Category Archives: Metrics

Employee-Zero

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All this Ebola talk and Patient-Zero stuff has got me all fired up to be an investigator!  I can’t even imagine the nightmare it must be to try and track back all this illness to the first person.  But, it’s also the coolest thing that they can actually do that!

What if we could trace back to ‘Employee-Zero’?

You know, that one hire, that one employee, that turned it all around for your organization.  I’ve worked at some really successful companies, and I’ve worked at some companies that were successful and then on a downward trend.  I like to think that my hire didn’t put us on a downward trend, but let’s face it, no one really did any due diligence to find out for sure!

You see organizational leadership do this all the time for bad hires and bad results.  I have to say, usually, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) take the brunt of this.  “Well, we were great before they hired that new CMO, then sales went into the tank and we haven’t been the same since!”  CMOs become Employee-Zero more than any other single employee! They get way too much blame for bad results, and way too much credit for good results!

You almost never hear about Employee-Zero when it comes to good results!  “Yeah, you know when we really took off, it’s when we hired Tim!”  Bad results equal a bad individual hire.  Good results equal a team of good employees and good hires.  Like how that goes!?  We like to place blame on a few, but give credit to many. Welcome to modern day leadership theory.

We measure almost everything in in HR and Talent Acquisition, you would think one of the new shiny data analytics companies would come up with some secret sauce on how to figure out which one of your employees is Employee-Zero.  Why would it be important?  If we could figure out why that one employee, or why certain employees early on made us successful, or put us on the path to success, don’t we really finally solve the hiring equation?

It’s a bit altruistic I know.  The reality is we would be looking at historical data, the times have changed, the conditions have changed, there is no real way of us replicating that exact scenario again to get the same magical results.   Regardless, I think it would be cool to know, I’m a HR geek that way.  Talk about analyzing your hiring!  I’m sure it’s just a matter of time, many organizations obviously have the data, we just need some data scientist to believe it matters.

What do you think?  Do you know who your Employee-Zero is?

HR’s Ebola Crisis Plan!

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Wait for it…

Any minute now some executive is going to come into your office and ask ‘you’ what you’re doing about this Ebola outbreak!

I’m not trying to slight the importance and the tragedy that disease is currently on path to creating in West Africa, it’s horrific.  But our American media is bringing this to hysteria levels in the states!  As of my time writing this, there are 3 confirmed cases of Ebola in the U.S. and one death.

Yesterday in the U.S., approximately, this many people died from:

  • Heart Disease: 1,637
  • Cancer: 1,574
  • Stroke: 354
  • Accidents: 331
  • The Flu: 139

That’s each day people!

But, you my fellow HR Pro are going to have to answer this question very, very soon.  What is ‘your’ plan to address Ebola?

Not, hey how about we actually fund our Wellness program properly and maybe we can really save some of our employees from what’s going to kill them!  Eating crappy food, smoking, drinking themselves to death, texting while driving, NOT getting the freaking Flu shot we pay for!  I could go on…

But, here’s your plan for Ebola, it will keep your executive off your back, so you can get back to real work:

Step 1 – We are going to insist all of our employees get Flu Shots this season. Why? Because Ebola symptoms mirror Flu symptoms, so it’s just a matter of time until Tammy, our inhouse hypochondriac, comes to me telling me she has Ebola and the entire staff freaks out!

Step 2 – We are going to communicate with our employees about the realities of how one catches Ebola.  The CDC has many of these documents and videos.

Step 3– We are going to tell our employees if they have a fever, to stay home until it’s gone.  Also, let them know that fevers actually can happen on any day, not just Mondays and Fridays.

Step 4 – We are going to give some statistics about the risks of one of our employees catching Ebola in cute little pictures.  Like one that shows a person getting struck by lightening and eaten by a shark at the same time. You have more of a chance of this happening than contracting Ebola in the U.S.

Step 5 –  You will keep asking the executive who asked you about your Ebola Crisis Plan if they are feeling well, because they don’t look well?!?!

