Category Archives: Life Lessons

Mothers, Sons, and Daughters! #HRTechConf

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I’m out at “The” HR Technology Conference this week in Las Vegas and a few years ago HR Tech started a Women in HR Technology event that happens the morning of the opening of the conference with specific content built around the unique role of women in our industry.

I’m a big fan, and I think LRP (the company that runs the HR Technology Conference, and Jeanne Achille who chairs this part of the conference) have done an exceptional job building content that you really find nowhere else in our industry. Which leads me to the panel I was on, “Mothers, Sons, and Daughters” with my co-panelist, Jess Von Bank and Kyle Lagunas.

The idea Jeanne gave us and we ran with was around this idea that women in technology play these multiple roles, that are very different than their male counterparts. Jess is a single Mom of three young girls and a successful professional in our industry. Kyle is a son and aspiring father, and I’m a son to a woman who started the business I currently run. We all have very strong beliefs around the impact and influence women make on our lives.

I can’t stress enough how this type of content does not happen at conferences. Not technology conferences. Not HR conferences. Not any conferences I’ve been to! It was real and raw, and we were able to have this awesome conversation with a bunch of attendees that was unfiltered.

You see my quote from the tweet above. One of the questions we wanted to tackle is, “Do women make better leaders?”

This part of the conversation really centered around how we were raised and what were the things our mothers gave us to be successful in life. Where those things the same things that possibly give women an advantage in leadership roles in the modern workplace?

Gen Z and Millennials are looking for workplaces and leadership that are empathetic, compassionate, developmental, and understand that they want to bring their whole self to work. Traditional leadership kind of frowned on all this. You come to work, to work! Don’t bring your personal life to work!

Any leader can have the traits to be successful as a modern leader, but we find that females tend to have more of these traits than males, and it much easier for them to develop these traits deeper, primarily because of how they were nurtured and nurture as mothers.

I left the session inspired by the women in our industry and the great things they are doing to move the workforce and our workplaces forward. Great organizations need great talent. That won’t happen in a traditional workplace that our parents grew up in. My mom ran a successful company partly because the employees of her company were her family. She used those words constantly and meant it. She took it very personal to make sure they could and would succeed.

I want to send a huge thank you to LRP and Jeanne for allowing us to indulge in a very personal topic that is ever-present, but rarely talked about!

The Rules for Office Romances

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We spend a ton of time at the office and it only seems to be increasing. On top of that, new research says we need to spend more time with co-workers if we want a great employee experience! As HR pros we know what this means, which is usually a lot of unwanted advances by horny dudes who think they have a shot at the hot co-worker, who has absolutely no interest in them at all.

Welcome to the show, kids!

I’ve given out some rules in the past. Everyone on the planet has read my Rules for Hugging at the Office, but Office Romances are a little more complicated than the simple side-hug in the hallway. So, I thought I would lay out some easy to follow, simple rules for Office Romances for you to pass out to your employees as you start asking them to join each other at TopGolf for your employee outing to increase their employee experience:

Rule #1 – Don’t fall for someone you supervise. If you do fall for someone you supervise, which you probably will because this is how office romances work. In that case, get ready to quit, be fired, be moved to another department, and or get the person you’re having an office romance with fired, moved, etc.

Rule #2 – Don’t fall for anyone in Payroll. When it ends, so will your paycheck. At least temporarily, and even then it will be filled with errors from now until eternity. It’s a good rule of thumb to never mess with payroll for any reason.

Rule #3 – Don’t mess around in the office, or on office grounds. Look I get it. You’re crazy in love and just can’t wait until you get home. The problem is the security footage never dies. It will live long past your tenure with us, and we’ll laugh for a long time at you. So, please don’t.

Rule #4 – Don’t send explicit emails to each other at work. It’s not that I won’t enjoy reading them, it’s that I get embarrassed when I have to read them aloud to the unemployment judge at your hearing. Okay, I lied, I actually don’t get embarrassed, but you will.

Rule #5 – Don’t pick a married one. Look I get it, you’re the work spouse. He/She tells you everything. You get so close, you really think it’s real, but it’s not. You’ll actually see this when the real spouse shows up and keys your car in the parking lot.

Rule #6 – Don’t pick someone who has crappy performance. Oh, great, you’re in love! Now I’m firing your boyfriend and you’ll have to pick between him and us, which you’ll pick him, and now I’m out two employees. Pick the great performers, it’s easier for all of us.

