Category Archives: Retention

4 Ways To Find Great Talent on Glassdoor

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The next biggest recruiting play is not LinkedIn, or CareerBuilder, or Monster.  It’s Glassdoor!  But you wouldn’t know that, because you still see them as a place where former employees and zombies go to bitch about your company and bad managers.  It’s not!

Kris Dunn and I are going to show you, in this month’s FOT webinar, how smart companies are leveraging Glassdoor in their recruiting practices to steal your talent, and it’s not the crappy talent you wish would leave!

Yep, Glassdoor is sponsoring this webinar.  Yep, Kris and I made sure they knew we don’t hold back punches!  That, in and of itself, is cool, because they know we speak the truth, and they aren’t afraid of the truth getting out (BTW – we have a lot of companies not willing to do FOT webinars because of this!).

Let’s face it. HR pros have a long history of being uncomfortable with sites like Glassdoor.com. After all, the only people that use Glassdoor.com and sites like it are disgruntled ex-employees that you fired, right?

Wrong. It was wrong 5 years ago, and it’s horribly wrong today. Rather than view these types of sites as a threat, smart HR and Recruiting pros are learning how to use the reputation/rating sites to manage their employment brand, connect with candidates and make better hires.

The days of the employment brand strategy with scripted photos, smiling faces (just the right amount of diversity!) and PDFs are over.

That’s why we’re going deep on reputation sites like Glassdoor in the July version of the FOT Webinar entitled,“How Smart HR Pros are Becoming Better Marketers – By Using Company Reputation Sites Like Glassdoor.”  Join Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett from Fistful of Talent at 2pm ET on Wednesday July 30th, and we’ll hit you with the following:

– How the the yelp-ification of America—the trend towards consumer-based reviews in almost every area of our economy—is changing the way employees and candidates think about job search and employer brands. It’s second nature for your employees to rate a restaurant, a book or a movie online. That means that employees of all types (not just the ones who want to complain) are more willing than ever to participate in your brand through user review.

– Why the explosion of social media and deep coverage of every aspect of our lives through video and photos is changing the willingness of smart companies to increase their transparency.  Every employee and candidate who interacts with your company is a potential reporter, and they expect you to share the good, bad and ugly about working with your firm openly and honestly. Old versions of employment brands won’t cut it—you”re going to have to give up some control to maximize your brand.

– We’ll cover the 5 Biggest Myths about company reputation sites like Glassdoor and tell you which ones are completely BS and which ones you actually perpetrate by not fully engaging on sites like Glassdoor. We’ll hit the usual suspects here: “The only comments are from the bad employees”  and “The salary data out there isn’t factual,” and tell you why things have changed. More importantly, we’ll cover how you actually may make the myths a reality by not fully engaging on reputation sites.  Think about that last sentence: You’ve got to be in the game to influence the game.

– Last but not least, we’ll give you a 4-step playbook on how to engage on reputation sites and become more of a Marketer as an HR/Recruiting Pro.  It’s true—you wouldn’t have read this far if you didn’t want to learn more about how to use reputation sites like Glassdoor to maximize your company and your career. We’ll help you get started.

The outside world now has a huge say in how your company/employment brand is perceived, whether you engage or not. FOT thinks you should engage.  Join us for “How Smart HR Pros are Becoming Better Marketers – By Using Company Reputation Sites Like Glassdoor” at 2pm ET on Wednesday July 30th and we’ll show you how.

(FOT Note: Glassdoor is sponsoring this FOT webinar. We’re happy to have them as a sponsor and, true to their commitment to transparency, they’re letting us talk about the myths and a lot of other realities HR and Recruiting pros have experienced related to Glassdoor—without restriction. That type of balance makes them a great partner.  Join us and we promise you’ll get a balanced view—no sales pitch—as well as an insider’s guide to how to use sites like Glassdoor to become a better marketer as an HR/Recruiting pro.)

HR Strategy For Dummies

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If there is one thing I hate in HR, it’s when I hear other HR Pros try and make HR seemingly overly complicated.  Look, we aren’t launching the Space Shuttle, we are only trying to get good people to come and stay at our organizations.  It’s not rocket science, it’s people science, and it’s probably less science and more common sense.  We could call your HR strategy, People Sense! That’s sounds like a bad HR tech company name.

The reality is our organizations actually have fairly low expectations when it comes to HR strategy.  It doesn’t seem that way because we tend to get stuck in doing so much busy work, that anything strategic throws us off our tactical game.  In truth our organizations really just want HR to deliver some very simple things, consistently, without fail.  Here they are:

1. Make sure everyone gets paid on time and correctly. This should be done 99.99% of the time with out fail.

2. Make it easy for us to get answers to simple questions.  I need to see a doctor about a bump. This should be one call, one click. Not a process.

