Category Archives: Performance

Get Your Employees to Stop Sleepwalking Through Open Enrollment

Posted on by
Reply

Hey gang! I’m doing another SHRM Webinar to help you get your employees more involved in this year’s Open Enrollment, and give you some of the background to what frustrates them the most, along with some tips on waking them up!

Do way too many of your employees default into exactly the same plan they chose the year before…just because it’s easier? Is their reluctance to even consider making changes to their benefits costing them — and your company — serious money?

If so, you’re going to love the advice I have to offer about waking up your benefits sleepwalkers in this lively one-hour webinar.

Specifically, you’ll learn:

  • Why the same old, same old is so appealing to people, and how to make change seem less intimidating
  • Smart ways to deal with the blowback you might get if you take away a plan option
  • Why employees find making benefits decisions so dang hard – and how you can help alleviate their stress
  • What you can do to jolt your benefits sleepwalking employees awake once and for all

In short: if you’ve ever struggled to get employees to embrace a new plan or to take any action at all during open enrollment, this is the webinar for you!

August 20th at 2pm EST – just in time for your afternoon nap on the East Coast, and your lunch nap on the West Coast!

Free Webinar (Sponsored by SHRM and ALEX) –  How to Get Your Employees to Stop Sleepwalking Through Open Enrollment—And Help Them Make Better Decisions! 

REGISTER HERE! 

Bathroom Monitor: The Newest HR Pro Title

Posted on by
3

I love HR.  I’m always on the lookout for the next latest and greatest HR title, so this is an exciting day!  The WaterSaver Faucet Company in Chicago, a great Union town, decided to add “Bathroom Monitor” to the duties HR is now responsible for. Check it out:

“If you work at WaterSaver Faucet Company, when you gotta go, you might not want to go.

The Chicago company installed a new system that monitors bathroom breaks and penalizes employees who spend more than six minutes a day in the washroom outside their normal breaks.

“The HR woman literally goes through every person’s bathroom use and either hands out a reward or discipline,” said Nick Kreitman, an attorney for Teamsters Local 743, which represents 80 workers at the plant, which coincidentally manufactures taps and other sink fixtures.

Employees who don’t use extra breaks get a dollar a day while others who exceed more than one hour in a 10-day period will get a warning, which can lead to termination, he said.”

Now, you probably think this is where I’ll rant about how being a Bathroom Monitor isn’t strategic and demeaning to HR Pros. But, I’m not. In this case, workers are getting what they have asked for.

If you act like a child, employers are forced to treat you like a child.  Adults use the bathroom for reasons G*d intended. Children use the bathroom for that reason and about a hundred others.  Have you ever spent time in an elementary school!?!  I have.  I taught elementary aged children.  The bathroom is a place to go when you’re bored in class to waste time. The bathroom is where mischief happens.

Watersaver HR is doing what is has to, to solve an employee problem it is having.  Employees were taking an advantage of unlimited bathroom breaks that the employer had given to them.  It wasn’t everyone, but it was enough that Watersaver felt the need to make changes.  Employees can still take a bathroom break any time they need, but once a certain amount of time is taken up over a ten day period, it starts to become a disciplinary issue.

Do I agree with this type of strategy? No.

Here’s how I would have handled it.  I would have had the managers who were having issues with a few employees taking too many bathroom breaks, get rid of those employees who were abusing the privilege of unlimited breaks.  I would have sent the message, that we don’t put up with childish behavior.  We want adults to work here.

You know what? The other employees, the majority, also want to work with other adults.  They would have applauded this. Because adults hate when they are working their butts off and others, doing the same job, are goofing off.  We are talking about medical need here.  We are talking about adults who don’t want to work for the money they are being paid. Those people have to go bye-bye.

That’s the type of strategy I would have rather seen Watersaver take.

The 19 Types of HR & Talent Software You Need

Posted on by
8

I’m a virgin when it comes to HR Technology.  When I first got into really studying the industry I probably put HR technology into about three buckets: HR system of record, applicant tracking systems and payroll.  If you had those three types of software you had what you basically needed to run HR.

My friends, William and John, over at Key Interval Research recently released their latest study called “The Optimal Technical Stack”. The goal being let’s figure out what pieces of HR and Talent Technology you really need to run a ‘complete’ HR shop, and ideal HR shop.  If money was no object, what technology solutions should you have to be great?

