Category Archives: Leadership

Moneyball Rules: Offering More Experienced Workers Less Money!

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For years I’ve been trying to get people to understand this Moneyball concept as it relates to hiring, but few really listen. I know you saw the movie, Moneyball, where a major league baseball general manager finds success by signing and drafting ‘undervalued’ players. The players are undervalued for a number of reasons, it doesn’t matter, what matters he was able to get talent on at a discount rate!

Don’t you want to hire employees at a discount rate!?

Hired.com recently came out with a survey that once again demonstrates the most undervalued talent in any market are older workers, 50 years old and up. Apparently, once you become 50 years old, you start becoming worthless! Don’t kill the messenger, “you” are the ones saying this:

Basically, our average salary offer increases every single year of age. It makes sense because as you age, you gain more experience, more experience is more valuable. Or is it?

The chart, also, shows that once a worker turns 50 years old or so, employers (but not you…) start offering those workers less money, even though they have more experience!

Why!?

This has nothing to with wages! This is pure age bias shown towards younger workers. We believe, even older hiring managers, that once someone gets to a certain age, and Hired.com shows us that age to be 50 years old, older workers start losing their effectiveness even as they gain experience.

Somehow, in our minds, that 35-year-old, with three screaming kids and soccer practice four nights a week, is more effective than the 50-year-old with no kids at home, who is willing to work wherever and whenever you need them.

So, now you can play Moneyball!

You already know that most employers in the world hate old people. Thus, there are tons of gray hairs limping around out there willing to take all of your crappy low-ball offers, and they’re probably more loyal for those low wages then any younger worker you have on staff.

Yeah, for capitalism! You get great talent at low rates. Who needs H1B’s when we have old people!

“Well, Tim, it’s not about age bias! It’s about fit and culture and inclusi… I mean, we hire the best available candidate for the job!”

I’m sure you do.

Your reality is as hiring gets tighter, you can continue to overpay for younger talent with less experience, or you can pay a cheaper wage for more experience. Sooner or later, someone is going to ask the right questions. Are you going to have the right answer?

 

America First: The White Collar Workers Who Got Outsourced

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Your liberal friends want you to believe everyone who voted for Trump are racist, low paid, middle-aged white dudes from the Midwest. It’s nice and clean when you put it into that box. It fits the narrative they are selling really well.

 They don’t want you to know about the black female in California who lost her high paying salaried job to an H1B worker. Or the Asian-American male and female who lost their jobs, as well. Or the 60-year-old plus Hispanic male who lost his job. Those folks also are hoping ‘America First’ takes off.

This from the New York Times (I think this is still ‘real’ news, the NY Times?):

Audrey Hatten-Milholin, 54, was notified in July that she would be laid off from the University of California, San Francisco, at the end of February after 17 years in its technology department. Along with eight others, she filed a complaint in November with California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, charging that replacing her and others with “significantly younger, male” workers “who will then perform the work overseas” was discriminatory.

“We are at a disadvantage as Americans,” Ms. Hatten-Milholin said. “They look at it like, where can we get it cheaper? And for U.C., it’s not here.”

From the same article:

In other words, it’s true that cheaper labor helps employers increase profits and grow, and having more skilled workers in the United States contributes to economic innovation. But at the same time, individual American employees do face more salary pressure from newcomers who will work for less. And in some cases, they risk losing their jobs entirely, especially older employees who earn higher salaries.

After 11 years working in the I.T. department of Northeast Utilities, a Connecticut-based company now named Eversource Energy, Craig Diangelo was among 220 employees laid off in 2014. Before leaving the company, he was told he needed to train his replacement if he wanted to receive his severance.

Mr. Diangelo, who is now 64 and was receiving $130,000 a year in salary and bonus, said he trained an employee from the Indian outsourcing firm Infosys who was an H-1B visa holder making $60,000 a year. There was also a team of workers in India making $6,000 a year that shadowed him on the computer.

There’s a reason Tech companies are screaming as loud as they can for the current administration to expand the H1B program and it’s not because they can’t find candidates for their jobs. The candidates are there, but the companies don’t want to pay the salaries of the American candidates who are available!

About half of all the H1B’s issued annually go to outsourcing firms. What are those? These are basically companies who perform modern day indentured servitude. They find a foreign worker with great skills who desperately wants to come to America, pay them a very good rate as compared to where they are coming from, but much less than a similar American worker. Since the outsourcing company holds the H1B, they basically have this person at the lower rate for six years.