3. Hiring manager needs a new person, a back-fill or an upgrade.  Give me a realistic timeline on how long this will take and what my role in the this process will be.  Don’t think you have to do it all, let’s just be clear what each of us is going to do, and deliver those items.

4. I have no idea how to lead my team, please help me be better now, and get better for the future.

5. We don’t care you don’t have a ‘system’ that can do this, or not do this.  That’s a ‘you’ problem, not a ‘me’ problem.  Figure it out, that’s your department.  I don’t tell you we don’t have the proper system to design parts, that’s not your problem.  It’s my job to make sure we get parts designed.  It’s your job to make sure of the all the people stuff.

6. I’m concerned about how to get work done right now, deadlines.  I need you to be concerned about how we’ll get work done in the future, and keep me in the loop on these issues.

7. Help me get my team better.

We tend to believe that our processes and systems will drive our strategy.  They won’t, there just processes and systems.  Side note: stop asking Enterprise Systems to change to your way of thinking.  You paid a lot of money for a great tool, which was designed under specific methodology and processes, that are way more scientific than you. Follow their work flows, you’ll be so much better off in the long run.  Your processes and systems aren’t that special.

HR strategy for small businesses to the largest corporations and organizations in the world aren’t really all that different.  There are a few things we need to deliver almost perfectly, then we need to help our organizations get better.  We add in so much complexity, that these simple truths get lost by so many HR Pros. It’s about delivering pay and benefits flawlessly, finding and retaining talent that works for us, developing and guiding leaders to run effective teams, helping our employees better versions of themselves, and ensuring we are prepared for what comes next.

Sounds simple, right!?

5 Ways HR Pros Can Get Back Up After Being Knocked Down

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Almost weekly I get a message from a HR or Talent Pro from around the world who has gotten their ass handed to them in some way or another.  Maybe they tried making a necessary change in their organization and got shot down by an executive.  They gave some wrong advice to an employee, and now legal is beating them up.  They didn’t move fast enough in making a decision, so the decision was made for them. They did everything they could do to get an candidate to accept and offer, just to have the candidate turn it down, then the hiring manager makes one call and they accept.

The stories are always different, yet, always the same.  They are feeling beaten up, broken down and just flat feeling like they’ve chosen the wrong profession.

I can always relate with their stories.  Every HR Pro has been through these types of issues.  Sometimes in HR it feels like these are ‘always’ the issues and the job will never get better.

I believe there are 5 things HR Pros can do to pull themselves back up and prepare for another day.

1. Shed The Shame: “shame is a toxic form of fear,” says Scott C. Hammond, a clinical professor of management at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. So, often in business we make a bad decision or something we are responsible for fails, and we feel shame and embarrassment.  For some reason HR Pros feel we need to be perfect.  We don’t.  We have to be good, good is not perfect.  We don’t expect any other employee to be perfect.  You shouldn’t expect that from yourself.

2. Don’t Lose Hope: Hope gives us this promise that there is something better ahead.  A better day, a better project, maybe just a better cup of coffee.  Whatever it is, you can’t lose hope that better is always a possibility.  I always look at business as one large experiment. A test.  I hope it will be successful, but like any test, it might fail.  The cool thing about running experiments and tests in HR is you give yourself this hope that the next one will be better, because you now know at least one way not to do it!

3. You Have So Many Choices: In HR there are so few things we actually control.  That is why it’s so important not to forget and understand the choices you actually have.  I spoke to a person just yesterday who felt like they had ‘no choices’. After about 15 minutes of conversation he had completely changed his perception because we came up with at least 10 choices! Choice #1, you can always go and work somewhere else. Always. Might be different position, different money, different location, but you can.  In my career I made the choice once to take a position making half of what I was making. HALF!  It worked out just fine. I found out I could live with less house, less car, and still be happy – much more happy. You have choices.

4. Ask For Help: Most proud HR Pros don’t want to ask for help because they don’t want to appear weak or incapable.  The fact is, most people actually like to help and it makes them feel valuable.  Leaders like to be asked for help. They don’t see it as weakness, they see it as their time to earn their money. Yes! Someone finally needs someone my expertise! We try and tell ourselves this isn’t the case, but it’s not.  I’m always amazed at the positive response I get from people when I ask for help.  It might be hard for you to believe in our cynical world, but most people actually like helping others!

5. Be Willing To Reset:  If you get knocked down, having the ability to ‘reset’ and start again is huge.  Many times we feel like all is lost, when it’s really just knocked off the tracks for a moment.  Take a breath.  Put what happened into proper perspective and get back on track.  Resetting is a powerful way to get yourself back to work and back to your positive self.  Alright, that didn’t go well.  Let’s see where we are, what we still have that is usable, and how we can make this thing fly moving forward.

adapted from Fast Companies “How Resilient People Stand Back Up When Life Knocks Them Down”

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!

The Top 8 Things Employees Don’t Want For A Recognition Award!