Here’s the list. I’m going to put in order to what I think you should invest in first to last. The guys at Key Interval did not do this. They do real research, this ranking is just my opinion:

1. Human Resource Information System (HRIS)

2. Payroll

3. Recruiting/Talent Acquisition (Applicant Tracking Systems & Recruiting Automation)

4. Benefits Management

5. OnBoarding

6. Total Rewards (Recognition)

7. Performance Management

8.  Time & Attendance/Scheduling (Key broke T&A and Scheduling out separately, I think they go together)

9. Learning Management

10. HR Analytics

11. Succession Management

12. Engagement Tools

13. Recruiting Tools (Interviewing tools and Assessments – Key broke these out as two separate categories)

14. Wellness Management

15. Compensation Management

16. Employment Websites (CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, etc.)

17. Collaboration/Communication Tools (Tools that help your employees communicate with each other: Yammer, TINYPulse, Chatter, etc.)

18. Case Management (Employee hotlines, tracking calls and issues brought into HR, etc.)

19. Workforce Planning & Workforce Management (Key had these broken out, but I think they actually probably fall into one of the 18 categories I have listed above somewhere)

You might rank this list differently depending on the situation you find yourself in with your current organization.  If I had my HR shop locked in and running down the tracks smoothly, maybe I would move up Wellness. If I had a crunch on hiring, maybe I move up some of the recruiting, interviewing talent attraction types of technology.

I think most people would look at this list and believe that their HR ‘suite’ is providing them with most, if not all of this stuff.  The reality is, most suites are good with about three of these, touch another three, and try to make you believe they have another three. That makes nine pieces they might cover, which leaves a ton of technology you just don’t have.

If you were to listen to any HR or Talent technology vendor in 2015, you would be led to believe that the only piece of technology you really need is HR Analytics!  That’s all we hear in the marketplace right now.

Another fascinating piece from the Key Interval research was that Succession Technology is ranked as the most desired need of organizations. Yet, has one of the lowest market penetrations. Also, it was clear to me, that organizations don’t really see any leader in this space. Most respondents used one of three tools for Succession: Some in-house/home grown (like an Excel spreadsheet), relied on what their HRIS suite offered (which is probably very weak) or relied on what their Learning Management system offered (probably weaker yet!).

No real players in Succession Technology!  Sounds like an opportunity…

Fascinating research and data from Key Interval.  Check them out. I love receiving their reports!

 

HR Never Wins the Dress Code Game

Posted on by
5

You probably saw this last week when the internet got all hot and bothered over a 17 year old girl who worked at JC Penny got sent home for a dress code violation. She tweeted out a picture of herself dressed in JC Penny bought ‘career’ apparel that she was wearing at the time (see pic above). The only place where I see this being dressed appropriate for work is probably Hooters, but you know me, I’m super ultra conservative right winged nut job, so what the hell do I know…

Many wanted were angry over what they saw as a double standard, although I’m not sure what that double standard is. I would have been more upset over a 17 year old boy wearing this outfit to work than the girl!  I would have sent both home, so there goes your double standard.

The real issue here is that JC Penny labeled this outfit ‘career apparel” to the customers, but didn’t find it career appropriate for their own associate. If JC Penny is labeling this outfit on their shelves appropriate work wear, why is it inappropriate work wear for their own employees?

Well, I have some reasons:

1. It’s tight and revealing for the average customer of JC Penny.  The average age of a JC Penny shopper is 103 years of age.  The last thing an old person wants to see is a fourth of July wannabe stripper.  That’s knowing your customer base.  I’m sure if she was working at Hot Topic, she wouldn’t have been sent home.

2. There a difference between marketing and operations.  Just because marketing is calling something ‘career appropriate’, doesn’t mean your HR and Operations folks will feel the same way.  Welcome to the reality of working in a corporation. People aren’t always on the same page, and that is a bad thing.

3. 17 year olds have no ability to understand the broader picture of the corporate politics at play here.  It’s too bad someone couldn’t have better coached this young lady on how to handle this situation to have a better impact for herself and fellow employees. Going nuclear wasn’t the best option for her.

4. HR never wins when it comes to dress code, because of these kinds of issues.

HR should give up the dress code policy whenever it’s an option and let your operations team own it. They know their customer base. They know their work environment. They know their employees.  Let them build a dress code that works for them, and trust they’ll do what’s right for the organization.  I’ve done this three times in my career, and all three times it worked out wonderfully, and I didn’t ever have to deal with dress code ever again!

4 Reasons You’ll Leave Your Job on Your Terms

Posted on by
1

There’s a million ways to lose your job.  Layoffs, company closes, smacking an employee on the butt, you name it and someone has lost their job over it!

The reality is, though, most people leave their jobs on their own terms and it has nothing to do with more money or a higher level job.

