs to hire on an ongoing basis. Bad TA happens when you can’t get out of firefighting mode. Great TA happens when you have a plan and can go make real long-term strategies to attract great talent.

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

How Many Beers Does it Take to Get Your Employees to Peak Performance?

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Did you see that winter Olympic athletes were using beer as a recovery drink!?

The science says that non-alcoholic beer, used as a recovery drink for sports, is better than normal sports drinks like Gatorade. From the NPR article:

Appalachian State University’s David Nieman has studied phenols’ health effects. On the whole, phenol-rich diets tend to lower inflammation and reduce the risk of sickness, he says. “[Polyphenols] have a very unique molecular structure that can actually regulate the genes that control inflammation,” in addition to general antiviral properties, says Nieman.

In 2011, Nieman and the University of Munich’s Johannes Scherr investigated the effects of beer, which contains around 50 phenols, on athletes — whose intense physical activity can compromise their immune activity. When marathon runners were instructed to drink 1.5 liters of nonalcoholic beer a day, their risk of upper respiratory infection was reduced. The activity of white blood cells, a good indicator of inflammation, was lowered 20 percent.

All over the world, we were trying to figure out why the Germans were kicking our butts in all these events and the secret was they drink a bunch of this new ‘sports’ beer!

If non-alcoholic beer helped athletes recover more quickly from grueling workouts, then it could allow them to train harder. Scherr credits the nonalcoholic beer’s salubrious effects to its high concentration of polyphenols, immune-boosting chemicals from the plants with which its brewed.

“After that, we really had the proof: It’s really healthy and not only a marketing gag,” said Holger Eichele, the chief executive of the German Brewers Association. From 2011 to 2016, German consumption of nonalcoholic beer grew 43 percent even as overall beer consumption declined, according to Euromonitor International. New brewing techniques helped to diversify and improve the flavor, and now there are more than 400 non-alcoholic beers on the market in Germany. Germans drink more nonalcoholic beer than any nation, except Iran.

So, making beer available to our employees became super popular as a ‘benefit’ to offer up over the past decade, as employers looked to attract millennials and show how ‘super cool’ they are to work for. Work hard, play hard!

What we didn’t know, was that we had it just a tiny bit wrong! We should be giving beer to our employees, but it should be non-alcoholic beer, not the normal stuff!

The one aspect of both articles I thought had particular interest to employers was the social aspect of drinking beer. All over the world, people drink beer in mostly social settings. We tend to see drinking beer as a social activity.

So, having a beer at work isn’t necessarily a bad idea, if it was non-alcoholic and it increased our employees to interact more with each other. Plus, if it actually helps your employees recover faster from those grueling all-night coding sessions, heck, we better give it a try!

The Cancer of Speaking Up!

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There was a post recently on TLNT by Tim Kuppler titled Society is Holding Organizations and Leaders Accountable for Their Culture. Go read it, it’s really good. I agree with so much of what Tim wrote in the piece.

There is one concept though that I’m beginning to question. Kuppler wants to believe that we have a problem in our society and that problem is people are afraid to speak up to their leadership.

About a decade ago I would have 100% agreed with him. In fact, I probably spent more time in training sessions working with leaders on how to get employees to open up, then any other single thing in my HR career a decade ago!

In 2018, we do not have a problem with employees speaking up. In fact, it’s a full-blown Cancer! Yes, I want employees to speak up when they have something of value to add to the conversation, or if they or another employee are being wronged. No, I don’t want to hear your idiot opinions that have nothing to do with anything we have going on to make us better!

I get it. Everyone should have a voice! We are in a time when people have the right to speak up.

Just because you have the right, doesn’t mean you should open your dumb mouth! You have employees in non-leadership positions who should open their mouth and add to the conversation. And, you have employees who make you dumber when they open their mouth.

Your company isn’t a democracy. Turns out businesses don’t run well as democracies. When everyone has a say, we tend to get very cautious and very vanilla, and no innovation happens, as we try to take into account every single opinion. The business gets pulled to the middle. “Middle” is not a good position for businesses.

