Category Archives: Selection

The Secret to Happy Work

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We’ve all been sold a really harmful lie, by a lot of people.  That lie is:  To be truly happy at work, you must do what you love (or some variation of the same theme). It’s complete garbage that is usually told to you by – an ultra-rich people who can do anything they want, someone who really doesn’t have to earn a living because they have a spouse earning a living for them or someone who just flat out got lucky, right place-right time and does something they actually love.  I know, I know – “Tim, you create your own luck!” – said by the same idiot who’s wife is a brain surgeon and allows her deadbeat husband to be a “writer” at home.

Still most of us define our happiness like this:

Step 1 – Work really super hard.

Step 2 – Really super hard work will make you successful.

Step 3 – Being successful will make me happy.

I hate to break this to you – being successful will not make you happy.  It will allow you to buy a lot of stuff, you’ll probably have less money arguments and you might even feel good about your success, but if you’re not happy before all of that, there is a really good chance you won’t be happy after to gain success.

Let’s start with this concept:

Work Success ≠ Happiness

Have you ever met someone working a dead-end job, a just-not-going-anywhere type of job, but they are completely joyous?  I have.  I envy those people.  They do not define their happiness in life by the level of success they’ve obtained in their career. Their happiness is defined by a number of other things: are their basic needs met, do they enjoy the people they surround themselves with, do they have a positive outlook on life, etc.  These individuals do not allow the external world to impact their happiness.  Their happiness is derived from within.

In HR I’ve been forced to learn this, because I’ve had people try and sell me on that Engagement =’s Happiness – which is also a lie.  I’ve had incredibly engaged workers who are very unhappy people and very happy people who were not engaged.  I’ve found over time, I can do almost nothing to “make” someone be happier.  I’m an external factor to their life.  Don’t get me wrong – as a leader I can give praise and recognition, I can give merit and bonuses, etc. While that might have a short-term impact to ones happiness, it’s not truly lasting happiness that comes from within.

So, how can you help someone find their happiness?  I think we have to start realizing that you don’t have to ‘work’ at something you love, to have happiness at work.  Putting work into perspective of life is key. I like what I do a whole bunch – hell, I blog about it! But if I really thought about it, I don’t ‘love’ it.  I love my family.  I love floating on a lake on a warm summer day.  I love listening to my sons laugh in pure joy.  I find my happiness in many ways – only part of which I gain through my career. My secret to happy work is finding happiness in a number of aspects in my life.  That way if I’m having a bad day at work, or a bad day at home, I still have pockets of happiness I can adjust my focus to.

What is your secret to being happy at work?

How Not To Hire A D1 Football Coach in the BigTen

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For those College Football fans, last week was a bit crazy on the college football coaching carousel!  The one that really caught my eye was Bret Bielema, the University of Wisconsin coach, leaving to go to the University of Arkansas in the SEC.  First off, I hate the University of Wisconsin. Second off, I hate Bret Bielema.  Being a Michigan State University fan/donor – the University of Wisconsin has been a rather large pain in our backside the past few years!  So, it’s with respect (and hatred) that I bid the rather large jackass, Bret Bielema, adieu.   Here’s what is really great about this whole thing, though – the head coaching job at the University of Wisconsin (like most state colleges) is a state job – and with most ‘government’ jobs they have processes they need to follow when hiring. No. Matter. What.

Here’s the posting – from the University of Wisconsin career site! It’s awesomely bad HR!

Want the job?  Here’s what UW is looking for in their next coach:

– Bachelor’s degree required (I mean this isn’t Arkansas!)

– Minimum of 5 years of successful collegiate football coaching experience, preferred. (way to shoot for the moon!)

– Other qualifications include the ability to work cooperatively with diverse groups and administrators, faculty, staff and students. The successful applicant must be able develop and implement innovative approaches and solutions; work well independently and in teams; and be flexible in accepting new responsibilities. (Um, what!?)

– Anticipated start date: December 24, 2012 (Merry F’ing Christmas we need recruits – start calling!)

I really would love to sit down with the President and Athletic Director of the University of Wisconsin and find out if they ‘truly’ feel this is the job requirements for their Head Football Coach at UW! And, oh brother this is a BIG and, is this current ‘recruiting’ process meeting their needs!!!  I can only assume I already know this answer.

