Category Archives: Selection

Recruiting, Reenvisioned

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What is the worst buying experience you’ve ever had?  For most people, it’s buying a car.  New or Used, it doesn’t matter – buying a car, sucks.  It starts with the sales person.  You go onto a lot, you see a car you like and you want to take it for a test drive.  The last thing you want is to have someone you don’t know, ride a long with you and make small talk when you’re trying to decide if the car if right for you.  It starts the entire experience off on the wrong foot.  Then you finally decide and you have to sit through a minimum of an hour while you do this stupid dance between the sales person and their ‘sales manager’ as you negotiate the car.  From top to bottom, most people would rate – buying a car – as the single worst buying experience they’ll ever experience.  The entire process is set up for the car dealers, not for the buyers.

From a recent article in Time on re-envisioning the car buying experience:

…“I wish the Apple store was more like an auto dealership.” Or even something like: “My check engine light comes on and I smile.”…When asked what car shopping should be like, Michael Accavitti, vice president of marketing at American Honda, and one of the judges at the challenge, offered the following description:

“It should be like when you go to an ice cream store. Everybody is happy at the ice cream store. They are laughing, smiling and joking. When you buy a car, it should be the same.”

Recruiting is a little like buying a car for a company/hiring manager/candidates.  It’s uncomfortable. Both sides want to ask things, but they don’t. Both sides want information, but it’s not shared.  In the end, one side usually feels like they’ve won, and one side feels like they ‘left something on the table.’

How do we change that?

That is a really difficult question.  Like the car buying experience, dealers and auto companies would have changed it decades ago if they would have a better answer.  The problem comes down to the company not believing the buyer is smart enough to understand their position and need for a profit.  “Hey, look, the car cost us $15K, we need to make $2K, the taxes will be $1K – it’s going to cost you $18K” Instead they they list it $25K, and let us feel like we are ‘getting a deal’ when they negotiate it down to a purchase prices of $21K – then we find out a neighbor down the street got his for $19K and we lose our minds.  Trust broken – you made one sale, you won’t make another.

I think, like the article explains, recruiting functions need to become more match making services versus we’re going to sell you what we have!  Ultimately, I’m not looking for the best talent. I’m not.  I’m looking for the best talent that matches my culture and can work effectively within our organization and those already in it. Those could be very different people.  Recruiting tends to only look, or mostly only look, for skill match.  Hiring manager needs Java Developer, Recruiting delivers Java Developer, one or both are miserable because they didn’t really match to begin with.  The problem with why we don’t do this now, is that it frankly takes to long and is too subjective.  Subjectivity causes HR heartburn.

I don’t have an exact answer, but I wonder what recruiting would look like if we went more match.com vs. monster.com?

 

Ugly People Hate Recruiting’s Newest Silver Bullet

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One really great thing about the traditional resume is that you can be a Troll and no one will know until you actually show up for the interview! Hey, getting to that point is half the battle.  Once you get into the interview room and you’re super uggs – you’ll get a courtesy 20 to 30 minutes at least.  This gives you some time to actually break down those initial rejections to your looks and prove yourself worthy of working with these beautiful people!  It’s really win-win.  Long live traditional resumes.

The reality is, ugly people are running scared right now!  While video interviewing and video profiles aren’t new – they’ve finally gotten to the point where ultra conservative corporate HR and Recruiting departments are beginning to use them.  The tech has gotten so simple, your baby boomer hiring managers can figure it out – at least if they can figure out how to open an email. Plus, the ROI on cost is ridiculously low, as compared to flying someone in for an interview.  It’s not if, but when, most companies will be doing video interviewing and screening as a major part of their recruiting process.