If fact there are four main ways people leave their jobs:

#1 – Crappy Boss.  Almost anyone who has left my company has left because they didn’t like me, or I didn’t like them. Well, to be honest, I probably didn’t like the way they were performing.  If they were performing well, I don’t really care if I like them personally. I’ll take the performance over me liking them!  So, for some I’m a crappy boss, for others I’m not.  The key to great leadership is having only a few believe you’re crappy!

#2 – Bad Job Fit. We hired you and thought you would be awesome. Yay! But, we all messed up with thinking you would fit.  You’re not the right fit. You know it. Doesn’t ‘feel’ right, so you you leave to something that feels better. In so many of our jobs that we hire for, fit is the most important part of success. Fit and showing up every day. Shocking how we can’t figure this out!

#3 – Commute.  Length of commute is subjective.  My friends in Detroit live 10 miles from work and drive an hour on good days to their jobs. They seem completely happy with this commute.  I drive 12 miles and it takes me twenty minutes and if I get slowed down and it takes me 22 minutes, I’m ready to shoot people!  People take a job and think the commute is no big deal, but it is a very big deal for so many people.  If the length of commute comes up in negotiation, run away from that candidate.

#4 – Cultural Fit.  I hate conservative, very political environments.  There’s something about kissing ass all day that makes me not a pleasant person to be around.  You need to know who you are and what kinds of culture you like.  Some of my best friends love ultra-professional conservative cultures and do exceptional working in those cultures.  Everyone has a preference. Find yours.  So many people get this wrong and stay in a culture they hate.

These four reasons make up about 99% of why people decide to leave a company.  People always want you to believe they left for money or a promotion, but all of that can usually be had at their current employer with a little patience and some conversations.

 

Checking Work Email, Isn’t Working!

Posted on by
Reply

For most of their careers, my parents could never check their work email at home.  It did mean that they probably stopped working when they got home, unlike most professional employees today.  My parents also rarely made it home at 5pm, and worked in the office many Saturdays and Sundays when the work needed to get done.

When did we start defining work as sitting in the bathroom at home and replying to email in five minutes as work?

Let’s face it, most people aren’t really working when they are home.  They like to believe that what they’re doing is real work, but if can also wait to be done the next morning when you arrive at the office, you’re not doing real work, you’re just narcissistic.  Oh, I better immediately get back to John and tell him I can definitely do that interview at 8am, next week Friday…

We act like checking work email at home is like we’re donating a kidney, or something.

CareerBuilder released a new survey today that shows that 59% of males and 42% of females respond to emails when out of the office.  Those numbers actually sound low to me. The survey also shows that younger workers are more likely to think about work when going to bed and when waking. Just wait! Pretty soon thinking about work will be the same as work!

Are we losing our minds!?

Seriously! I want to know.  Having the ability to check and respond to emails outside of the office increase your work-life flexibility, but we talk about it like it’s an anchor.  That iPhone is only an anchor if you make it an anchor!  Tomorrow I’m taking a half day to go watch my son play baseball.  In between innings I always check my email and respond if necessary.

Making the decision to take a half a day to watch my son play baseball is easy, because I know I can balance both jobs I have, running a company and being a Dad.  Does my son care that I’m checking email while he’s warming up in between innings?  No. He doesn’t even notice.  It’s not like I’m behind the backstop giving a performance review over the phone while he’s up to bat! I’m just checking and following up on some emails.

If you decide you want to stay connected to your job and organization while you are out of the office, that is a personal decision. Don’t act like you’re going above and beyond by keeping up on your emails.

If keeping up on your emails is the real work you’re doing, you’re way overpaid!

No One is Going to Remember How Much Money You Saved!

Posted on by
Reply

When I first started my career in HR on the corporate side of the fence I was always very concerned about my budget.  I spent a long time making sure I developed a good budget and I worked even harder to stay on or under budget.  Ultimately, it was the biggest waste of time I ever spent as an HR professional.

What I learned over the years was that budgets are important, but succeeding at your functional area is more important!

No one cared if I came in 7% under budget, but I had critical positions open for way too long, and projects were behind or failed as a result. No one cared that I came in under salary budget if our turnover increased.  No one cared that didn’t use all of my HR technology budget if they continued to be frustrated with processes that caused them more work.

I didn’t learn this until I spent so much money I thought I was going to be fired, and ended up getting praised!