The tech companies get great talent, for a much lower wage than a similar American worker. Everyone is happy. Well, almost everyone. Miss Hatten-Milholin and Mr. Diangelo from above, they’re not too happy, they are really hoping this America First thing takes off.

If you really dig into what the new administration is trying to do with the H1B program it’s not to eliminate it, it’s to bring it up to an equal footing of the American worker. If the American worker gets paid $100K to do the job, you also have to pay the H1B worker $100K for the same job. The theory being if everything is equal American companies will hire American workers. Or, in the case where a true shortage exists, then hiring H1B workers will make sense without limits.

Ah, equality, it’s what I love about America. There are at least two sides to every story, this side rarely gets shared.

Maybe You Should Just Do The Job You Were Hired For

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It seems like frustration is at an all-time high. On a daily basis people are coming unglued over things they have no control over, and never will.

We are told to be more empathetic. We are told our employees need us to be “X”. You fill in the “X” because it changes pretty much article to article, generation to generation, leader to leader. One day I’m just supposed to care more. Then next day I need to listen more. The next day I need to understand more. Today, I need to be more flexible.

Somehow we’ve gone from running businesses to managing a day care.

I’ve stopped listening to people who don’t do the job I do. To the people who haven’t done the job in the past decade. To the people who claim to be experts but haven’t worked in my field, ever. 

Instead, I’m going out and talking to my employees. The young ones, the old ones, the ones in between that we’re not supposed to pay attention to anymore because they don’t matter because they’re not young or old, or female, or a minority, or gay. I’m going out and talking to them all equally. Since I need them ‘all’ to move my organization forward.

It doesn’t matter what my employees are telling me. That’s for me, to help them. The thing that will help my employees, most likely won’t help your employees. You work in a different culture, location, industry, climate, etc. No one is a better expert on my employees than I am. 

Just like you will be the expert of your employees, your team, your department, your organization.

 But, here’s what I think you’ll find out:

 – Your employees are all individuals with very specific problems, concerns, and desires.

– Their problems start close to them and then move outward. Sure it sucks Trump is making massive change and they want to help America and the World, but first, they have an issue with daycare and paying student loans, and a health scare. Those problems are bigger than the world problems you keep shoving down their throat. Help them solve the problems close first, then solve the world.

– Your millennials employees became adults, and you keep treating them like they just left college and are still kids.

– Your ‘new’ youngest employees are much different than millennials, and they’re not. They’re still young people with young people problems and passions.

– Your employees want to be successful. Across the board, it’s a driving, motivating force. You helping them become successful is the most important thing you can do as a leader. What’s successful? That is also very individualized. Your challenge, as a leader, is to find a way tie their success to the organization’s success. It’s hard to do, and you have to figure it out for your employees.

We keep letting other people tell us how to do our jobs. Have fun with that. I’m going to do the job I was hired to do, the way I know it needs to be done because no one knows how to do this job, better than me.

11 Proven Tips for Landing the Perfect HR Tech Solution

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It’s no wonder we all fall in love with technology: When we pick the right tools, they can save us a ton of time and headaches–and help us make our employees’ lives easier, too.

The catch, of course, is that getting approval for great tech can be a giant hurdle, what with the constant demand that HR do more while simultaneously cutting its budget. However, as HR tech expert Tim Sackett will tell you, there’s a realistic path to getting the HR tech solutions you desire without freaking out your CFO–and in this special Valentine’s Day webcast, he’ll show you the way.

Specifically, you’ll learn:

  • 3 ways to argue that HR tech should be a top priority within your organization.
  • 5 strategies for making your pitch to your executive teams.
  • 3 ways to ensure the HR tech solutions you choose won’t come back to haunt you.

The HR technology answers to your prayers are right around the corner! (Or, at the very least, you’re just a click away from getting some great, practical advice on how to boost your tech stack in 2017 … and beyond!)

This, free, webinar will run on February 14th (that’s right, the day of Love!) at 2 pm EST, just around that time in the day when you’ll need a nice big hug from me on Valentine’s Day!

So, if you’re lonely on Valentine’s Day, like I’ll be, come on over and we can commiserate together and geek out talking HR technology, since I’ll be hosting!

REGISTER HERE! 

 

 

 

Compromise Kills Innovation

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The most innovative leaders of our time were mostly assholes. Why? They refused to budge on their idea. Everything in their body told them what needed to be done to make their idea happen, and they refused to compromise on even the smallest details. This is how greatness happens.