That sucks if you’re Ugly.  Now, you’ll never make it to that interview room for the courtesy interview – Video Interviewing Vendors have stolen your dream.  Blame them – and your parents for your genetics, heck blame it on the rain – doesn’t matter, you’re not making it through.  Unless!  Unless, you follow these easy tips for nailing your video interview/screening opportunity:

Don’t look like yourself.  Seriously – if you’re not the ‘pretty friend’ in your friend group, ask the pretty friend to help you get ready for the interview. It’s a video – not a runway – only worry about what you’re wearing from the shoulders up.  You have to have your best hair day ever.  Professional makeup – cover up anything you can see in good lighting.  Again, don’t do this yourself – ask someone much better looking than you for help – or pay to have it done.

Practice. Not into a mirror, not to your cat, not to your Mom.  Practice on video. Yes you can – you have a smart phone – just set it up on something and push record – then watch it back. Repeat 250 times.   You’ll instantly notice all the things wrong with you – that’s good.  Now limit those annoying things you’re doing, because that is what someone else is going to see instantly.  Practice is key, because most automated Video interviewing/screening systems only give a few minutes, and only one take.

Connect. Find a way to tell your story in around 90 seconds.  Also, have other stories about your experiences you can also share in 90-120 seconds. People won’t remember your skills – they’ll remember your story – your personality.  Practice these as well – so many times that they don’t seem like you practiced them, but come off as natural, as a good memory you are recalling.

Believe me, I feel for you.  Growing up a short redheaded kid on the wrong side of the tracks – I’ve been where you are now.  Don’t curse the game – it’s here to stay.  Adjust, learn how to play it better than those running it.  Be better than those pretty brainless idiots you’re competing against.  Capture the hearts of your tormentors.  Embrace your trollness!

The 4 People You Need In Your HR Network

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Fast Company published an article titled called “The 4 People You Need For An Awesome Network” and like most stuff they put out, it was great!  Here’s a taste:

“Start with the Socialite. “If you’re not actively filling the role of Happy Hour Coordinator Extraordinaire,” Augustine writes, “you should befriend whoever is–and quick.” This is the friendly neighborhood super-connector, the person who will intro you to all the people you need to know.

And within that crew, you’ll find an Older Sibling that’s yearning to be a mentor. She can help you find the supply closet, navigate office politics, and vouch for your side hustles.

Another expert you need is the IT Guru: You don’t want to be stuck hapless while waiting for the IT ticket to be resolved, Augustine observes, so you better have a tech-knowledgable colleague that you can lean on in times of buggy need.

But office friendships aren’t just take-take-take; that would be ungracious. Be on the lookout for the Helpless Newbie: If someone is more doe-eyed than you, they could probably use a kind word–which could launch a career.”

It’s a strong list and everyone should have these 4 types of folks in their ‘inner-circle’ for sure.  The article did make me think about who it is I have and would recommend to other HR pros to have in their network to make themselves a better HR Pro.  Here’s my list:

1. A Money Girl.  The one thing you’ll need to be effective in HR is a budget that allows you to do basic blocking and tackling of the job.  So often I see HR pros struggle because they can’t even fund the ‘basics’.  It’s usually because they’ve gone through years of budget reduction and throwing their department on the proverbial sword.  A great relationship with a peer in finance will help stop this trend and actually reverse it!

2. Nerd.  Like the Fast Company article – it’s really a non-negotiable in my network – I have to have a great IT Pro on my side.  Great HR takes Great IT solutions to be the most efficient and effective you can be.

3.  Used Car Salesman.  Most HR Pros don’t know how to make money.  You need someone in your network that will help you think like a business person. Someone who will show you how to communicate like a profit center, not a cost center.  It’s not that you have to actually make money, but you need to run your HR shop like you could if you had to.

4. Trusted Adviser.  My last network must have is a strong relationship with a senior level executive who is not in your functional area.  I love to have these people be from operations, but really any area will do.  Why not your own function?  You need to sometimes run ideas and things by someone at an executive who isn’t your boss – to get real feedback.  Set this relationship up as a mentor and tell them it’s for your development, have regular time set on their calendar and come prepared to seek out their advice.  You have no idea how this will help you down the road within your organization!

Who would you add to you must have network relationships?