I was working on a project to open up 40 pharmacies in a year. That meant we had to find a lot of pharmacists.  For those in that game, you know finding 80 or so Pharmacists isn’t something you just go post on CareerBuilder.  We had to market. We had to go to a ton of schools. We had to ‘buy’ some folks. Sign on bonuses. Relocation bonuses. Tuition guarantees. Whatever it took!

I was so far over my budget I took on this thought process, “well, I might as well fill them all, I’ll be fired next year at budget time!”  So, I did. I got a sourcing company to help me. I got my team on the road. We threw parties on campuses for new pharmacy grads. We killed it!

In my year end budget meeting, the VP of Pharmacy congratulated me and my team.  We were over our budget by almost a half a million dollars. The one factor I didn’t know, which I should have, was each pharmacy that we didn’t open cost the company about three million.  My overage, wasn’t peanuts!

There are times to save money in HR.  Anything you can give back at the end of the year will always be appreciated.  I learned, though, that being over for the right reasons is looked upon almost more strategic than the times I gave money back.

I faced more questions giving money back, then spending more than I had. Executives wanted to know why I didn’t spend all the money I had in my technology budget.  Were we going to fall behind? What my plans were in the future? Etc.  Not spending my money to get better, was looked at as a sign of I didn’t know what I was doing.

I learned that no one is going to remember how much I saved if I’m not making my function better. Staying status quo isn’t a good answer.  They gave me money for a reason, and it was up to me to use that money to make us better.  Giving it back just showed them I wasn’t strategic enough to find great ways to use those resources.

The Jealous Girlfriend Interview Technique!

Posted on by
2

About a year ago Forbes had an article, Top Executive Recruiters Agree There Are Only 3 True Job Interview Questions, that shared the “wisdom” of a handful of Executive  Recruiters on the only things that you should really have to ask a candidate.  There 3 questions where:

  1. Can you do the job?
  2. Will you love the job?
  3. Can we tolerate working with you?

Simple enough.  Straight to the point, and you can assume for the $75,000 you’re paying, this is probably the extent of their screening as well!

In my Recruiting/HR career it’s probably the single most often asked question I get:

“What are your best interview questions?”

Then, you get to hear their questions. About how Google has some really great ones. Even, how I heard once about a company that asked people if they were an animal which animal would they be? Or, if you only pick one vegetable to eat the rest of your life, would it be carrots?  It goes on, and on. Until you want to vomit!

The actual interview questions have very little impact in the success of the interview.

If you are interviewing anyone with some decent smarts, they are going to be able to ace your questions with little effort.  What is important in interviewing is what you allow the candidate to get away with.  I find that most recruiters and hiring managers to be way (I mean WAY!) to easy when it comes to questioning candidates.  See if this example sounds familiar:

Interviewer: “John, looks like you left your last next to last company in May, but didn’t start your current position until July. Can you explain that gap?”

John: “Sure, you know I was doing a great job and I didn’t see myself moving up in that company, so I wanted to go find somewhere I could move up the ladder.”

Bam! At this point, most interviewers move on to the next questions.  When clearly, John deflected, and someone needs to rip into some Gestapo interrogation tactics and find out what’s really going on.  But they don’t, it would be a conflict, he might think we are rude, and well, we’ll move on…

Follow-up questions to original answers during an interview is a skill in itself.  The only interview questions you ever need are the questions a Jealous Girlfriend asks when you come home on a Saturday morning around 3am.  Shoot, just hire Jealous Girlfriends as your interviewers! They’ll get to the bottom of a candidates background!

The hardest interview I ever had was with a woman that was eventually my boss, who was a former U.S. Army interrogator. It was exhausting! It was painful! It was Awesome! I actually lost my voice (after the 7th hour – True Story!).

She was the ultimate Jealous Girlfriend, in fact, I think she trains Jealous Girlfriends in her spare time.  There wasn’t an answer I could give her that she was satisfied with. She just kept at it, until I would slip and say something I really didn’t mean to. Once she smelled the blood, it was over.

The result? She hired the best talent (excluding me) in the entire organization by far!  Bad hired did not make it past here interviewing technique.

So, don’t worry about having the “best” interview questions. Really any will do. Just don’t accept the first answer you get!

 

The #1 Way to Communicate Success of a HR Change!

Posted on by
2

Adobe recently changed their annual performance review process of the traditional once-per-year review to a more modern design of having frequent feedback throughout the year:

So, based in part on ideas crowdsourced from employees, Morris and her team scrapped annual evaluations and replaced them with a system called Check In. At the start of each fiscal year, employees and managers set specific goals. Then, at least every eight weeks but usually much more often, people “check in” with their bosses for a real-time discussion of how things are going. At an annual “rewards check-in,” managers give out raises and bonuses according to how well each employee has met or exceeded his or her targets. “Managers are empowered to make those decisions,” says Morris. “There is no ‘matrix.’ HR isn’t involved.”