Rule #7 – Inform the appropriate parties as soon as possible. Okay, you went to a movie together, not a big deal. Okay, you went to the movie together and woke up in a different bed than your own. It might be time to mention this to someone in HR if there is at anyway a conflict of some sort. If you don’t know if there’s a conflict of some sort, let someone in HR help you out with that.

Rule #8 – If it seems wrong, it probably is.  If you find yourself saying things in your head like, “I’m not sure if this is right”, you probably shouldn’t be having that relationship. If you find yourself saying things like, “If this is wrong, I don’t want to be right”, you definitely shouldn’t be having this relationship.

Rule #9 – If you find yourself hiding your relationship at work, it might be time to talk to HR. We’re all adults, we shouldn’t be hiding normal adult relationships. If you feel the need to hide it, something isn’t normal about it.

Rule #10 – Everyone already knows about your relationship. People having an office romance are the worst at hiding it. You think you’re so sneaky and clever, but we see you stopping at her desk 13,000 times a day ‘asking for help’ on your expense report. We see you. We’re adults. We know what happened when you both went into the stairwell 7 seconds apart. Stop it.

There you go. Hope that helps.

College Students: Are you adding your side-hustle to your resume!?

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I got killed a few weeks ago by some trolls on Twitter over posting this tweet:

I get that many people need to work side hustles to make ends meet in today’s world. I wasn’t talking about these folks working their butts off to make ends meet. I myself work side hustles.

In today’s #outrage culture, this tweet was seen as insensitive by some folks who spend way too much time on Twitter and not enough time on their professional role! Also, I’m clearly not Gary Vaynerchuk, the king of hustle porn, who could tweet this exact tweet and get 5 million likes before the end of the day!

Turns out, Recruiters are now encouraging college students to put their side hustles on their resume and profiles. Why? Because employers actually really like candidates who aren’t afraid to work! It’s the #1 thing that executives tell me when we talk about their pain points around hiring. “Tim, we just need people who want to work!”

So, what are the top side hustles you should be adding onto your resume and profiles? The folks at The Knowledge Academy did a survey and found these were the most popular:

  • 85% of US recruiters recommend those college students who buy items from garage sales and then sell them online for a higher price, to include it on their resume/job applications
  • 67% of US recruiters believe college students that create/modify products to sell online, should have it on their resume/job applications
  • 60% of US recruiters think college students who offer photography services for hire, encourage stating it on their resume/job applications

I really think as a candidate, any skill you believe adds to your overall value as an employee should be something you add to your resume and/or profile, but just know that some HR/Talent/Hiring Managers will look at this in different ways. If you’re an engineer and you’re also driving for a ride share service, you probably need to explain why the full-time gig isn’t enough. “I’m also supplementing my income with weekend and evening ride share to help pay off my student loans quicker!”

The survey found that –52% of recruiters feel companies who know an employee has a growing ‘side hustle’ should take an active approach to support them (i.e. offering flexible working hours). Um, what!? So, Mary is our accountant and we love her, but she also has a growing cupcake business on the side and I should give her time off to go do that and not fulfill her duties in a full-time role? I’m not sure I 100% can buy into this philosophy from a business standpoint!

I would probably go back to that employee and ask them if they started their own business, like this side hustle, and had to hire folks, who then wanted to not work their ‘real’ job, but put more time and effort towards their own thing, how would that sit with them? I already know the answer. They want and need workers who are committed and get their jobs done like everyone else.

It’s definitely a different world we live in. Side hustles become full-time hustles for so many folks. I definitely see this when someone is working a full-time gig that they hate, and a side hustle that they love. Like Gary V would say, you need to then adjust your lifestyle to fit your side hustle, and not your full-time gig if that’s what you desire to do. What you can’t do is think just because you love petting puppies, doesn’t mean you can do it full-time without giving up some stuff. It’s hard to make those Tesla payments on a puppy petter salary!

How much would 1 share of you be worth?

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What if instead of paying your university or trade school tuition, you paid them shares of your future self in the form of “Income Sharing“? That’s what some schools have been toying around with:

“The Lambda School teaches information technology skills online, and it charges zero tuition and offers stipends to select students. The deal is that students pay back 17 percent of their income from the first two years of work, if earnings exceed $50,000 a year, with a maximum payment of $30,000. Students who don’t find jobs at that income level don’t pay anything. Students may also opt to pay $20,000 in tuition upfront and keep their future income.

There are reportedly about 1,300 students enrolled, and the company has raised almost $50 million. The early job placement record is impressive; 86 percent of graduates have jobs within 180 days of finishing the program, at a median starting salary of $60,000. It is too early to judge results — how would these students have fared without Lambda or in a less strong job market? — but this kind of effort is an economist’s dream come true.”