 

 

3 Things You Can Do To Increase Your Female Engineering Hires

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I run a small technical recruiting company.  We hire mostly engineers and IT professionals.  It’s a good group to go after – they’re educated and higher level wage earners which typically cascades itself into other traits that are nice to work with – career focused, courteous, responsible, etc.  Because the technical demographic we go after – to be fair – it’s mostly men we have to deal with.  As any company who is trying to hire technical professionals can attest it is really difficult to hire minorities and/or females in the technical disciplines. Tough, but not impossible!

The one thing we hear all the time from almost every company we work with is, “Hey, if you ever come across any female or minority engineers let us know – we would be interested.”  Which begs the question – “Do you want me to find you a female or minority engineer?”  Of course they do!  But these good respecting HR Pros we work with will never say that because they think it’s against the law to say that.  Which it isn’t. But they assume it is, because saying the opposite would be!  (I.E., “Please don’t give us any female or minority engineers!”)  I won’t say the name of our client, but one Fortune 500 manufacturer we work with does actually use us for minority hiring and will say very specifically what they want.  Like they’re ordering a pizza!  It doesn’t bother me, because I know what they are trying to do is ‘right’ – they are attempting to have a positive impact on their diversity – I can support that!

I saw this from Etsy recently on how they increased their female engineering hires by 500%! Don’t go crazy – it was 20 hires – but still impressive.  Again, they’re a female dominated company, so as you can imagine that having female engineers was important to them, and you could probably also imagine females would be attracted to a female oriented company. From the article:

“Most technical interviews suck – fundamentally interviewers ask the question, “Quick, prove to me how smart you are!” “Smart” is not optional. “Quick” and “prove to me” are very rarely actually part of the job and you’re interviewing for the wrong thing – which generally sets up women for failure in the process…after two years, female engineers at Etsy are nearly 20% of the team, four and a half times what they numbered at the start of the initiative. When reached for comment, Etsy’s corporate communications would not comment on the current number of female engineering staffers, but told FORBES that the coming months would see the company making women a even bigger priority, particularly in the wake of the media coverage sparked by Elliott-McCrae’s presentation. After all, roughly 80% of the over 800,000 shops on the site are owned and operated by women. At a certain point, they should be represented from within the company’s ranks.”

So, how did Esty do it?  How did they increase their female engineering hires?  I’ll give you 3 things they did:

Step 1   Make it known publicly you want to hire women!  Too many companies decide behind closed doors this is something they want to do in their organization, but then never go the next step and let their staff know, let their industry know, etc.!  And not only that, but let your staff know why this is important!

Step 2  Don’t lower the hiring standard.  The first thing most companies do when an initiative like this becomes hot, is lower the standard. “Oh, you want more women. Ok, you need to allow us to hire entry levels and from ‘B’ level schools!” Don’t do that, you’ll marginalize the entire program and your people and your candidates will know it!

Step 3  Put women in charge of hiring women.  It’s Ok to have different hiring processes if they are both getting you, in the end, what you want as an organization.  You can make two interview decks, one for woman and one for men, that are both still valid and reliable.  It’s just hard, so 99.9% of you won’t do it. Have your female leaders interview your female candidates – they will do a better job at selecting female talent, especially if this is a huge organizational weakness you’re trying to correct!

The more you hire of any kind of person, they more your organization will start to take on those traits.  The more women you hire, the easier it will be to hire more.  It doesn’t happen overnight – but you can do it!

It’s Time To Change Your Employee Referral Program!

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The really cool thing about superheroes is that they are superheroes for a reason – they have someone who is their equal to compete against them. These competitors are the villains, and in the movies they’re doing bad things – but in real life these “villains” are only the bad guys and girls because they work for the competition.

So, how do you get your competitors talent to come over to your side and put on your company’s cape?  A great employee referral program is the key.

