Category Archives: Performance

It’s Not a Talent Contest

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I think most of us have gotten away from using the phrase “a war on talent’ throughout the industry.  It’s not really a war, and if it was most of you would lose.  Most talent acquisition shops are unwilling to do what it would take to win a war, that’s just a fact, not a shot at your shop.

There’s a better phrase that I think should encompass the plight of talent in our organizations that is used frequently in sports:

“It’s not a ‘talent’ contest. It’s a ‘winning’ contest!”

This means it doesn’t matter how talented the other team is, it all comes down to winning the game.  Great, you have the best talent, but if you’re losing the game/contest/event your high level of talent means nothing!

HR, Talent Acquisition and most executives have a hard time with this. They want to get the ‘best’ talent.  When, in reality, the best talent might not help your organization ‘win’.  Yes, you win or lose in most organizations.  You either make the sale or don’t make the sale. You either launch on time or don’t.  You either design award winning products, or you design products that never make it market.  Those are winning and losing in a business sense.

Business isn’t a talent game. It’s a winning and losing game.

What does this mean to HR and Talent Acquisition?  You don’t always need the most talented individuals to win.  What you need is people who are willing to give that little bit of extra effort, over those who won’t.  This discretionary effort gets you the win, over talented individuals who aren’t willing to give such effort.

You need individuals that put the goal, the vision, first.  Again, nothing to do with talent.  They believe in what you are doing as an organization, and do what it takes to make those goals reality.

You need individuals who want to see those around them succeed and are willing to sacrifice themselves, from time to time, to see their peers and coworkers succeed.  This sacrifice has nothing to do with talent.

I love talent, don’t get me wrong.  All of us need a certain level of talent to do what we do, but almost all of us don’t need to be the ‘most’ talented to be successful.  When we go out and build our talent strategies we have to be aware of this.  It’s not about hiring top talent.  It’s about hiring the talent that will make our organizations successful.

I don’t want my organization to be in a talent game.  I want my organization to be in a winning game.

T3 – BlackbookHR – Sense, RNA and Presto

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T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.

So, I’ll start about saying I’m a proud member of Blackbook HR’s Advisory Board, along with some other great HR pros. But, even prior to that I was a fan of their products – my review of Sense. This review is highlighting two new products that Blackbook HR has launched – RNA and Presto.

First, let me say that I’m not the only one who is really liking what Blackbook is doing.  They were named one of the 2014 HR Tech Conference Awesome New Startups (don’t worry, I’ll be highlighting many of these others as well!).

RNA (Relationship Network Analysis) is one of Blackbook HR’s newest offerings.   When I saw the demo of this at HR Tech I was blown away.  It basically shows you your organization chart, but not by title, by influence!  It’s super cool, and the application of uses for retention, performance and succession are really limitless. One customer is using it to transition new leaders into the organization, so they know which players they need to connect with immediately, and how their organization is really getting work done!

Some of the other really cool things RNA can do if allow you to search your organization by skills. Not only self-reported skills, but all the employees in your organization can also rate each other on those skill levels.  So, you need someone for a new project that has project management skills?  What about the one person in your organization that their peers rate them highest in that skill!?  It does that.  Losing folks to turnover or retirement and need a pool of potential replacements (Succession), you can source that data here.

Also, think about any change management. Who are the most important employees to ensure are bought into the change before rolling it out?  That’s critical for success in any change, and RNA can give you these connections.  You can now go out and work with these individuals first, and let them help drive the change, positively, forward. Merger and acquisitions would be another way I could see this data being extremely important.

I will say, this is much more of an enterprise type of solution.  Most SMB’s probably don’t have enough data to really take advantage of this type of solution. But, if you are in the 2500+ employee range, this will blow your mind.  It’s fairly inexpensive, and the analytics you get from this data are crazy, it’s well worth a demo for sure!

RNA

 

Presto, is Blackbook’s other new product, and it’s totally free to use!  Basically, Presto is a survey App you can use within your organization, department and group.  It doesn’t even have to be used for business, but that’s what it was originally designed for.  Let’s say you just came out of an executive meeting and one of your senior leaders wanted to know how an announcement of some big new project was being ‘viewed’ by your employees.  You could within seconds put out a survey question to your organization, and watch in real-time the survey results come back to you.  Not only do you see, but everyone who participates can see the results.