The challenge we have as leaders and HR pros is not giving everyone a voice. It’s finding the best and brightest in our organizations, regardless of race, gender, etc., and making sure ‘those’ people have a voice.

The fastest way to failure is to listen to everyone and take into account every opinion. That isn’t helpful. Having the foresight to understand there are really great voices beyond your leadership team could be your greatest insight of all, but understand it’s not everyone.

In a representative government, you want all voices to come through. In business, you want the voices to come through that can actually make a positive difference. Unfortunately, that isn’t everyone who works for you.

In business and leadership right now we have a cancer that is growing out of control and that cancer is a belief that every voice matters. That’s wrong. Every voice does not matter, at every time. Do you think Steve Jobs listened to every person at Apple? No, he barely listened to anyone! What about Elon Musk? Again, no. What about Marissa Mayer? Heck, no!

Great business and great innovation don’t happen by listening to everyone. They happen by listening to the right ones. That might not be popular right now in society, but that doesn’t mean it’s not right!

When Should You Let Employees Lead Themselves?

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I like to compare sports coaches to business leaders. I know it’s different, but in so many ways there are great comparisons when it comes to execution, performance, and team dynamics.

Coaches are known from time to time to get out the way and let players take over. Player only meetings, player-coaches, etc.

What coaches find is that their teams will sometimes stop listening (sound familiar leaders!?), or they’ve have heard them say the same thing so often, it no longer has the impact it once did. So, have the players be the coach! What you usually find is the players say basically the same thing as the coach, but in a slightly different way and the team responds!

Steve Kerr, the coach of the NBA Golden State Warriors did this last week with a couple of players who had the night off due to injury, rest, etc. He basically let them coach the timeout huddles. Now, he did this with three players he knew could handle it and three players that have high respect for their teammates (see the video below):

There is no doubt each of those players could become a coach when their playing days are over, just like Kerr did if they wanted.

My question is, would this work in a real work setting?

Do you think that your employees, left to ‘coaching’ themselves would respond in a positive way?

Maybe, but most likely not unless you prepared them for this. I’m guessing Kerr has had some time in practice with these three players talking strategy and full confidence that his vision, was also their vision. Because of these “pre-session”, he felt comfortable that the wheels weren’t going to come off.

The other factor here is you need a team that completely trusts one another. The team reacted positively because each of them knew that the player, now playing the role of coach, wanted the same thing they wanted, to win. To make them look good. To use their strengths to accomplish the outcome.

I’m guessing if you walked into your department tomorrow and brought everyone into the conference room and threw Jill a whiteboard marker and said: “Okay, I’m going to have Jill tell us the sales strategy for the 2nd quarter!” Everyone would look sideways and Jill would probably want to have a private conversation!

But, if you had many conversations with Jill and you felt she was prepared and ready, then maybe it could be a positive for her and for the team, believing you had confidence they could make it happen!  I like leaders who try things, given they try things based on skill and preparation.

What do you think? Should Kerr have put players in charge over other players? How would this play in your work environment?

Are you willing to reduce your office cafeteria prices for female employees?

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I read an article a few weeks back in Detroit about a local gym that is offering a reduced gym membership for females. Males pay full price, females pay 30% less because females make less than males. How does that sound?

From the article:

“Ever wonder why XY>XX? WE DO! The Gym values its male members tremendously but we don’t value them a THIRD more than our female members!” the ad reads

The ad goes on to read that women can join for $20 a month with no initiation fee. The Gym Lake Orion’s ad promoting that women will pay 1/3 less for membership than men. (Photo: Rich Garvin)

The manager and operator of the gym, Rich Garvin, wants to even the playing field for women due to the pay disparity between men and women. “It’s just difficult to observe injustice or unfairness,” said Garvin. “I think it’s important that we don’t sit idly by … if we do, we condone it. And I don’t condone it.”

Garvin also said he’s not raising anyone’s prices. “You can get a $30 a month membership (for $20) … having a discount, encouraging women to come in, in an attempt to make it a little easier for them to do so, I think is a good business practice and just the right thing to do.”

So, first let me call B.S. on this entire thing and say I don’t believe Rich the owner one even little bit!