FOT is back at it with the March installment of our monthly webinar series. This month, with the help from the heroes at Zao, HR SuperFriends Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett will be laying down seven strategies that are guaranteed to put your employee referral program on another planet.  Join us Wednesday March 27 at 1pm ET and we’ll hit you with the following:

  • Seven surefire ways to engage your best employees and increase referrals (while ensuring your employees don’t refer SuperDuds!)
  • How to develop an internal communication strategy for your employee referral program.
  • The keys to sustaining your program long-term.
  • How and why trends like gamification can lead to better employee referral results.
  • The top three reasons 99% of employee referral programs fail and how you can make sure your employee referral program is delivering the goods all year long.

Don’t let your employee referral program fall to the Legion of Doom.

Register now for The SuperFriends: 7 Strategies to Get Your Superhero Employees to refer Their Arch Nemesis! 

Have A Poor Performer, Call Their Parents!

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It’s a different world we live. 30 is the new 20, which makes 20 the new 10, which makes me, still old.  I’ve mentioned this before, and people always felt like it was always tongue in cheek, but I think it’s time as HR pros and leaders we start having parents in on our performance conversations. I’m serious!  I have a great real-life example from the world of the NBA. Klay Thompson, a member of the Golden State Warriors, was involved in a fight recently and fined $35,000. No big deal, right? Typical NBA pro sports behavior. But, wait! His dad, former NBA player Mychal Thompson, keeps his son’s finances and “grounded” him from his weekly allowance! From the Bleacher Report:

“The 23-year-old doesn’t have access to his money, all cheques are paid to Mychal and Julie who take care of his accounts for him to make sure Klay’s financial situation is set up for his post NBA career. So, naturally, Papa Thompson’s going to teach Klay a lesson of his own by fining him personally also, however Klay will find out the old fashioned way.

“He will [find out he’s been fined by us] when he sees that cash envelope show up a little short this week,” he said.”

23 years old.  How many young 20’s do you have working in your office?  How many of those young 20’s and late 20’s and possibly 30’s – could use a little wake up call from Mom and/or Dad!?

If HR has taught me anything, it’s most leaders are terrible at holding their employees accountable and managing performance.  It’s not getting better, it’s gotten worse over the past 5 years.  Most organizations eliminated or reduced leadership training during the recession, so our leaders haven’t gotten better, they’ve gotten worse.  We can start spending a ton of resources to train them and get them up to speed – or – we could just hand them Billy’s Mom’s number and have her come by the office one day.  Kind of like a conference at school!

“Mrs. Sackett, we are glad you could take time out of your busy day to talk about Timmie.  You see, Timmie is a little…well, let’s say Tim’s performance isn’t where it should be for someone of his age, experience and education. I was hoping you might be able to help me get Tim back on track.  Here are some examples of what Tim’s been doing…”

Can you imagine how 99% of those poor performers involved in this conversation would change!?  We laugh because it seems absurd that we would have to call in someone’s parents to adjust their performance, but I truly think in the right circumstance, it could really work.  I’ve seen it work well with good performance.  I’ve had a past boss speak to my mother about my good performance and she lite up like a Christmas tree, made me feel proud.  After that happen to me, I did it with some employees who worked for me, with the same result.  If it works so well on the positive side – why should we dismiss it wouldn’t work on the correction side?

Before you let go of your next poor performer – do me one favor – make one more call – one last ditch effort – call Mom and Dad in for a meeting.

Who’s In Your Circle of Trust?

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I have a small “Circle of Trust” – it’s probably an outcome of being in HR for 20 years.  Too many times I’ve shared things with people I thought would ‘know’ better, only to later find out some stuff was shared, that shouldn’t have been shared.  Ultimately, I blame myself – and the circle grows smaller.  Circles of trust work professionally and personally – some of us will have overlaps – or you might have two completely different circles.   Your circles will change as you change organizations and positions – your lunch pal Ted was in the circle of trust, then he got promoted to a new position – alas, Ted is now out of the circle.