I even joked you could send it out to your department to see what people wanted for lunch, and the entire group could see what everyone preferred!  It’s basically a real-time way to gather feedback in your organization. Totally free.  Completely simple to use.  I can think of a hundred ways I could use this, or coach my hiring managers to use this in an organization.  While this is a mobile app, the users can also log into a dashboard that gives you tabulated, colorful graphs, that are easily manipulated to share with your organization in which communication way you would like.

Yeah, I’m a fanboy of Blackbook HR.  The thing I like is the people running the company aren’t designing things thinking, ‘what will sell’.  They’re designing things thinking, ‘how do I solve this problem?’, then going, oh crap, how do we make money on this!  That gives them some of the best technology on the market, which you can actually buy or in Presto’s case use for free.

Next Tuesday I’ll be looking at recruitment marketing solution SmashFly!

3 Real Reasons HR Does Exit Interviews

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The exit interview process is much like most organizations employee referral process. You believe you should have a process.  You design the process.  It’s going to be great! It starts out great.  At some point, soon after starting the process, it dies a slow horrible death!

Exit interviews are something every HR pro believes are important, but very few actually do a great job at.  The problem with most exit interview processes is that their very HR dependent and take a ton of follow through.   Another major problem is that while our executives say they want the data from the interviews, rarely do they believe what they are given.  Most chaulk bad interviews up to disgruntled employees and discount the entire process.

So, why do we give Exit Interviews?  I’ll give you three ‘real’ reasons HR wants to do exit interviews:

1. We want to know where you’re going!  Yep, HR folks love to gossip and we want to be the first ones to know where you’re going and why.

2. We trying to get your current manager fired!  You know what’s really frustrating in HR? Having to hire over and over again for the same bad managers!

3. We need data to look strategic. But we’ll never really make any changes based on what we find.  What? Everyone is leaving us because our competition across the street is providing more flexibility.  Yeah, well, they suck and you suck if you go to work for them!

Chalk this up to data that our executives say they want, but they really don’t!   What they want to hear is the problem our people are leaving us are easy fixes.  When they find out they’re leaving because of their bad leadership, every person who fills out an exit interview immediately becomes a piece of garbage in their eyes.

How do you fix this?

Do ever deliver specific exit interview data immediately after one person leaves, that seems to similar to why that person leaves.  Basically, you never get credit for that being real data.  Exit interview data only becomes ‘real’ when it’s based on a many data points put together.  The problem with that, is it takes most organizations a while to get that much data.  Usually, at that point, it starts to become vanilla.

Individual exit interview feedback can be powerful, but only if it is coming from a top player and you can get everyone involved to agree this is a top performer before the data comes in.  At least, at that point, you have a fighting chance to get them to listen and not discount the feedback.

Let’s face it, we all know most of our issues.  We just hate it when our past employees throw those in our face, when we think we’ve been working hard to correct them.   That kind of feedback is hard to accept, and we tend to discredit it way too fast.  Don’t allow yourself to believe data isn’t statistically significant unless you have a lot of it.  One great employee leaving is significant, and you need to listen to it.  Just know, the up hill battle you’ll face in actually creating the leadership change necessary to address it.

 

Recruitment Marketing Is Not One-size Fits All!

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Hey, gang I’m running a sponsored post by the great folks at Spherion regarding their 2014 Emerging Workforce Study which has some really great data, check it out. 

The big ‘Wow’ that came out of the study for me is how organizations might be discounting how potential workers are using social media to influence their decision on who they work for! It used to be we would primarily rely on our social networks to give us insight to how we thought about potential employers.  “Oh! I know my aunt used to work there and she loved it!” Or, “I know my neighbor works there and says it’s awful!”   Now, it seems like we have an endless supply of opinions and connections about potential employers via the use of social media.