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I run a small business.  When I need to know something, I usually reach out to my employees and find out what they think.  It’s not some big fancy ‘research’ survey with thousands of responses, but it’s real.  Recently, I wanted to know what people might want in terms of a recognition award.  Ironically, what I found goes against some big fancy research done by recognition companies who are in the business of selling the crap on the list below – crazy how that works in the research game! Any who, what I found wasn’t surprising to me.

Here’s the list of the Top 8 things my employees don’t want when it comes to Recognition Awards:

1. Anniversary Pins! If you give me one of these I will stick it back in your eye! “Hey, Tim, Thanks for 10 years! Buddy, here’s a pin!” A What!?!? I’ve given you ten great years and you’re giving me a pin. Is this 1955?

2. A Plaque. Or any other kind of trophy thing. If I wanted a trophy to show me that I’m sales person of the year, you hired the wrong person. JayZ said it best “we can talk, but money talks, so talk more bucks”.

3. Corporate logo wear. Giving out corporate logo wear as a form of recognition screams you have executives that haven’t actually spoken to an employee in the last twenty years!

4. A watch. Wait, if it’s a Rolex, I’ll take a watch. If it’s a Timex you better ‘watch’ out, I’m throwing it at someone! Nothing says we don’t really care about you like a $50 watch with it engraved on the back ‘You Matter! 2014!’

5. Luggage. The ‘experts’ would like you to believe that your employees would really ‘appreciate’ luggage because it’s an item they don’t normally like to spend their money on. The reason why people don’t like to spend their money on luggage is because it gets destroyed after one trip through O’Hare! That’s just what you want to see coming around the luggage carousel – “Hey, look honey, it’s your employee of the year award all ripped up and stained”. Sign and symbols.

6. Fruit Baskets. First, most people don’t want to be healthy or we wouldn’t have the obesity problem we have in our society. Second, people like chocolate, candy, salty snacks and diet soda. If you want to send food, send food they’ll actually eat!

7. A Parking Spot with Their Name On It. This goes bad two ways: 1. I drive a $100K Mercedes and you don’t, now you know I drive a better car than you and it’s awkward; 2. I drive a beater and I’m embarrassed to let everyone know I make so little I can even afford a Chevy Colbalt.

8. A Hug! Wait! I totally want a hug! Just not a creepy hug. You know what a creepy hug feels like when you’re about 13 seconds into it and the other person won’t let go! But nothing says “we recognize you” in the totally wrong way, like inappropriate hugs at work!

What do employees want? Well, that’s an entire other post, but my 20 years of HR ‘research’/experience shows people want for their peers and leaders to appreciate their efforts. Nothing says ‘we truly care about you’ like having one of your peers tell you in some sort of way. When teams can do that, they become special! It might be a quick hand written note, a face to face meeting in the hall, etc. It really doesn’t matter the avenue of how it comes, it just matters that you have the culture that it does come and it’s encouraged to keep coming.

The Honest Performance Feedback

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Channeling my inner Seth Godin today…

It really is a choice.

Either you can decide to perform the job you have, or you can decide to work someplace else.

Either you believe this is the right company for you, or you can decide it’s another company.

Either you treat you coworkers as partners, or you don’t treat someone else’s employees like crap.

Either you follow our rules, or you follow someone else’s rules.

Either you make a positive contribution to the organization, or you make me make a choice about your future.

Earning the right to work here isn’t hard, it’s just a simple choice that you control. Losing that choice is up to me, though.

Does HR Love Employees Less Than Leaders?

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Father’s Day just happened yesterday and Time.com had an article about whether Dads love their kids less than Moms. Most studies show that Women gain more happiness from their children, than any other single thing. While Men rank children next to career in terms of a source of happiness. I’m not sure I agree, but interesting for sure.

This got me thinking about our own organizations. I always view HR and Leadership as the Mom and Dads of an organization. Leadership being the traditional ‘father’ figure to the organization. While Dad makes the big decisions in an organization, ‘Mom’/HR has a ton of influence on the direction of those decisions. In the best organizations, Mom and Dad have a great relationship and work well with each other. In the worst organizations, Mom and Dad are on the verge of divorce!

When I worked at Applebee’s the CEO and CHRO both admitted to this fact, but said it depended on the day who was the Mom and who was the Dad! Basically, both had a seat at the head of the table, one on each side.

So, I wonder in an organization does one side, HR or Leadership, love employees more?

I think I have a ton of peers who would say easily HR loves our employees more than leadership. I, also, know many leaders who would call that B.S., leadership easily cares and loves for employees more. I can’t argue they don’t because I’ve seen leaders who I know love their employees more than HR! I’ve also seen my HR peers go to extraordinary lengths to prove their love in taking care of employees best interests.

So, what do you think? Who loves employees more HR or Leaders/Mom or Dad?