The type of gym that Garvin runs is more likely frequented by weightlifting dudes. He knows if he can get more women to sign up, even more, weightlifting dudes will show up. This is just good old fashion marketing, wrapped in activism for a hook.

Can you imagine if you actually tried to do something real like this in your workplace!?

Hey, employees!

This year we’ve decided instead of actually fixing pay inequality, we’re just going to reduce the cost of everything females might pay for in our environment! Health insurance is now 30% off! Coffee at the coffee bar is now 30% off and get scones buy 1, get 1! All full priced menu items in the cafeteria will be 30% off for women only.

Male employees don’t get upset, you make more money!

Have a great week!

HR

Yeah, that probably wouldn’t play well! But, is that the ‘right thing to do’?

So, this sounds completely crazy. Of course, you would never charge employees differently for the same access to healthcare and cafeteria food! I mean come on!

But, what do you do when you know you have certain employees making less for doing the same work? Do you automatically do what’s right and adjust their salary to make it equitable?

Giving your female employees a 30% discount on cafeteria food and drinks sounds ridiculous, but so does paying a woman less for doing the same work.

Lifesaving Advice I Gave My Son When Someone Starts Shooting At His School

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Last night I had to sit my 14-year-old son down and have “the ‘talk”.

It was uncomfortable, it should be, having “the talk” is never easy for parents and their kids. Unfortunately, this wasn’t “the talk” I thought I would be having with him. This talk was about what he needed to do to stay alive when a shooter comes into his school and starts mowing down innocent kids because our American government refuses to do anything about it.

I need to take my shoes off to get on an airplane because I might have a shoe bomb and want to blow up a plane. I have to do this because 1 person, 1 time, got on a plane with a shoe bomb and burned himself.

Hundreds of school shootings have happened and thousands of kids have been killed or hurt, and we can’t figure out a way to stop this from happening. It’s not important enough for our society to change this.

This isn’t a political statement. This is a dad crying out to the universe to please stop this so I won’t be that parent on CNN telling my own child’s story because they were never given a chance to tell it on their own.

Those who were voted into a position of political power in our country, every party, every single person, have failed this nation. This isn’t a party issue. This is a kid’s are getting killed issue. You don’t need an arsenal of guns in your house to go deer hunting. You need one rifle that shoots one bullet at a time.

The 2nd Amendment in our Bill of Rights that gives us this ‘freedom’ as Americans to bear arms was written and approved by Congress in 1789. 229 years ago we needed to bear arms because a bear actually might kill you! Now, we don’t need to bear arms. We have the world’s best, most highly funded military force to protect us.

That we live in a society that allows any kind of access to teens to get their hands on guns is shameful. Teens are mostly crazy! They’re emotional. They act impulsively. They don’t think beyond the minute they’re living in. That is not a good combination to mix in access to guns and ammunition. Every single parent in the world understands this simple concept.

But, now I have to give tips and strategy to my son on how to save his life when a school shooter commences to mowing down innocent victims because Timmy’s Dad had to have an arsenal in his basement because this is “America!”

Fuck you, Timmy’s Dad!

So, here’s the advice I gave to my son, and I’m sure you’ll give to your sons and daughters. I told him to survive. Do anything you have to do to survive. Like the Hunger Games, you survive. That’s an order. For some reason, we’ve regressed hundreds of years as a society that my ‘life’ advice to my son in 2018 is simply to “Survive”.

So, ultimately, this is a failure of parenting. We have failed as parents that we elected people in our own image who have refused to fix a problem that we all want to be fixed. We failed because we don’t think this will happen to ‘our’ kid. We hate that it happens to any kid, but it won’t happen to “my” kid.

We’re stupid. It is going to happen to my kid and I can’t sleep at night knowing when I drop my son off at school tomorrow there isn’t one thing being done to save his life by those in charge of our laws in this country. Not one single thing.

Just survive, I told him…

We can stop this. In our world, it takes money to beat the bad guys who have more money right now. I donated to Everytown.org – The Movement to End Gun Violence. I’m not associated with Everytown, but I donated money so I support them. If you want to support them, great! 

(Photo cred: Larry Nodarse)