True change only happens when someone is unwilling to listen to their critics.

This is also the exact way more careers are killed than any others. It’s all or nothing. Greatness happens at the edges, not in the middle.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t fit well in most corporate environments. Most MBA programs don’t teach you to be a tyrant. Leadership development, in today’s corporate world, is about bringing everyone to the middle. Finding ways that we can all get along. Even suppressing those who push the envelope too far.

We want everyone to line up nice and pretty. To play the role they were hired to play. To be the poster children for compromise.

It’s important for leaders to understand this concept if your job as a leader is to drive innovation and change. You don’t drive this through compromise and you need some renegades on your team, that quite frankly you might not even enjoy being around.

It took me so long to learn this because I was a renegade as an employee. I couldn’t understand why my leaders kept pushing me to compromise when I knew the right way to do something, the better way to do something, the new way to do something.

Once I became a leader I acted the exact same way towards those who were like me. Get back in line. Run the play. Do what the others do. That was the leadership I was taught. I didn’t value those who seemed to be fighting me, just as I use to fight. New leaders struggle with this because we take it personally.

We feel like those renegade employees are actually fighting us. When in reality they’re fighting everything. It’s our job as leaders to understand that the fight they have is super valuable if directed at the right target! To get them to understand they don’t need to fight everyone and everything but pick some fights that help us all and then support that fight.

This isn’t everyone you lead. It’s actually a really tiny number, but it seems bigger because they take up a lot of time and cause a lot of commotion amongst the drones who want to stay in their box. But, this is how change and innovation are born. By one person who is unwilling to compromise because they know a better way and they’re willing to fight to make it a reality.

This isn’t to say it will always work. Most ideas fail, but those who are willing to make an uncompromising stand for their idea, stand a better chance of seeing that idea succeed.

The Super Bowl Should be on Saturday: An Employer’s Plea

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So, it’s the Monday after Super Bowl and 15% of your employees didn’t show up. As HR professionals we are not shocked by this, it happens every year after the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl has become an unofficial national holiday. You don’t even have to like the teams playing to want to go to a Super Bowl party, or throw a Super Bowl party, because it’s become a national social event.

Kraft Foods understands this and instead of trying to move the Super Bowl started an online petition to declare the Monday after the Super Bowl a national holiday, since, they claim, more than 16 million employees call in ‘sick’ the day after the Super Bowl costing organizations over $1 billion in lost productivity.

Think you have a God-given right to be off the day after the Super Bowl? Kraft Heinz agrees with you. So the food company’s giving all of its salaried employees the day off on February 6 after Super Bowl LI…

In addition to letting its employees stay home, Kraft Heinz is launching a campaign to push for everybody to be off after Super Bowls. It’s started an online petition to essentially create a new national holiday it calls “Smunday,” which extends Sunday’s Super Bowl fun into Monday.

Okay, some of this is just good old fashion marketing. Kraft Heinz food group makes a killing on Super Bowl weekend, so why not try a marketing stunt like this to drum up even more business and brand recognition!

The problem with this solution is it doesn’t really help employers gain back lost productivity and revenue, in fact, it only increases expenses by now having another paid holiday (an expense), with nothing to return the lost productivity of having your entire workforce off for a day.

The issue is that the NFL should move the Super Bowl game to Saturday evening or day. Can you imagine the nationwide party that would take place, over what it already is, if the Super Bowl was on Saturday night!

The NFL already gives both teams an extra week off to prepare. Starting the game on Saturday, instead of Sunday, wouldn’t harm the players, wouldn’t harm the NFL, and bars and restaurants would have even a bigger day than they do already.

If Kraft Heinz really wants to help America, they should change their petition to move the Super Bowl to Saturday, not just make up another work holiday.

Dear Timmy: When Should I Leave My First Job?

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Dear Timmy, 

I graduated college a couple of years ago and took a job with a good company. I’m an engineer and I like my job and I like the people I work with, but I’m getting calls from recruiters telling me they can get me a lot more money. My question is, when can I leave my first job so that it doesn’t look like I’m a job hopper? 

Thanks,

I Don’t Want To Look Like A Job Hopper

—————————————————–

Dear Job Hopper, (just kidding!)

Why should you leave?! If you want more money, go ask for more money!

That’s the real issue, right? Instead of having a conversation about your value on the open market, you would rather leave a company and job you like. This makes absolutely no sense, but people do it all the time because they are unwilling to have a conversation that makes them feel uncomfortable!