Want to apply:

Unless another application procedure has been specified above, please send resume and cover letter referring to Position Vacancy Listing #75429 to:

Holly Weber
1440 Monroe St.
Kellner Hall
Madison, WI

I’m sure Holly is a solid Talent Acquisition Pro and will do a proper job screening you before you meet with the Athletic Director.

Is it just me, or do you feel they might end up using a head hunting firm on this hire?!  To me, this is the exact reason HR/Recruiting get zero respect.  This job should not be posted on the career site next to the janitor opening. This hire will have millions of dollar impact to the funding of this school – stop treating it like it’s like every other hire – it’s not – and it makes you look like you have no idea what you’re doing.

Everything You Ever Needed To Know About Compensation

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Let me start by saying I don’t really understand Comp Pros.  Seems like a lot of spreadsheets, market analysis, internal analysis, 48-72 hours of waiting, followed by me getting approval to offer the candidate less than what they originally asked for, followed by the hiring manager sending a nasty email to their line executive, followed by me getting approval from said Comp Pro to offer what I wanted to originally, followed by the hiring manager believing I have no idea what I’m doing. But what do I know…

If I ever get the chance to run a Compensation Department (please G*d never let this happen) I would concentrate on only one thing: which positions drive the largest percentage of revenue in my organization.  Now that is much harder than you think.  First, I’m sure you’re organization is like mine in that ‘every’ position is important…wait, I have to stop laughing…and as such, we really need to look at the whole.  No, I wouldn’t do that in my made up Compensation Department – I only want to look at the important people.  It’s not that I’m getting rid of anyone – Comp doesn’t do that – we leave that to the Generalist!  My focus is finding out who is the most important in driving revenue (thus profit) in our organization.  I need to know this because I need to ensure we are leading the market in compensation plans for those specific skills.  Why? Because I want to go out and give my HR/Talent team all the ammunition they need to hunt down the best possible revenue driving team for my organization that has ever been assembled by man, beast or robot.

Bam! – that is all you need to know about Compensation.

“Oh, but Tim you’re so naive! We need to pay all of our people fairly to drive the best productivity. We need to ensure we don’t have internal pay equity issues. We have to have proper bonus plan designs and executive pay structures. We need…” Shut it!  You know what happens when you lead any industry in revenue?  All that crap tends to take care of itself.  You know what happens when you’re chasing revenue in an industry?  All that crap becomes issues.

Ok, so I make one giant assumption – I assume if my organization can drive revenue, that we can also drive profit – that isn’t always the case – but it will be in my organization because I know how to performance manage the morons out who don’t get these two need to be on parallel paths.  My compensation philosophy is simple – over pay the people who drive my revenue, and make sure I always have the best revenue driving talent in the game, at all times.  Pay everyone else at the market rate – I don’t need racehorses in those roles, I need plow-horses.  Most organizations don’t have the guts to do this and it’s why most organizations are always struggling around budget time to determine where to cut.  I don’t want to cut, I want to grow, I want to take over the world – or, well, at least lead my industry.

It’s hard, but it’s fair

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I heard this quote recently, it was used by an old football coach to his players:

“It’s hard, but it’s fair.”

He wasn’t the first to use this and probably won’t be the last – but the line stuck with me because of how I don’t think many people in today’s age really think this way.  Many want to talk about what’s fair, few want to discuss the ‘hard’ part.  The football coach’s son described the meaning of what he feels the phrase means:

“It’s about sacrifice,” Toler Jr. said of the quote. “It means that that if you work hard that when it’s all said and done at the end of the day, it will be fair based on your body of work. It’s about putting in the time, making sure that you’re ready for the opportunity.”

I think we all think our parents are hard on us growing up.  I recall stories I tell to my own sons of my Dad waking me up on a Saturday morning at 7am, after I was out to late the night before, and ‘making’ me help him with something, like chopping wood or cleaning the garage out.  He didn’t really need my help, he was trying to teach me a lesson about choices.  If I chose to stay out late at night, it was going to suck getting up early to go to school.  He shared with me stories of his father doing the same thing – one night my Dad had gotten home late, so late, he didn’t even go to bed, just started a pot of coffee and waited for my grandfather to get up, figuring that was easier than getting a couple of hours of sleep and then hearing it from my grandfather the rest of the day.