The cool thing about a Circle of Trust is that you don’t have actually tell someone you’re in the circle, or that they are out of the circle.  You can – but it isn’t necessary.  When someone’s in the circle the thing that is important is that ‘you’ can trust them with information.  Others might not find them trustworthy, but you do, so they make your circle.  The individuals within your circle don’t even have to know each other, or know each of them are in the circle.  It’s yours – you decide, you undecide – keep it to yourself.

A question I like to ask Leaders and Executives is who is in your Circle of Trust?  Not names – but give me function and level – I.E., a VP in Finance, Operations Director, etc.  I’m looking for one ingredient in the answer – do they have someone in HR in their circle?  You would be shocked at how often a non-HR leader does not have someone from HR in their circle.  I like to think of myself and my peers in HR is being the ‘ultimate’ circle of trust partners!  If there was a Circle of Trust draft – HR should always have first round selections.  Simple – we are the keepers of the secrets. So, why don’t leaders have HR in their circle?

Let’s answer that by looking at our own Circle membership.  Most of us come into contact with the same folks on a daily basis.  Most of those folks are within our direct functional area, and those closest to us in proximity. If I’m in Marketing – my circle will probably have marketing folks in it, maybe a finance person, maybe even a marketing vendor that is critical to our business, etc.  Unless HR is sitting next to me, or across the hall, and I don’t have daily dealings with them – why would they make my circle?  The reason HR isn’t in enough leaders Circles of Trust in your organization is because HR isn’t making this happen.

That being said, I tell leaders constantly, you ‘Must Have HR In Your Circle of Trust“.  Leaders hate being told this.  “Oh, Tim, they just muck everything up and tell me ‘No’!”  Yep – that’s what they do – because you don’t have a relationship with them – so they go all CYA.  Leaders need to reach out and create a strong relationship with HR – so strong that when the Circle of Trust gets pulled together – someone from HR is there closing the circle with them.  Don’t get me wrong – if you’re an HR pro and you can’t count a number of Circles you are a part of with Leaders outside of HR – you’re probably thought of us worthless.  Sorry, but it’s true.  Get out and build relationships – and when given a chance to join a Circle of Trust – don’t blow it – don’t break the trust – the eventual success of your HR career demands this.

 

The ‘F’ Word’s Final, Shallow Breath

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By Cali Ressler

The memo from Yahoo!’s CEO Marissa Mayer has put telework, flexible work schedules, and other work/life balance programs into the spotlight in recent days. It’s perplexing, laughable, and almost unfathomable that we’re still debating whether or not people should be able to work outside of the office.

The evidence is clear that every important metric goes up when you give people freedom to work where and when they want: employee engagement and satisfaction, productivity, customer satisfaction, to name a few. But with autonomy comes accountability. Are employees accountable for results or just accountable for ‘showing up’? Is everyone aware of how their results are being measured? If people aren’t delivering, why do they still have a job? Just pulling people back into an office does not, in any way, shape or form set a better foundation for collaboration, communication, or innovation.

We know that communication and collaboration can (and does) happen between and among people anywhere at any time. So what’s the real problem? We’re still following a very deeply rooted formula of time + presence = results. If I can see you in the office, I believe you’re working! When I see you talking with your colleagues, I get all warm and fuzzy because I think you’re solving our business challenges or coming up with the next big idea. When I hear everyone talking about working 80 hours a week, I feel like they’re earning their keep.  When I see them complaining about missing out on important aspects of their lives, I feel good because I’m in the same boat…and really, we’re all in this together.

We need to stop using this formula. We need to stop using the F word. Flexibility and these other terms are not worth of our energy. Yahoo! has organizations all over the country asking if they should do a rigorous study of their telework programs. Um, no. Instead, do a rigorous study of whether your people know what they’re supposed to be doing…regardless of where they are. And so…death to the following words:

1. Telework

Back in the days when dinosaurs walked the earth, someone came up with the brilliant idea to allow some people to telework. Now there are a million different flexible work programs to make people excited about flexibility–like My Work, iWork, My Mobile Workplace, Mobility ‘R’ Us, Mobile Me, and Teleriffic.  No matter how you market it, it’s the same thing: a program that manages people’s time because we know they can’t be trusted to manage it themselves. A program that says “I’m inept at managing what you need to achieve, so I’m going to manage how you spend your time.”  We need to go beyond telework. Its time is so over.