From the study:

    • 44% of workers believe social media is influential in their view of a company they might work for.
    • 51% of workers agree their company’s online reputation impacts its ability to recruit workers.
    • 46% of workers say when they consider new employment, the company’s online reputation will be as important as any job offer they are given.

Too many organizations still do not believe social media really has that much of an impact to their hiring, or their ability to attract the best hires. This is especially true in small and medium sized businesses (SMB). In reality, SMB organizations might be impacted by a negative, or positive, social media perception of candidates than larger organizations, where the data gets washed out by the many numbers.

One other piece that came from the study is how organizations are failing to market towards all generations.  Some of this, for sure, is based on the use of new media, which tends to target a younger workforce.  Organizations really need to dig into their recruitment marketing strategy and specifically look at what mediums are we using and what are those mediums getting us from a candidate demographic perspective.

More interesting data from the study:

    • Less than half (45%) of companies utilize tailored recruitment strategies based on different age groups or professions.
    • Yet, recruiting workers isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Manufacturing workers are mostly likely to land their job through a staffing agency, while accountants rely on professional associations and networking, IT workers use online sources and admin/clerical workers secure their jobs through classified ads and company websites.

The reality is most organizations don’t dig into this, because like Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, you don’t want to know the truth!  The truth is, in my opinion, most organizations want to market towards younger workers, so they’re completely fine using a one approach marketing strategy that misses out on older, more experienced workers.  It’s a poor strategy, for sure, as more competitive organizations are figuring out very quickly on how to use and leverage a more experienced aging workforce.

Check out the 2014 EWS Infographic:

Spherion EWS Employment Life Cycle Infographic (first 3 phases)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disclosure Language:

Spherion partnered with bloggers such as me for their Emerging Workforce Study program. As part of this program, I received compensation for my time. They did not tell me what to purchase or what to say about any idea mentioned in these posts. Spherion believes that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. Spherion’s policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations. 

You Need a Professional Tribe

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One of the things I speak about when presenting to HR pros is there need to become part of the ‘Tribe’.  Meaning, if you want to have your seat at the table, you want to gain influence with your leadership team, you need to become part of that tribe.  How do you do that? Well, every tribe is different, you need to figure that out. There is no magical answer, but my guess is they have or do something in common. Find out what that is, and slowly work yourself into that tribe!

HR people struggle with this concept.

“Tim, I just want to do my job and go home!”  Okay.  Then stop bitching that you’re not getting any respect from your executives.  You’re choosing not to be part of that tribe.  Tribes take care of themselves.

You see, most HR pros place themselves on a professional island.  Just Tom Hanks in Cast Away, they’re all by themselves, plus maybe there own little ‘Wilson’ comfort toy picked up at a SHRM conference, a Monster stuffed animal, a Careerbuilder ‘recruiter’ doll, you know the ones!

I have a really, really cool tribe.  In fact, I have many tribes.  First and foremost of have my family.  My HRU tribe is next.  I probably spend more time with them, then my real family on a daily basis!  I also have a number of other personal tribes around youth sports, neighborhood, etc.

My FOT tribe is professionally very cool and satisfying. It’s a group of HR and Talent bloggers who are super smart and snarky, and they make me laugh every day.  I support this tribe and they support me.  They make my professional world better.  They help make me get excited about what I do, and how I do it.  They challenge me to be better. There are many subsets of that tribe, like the 8 Man Rotation tribe, the greater HR blogger tribe, etc.

Tribes are important.

HR and Talent Acquisition pros need to take down their locked HR office doors. Take them right off the hinges.  Get out and start getting involved with professional tribes.  Start in your own organization first.  Do you support a department or client group?  Get into that tribe, now!  Go to lunch with them. Go for drinks after work on Friday.  Bake cookies and bring them to the tribes.  All tribes like to eat and drink! Never underestimate the importance of being a part of that tribe.

I hear from HR pros who tell me all the time, “Tim, ‘they’ just won’t listen to me. How do I get them to listen?”  My first question is to ask them what relationship they have with whomever isn’t listening. That answer is usually, none, or next to none.  They aren’t part of that tribe. That’s the real problem.

