Category Archives: Learning

5 Traits that Make Great HR Partners Great!

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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.

Is This a Major Sign Your Company Culture is Broke?

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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!

 

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.

 

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!

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!

Career Confessions from GenZ: Are you Pre-boarding Interns?

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College orientation was one of the most uncomfortable and awkward experiences of my life. I would say that most other current college students would attest to this. I think it’s very unreasonable to expect a group of 18-year-olds to meet for the first time and become friends in a short time span while learning everything you’re supposed to know about the school you are attending.

Thankfully I am through the college orientation process, but I have a lifetime of job orientations ahead of me. Apparently, this process in the workforce is called “onboarding” (thanks, Dad!), but to newbies like me, we invented a new term to describe this orientation called “pre-boarding”.

This new style of onboarding is a more in-depth look into general ideas about the workforce in addition to normal onboarding events. This is for people that have never worked real-life jobs before (yup, that’s me). I like this idea of pre-boarding because I am a very curious person that has a million questions and likes them all to be answered! So, here are some specific topics that I want companies to focus on while pre-boarding newbies like me:

  1. Dress Code: For someone that has always put a heavy emphasis on what I wear, this is very important to me and other young people. The words “business casual” mean absolutely nothing to me. I need concrete examples of what to wear and this means VISUALS.  I want someone to show me pictures or even show me real-life examples of what I should be wearing every day to work. Please and thank you.
  2. Logistics: I’m calling this section logistics because it encompasses a whole array of logistical things. I need to know where to park, where to sit, when I eat, where I eat, where’s the bathroom, when I’m supposed to arrive, when I’m supposed to leave, among many other things. And I would like a concrete answer to all of these. Coming from a school environment, like most newbies are, we are always told when to do things and how to do them. Therefore, it is important to realize this and adhere to how your new employees have been given information for most of their lives.
  3. Job-related content: This part of the pre-boarding process should be different for every job because it has to do with the specific duties and tasks that new employees will be performing. This can include things like meeting your fellow team members, learning how to use certain software or programs, and other instructional demonstrations as needed (you guys already know how to do this part). Will I have a laptop, desktop, no computer, no desk? Should I bring my own laptop? What about my phone, you know I’m not going anywhere without that!? 

I’m sure I’m forgetting a million other things that are important, but these are just things that I specifically worry about. For this pre-boarding process, it is extremely important to leave all questions unanswered. Gen-Z (and young people across history) DON’T ask questions, so it is important to make sure you think of everything beforehand. This process will help alleviate pressure from your new employee and will warrant an easy and successful transition into their new position.

Here’s to hoping that my future bosses will be reading this post to make it easier for me!

 

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

 

Snoring on a Plane!

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I was flying recently and the dude right across the aisle from me started snoring. Snoring like he had a problem and there’s no way his wife still loves him kind of snoring. Snoring so loud I wanted to punch him right in the face.

I get it. Snoring is a medical condition he couldn’t help. Poor dude was tired and sitting in a hot plane and nature took over.

Snoring on a plane though speaks to me as a recruiter.

If you know you snore, you make sure you don’t snore in public. Drink 26 cups of coffee before you get on the plane, go see a doctor for some kind of surgery, take up a cocaine habit, I don’t know but do something!

It shows lack of self-insight.

The best case scenario is he wakes up, without me punching him in the face, and he looks at me and apologizes because he knows his own snoring woke him up. Or he wakes up and I tell him, dude, you’ve got a problem! Don’t ever fall in asleep on a plane!

He then looks at me, and says, I had no idea! Oh, my god, I’m so embarrassed and sorry! I will make sure to never fall asleep on a plane again without first putting on a breath-right strip!

But, he didn’t. He woke up an hour later with about 12 people hating him, and he had no idea, or he did and didn’t care. Which gets me back to recruiting.

Snoring on a plane demonstrates lack of self-insight. It might be the single most important thing you can have as a candidate. From the first moment you have contact with an employer to the last, you’re being judged.

The last thing you want to be judged on is having low self-insight. “Oh, wow, did you see Tim come in with the stain on his tie? Did he know? How doesn’t he know? Why didn’t he say something like, ‘sorry, guys, spilled coffee on my tie on the way in, and I’m totally embarrassed!’

At least we would know he wasn’t a complete moron! Instead, Tim is “snoring on a plane”.

No employer wants to hire you if you “snore on a plane”, they want to hire people who know who they are, good and bad, and can then overcome the bad and highlight the good. They want to hire candidates who have high self-insight because they know those people will take care of themselves and their performance.

We are really bad judges of self-insight for ourselves. We all think we have super high self-insight, but most of us really suck at this self-diagnosis. As someone who is close to you, but not to close, to help you out with this. Let them know you need to know the truth, the real truth.

Ask them to be real with you for a second! Hey, please, if you’re my friend, tell me, do I ‘snore on a plane’?

Career Confessions of GenZ: Are Dream Jobs a Lie?

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Career Confessions from GenZ is a weekly series authored by Cameron Sackett, a Sophomore at the Univesity of Michigan majoring in Communications and Advertising. Make sure you connect with him on LinkedIn:

In 2014 I (Tim, not Cameron) wrote a post titled, “Dream Jobs are a Lie!”  It’s one of my most read posts of all time. One reason is the title is SEO gold, turns out a lot of people are using the search term “dream jobs”.

When I wrote the post I was basically speaking to the Millennial generation. What I wanted to find out is whether or not GenZ felt like they were also feeling the pressure of finding their “dream job”. So, I went right to my GenZ Expert, Cameron Sackett!

Since we are in Miami on vacation – we decided to go all GenZ and do this post via video –

Let us know what you think in the comments! Do you think the concept of a Dream Job is a lie? Should people be chasing ‘their’ dream job?

 

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

2018 Talent Acquisition as a Career Survey! Take it now! @ATAPglobal

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I need your help!

As you may know, in 2018 I became the President-elect for the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP). I’m pretty proud of that because I love our industry and spend countless hours advocating for Recruiting and TA pros worldwide.

One of the member benefits of joining ATAP is access to some great data and research. Our most recent project is our inaugural Talent Acquisition as a Career 2018 survey. This survey is meant for any and all Talent Acquisition and Recruiting professionals, including ATAP and Non-ATAP members.

So, PLEASE take a few minutes and complete the survey!

The results should provide us great insight into how TA professionals truly feel today about their roles and their opportunities to be successful in their TA career. We will be sharing the results of this survey publicly first at the Spring ERE Conference in San Diego (April 2-4, 2018), and then on the ATAP website.

Please do me this favor and take the survey. We are trying to get over 1,000 responses! Click here for the survey.

ONE MORE THING:

What the heck is ATAP?!? I get asked this question almost daily. ATAP stands for the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals. Founded in 2016, ATAP’s mission is to develop a body of unified educational, ethical and measurement standards, advocate on issues that impact those in our profession, and build a global community of inspired and informed professionals. Not only am I a member, but I’m the President-elect (Hair Club for Men joke!) You should be one too – Join Here – use my code to get $5 off your first-year “ATAPDISCTS”!