As a HR Pro, we see this every day in our workforce.  There are some who work their tails off, not outwardly expecting anything additional, they’re just hard workers.  Others will put in the minimum, then expect a cookie. It’s a tough life lesson for those folks.  Most usually end up leaving your organization, believing they were treated unfairly, so they’ll go bounce around a few more times.  Eventually they’ll learn to put in the work, put in the time and more times than not, things work out pretty well.  Sometimes it won’t – so you go back to work even harder.  It’s been very rare in my 20 year HR career that I’ve truly seen a really hard worker get screwed over – very rare!  Do some idiots who don’t deserve a promotion or raise sometimes get it – yep, they sure do – but that doesn’t happen as much as you think.  The hard workers tend to get the better end of the deal almost always.

I hope I can teach my sons this lesson:  Life is going to be hard, but if you keep at it and put in the work, it’s going to be fair.  I think that is all we can really hope for.

HR’s Unwritten Rules

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Welcome back! How was your long holiday weekend?  I ate too much and watched a ton of sports – so mine was wonderful!

For those NFL/Professional Sports Fans out there I give you one of the dumbest unwritten sports rules that is out there:

You can’t lose your starting spot due to injury.

San Fransisco 49’ers starting Quarterback, Alex Smith, was injured recently and potentially could have come back this past week, but his ‘backup’ Colin Kaepernik did such a good job in the one game he started in place of Smith, that the coach decided his starter wasn’t quite ready to go and let’s give the backup another game! This got sports news, radio and fans talking about ‘the rule’ – if you’re the starter and you get injured, once you are better, you automatically get your starting job back.  But, why?  Where does this come from?

I can think of a couple of reasons why an organization might want to have this type of rule, in sports:

1. You don’t want players playing injured and not wanting to tell the coaches for fear if they get pulled, they’ll lose their job.  Thus putting the team in a worse spot of playing injured instead of allowing a healthy player to come in. Also, you don’t want the player furthering injuring themselves worse.

2. If the person has proven themselves to be the best, then they get injured, why wouldn’t you go back with the proven commodity?

I can think of more ways this unwritten rule makes no sense at all:

1. No matter the reason, shouldn’t the person with the best performance get the job?  No matter the reason the person was given to have his or her shot – if they perform better than the previous person, they should keep the job.

2. If you want a performance-based culture, you go with the hot hand.

3. Injuries are a part of the game, just as leave of absences are a part of our work environments, the organizations that are best prepared for this will win in the end – that means having capable succession in place that should be able to perform at a similar level, and if you’re lucky – at a better level.

It’s different for us in HR, right?  We have laws we have to follow – FMLA for example, or your own leave policies.  But is it really that different?  In my experience I see companies constantly make moves when someone has to take a personal or medical leave, and go a different direction with a certain person or position. Let’s face it, the truth is our companies can’t just be put on hold while someone takes weeks or months off to take care of whatever it is they need to do.  That doesn’t mean we eliminate them – we can’t – but we do get very creative in how we bring them back and positions that get created to ensure they still have something, but at the same time the company can continue to move forward in their absence.

I wonder if ‘our’ thinking about the NFL’s unwritten rule of losing your position comes from our own HR rules and laws we have in place in our organizations.  It would seem, like the NFL, most HR shops figure out ways around their own rules as well!

When is Gutting Payroll the Right Thing?

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HR-Sports Post Alert!

Many of you probably cared less about the recent trade between Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins and Toronto Blue Jays (check out the details here) – suffice to say the Marlins were able to decrease their annual payroll from $188M to around $35M in one giant trade!  Classic rebuilding type of move, right?  People/fans are saying the Marlins shouldn’t do this to their fans and they gave up on some great talent.  Let’s take a look back at recent Florida/Miami Marlins history:

1997 – Won the World Series (payroll at $47.8M)

By 1999 – they gutted their roster of high priced talent for younger up and coming talent (payroll at $15.2M)

2003 – Won the World Series (Payroll at $76.9M)

By 2006 – they gutted their roster again (payroll at $15M)

The difference the Marlins and large market teams like the Yankees and Red Sox is that the Marlins can’t make giant financial talent mistakes without something major happening in the next year or two.  They took some gambles over the past couple of years trying to assemble a world series capable team (they’ve done this before – twice!) and it didn’t work out.  So, change needed to happen – rebuilding needed to begin.  Any fan of the Marlins could have predicted this.