I’m not saying it’s easy to break into every tribe. It might not be, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying.  Also, you can create your own professional tribes.  There are so many people just like you that just want to be a part of a tribe.  Go find them! Start a tribe.  You’ll be better for it.

Unlimited Vacation Policies Suck!

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Well, it had to happen, unlimited vacation policies have jumped the shark!  Billionaire Richard Branson announced this week his company, Virgin Group, would begin offering unlimited vacation to all corporate employees. Here’s a statement from Richard:

“Take a holiday whenever you want. Take as much holiday as you want. We’re not going to keep a check on how much holiday you take,” he said in a CNN interview…”Treat people as human beings, give them that flexibility and I don’t think they’ll abuse it. And they’ll get the job done,”

Here’s what Richard knows, it’s been proven time and again, study after study, that companies that implement unlimited vacation policies actually show a decrease in vacation time used, not an increase!  He’s not making a decision based on people, he’s making a decision based on business.  That’s how you become a billionaire, and not a thousandaire!

One other issue I have with the announcement, is him saying ‘we’re not going to be checking”.  Really!?  You aren’t going to have anyone checking who and how much vacation is being used. What if you have some employees not using any vacation at all?  Isn’t that a problem?  Shouldn’t someone be ‘checking’ on this?

Let’s face it, unlimited vacation day policies were garbage the moment companies discovered that the psychology of these policies was causing their employees to actually take less time off, not more time.

We all write and design policies we think will have benefit to our employees and the organization.  It’s a balancing act.  As soon as you come out publicly with a policy and state it’s a ‘benefit’ to your employees, when you know it isn’t a ‘benefit’ to your employees, you lose credibility.

The design of unlimited vacation policies were broken to begin with, but we got sucked into the dream of taking every Friday off, and taking a 3 week holiday in the summer to some island.  Then reality kick us in the teeth and we realized what would actually happen if we tried doing something like that.  It’s hard enough to use the time you had given to you previously, and your leadership team made your employees feel like crap when they did have to use it.

Unlimited time off was designed to be trap.  Let’s see which poor sucker will actually try and use it, and then we know which person is least engaged and not fully on the bus!  No one will say this, because the companies using these policies think they’re saving the world one stupid app at a time.

The reality of most work environment is you are hired to do a specific job.  When you are not there that job doesn’t get done, or at the very least gets put on hold for the period of time you’re gone.  So, you, taking off all this wonderful vacation time, only means your job really doesn’t get done.  This becomes a performance issue, and/or a resource issue, since now we have to hire someone else to pick up your slack while you’re out on ‘holiday’.

How long do you think you’ll keep your wonderful job, with unlimited vacation, when your organization is having to bring in other people to do the job you are supposed to be doing?

Yep. Not long.

What’s a better alternative?

Design the amount of time off around business needs.  I’m in the Midwest, most companies are a ghost town between December 23 and January 2 or so, depending on the calendar. They are also empty Thanksgiving weekend.  Throw in a few days around July 4th, and a week for spring break, and you have almost 3 full weeks of vacation time.  Your employees now have sick time, doctors and dentists appointments, a day here or there for personal business (banking, family, etc.), there goes another week.  How about a real vacation?  You know the kind where you sit at home with a list of a thousand things to do, but spend four days watching Netflix!  Now, we’re at 5 weeks.

5 weeks of total time off, probably works for about 99% of people in the world.  Anymore and it’s hard to actually do your job.

The Problem With Executives Estimating Risk

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I harp on my peers when I speak about our role as HR Pros.  I tell HR Pros it is not our job to eliminate risk, it’s our job to advise risk, then let our executives make choices based on that perceived risk, with our influence.   It sounds really good when I say it live!  It sounds thought provoking and wise.  People take notes.

I might be wrong about all of it, though.

Daniel Crosby, Ph.D. wrote a post over on LinkedIn called You Are Not a Snowflake were he cited a study done by Cook College that explored unrealistic optimism. Here’s some of it:

Cook College performed a study in which people were asked to rate the likelihood that a number of positive events (e.g., win the lottery, marry for life) and negative events (e.g., die of cancer, get divorced) would impact their lives. What they found was hardly surprising—participants overestimated the likelihood of positive events by 15% and underestimated the probability of negative events by 20%.