Seriously, though, get your employees to get a Flu shot this season!  It might be the one thing that will help them out. Not against Ebola, but with actually keeping themselves healthy.  They don’t need help from Ebola, yet.

Top HR Products for 2014!

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I like new technology, which is why I’m headed out to the HR Technology Conference this week.  HR tech has continues to transform how we deliver HR and Talent solutions to our organizations.  I’m always amazed at the new stuff that comes out each year.  Human Resource Executive named their 2014 award winners for Top HR Products last week, and the awards are given out at the HR Technology Conference.  I’ll be checking all of these out for sure, but here is a preview of the award winners:

Appcast.io – www.appcast.io

A recruiting marketing platform that helps organizations fill their hard-to-fill requisitions by marketing it to 6,000 career and consumer sites on a pay-per-applicant basis.

Entelo Diversity – www.entelo.com

Entelo claims to have a program that will help you hire black people! Or women, veterans, Hispanics, etc. Basically, you can stop trying to search job boards using words like “Black” and “Spanish”.

Halogen 1:1 Exchange – www.halogensoftware.com

Halogen takes performance management to the next level with Halogen 1:1 Exchange.  This is a one-on-one meeting-management tool that works with other Halogen TalentSpace modules and is designed to spur greater communication, collaboration and coaching. The module tracks the frequency of these one-on-one meetings to provide employers with evidence these discussions are occurring. It also correlates the impact they are having on performance ratings, engagement scores and turnover.

Health E(fx) – www.healthefx.us

Health E(fx) is a stand-alone solution designed to help employers avoid penalties while optimizing their benefits strategies, decisions and costs within the Affordable Care Act environment.

HireVue Insights – www.hirevue.com

I’ve seen this one live and it’s awesome, can’t say enough about it! Basically, it analyzes your digital interviews to automatically give you the best candidates based on 15,000+ attributes. All your candidates.  Have 1000 apply, and you know you’ll only really look at the first 25 you applied, even though number 999 might be your best? Insights solves this! Plus, tells you which hiring managers are your best at selection!

IBM Social Learning – www.ibm.com

IBM Social Learning, powered by IBM Kenexa learning solutions and IBM social-collaboration and analytics tools, is designed to help people engage with one another, contribute expertise and learn from others using interactive media in near real-time.

Match-Click – www.match-click.com

Match-Click is a video-driven recruiting platform designed to let employers give job candidates a preview of their new corporate environment and potential supervisor and co-workers, through short, 20-second video clips featuring hiring managers and would-be colleagues describing the position and the organization.

QUEsocial – www.quesocial.com

Another one I’m really interested in seeing live! QUEsocial blends employer branding and social recruiting into a social talent-acquisition Software-as-a-Service technology platform. The idea is to enable recruiters and — by extension, employers — to “amplify and extend” the employer brand through individual recruiter and sourcing networks.

RecruitiFi – www.recruitifi.com

RecruitiFi is intended to offer organizations a new way to source talent by letting them select and post jobs to 250 expert recruiters from its membership pool of approximately 2,000.

Skillrater.com – www.skillrater.com

Skillrater.com is a cloud-based performance-feedback tool that incorporates social networking and collaboration.

There will be hundreds of other companies as well. I’ll make sure to give you a run down on some companies and technology that you haven’t ever heard of, yet, when I return.  The coolest part of HR Tech is finding a company that is nothing today, but will be industry leading in 3 to 5 years.  Last year I saw Blackbook HR and their Sense product and they are blowing up – such a great piece of technology to help us with one of HR’s biggest issues – Turnover!

Who will it be this year? I can’t wait to find out.

Recruiting’s Silver Bullet

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I don’t have a tattoo, but if I did it would say this:

“Pick Up The G*d Damn Phone!”

That’s it.  It would probably be one of those cool barbed wire kind of ones around my bicep, if I had biceps. Maybe I could even get it in another language so people would think it had some really deep thought or meaning.

I get asked weekly for advice on how to make ‘my’ recruiting department or shop better at recruiting.  I get asked advice on if they should have talent communities. Should they use one software, over another software.  Should they buy a LinkedIn seat or spend that money on a Facebook strategy.  I get asked if about every single tool imaginable that is sold to talent acquisition pros.