2. Flexible Schedule

Flexible schedule is an oxymoron. Think about the poor manager who is managing their employees’ flexible schedules. We’ve seen it time and again: “Bob, you’re telling me you want to switch your flex days from Tuesday and Thursday to Monday and Friday.  Hmmm…I’ll have to think about that and get back to you next week.” Is Bob incapable of knowing when he needs to be in the office and when he doesn’t need to be?  The manager might think so.  But in the end, if the results aren’t achieved, it’s a performance issue that must be dealt with, not an attendance issue.

3. Remote workers/virtual workers/teleworkers

Telework implies that you’re not a real worker, just a teleworker. It is the label we put on people who are just not where they should be: the office! Everyone back at the office is talking about the people who get to work outside the office. “I wish I could work from home!” “Those of us in the office do all the work!” Sound familiar?  Telework programs foster a sense of entitlement – not consciously, but because they cause people to think in a backwards manner: “I want to work from home…so my work better fit into that.” Without a telework program in place – when you have an environment that determines measurable results, and fosters and accountability, you have people instead thinking “These are my results, this is how I’m being measured, so now I can figure out the most productive, efficient ways to do that.”

4. Permission

With discussions of flexibility and telework, the end result is the employee asking managers for what amounts to a hall pass.

You have my permission to work from home on Fridays. You have my permission to leave work at 4:30 to pick up your child. We allow employees to telework twice a week – aren’t you happy about that?!  I let my employees go to the dentist. 

If you want to work from a different place or at a different time than the socially accepted standard office hours, you have to ask permission. And at that moment, the manager is in the position of managing your work location and time … not the work itself. It makes you feel like you’re back in high school asking your parents’ permission to stay out an extra hour on Friday night.

5. Flexibility

The more we talk about flexibility, the further we remove ourselves from talking about the one thing that’s important: the work.  Change the conversation. Get crystal clear about the measurable results each person is accountable for, and get out of the managed flexibility game. People can manage their own time. [“But what if they can’t?”  Then they most likely aren’t getting to their results and need to head into the land of consequences.]

Let’s face it. The world is changing. Fifty years from now nobody will be talking about flextime, compressed workweek, telework, reduced hours, remote working, virtual working or home-officing.

We will not be segmenting people who do work by labeling them. LIFE will happen. Work will happen. Wherever. Whenever.

 

Cali’s Bio

cali

Cali Ressler, along with her partner Jody Thompson, is the Founder of CultureRx and co-creator of the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). Cali is a nationally recognized keynote speaker and author of bestselling business book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. Her second book, Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It is the field guide for how to manage work in the 21st century.

 

I Love Work From Home

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Now that everyone has calmed down about Yahoo pulling their ‘Work From Home’ program and making those Yahoos working from home come back to the barn – I wanted to comment.

“I LOVE Work From Home.”

You can quote me on this.  I know, I know – all you big business, strategic HR types have come out and given us WFHers a real ear full.  Good for you strategic HR pros!  It only took you the last 10 years and a Great Recession to figure out you better get on the business side of things and jump off the sinking employee boat!  Well played.  Screw work-life balance – nobody wants to support those kinds of crazy programs!  We’re HR Business partners – not HR Employee partners.

I love WFH – my wife works from home.  And what they say about WFH employees is exactly correct – she faces communications challenges every single day.  She doesn’t get the respect or appreciation that non-WFH employees get.  Getting people to understand the amount of work you do, is almost impossible.  Everyone wants to change positions with her, believing It is easy.  Everyday is a struggle, but at the same time a blessing.