The barrier for most people getting into the field they want is education and the cost of education. Are you willing to bet on yourself?
The entire concept is fascinating to me. It makes me think about how you value yourself. What are you really worth?

div data-position=”3″>Let’s say each of us was separated into 100 shares of theoretical stock. What would your stock be valued at certain times in your life? Would you be willing to sell a share or two or more at certain periods to help you pay for certain things at that time, or even use that money you got in return to purchase other shares of other people you believe will have higher value down the road?

The big question is what do you really get in owning stock in a certain individual? What if it was a portion of their earnings forever?
Each time this individual earns money and let’s say you own one share, you would get 1/100th of there earnings until they die or you sell their share to someone else, or they buy their share back. All of this helps you understand how to value yourself
I get asked almost weekly by folks who want to be consultants how much per hour should they charge? I don’t really have an answer because each of us has a different value and we all value the work we do differently. For a friend, my hourly rate might be $0, or some work I don’t really want to do that hourly rate might be $1,000 per hour.
I’m not sure what my stock value is currently, but I know it’s way higher than when I was in college believing I was going to start a career as a teacher. When I was twenty I would have sold shares of myself fairly cheaply and someone would have made out really well.
What do you think your current share price is? If you’re interested, I’m selling shares of myself for $1,000,000 each! DM for more information!

The Employee Walk of Shame

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I’ve lost jobs and I’ve called old employers to see if they would want to hire me back. I’ve usually gotten a response that sounded something like, “Oh, boy would we want you back but we just don’t have anything. Good Luck!”  Many of us in the talent game talk about our employee Alumni and how we should engage our Alumni but very few of us really take true advantage of leveraging this network.

I was reminded of this recently when a friend of mine took a new job.  You know the deal, shorter drive, more money, growing company and oh, boy, just where do I sign!?  The fact was, it was all they said, shorter drive, more money and they were growing, but they forgot to tell him was our operations are broken beyond repair, you will work 7 days a week and probably 12-14 hours per day because of the mess we have, but keep your head up it’s the only way you won’t drown here!

So, now what does he do?

He already had the going away party, bar night out with the work friends with the promises to do lunches and not get disconnected, packed up and unpack the office into the new office.  Let’s face it, big boy, you’re stuck!  Not so fast.  He did the single hardest thing an employee can do he called his old boss after 7 days and said one thing, “I made a mistake, can I come back?”

Luckily for him, his past boss was a forward-thinking leader and so this past Monday he did the 2nd hardest thing an employee can do he made the “Employee Walk of Shame“.

You can imagine the looks from people who didn’t know him well, “Hey, wait a minute, didn’t you leave?” Having to tell the same story over and over, feeling like he failed, like he wasn’t good enough to make it in the new position.

HR plays a huge part in this story because it was HR who can make this walk of shame a little less rough.  Let’s face it, it is different.  You just don’t leave and come back as nothing happened. Something did happen, there was a reason he left and that reason isn’t going away.  A transition back needs to be put into place even though he was gone seven days.  It’s not about just plugging back in, it is about re-engaging again and finding out what we all can do better so it doesn’t happen again.

It’s also about making sure you let those employees who you truly want back, that they are welcome to come back (assuming you have the job) and not just saying that to everyone.  There are employees who leave that you say a small prayer to G*d and you are thankful they left!  There are others where you wish there was a prayer you could say so they wouldn’t leave.

Make it easy for your employees to do the Walk of Shame, it helps the organization, but realize they are hurting, they are embarrassed, but they are also grateful!

What’s the Secret to a Great Marriage? The Sackett Rules!

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I’m on vacation this week with my wife. It’s our 27th wedding anniversary. Yes, it was a child marriage, don’t judge us. When I tell people I’ve been married 27 years I frequently get “the question”! So, tell us, what’s the secret to a great marriage!?

I like to answer that very straight forward, and while staring at the opposite spouse or partner who asked the question, I say directly into their eyes:

“Great sex!” 

Their immediate reaction to that answer tells me everything I need to know about their relationship.

Kidding! I don’t do that, but I should! That would be fun, but I think most HR ladies would be offended because they aren’t having great sex! 😉

Okay, why has my marriage lasted 27 years in no particular order:

– My wife holds it all together and has made me a million times better person than I would without her.

– My wife is exceptional at managing home finances, which has made our life a million times easier because we have very few disagreements over money. I let her buy anything she wants, and she takes an extremely long time to make up her mind on what to buy. It works!