A big change for any organization, for sure, but that’s not what this post is really about.  You see, Donna Morris, Adobe’s Sr. Global VP of People and Places could have easily just said it’s been a great success and shared stories from employees and hiring managers about how much they loved it. She could have shared retention metrics and employee engagement scores to show its success, but she didn’t. What shared did was absolutely brilliant! She shared this:

Getting feedback in real time, so everyone stays on track and is pulling in the same direction, has helped make Adobe’s 13,000 employees far more productive, Morris says. Adobe’s stock price has increased from about $30 to over $80 since Check In began.

Drops mic, walks off stage.

You want to really communicate the success of HR change, tie it to direct financial outcomes!  Yes, it’s a major leap to say “Check In” created $50 per share of shareholder value.  Let me say that again, MAJOR LEAP!  In fact, I don’t even think you could scientifically correlate this one HR change to the raise in shareholder value, but she did!  What she did would be similar to saying global temperatures have risen 3 degrees on average since they started making Krispy Kreme donuts, so Krispy Kreme is responsible for global warming!

You see, success of a major program has little to do with fact, and ton to do with perception.  Here is a senior HR executive who gets it.   She wants to do other cool and innovative stuff at Adobe, and now she has her big-win to go back to when someone pushes back that it won’t work, or it’s not needed.   In the minds of Adobe employees, this program has increased shareholder value, and we need to listen to her other ideas!

Take note HR Pros!  If you get this opportunity, you take it 100% of the time! Because you won’t get it often.  How do you communicate your success of a HR program?  Wait until you have favorable financial data in your organization, then connect the dots for people!

Do Demotions Work?

Posted on by
Reply

Quietly, Brian Williams returned to NBC last week. Not in his usual spot of nightly news anchor, but in a demoted spot, for less pay:

The embattled former NBC Nightly News anchor has been demoted and will receive reportedly less money in his new role, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Williams is being replaced by Lester Holt, who took over for him after he was handed down an unpaid six-month suspension for making factually incorrect comments and “misremembering” details spoken about on-air.

The newspaper reported that Williams will receive “substantially” less money when he returns to the network as a breaking news and special reports anchor for MSNBC, a division of NBC. He had been making at least $10 million a year for the last five years.

It begs the question, do demotions work?

They certainly aren’t popular. Both, employers and employees, dislike demotions.  Employers feel like if they demote an employee they are just giving them notice to go find another job.  Employees feel like a failure and that the organization is probably just trying to push them out the door. In my experience demotions rarely work.

What kind of demotions work?

There are times when you promote a good worker into a new role, a promotion, and both you and the employee think it will be great, but then it ends up not being great. The employee can’t handle the new role, you did a bad job preparing them, there were other organizational issues at play, whatever the reason, it’s not working. This happens more than you realize, but we usually just end up firing the employee for performance, or they see the writing on the wall and take off before you get a chance to shoot them yourself.

I always find it ironic when I hear about this type of turnover. I’ll ask, “was this person a good, solid employee before they got promoted?”  The answer is always yes.  They wouldn’t have gotten promoted if they weren’t. So, then, why did this person have to be a turnover statistic? Why couldn’t we figure out how to get them back to a position where they were productive and successful again?

Modern organizational theory doesn’t allow for this.  We don’t believe that a person will ever want to go backwards in their career. Once they have been promoted, they will not want to go back into a position they had prior, and they definitely don’t want a pay cut!  We assume this to be true. Also, it might be true in many cases. So, we take a ‘good’ employee and terminate them or let them just go away on their own.

I think the only way you make a demotion work is if you set it up within your organizational culture that this ‘demotion’, going back into a very important role in the company, is something that happens here.  We want to challenge people, and sometimes those challenges won’t end well.  That’s okay, we still love you, and respect you, and we want to get you back on a path of success.

This conversation has to happen, not after failure, but before the person is ever promoted.  That moving along the career path here, at our organization, isn’t just up, it’s down, it’s sideways, etc.  We are going to constantly want to get you into a ‘role’ of success.  Yes, failure happens, but we will want to get you back to success as fast as possible.

The reality is, people don’t stay around if they’re failing.

Brian Williams is damaged goods, so he accepted the demotion.  He’s talented. He’ll get back on the horse, show his value, and then he’ll go someplace else.  NBC is giving him an opportunity, but this kind of demotion doesn’t usually end well, for the employer.