Every single Recruiting Pro I speak with wants to know the solution, the answer, the trick, to great recruiting.  Every. Single. One.

It’s not a trick, and it’s not hard.  It’s actually quite simple.  I tell them.  Then, they look at me, pause, and then they ask, “yeah, but what about…”

It’s a painful experience.  You see Talent Acquisition fails not because of the tools and processes, talent acquisition fails because the leadership in talent acquisition allows it to fail, because they want it to be something it’s not.  It’s not HR. It’s not sit at your desk and wait for magical software to deliver you magical candidates who magically want to come work for your company.

Talent Acquisition is sales. It’s about me talking you into something.  Like a car, but it’s not a car, it’s a job.  There a reasons you want the job, and reasons you don’t want the job, just like a car.  I have to convince you that you can really live with a green car, instead of a red car, because the green car is a better value or more reliable or something you’ll agree to.  Say hello to recruiting.

I know of one Silver Bullet in recruiting.  It’s as deadly today, as it was twenty years ago.  It’s called activity.  The recruiter with the most contacts will always fill more jobs over an extended period of time.  Bam!  It is that easy. And, that hard.

 

The Search For The Smartest Employee

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Yo! I’m on vacation this week, don’t try and come rob my house, it’s a ‘staycation’!  I’m going to run some oldies but goodies so I can let my creative juices focus on Gin and Tonics. Here you go:

I couldn’t sleep the other night, probably because of the 14 Diet Dews I had throughout the day, but I had an Epiphany while staring at the ceiling in the dark.   I figured out a way for HR Pros to find the Smartest Employee in their Company!  It isn’t a complex algorithm or a set of cognitive assessment tests – it’s a simple matrix – but it’s very effective.  Now, you might be asking yourself:

 “Why do I need to find the smartest employee in our company?”

Which would be legitimate – unfortunately at 2 a.m. I didn’t ask myself that same question – I just thought I came up with some crazy Einstein type shit!  But, like most things I deal with, I can come up with a plausible argument to why it’s important to find the smartest people in your company.  My reasons:

1. Smart people have the potential to do smart things.  In an organization you want to make the right decisions – usually dumb people don’t.

2. Smart people usually know other smart people. In an organization you want to get rid of your dumb people, and hire more smart people.

3. Smart people know the fakers.  Organizations make people selection mistakes, it happens all the time, don’t be embarrassed, just don’t let one decision turn into another by keeping a mistake.  Smart people know your bad hiring mistakes, because they can read through the B.S.

Now for the Matrix!  Like I said it’s simple – which is also why it’s genious, because anyone can do it.  It goes a little something like this (hit it!) –

First Step: down one side of your matrix list your employees by level of responsibility. Most responsible at the top, down to the least responsible at the bottom.  Some of these you’ll just have to do the eyeball test on, and slot people as you see fit – don’t get to worked up over this – just get the most responsible up top, the least down low – the ones in the middle don’t matter anyway.

Second Step: Across the top of the matrix list total compensation of each person to the corresponding column.  For the most part you should end up with a sheet that shows the most responsible person in your organization, making the most money, and slowing but surely working your way down to the least responsible, least amount of money.

Third Step: The Smart Employee Search.  Here’s where the rubber hits the road!  Now, look at your matrix and find the highest paid employee, with the corresponding least amount of experience.  Boom! You just found your smartest employee.

I told you it was easy!  This person has figured out how to, relatively, make the most money by having virtually no responsibility.  Say what you want – but that is one smart person!  You need to pull that person in and find out how to get them more engaged into your daily operations.  Don’t take this as a joke – dumb people don’t figure this out – you just don’t fall into a highly paid, low or no responsibility job – you have to work to get there.  Don’t underestimate this person’s capabilities – because guess what – everyone else has!  That’s why your working your butt off until 6pm, and they’re out the door at 3pm going to their golf league – for about $4000 less than you make. They’re going home with no stress, while you’re on your 4th therapist – this year.   They love coming to work – you have a hard time pulling yourself out of bed.