What this tells us is that we tend to personalize the positive and delegate the dangerous. I might win the lottery, she might die of cancer. We might live happily ever after, they might get divorced. We understand that bad things happen, but in service of living a happy life, we tend to think about those things in the abstract.

Knowing this, it now makes me uneasy to let our executives just go off and make decisions on risk!

HR Pro: “Well, you know if we fire Ken, he’s probably going to sue us and we’ll lose.”

Executive: “Let’s go ahead with it.” (in their mind thinking “we won’t get sued, that’s only other companies who treat their employees like crap. we’re great”)

HR Pro: “Are you sure!? From my experience we are definitely going to be hanging out there on this one.”

Executive: “Yes, I’m sure. Shoot Ken!” (again thinking, “Ken will probably thank us for finally put him out of his misery”)

That is just one silly example.  We constantly mitigate risk in HR.  On a daily basis we are making decisions based on positive and negative outcomes.  If we know we are predispositioned to believe the positive is more likely going to happen, when statistically speaking it won’t more than negative, and we are predispositioned to believe negative things won’t happen, when they likely more than we believe, we are really making some bad decisions over time!

I’m a very confident person.  I’m also decisive.  This makes this concept very concerning to me!  I like to believe in positive outcomes. I don’t believe bad stuff will happen, or if it does I’ll be able to conquer it!

So, HR pros forget what I tell you.  Stop risk in all manners that you can in your organization! Don’t advise.  Mitigate! If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably already had this come back and bite you a time or two.  Also, know you won’t be very well liked taking this course of action, but that’s something else I like to advise to HR pros in which is probably wrong…

ACA Complaince – HR, You’re In Trouble!

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I wanted to title this – “The most boring post ever!” But you guys know I couldn’t write a boring post!

Going through my debrief of HR Tech and I had a meeting with ADP regarding health care reform compliance.  Yes. It was as boring as it sounds!  But there’s a catch, this is stuff that the real HR folks are really concerned about, especially small and medium sized HR shops (50 – 999 employees).  Let’s face it, we don’t have the staff or budget to really feel 100% confident we know what we really need to be doing!  It’s something that can make us look like fools to our executives.  So, I wanted to pass along some stuff I think might help.

ADP has data coming out of their ears! They surveyed our executives in the SMB space and here’s what they are saying:

  1. 69% are concerned with the cost of health coverage and other benefits
  2. 54% are concerned with health care reform legislation

I’ll bet you that 54% is really 100%, but the other 46% believe you (HR Pro) have it under control, and most of us probably don’t!

ACA is confusing, and it seems like a moving target.  Most vendors will tell you they can help, but when you really look into the folks who are giving them the information to give you, they’re really no different than you or I.  What I really liked about my meeting with ADP is they have the resources to throw some really, really smart people at this, and they have the size and influence to probably get insight directly from those writing the legislation.  With great size, comes great access!

ADP has launched a new solution called ADP Health Compliance.  ADP Health Compliance combines Software as a Service (SaaS) with rigorous managed services staffed by ACA experts who can help to enable compliance while managing all of the complex regulatory requirements: Eligibility, Affordability and Regulatory Management.  And you don’t even need to be an ADP client to sign up to use this solution!

“The ACA has transformed the practice of workforce management into a fluctuating system of checks and balances, and one missed step can be the difference between compliance and significant financial penalties,” said Saliterman.  “ADP Health Compliance’s managed service feature is truly unique and can provide large employers with the expertise that only a leader in tax and compliance can deliver.”