It’s pretty silly when you think about it. I’m willing to risk a job I like, a company I like, and Coworkers I like for a 10-20% raise. Instead of just going to your boss and saying:

“Hey, Tim, I’ve been getting a ton of calls from recruiters. Each time they are saying they can get me a job making 20% more than I’m making now. You know, or if you don’t you should, I really like working here. I like you as a boss, I like the company, and I like what I’m doing. But, I also would really like 20% more pay! Is there anything you can do to help me?”

Now, it’s critical you do this before you start engaging with recruiters and going out on interviews. Why? Because once you do that, now your loyalty will come into question.

Most organizations are willing to pay you more, but they really only want to pay people more who are 1. Good performers, and 2. Going to stay around. If you’re already interviewing, without giving them a shot to make it right with you, you are basically just showing them you’ll eventually just take off again the next time someone calls offering you a dollar more.

When should I leave my first job? 

That is a very different question than what you are really asking. There’s no reason to leave your first job if all of your career needs are being met. So, you need to ask yourself, about this first job,

  • Am I doing work I like to do? (Not love. Love your family. Don’t love your job. Like your job.)
  • Am I in a position where I’m being developed in a way that will continue to help my career going forward? (Remember, you own your own development. Don’t wait for an organization to ‘put you on a plan’, build your own plan. What you need is an organization that allows you to do this, and supports you to do this.)
  • Do I feel valued by my organization and my boss? (Value comes across in a lot of ways. Don’t discount working with and for people who truly care about you.)
  • Am I being paid at the market for my education, skills, and experience? (Everyone can get paid over the market, but you give up stuff to get that money. Usually, you give up working for good companies and good people.)
  • Does this position, company and location still fit where I want to be personally with my life? (Sometimes your personal life changes where you want to be professionally, and there is not much organizations can do about that in many cases, but sometimes they can.)

So, whey should you leave your first job?

You should leave your first job when the answers to the questions above show you that it’s time to leave. You should not leave your first job because you are unwilling to have a conversation that makes you feel awkward or uncomfortable, in fact, to me that would be the first sign that you’re not ready to leave that first job!

Employee Betrayal is Something You Never Get Over

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You probably missed this recently, another lawsuit, another former employee ‘allegedly’ stealing company secrets and taking them to their new employer who just happens to be developing the same or similar product as their past employee. This one is interesting because it evolves one of the company that everyone in tech seems to want to work for, Tesla.

Here the information on the lawsuit:

Tesla filed a suit against its former director of Autopilot, Sterling Anderson, on Thursday, alleging he attempted to recruit engineers from Tesla to join the self-driving startup he and the former CTO of Google’s self-driving arm, Chris Urmson, were establishing.

The suit further alleged that Anderson downloaded “hundreds of gigabytes of Tesla confidential and four proprietary information” documents to his personal computer. When he was terminated, Anderson returned the documents, but not the backups he created, the company alleged.

In addition to making offers to a dozen Tesla employees — only two of whom accepted, according to the suit — Tesla is also alleging Anderson worked on the company Urmson was starting, called Aurora, during company time. Recode first reported that Urmson was starting his own self-driving company and that he was recruiting big names from many players, including Tesla and Uber.

There’s always two sides to every story, but this one always plays out about the same way. The original company hires you, trains you, develops you, gives you the opportunity to be a part of something great. The employee then says “F-you, I’m using all of this knowledge to benefit someone else. I mean it’s my brain, not yours.”

That’s really the extent of every employer-employee betrayal, like this one. Of course, in their minds, both sides are correct.

The reality is, and Mr. Anderson knows this, he would have never gotten the information into his brain if he Tesla never put him in a position, and billions of dollars of development, to get such knowledge. As you can imagine, Telsa feels betrayed. Mr. Anderson feels like he’s completely innocent. The courts will decide.

This has gone on since the beginning of time and will continue. Companies spend way too much money on developing ideas to have them just walk out the front door. As of today, it’s illegal for companies to kill employees who try and take this knowledge to the competition or start their own company on the back of all the work they got from their previous employer.

Here’s what I know. As a leader, you never forget this betrayal. You can forgive, but you won’t forget. It’s less about the ‘stealing’ of secrets and more about the break in trust. You were a part of the team, and you decided to leave and go play for the other team (and you took our playbook!). That employee will be forever dead in your eyes. They burned the ultimate bridge.