I love these employees – I try to hang with them, learn from them – I feel like I’m an anthropologist learning about a forgotten species – they intrigue me so.  A word of caution though – don’t try and capture and change these employees – don’t try and be “smarter” than they are – and change their job or their scope or their pay.  Remember, they’re smarter than you – you’ll just frustrate yourself as they find another position – doing even less for more!

HR’s Guide To Big Data For Dummies

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You’ve heard the hype: Big Data is taking over the business world, and HR’s going to be expected to make decisions—not through feelings, relationships or gut instinct—but via numbers. The problem is… your HRIS, ATS and Performance Solutions are all different systems and weren’t built with the big-data revolution in mind. In short, you feel less than ready for workforce analytics—you’re just trying to get the basic reports generated.

We feel your pain, people. That’s why our June installment of the FOT webinar is entitled, HR Moneyball: The FOT Bootstrapper Guide To Getting Started With Big Data. Join Steve Boese and Kris Dunn of FOT for this webinar (sponsored by ThoughtSpot, a cool business intelligence startup), and we’ll share the following goodies with you:

– A brief review of where HR stands with Business Intelligence (BI)/Big Data. We’ll cover some of the trends, what the bleeding edge is doing, the 3 types of data sources available to HR shops and what the CEOs and business leaders you support are asking for related to data and BI out of the HR Function. We’ll also talk about what your options are when HR is the last priority for an over-burdened IT function.

– Why HR pros need to shift/lean forward. It’s not what happened, it’s what going to happen. Getting your head around business intelligence and data means you have to shift your focus from reporting the past and move to predictive analytics. We’ll give you examples of great reporting decks from the HR Hall of Fame and tell you how they have to change to meet the call from predictive analytics out of your HR shop.

– The Five Best HR Plays for Business Intelligence (BI) and Big Data. Since we’re all about helping you win, we wouldn’t do this webinar without giving you some great ideas for where to start with a data play out of your shop. You’re going to stop reporting turnover and start predicting it. You’re going to stop reporting time to fill and start showing which hiring managers are great at—you guessed it—hiring. We’ll give you five great ideas and show you how to get started piecing the story together.

– A primer on what’s next once you start channeling Nostradamus. Since you specialize in people, you naturally understand the move to using Business Intelligence (BI)/Big Data that helps you predict the future is only half the battle—you have to have a plan once the predictions are made. We’ll help you understand the natural applications for using your business-intelligence data as both a hammer and a hug—to get people who need to change moving, and to embrace those that truly want your help as a partner.

You’re a quality HR pro who knows how to get things done. Join us June 26 at 2pm EST for HR Moneyball: The FOT Bootstrapper Guide To Getting Started With Big Data and we’ll help you understand how to deploy Moneyball principles in HR that allow you to use predictive Big Data to position yourself as the expert you are.

You’re Business Can Change In A Blink!

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So, there’s this lady, Mary Meeker,  who does this annual Internet trends report.  It’s super cool! Packed with odds and ends. I’m a data geek, so I love it!  Go read it, I could do a hundred posts on it! One of the things that caught me right away, actually blew me away, was this slide:

Global Smartphones

 

What does this all mean?  Basically, Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s operating system now run 97% of all smartphones.  8 years ago, it was 5%.

What happened?!

Remember your cool flip phone, the one your Dad still has?  Yeah, that was a Nokia.  What about that fat Blackberry IT made you have because it was safe for email?  Yeah, almost dead!

Think your business is really strong right now? Market leader?  Don’t blink!  It can all go away that freaking fast!

This isn’t a public service announcement, this is just a wake up call.  Know your customer. Take care of them better than anyone else ever  thought of taking care of them.  Listen to them. Hear them. They’ll tell you what they want to buy next.

Be your customers next buy.

SHRM Releases Their New Certification Designations!