– I put my wife first, in front of my kids, my family, my friends, my work, and well, maybe not my dog. I’ve told my three boys since they were little, I can make another one of you, I can not make another one of your Mom. (Honestly, I’m not perfect at this – sometimes any of these others get pushed ahead of my wife, but she knows, push comes to shove, whose team I’m on!)

– We have separate passions that we are free to explore, but we also have things we love to do together. I love to fish and golf, she doesn’t. She loves photography and scrapbooking, I don’t. We love to go to movies and to shop. You need alone time and you need together time. All of either doesn’t work.

– I’m a child of divorce, my wife is not. She had to fight like hell to get my head around just because you have a fight or don’t see eye to eye on something doesn’t mean you just walk away. Marriage isn’t easy, but it also shouldn’t be hard.

– My crazy fits her crazy. She constantly will say, “Do you think other people talk like this to each other!?” G*d I hope not for the sake of the world! My humor can be a bit dark, and while she is not that way, I think she secretly likes it.

– I agreed to never write about her on my blog. Okay, to be fair, when we got married I didn’t have a blog! So, just understand that you’ll constantly be renegotiating what you can and can’t do in marriage until you die!

What are your secrets to a great marriage?

 

Life is better when you have cheerleaders!

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I’ve got some great friends in my life. People who support me in my professional field. I’ve got cheerleaders that are on my side hoping I succeed in everything I do.

Do you have cheerleaders? Do you have a cheerleader?

I think if you have one your life is richer. It’s not about who has the most cheerleaders, but I do think it is critical for your success to have a cheerleader or two in your life.

What’s the role of a cheerleader in your life?

  • Support you in the community when you are not present.
  • Support you in your professional and personal positive endeavors. Sometimes in person. Sometimes from afar.
  • Pick you up when you are having a hard time picking yourself up.
  • They believe in you, and they’ve let you know they believe in you through their words and actions.
  • To let you know what you do matters. Maybe only to one other person, but it still matters.

Just because someone is your cheerleader doesn’t mean you need to be their cheerleader. I have people in my life that I cheer for, that they don’t cheer for me. It doesn’t mean they dislike me, it’s just they aren’t one of my cheerleaders, and that’s okay. I also have cheerleaders that I don’t return the favor for, again, not because I don’t cherish them, I just don’t know them enough to return that favor.

I think cheerleaders get a bad rap in our society. Why would someone want to stand on the sidelines and just cheer for someone else? Go do it yourself!

Yeah, I get that, but also what’s wrong with wanting to help someone else succeed? It’s a very selfless and endearing feature to want to help others succeed and cheer them on in their success. I don’t think cheerleaders get enough credit for what they do. When a team loses or an individual loses, people feel bad for them, but no one feels worse than those who cheered them on the most.

Here’s what I know.

I’ve been in places in my life when it felt like I didn’t have any cheerleaders in my life, and I’m in a place where it seems like I’ve got a tremendous amount of cheerleaders in my life cheering me on daily.

Life is way better with cheerleaders.

It’s Time for our HR Community to Give Back! #SHRM

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I’m asking a favor. I do this extremely rarely as a blogger. But I know the power of our HR community worldwide! We have a bright, shining star in our industry who is in need of a miracle.

If you haven’t heard SHRM’s Field Service Director, Callie Zipple has recently been diagnosed with Stage 4 Cancer.

Callie isn’t her diagnosis. If you’ve had the pleasure of meeting her you know she’s a tiny ball of pure energy and smiles. She loves her job. She loves our industry. It pours out of her like a fountain.

She graduated from St. Norbert’s College’s HR degree program in 2010, under the mentorship of my friend and Professor at St. Norbert’s, Matt Stollak. He wrote a post about her – check that out.

This is from Callie’s Go Fund Me page that he sister set up for her:

“Callie is a 31-year-old, Harry Potter loving midwestern girl. She loves her husband Shane and Frenchie Gryff madly. She is an HR professional and wonderful wife, daughter, sister, human being. This past week Callie was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer and started chemo immediately post-diagnosis. It’s a very aggressive cancer but she’s young and going to fight as hard and as long as she can.”

I got a chance to spend time with Callie twice this year. Once at a local SHRM event in Kalamazoo, where she showed up and we got to meet in person for the first time. And then at SHRM National this year where I was drilling her with questions about her popular podcast she does with SHRM.

Callie is the perfect spokesperson for SHRM. She’s positive. She’s high energy. She’s helpful. She’s hopeful. Callie sees the best of our industry. She sees potential in all we do. She isn’t naive to the realities of how hard HR can be, but she leans on the side of ‘we’ll figure it out together”.