 

That New Job Smell!

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Was on the phone with a friend of mine last week talking about their new job.  He had all that passion you hear from folks who just start a job!  Everything is new, it’s cool, it’s fun, it’s engaging.  He said it’s like ‘that new car smell’, you want to be able to keep it as long as possible.

He’s right.  He’s a pro, he gets it.  He’s experienced enough to know the new job smell, like your car, doesn’t last forever. In fact, you probably have a one to two year window of enjoying that smell, until it becomes the grind.  That’s the challenge, right?  How do you keep that New Job Smell as long as possible?

It got me to thinking about how to extend the new job smell.  I to have been victim of a job losing the great new car smell.  Here are some ideas for extending the great feeling of a new job:

1. Connect with people, frequently, from outside your company.  Why?  Because the grass isn’t greener, but you wouldn’t know that because you never talk with people who are on that grass!   When you’re out with people from other companies, what you realize quickly is it’s basically all the same.  We are all grinding.  It makes your job smell a little better when you return.

2. Connect to your industry.  I took a job once and immediately knew it was a wrong decision.  The culture suffocated me!  But, I had payments, I had kids, I had a career to protect, so I grinded it out.  How?  I threw myself into HR.  I started writing. I started volunteering in my profession. I connected more.  I got engaged more than ever, in a job I knew wasn’t the best fit.  I brought my new car smell can of air freshener with me to work each day!

3. Get involved with the business.  HR job started losing it’s new smell?  Go out and get involved in the actual business of what you do.  If you make widgets, find out how those are made. Work with your operators.  When I worked for Applebees, 90% of what I did was HR related. The other 10%?  I washed dishes during lunch rush hours, I made Pico De Gallo, I learned how to mix drinks (okay, I already knew how to do that but it was fun!), I learned how to do training, I helped develop sales and marketing campaigns, etc. Operations has many pain points.  Uncover those and help fix them.

It doesn’t happen with every job, but most jobs come with that new job smell.  It’s completely natural for all of us to have an internal clock of when that job begins to smell old.  For some people it’s two years, some five, heck, for some it’s twenty-five!  The key is understanding that’s what it is.  It’s not the job, it’s you.  No, you don’t smell, it’s you believing the job now sucks, when it’s probably just the same as the first day you stepped into your now junked up office.

Figure it out.  Clean it up.  Another new job isn’t going to solve this problem.

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.

5 Retention Fixes – No Money Down

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I love SMB HR shops (SMB – small/medium sized businesses) for a number of reasons, but none more than for the simple fact, smaller sized HR shops are forced to be more creative because of less resources.

Creativity and SMB HR shops, remind me of my Grandma. Grandma grew up in the depression.  People who grew up in the depression have creativity skills to burn!  They had so little, but found ways to fill their life with so many things.  Lack of resources didn’t stop them, it unleashed their creativity!  Creativity is the most underrated HR skill out their for high performing HR shops.

Having worked in big HR shops the one thing that frustrated me most was sitting around in large meetings, trying to figure out how to “fix” retention – and listening to all the ways and how much money it was going to cost.  In the end I always came back to, if we just take all this money we are going to spend on the “fix” and just go out and hand to the employees, we probably won’t have a retention problem.  Large HR shop folks don’t like to hear that!  So, for you SMB HR shop folks out there, with little or no money to spend on increasing your retention, I came up with a few ideas you might want to try before you go spend all that budget money on programs with little return.

No Money Retention Fixes:

Fire the manager with the lowest retention.  You have the data, you know who is turning people over. Your organization needs to send a message that managers, not HR and not the CEO, are responsible for retaining talent.  This has to be the first step!  Your leaders have to have a clear understanding it is their job to retain their employees, and it’s your job to hold them accountable for it.

Measure it by Department, and post it publicly for all to see.  No, don’t just share it in meetings.  Post it up in the lobby, down the halls, everywhere!  Then just wait.  It will almost change overnight.  No one likes to be at the bottom of any list, and have everyone know it.

Fire your worst performers – then use that money to compensate your best employees more.  It’s a wash.  Your worst employees aren’t helping your productivity anyway, and your best will appreciate the increase, appreciate you noticing the bad people were taking away from the team, and they’ll give you more discretionary effort.  The result – same cost (actually less if you factor in benefits, taxes, etc.) more productivity, a little less headcount.

Have your senior leadership talk about retention publicly, constantly.   That which gets measured will get changed, that which gets measured and has the eye of senior leadership will get changed much quicker!

Institute a “Save Strategy” for employees who want to leave.  Save Strategy? If an employee puts in their notice, have them go meet with your CEO and explain to her why they are leaving. You’ll be amazed at the results and how many people will change their minds.  Some people just want to know you care, and sitting down for some one-on-one with the CEO, shows that a whole bunch. Plus, it’s much cheaper than finding their replacement!