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So, currently you have a PHR (Professional of Human Resources), or a SPHR (Senior Professional of Human Resources), or a GPHR (Global Professional of Human Resources) from HRCI.  SHRM announced it was launching it’s competency based program of certified HR professionals, and the one thing everyone wants to know is what are my new letters going to be!?!?

Hello, My Name is Tim Sackett, SPHR.  But not for much longer, soon I’ll acquiesce to the new SHRM certification because that’s what we do as HR Pros, we give in and take it.

I like having letters after my name.  It makes me feel important, even though only HR people have any idea what they mean.  I’ve always known the letters were a little bit of a fraud.  I got my SPHR without every working in HR.  I can say that now because the statue of limitations has run out on SHRM legally taking away my SPHR, plus my SPHR is now worthless in the eyes of SHRM so they could care less about it!  In 2001 I accepted my first corporate HR gig, after working at a recruiting agency for eight years. I sat for and received my SPHR, without technically ever working in HR.  I did have eight years of recruiting experience, which mostly consisted of sales.

Either way, I felt proud to have letters behind my name.  This is why I’m super excited when SHRM chose my little old blog to make such a super big announcement of their new designations!  Here are the new SHRM Certification Designation letters (if they allowed me to choose them):

HRN – Human Resource Ninja – The HRN designation is for HR Pros who actually get something done, and you never have to hear about it.  That shit just happened and nobody knows how it happened. That’s because it was done by an HR Ninja!

SHRN – Sr. HR Ninja – Like the HRN, the SHRN gets stuff done without needing acknowledgement, but also without notice gets rid of horrible performing employees and leaders, never to be heard from or seen again.  Cold HR killers.  You need to get rid of an under-performing employee? Call a SHRN!

CHRR – Corporate HR Recruiter – The CHRR is a designation for those folks who work in corporate recruiting but don’t actually recruit, but they do a lot of stuff that sounds like recruiting, but isn’t really recruiting, because they don’t really want to recruit, they want to be in HR.  Is that clear?

SCHRR – Sr. Corporate HR Recruiter – The SCHRR is savvy enough to not only not doing any real recruiting, they’ve made a career out of coming up with analytics to prove how good of a non-recruiter recruiter they really are.  The SCHRR is also tech savvy enough to find programs that will endlessly post and pray, so now they can find ways to use Pinterest to not recruit great talent.

NHRBP – Not HR Business Partner – The NHRBP is someone who is so strategic, so business savvy, they aren’t actually considered to be in HR any longer.  A NHRBP can actually run your company. They know everything: Operations, Finance, Marketing, Sales, etc.  Just don’t ever ask them to plan a picnic, organize your annual United Way drive or send flowers to a grieving employee, because they don’t do that!

SNHRBP – Sr. Not HR Business Partner – Or as we like to call it- The CEO.  Moving forward SHRM will now push that every single CEO in the world get their CNHRBP certification.

HRGP – HR Global Professional – The HRGP is like the current GPHR but we moved the letters around. This is for those people who fell into HR and traveled overseas in either high school or college and decided they would rather live outside of America.  We don’t understand them either, but American companies like to feel like the people they send overseas to offend other countries have some insights, so here you go.  No SHRGP will be offered because why.

PhDP – The Doctor of People – I had to do this one for my professor friends who teach HR – hello Matt Stollak and Marcus Stewart! The only way you can get this designation is by spending most of your life at university and actually getting a PhD, and teaching HR classes every Tuesday and Thursday from 9am to 10:30am.  I might actually go back to school because having a PhDP would be the coolest designation ever!

I can’t wait to use my SHRN designation! Thanks Hank!

 

 

The 1 Reason Your New Recruiting Process Will Fail

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There is one absolute truth in Recruiting:  You (anyone who works in recruiting) will attempt to ‘Re-Process’ your recruiting process because you feel you can make it more efficient, more effective, more ‘something’.   The ‘old’ process was a failure (mainly because you didn’t design it), and you have to give the process an overhaul to bring it up to today’s standards.  This new process will satisfy your hiring managers, and completely revolutionize how talent is brought into your organization.

Is this true?