You see – my wife is a stay at home mother.  She is raising 3 smart and well adjusted boys to go out into the world.  Boys don’t communicate very well – it’s a challenge she faces everyday. Children have a hard appreciating all that their mother does for them, and her husband doesn’t appreciate her enough.  It’s hard – financially.  We don’t have brand new cars.  We don’t have a 2nd lake house. We don’t go on Disney Cruise vacations.  We are saving for 3 college educations, while at the same time attempting to give our kids all ‘those things we never had’.   Our WFH arrangement is the best decision we have ever made.

I’m envious many days of my wife’s WFH job.  While it’s a job I could not do successfully – she gets to see some of the most wonderful moments of my kids lives. Things I will never get to see.  She has a relationship with my children, I’ll never have.  She has sacrificed most of her career and professionalism to raise 3 young men.   We are winning.

I hear you – a Stay At Home Mom is not the same as the WFH Yahoos.  You’re right – instead of Yahoo paying for my wife to “WFH”, I’m paying her.  I’m not asking a corporation to pay my wife a full-time salary to raise my family.  The fact of the matter is organizations who are failing, like Yahoo, can’t sustain paying employees to work at home and raise their family. Raising your family isn’t a part-time job, so who’s getting the short end of the stick – Yahoo or your kids?  “Well, I don’t have a family and I was a WFH Yahoo Employee.”  Good for you – but it begs the question – if you didn’t have to be at home to raise a family or take care of a loved one, etc. why were you working from home to begin with?

Regardless – I love my Work From Home arrangement – I wish more people would find a way to do it.

Why Hasn’t Paying Employees To Leave Caught On?

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Remember a few years back when Zappos, the darling of the HR world, announced it was offering new employees $1000 on their 90 day anniversary to Leave the company?  At the time that’s all HR people talked about – it was revolutionary – pretty soon every company would be paying their employees to leave.  What happened to that?  Zappos is still offering to pay employees to leave.  Is your company? Why not?

It hasn’t caught on because your leadership is afraid your good hires would actually take you up on your offer!

Of all the HR gimmicks Zappos does, offering employees at bonus at 90 days is the best one – because it puts everything on the table.  It’s the one thing they did that other companies are too afraid to steal!   When you go to an employee and say we need you to be all in – so – if you can’t be all in, here’s $1000 bill, all you have to do is leave.  That’s having true faith in your organization, your culture.  We only want people to work here – that really want to be here.  Many of say it, but 99.9% aren’t willing to back it up with an offer.

It hasn’t caught on, because your HR team is too weak!

Think about the HR person who takes that idea to the executive conference room.  They’re either really good at what they do, or crazy.  Because most leadership teams are not going to buy in on the initial idea.  To get an idea like that approved, you have to have executive buy in, in a major way.  You have to be able to sell it.  That person is not your average HR person. That’s an HR person willing to do thing different, willing to put their beliefs on the line.  Those kind of HR folks are the ones who get the corporate logo tattooed on their ass – and don’t even tell you about it.

It hasn’t caught on because the recession put people 2nd and business 1st. (Remember when your employees were 1st!)

In a down economy the importance of your workforce has taken a back seat.  It has.  Leadership and management training was almost non-existent, retention programs disappeared and work-life balance turned into get-your-ass-back-to-work balance.  That’s simple economics.  When your pool of labor far outreaches your needs, the employer holds more of the power.  This makes the exercise of giving people money to leave, seem a little silly.  First, people aren’t leaving because they have no where else to go. Second, if someone sucks, I’m getting rid of them because I have 100 others waiting to take their spot.

HR Pros discount this policy.  They say it’s meaningless. It wouldn’t make a difference in their environment.  They have a performance management process that gets rid of ‘those’ kinds of employees. The fact is, we are scared.  We are scared to go and do this because we know the truth.  That it would cause turnover, that would cause our systems and processes to be taxed.  We don’t have the resources to handle it.  We don’t have the leadership to handle it.  We don’t have the guts to try it.

It’s the single most brilliant thing that Zappos has done in the HR space, and you’re not doing it.