The employee would argue the other side. “Hey, wait, I should be able to take my skills and work anywhere I want!” For many employees, this is the case. For some, for those who get brought into the ‘circle of trust’ and get to see the secret sauce recipe, you give up this right. Or at least, you give up the right to go to another employer and share trade secrets. The line of betrayal is fine and sharp. You never really want to find yourself on either side of it, because no one wins.

You Don’t Actually Have To Retain Everyone!

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In 2017, and beyond, employee retention will become a huge focus. Some could argue that employee retention is always an important issue, but during major recessions, it becomes less of a stress for sure. With shifting employee demographics, retention will be a hot item over the next few years as we see more and more of the baby boom generation leave the workforce, and we do not have enough young skilled workers entering the workforce to replace those leaving.

Here’s a dirty little secret, though:

“You don’t actually have to work to retain every one of your employees!”

Why? Because most of your employees won’t leave. We like to tell ourselves that every employee can leave, and by the law of the land (at least for now under the Trump administration), they actually can, but statistics clearly show that most don’t leave.

The average retention rate across all industries is about 85%, year over year. That means 85 out of 100 employees will probably not leave you. You are really worrying about 10-15% of employees. Ironically, it’s about 10-15% of your top performing employees that make the most difference in your company.

First, we have to solve one problem you have. Your ‘retention’ strategy is flawed and is actually pushing good employees out the door, the ones you want to keep!

Here’s why:

  1. You’re smart and send out a retention survey to find out from all of your employees what they want to be retained. You’re like 99% of organizations.
  2. The results of that survey tell you what the majority of your employees want to be retained. Things like ping pong, hot yoga, 27 smoke breaks a day, free tacos on Tuesday, etc.
  3. You implement a variety of the desired retention ‘fixes’! Yay!!!
  4. Your retention number actually stays the same, or maybe even gets worse.

WTF!?!?!?

Remember what I said above? You shouldn’t be concerned with about 85% of your employees who will never leave. They are not going anywhere! You shouldn’t be surveying all of your employees, you should be surveying only your best employees, those you are desperate at keeping!

What you’ll find is that the 10-15% of high valued employees you want to retain, what they want to be retained is very different from what the hoard wants to be retained! They’ll want a clear career path, performance-based compensation, more talented co-workers, better work tools, etc. They could give a shit about ping pong and Taco Tuesday.

Great HR isn’t working to make everyone equal. Great HR is working to make your organization better than your competition. That happens by having noticeably better talent. You get that kind of talent by listening to those employees who are noticeably better, not those who complain about the color of your new carpet.

What would this create?  It creates a high performing organization that attracts high-performing employees. Most organizations won’t do this because they believe they need to work to retain all of their employees. “We’re all high performing, Tim!” No, you’re not. Once you get that idea out of your head, you can do some really cool, industry changing stuff!

Most of Your Dream Won’t Come True…

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…but some will.

That’s what it’s all about. We don’t live and work and struggle to reach every single dream. That’s impossible. We do all of this for the chance we might actually get the chance to see some of our dreams come true. Maybe even just one. I guess it depends on what kind of a dreamer you are.

I dream of great cookies (okay, not all my dreams are big, but they’re all mine!). I had some once in small local hoagie place in Omaha, NE. The best cookies I’ve ever had. I think the secret ingredient was crack because I could never get enough of them.

Okay, that was a small dream. But I got to experience it! And, it was glorious! It’s been more than ten years since I’ve had those cookies and I still remember them!

 Some dreams we have are giant and most likely won’t come true. I have a dream to coach the LA Lakers. It’s a dream. I’ve done almost nothing to fulfill this dream but dream about it and watch a lot of NBA games and coach my sons in rec league games. This dream, probably won’t come true.

 I’ve dreamed about my boys going to college. I started saving money for this when they were babies, and still save today. We pushed them constantly to get good grades and put their studies first. We made them go to bed at a decent time, even when they complained. We made them eat good food when they wanted junk, so they would have energy at school to learn. We sat with them and helped them fill out applications.

We made them eat good food when they wanted junk, so they would have energy at school to learn. We made sure homework was done before free time took place. We sat with them and helped them fill out applications.

 I have two boys in college and one well on his way. I worked for this dream, for a long time, in many ways.

 You see we all have dreams. Some just happen. Some will never happen. Some you have to work your ass off to make happen.

 Most of your dream won’t come true, but some will.