It is.  I’ve been you.  The problem is, it won’t work.  The new process, is the old process, with better clip art.  The new process might actually be a ‘better’ process, but it doesn’t matter.  The reason it doesn’t matter is because of something you aren’t even considering.  Why are you ‘re-processing’?   Let’s assume it’s because you need to get “more” out of your recruiting process.  You need more talent, you need more compliance, you need more satisfied hiring managers, you need more retention, you need, more.

That’s really what this is all about.  If your current process was delivering you more, you wouldn’t change.

Do you know why your ‘new’ process won’t work either?  You don’t really want to get more.  You’re afraid of more.  More opens you up to things you could hide from under the old process.

That is why your ‘new’ process will fail.  Deep down, in places you don’t talk about at work, you don’t want the process to succeed.

Having a successful process means you have to open yourself up to failure.  A successful process needs some things to be successful.  Hard metrics, levels of accountability, a line in the sand that says “we own this”.   Those things will demonstrate success, and they will clearly demonstrate failure.  We love demonstrating our success.  No one loves demonstrating our failure.  So, we attempt to ‘re-process’ a process that will ensure our success, and also ensure we don’t fail.  That is impossible.   Success only works as a comparison.  Here is how we succeed, because here is what it looks like if we fail.

Organizationally, failing isn’t the worst thing that can happen, but individually we fear it.  This fear keeps us from designing the process our organization really needs.  A process that will show those doing it right, and those not doing it right.  A process that shows us where we need to improve, specifically.  A process that will lead to some black and white decisions.

That is why your new Recruiting process will fail.  You are not willing to build one that will show your failures.

 

Becoming A Victim Of Can’t

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I spoke in Huntsville, Al this week to a group of around 175 HR and Talent Pros for North Alabama SHRM.  It was a fun group. They had a ton of energy and were willing to put up with me and my fast talking northern ways! My wife told me to be more respectful, than usual, on my way down to Alabama.  She said southern women expected more manners than I was use to!

For those who don’t much about Huntsville it is a big military town, which means most people either work on the base, or work for a contractor supporting one of the many military contracts coming out of the base.  There are literally hundreds of companies in Huntsville that are considered military ‘contractors’.  That’s really just a big fancy term for companies that won a military contract, which is just a scope of work they need to do or deliver to the military.

If you haven’t worked a military contract before, they come with as much red tape and rules as you can expect from the U.S. government.  That becomes a very big problem for HR Pros who love to follow rules!  One thing that was apparent very early into the day was that some Huntsville HR and Talent Pros became very comfortable with saying the following statement:

“We can’t do that, we are a military contractor!”

You can probably guess what my answer was to that!  “Yes, you can! You just have to find a way to do it!”  What they didn’t expect was that my company was also a military contractor, I was going to accept any victim statements.  Yes, you are a military contractor.  Isn’t it great!  Now, let’s find out how we can use Facebook to recruit and find you some really good talent!

But, Tim, OFCCP! OFCCP won’t allow us to social recruit!  Really.  It really says within OFCCP regulations that you can’t recruit on Facebook!?  Well, no, but…you just don’t understand.  Yeah, I understand more than you really know.  I understand it’s going to be hard, but it can be done.  I also understand that it’s really easy to fall the victim and use OFCCP as a crutch to why we can do our job.

I actually spoke to two pros who were going through OFCCP audits.  Scary stuff for any HR or Talent Pro.  But I didn’t even let them use it as a crutch.  I asked them if they would get through it. Yes, was the answer.  Did you get fined? No.  So, now you just have to figure how to make it the sourcing you need to do, work within your OFCCP process.  Not easy. But doable and needed.

The most dangerous thing we’ll ever face in our career is becoming a victim of can’t.   I’m a firm believer you can try to do anything.  We might not succeed, but it shouldn’t stop you from trying.  Things like OFCCP are there to catch bad companies, doing bad things.  I’ve never spoken to a good company, with good people, trying to do the right things, that ever had an issue with OFCCP! Ever!

Go do the right things for your organization, and in the end trust that why you might get audited, you are doing what is right.  That’s ultimately all you really can do.