“In our restaurants, the vast majority of our employees are variable hour workers whose time will change shift to shift, week to week.  We need to constantly monitor employees hours—12 months a year—to determine who is required to be offered  health coverage benefits and whether or not that coverage is affordable, which can be a heavy lift,” said Bruce Clark, Chief Financial Officer of Hooters Management Corporation, an early adopter of ADP Health Compliance.  “Restaurant operators are good at running restaurants, but that doesn’t mean that they’re good at complicated compliance tasks.  Our plan is to keep doing what we do and do that great, and we’ll leave ACA administration to our expert partner…“

Yeah, ACA isn’t sexy.  It’s not employee engagement platforms, and digital interviewing and big data.  ACA compliance is where HR Pros earn their chops, it’s real-life HR, and it’s something we can’t afford to get wrong.  ADP isn’t paying me.  I think they have a product a lot of you could actually use, and it protects your organization.  Check it out. It’s probably worth your time to take a look and see where you might be at risk!

The Voice – Picking Leaders

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I like watching the TV show The Voice.

It’s singing competition show that has four famous singer judges who compete against each other by picking teams of singers who compete against each other.  The Voice doesn’t allow the professional judges/coaches actually physically see the participants before they’re selected.

It’s a ‘blind’ audition. They can hear them, and have to decide if they want the singer based upon their voice, not how they look. It’s really well produced and the people are talented and hungry.

One thing happens on the voice with the four judges every so often.  A singer will be so good that all four judges will turn around and want the singer to select them to be their coach.  This causes the judges to ‘sell’ themselves on why the singer should pick them over one of the other judges to be their coach.

Within these scenarios is the heart of great leadership and determining what people really want.

Adam Levine, the lead singer from Maroon5, is the best at ‘winning’ these scenarios.  He definitely let’s the person know he wants them on their team, but he also gives them some very critical feedback on what he will do to make them better.  He almost always wins.

He’s figured out that why people definitely love to be told their great, they also want critical feedback as well.  Most of us have this deep need for people to be truthful with us.  “Thanks, I appreciate the kind words, but what do you really think? And, how can I get even better?”

It’s so freaking simple, it’s insane!

Still, most of our leaders, especially new leaders, are unwilling to understand this concept.  Critical feedback won’t push your employees away from you, if you can learn how to deliver in a manner where the employee can see the benefit to them.  Of course, this is based on trust and respect.

It’s also based on a belief from the employee that you as a leader have only one goal. To help make them better.  Period.  It’s not about me showing I’m smarter, or know more, or I’m in control.  It’s only about me helping you get better.

Want your employees to ‘select’ you as their leader?  Make them a better version of who it is they want to be.

 

Is Your Personal Strength Your Biggest Weakness?

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I’ve always been a huge fan of adult learners ignoring their weaknesses and focusing on bettering their strengths.  This goes against almost every single OD department in the corporate world where employee weaknesses have to be improved at all costs!  Adult learning studies have proven time and again that after a certain point in a person’s life, usually once reaching adulthood, focus on improving a weak skill will still only slightly improve even with focused training. But, you can see better increases when focusing on bettering an adults strengths.

Let me give you a personal example, I’m terrible a grammar, always have been.  I see grammar rules as something that are only important to high school English teachers. But, I love to write! Now, I could spend hours on improving my grammar, or I could spend those hours on writing better creative content, then hiring an editor to fix the crap I write.   Seems simple enough.  Hire an editor.  Bam, people will think I’m a better writer.

But what happens when you overuse a personal strength?

I know quite a few people who have been told and given performance feedback that you have “great attention to detail” (by the way I love these folks – I hire them on my team – because they help catch my grammar mistakes!).  You get told this, you take pride in it, and you now “really” focus on it, because that is what you’re known for.

Your company has a big important project and everyone needs to deliver. Major time crunch.  You get the deal.  You become involved because you want every detail perfect and you want to ensure nothing leaves with an error. Seems good, right?  Except for the fact that you can’t deliver on time because nothing is good enough.  You keep sending stuff back to get better, to get perfect and you miss deadlines.  One small example in our normal corporate lives, but it shows how a person’s strength, something they are applauded for, can become a weakness.

Do you know what your personal strength’s are?  I bet you probably do, but do you know if you are relying on these strengths so much, they are becoming your enemy?

I’ve been told a strength of mine is that I “will tell it like it is”.  Not a bad strength to have on a leadership team – until it is.  There are times and places where “telling like it is” is very valuable, and their are times “when telling it like is is” is very dangerous.  Remember, not all of your strengths will always be strengths!