Callie’s Go Fund Me page is seeking $100,000 to help her battle her diagnosis. Currently, she only has $25,000. She has a gigantic battle in front of her. She is going to go through hell to beat this. She needs our help.

What you begin to understand, even with great health insurance, is beating cancer takes money. Insurance only covers certain treatments. It won’t cover everything and it won’t cover stuff like travel and loss of income from missing work, etc. Beating cancer becomes Callie’s full-time job and it’s an expensive job, but the most important job of her life.

So, I’m asking for your help. Help Callie in her fight. If you can give $5 dollars, give $5 dollars. $10, $100, whatever you can do, please do. If you can’t afford to give money, please share this post socially online – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

Give to Callie Zipple’s fund to Beat Cancer! 

If Someone Apologizes for Something, You Should Accept it.

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Stuff happens. We make bad decisions. We do stupid stuff. Sometimes it all ends with us having to apologize for being dumb or just not thinking straight at that moment.

So, we apologize.

For a while now I’ve been watching people do stupid stuff, apologizing, but those who are receiving the apology are not accepting it. Instead, they refuse to accept the apology and something weird happens. Everything just stops.

I get that you might not feel that an apology is enough. You want more. You want ‘justice’ of some kind. You might feel the apology isn’t authentic. For sure, that’s all possible.

Here’s the thing: Just because you accept an apology, doesn’t mean you are okay with what happened.

Accepting allows you and the other party to actually keep moving in the direction of positive interaction. Closing that down and stopping that movement does nothing for anyone. You’re still upset, the other party is still upset and doesn’t know what to do to help the situation, and we are now moving backward with the relationship.

One problem that happens frequently is that someone tries to apologize too soon. You are upset and not in a position to want to accept it. At the same time the person does want you to know they are apologetic for what happened, and while you might not be ready, it’s good to accept the apology and tell them “thank you for that, I’m not ready to talk about this just yet, can we do this another time?”

99% of the time this will work and buy you the time you need to work through it and get yourself into a better position to actually discuss or determine your course of action.

Every apology we get we have to put into context. Is this about the other person, is this about ourselves, or is it about both? Sometimes someone does something not even thinking about you. They are thinking about themselves and probably someone else, and you get caught in friendly fire that no one thought of. Doesn’t change the ultimate ending and it still sucks, and you still need an apology.

It’s really hard for me, personally, to not apologize if I think I’ve done something wrong. I want to work on fixing it immediately! It drives my wife crazy sometimes. I want immediate fixing and she might just need to digest what happened and determine what she needs. At that moment, it might not be an apology, it might just be some space.

Communication is a two-way street. Both sides have something to say and something they are trying to do. We live in this modern world where people have decided that it’s not okay to screw up, but we “celebrate failure”, and you can apologize, but I won’t accept it. Um, what?

Life is hard. Let people apologize. Accept it. If that’s not enough for you, let them know. If you want to end the relationship, and an apology isn’t enough, let them know that as well.

 

 

You Can Love America and Not be a Racist

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I had a big learning recently.

Might seem like a pretty obvious thing for me, but I really didn’t understand how it was shaping my thought process. Politically, right now in our country, we’re a mess.

You can actually love America and being an American, and you’re not a racist.

I wasn’t sure that was possible, but as we (Kris Dunn, Jessica Lee and I) were taping episodes of our podcast, This is HR, I was taken aback at how much Jessica Lee, my Millennial, female, Korean-American, liberal, podcast partner loved America. She is pro-America. She also, like many of us, very against some political forces in our country right now.

[buzzsprout episode=’1315402′ player=’true’]

I think it’s a great reminder as we set out to celebrate our great country over this 4th of July holiday. We love our country which is why we are fighting so hard to make this country something everyone can look at and appreciate our place in the world.

Too often, currently, I think we are associating “pro-America” with “pro-right” or conservative. This isn’t the case. Pro-America is why so many people are trying to get into this country, because of the opportunity that is here, even with all of the flaws we struggle with and will continue to struggle with.

While we might not agree with those in charge, this great country of ours allows us to vote. Allows us to fund those we do align with. Allows us to protest and march and campaign. Our melting pot is far from perfect. Inclusion causes friction. Different ideas cause friction. Our country was founded on this friction.

I’m more scared of living in a society with no friction. Where we all believe exactly the same thing or we least believe we need to believe the same thing or there will be consequences.

I have friends and family on every side of the political spectrum.  They are good people on all sides. There are bad people on all sides. This is America and I love it.