So – what does this have to do with HR – or my company?

There is some huge wisdom in how the Marlins manage their talent finances that we can all learn from.  Let’s make no mistake about this – this is not Moneyball, in fact he might be the opposite of what Billy Beane had envisioned.  But, many would argue that the Marlins version, had worked out better, certainly from a results standpoint.  My question is – could this type of talent financing work in a corporate setting, or in your company?

Think about it that for a minute.

How could you make this happen?  I tend to think about it in terms of your high priced – A talent – not necessarily your executives.  What if your company was looking to drive and increase in market share in your industry.  Your main competitor currently had 50% of the market, while you only had 25%, with the other 25% spread amongst competitors 3-10.  Your goal was to grow your market share to 35% in 3 years – a large task for most companies in most industries.  Conventional corporate wisdom would work this way – Step 1 – we hire away one of competitor 1’s executives to tell how they did it; Step 2 – The new executive brings over as many people as he can get, usually starting with a solid player from competitor 1’s marketing department; Step 3 – you re-brand and spend a crap ton of money; Step 4 – 3 years later you’re at 28% market share with less margins. Ouch.

If the Marlins management ran your company here is what they would do:

Step 1 – Go hire the top sales person from your main competitors – all of your competitors and pay them double what they are making.

Step 2 – Go directly after every single account the competitors have with the inside knowledge you just gained in your sales staff.

Step 3 – Build their market share to 40% within 24 months

Step 4 – Systematically let go of all of their high priced sales people – losing about 5% of their market share.

Step 5 – At 3 year mark be at their 35% market share with roughly the same payroll as they had 3 years prior.

I mean it could happen that way!

We/HR/Management tend to believe we have to keep our people on forever – even after they stop being rock stars, but are still getting paid like rock stars.  The Marlins have said, ‘look this is a dual benefit play – we get our championships and the players gets a giant check, then we both move on’.  It’s not “traditional” so everyone tends to think its wrong.  I don’t know if it’s right, but I’m sure their are some Chicago Cub fans that would take 2 World Series championships in the last 15 years!

Give Your Employees Permission

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It’s pretty widely accepted that referral hires are the best hires that most companies make.  Pretty easy math equation on why :

Good Employee + wanting to stay a good employee + employee’s reputation = usually good people they recommend to HR/Recruiting to go after and hire

I’m like Einstein when it comes to HR math!

But, there is one piece to the equation that most all companies struggle with.  We don’t get enough of these referrals!

So, we look at our referral process. Then we go out and look at our collateral material associated with our referral program. Then we look at using technology to automate our referral program. Then we look at the numbers again – and again – we still don’t have enough of these hires…

There is still one thing we keep forgetting to do – it’s simple – which is probably why we “assume” we don’t need to do it.  We/You need to give your employees permission to do share this with their personal and professional networks – each and every time you want a referral for a certain position.

You know what we do really well in HR?  Roll-outs! We do!  We can roll-out the shit of just about any program you can think of.  We love roll-outs. We live for roll-outs! You know what we do really bad in HR?  Continuing programs after we roll them out!  The truth sucks because it’s true.

How can you get more referrals?

1.  Have a program (don’t laugh, too many still don’t)

2. When you want a referral – ask for it – each and every time.  (We tend to roll out the referral program and assume each time we post a position our employees will just naturally share it with potential referrals – they don’t)

3.  When asking for a referral specifically “Give Permission” to your employees to share this with their Facebook friends, their LinkedIn Professional network and their Tweeps. (Specifically)

BEST PRACTICE ALERT: Create email groups by department, when you get an opening for that department send an email to the group with your standard referral “permission” language – plus one other item – an easy cut and paste hyperlink that they can post or send to their networks with specific instructions on where to paste/send it to.

Giving someone “permission” to do something strikes a trigger in their mind to actually do it – it has something to do with psychology or something, I don’t know I’m an HR pro, but suffice to say it works!  Think about it, like you were a 5 year old.  Your parents tell you, you can’t ride your Green Machine in the street.  Then, one day, Mom is out getting her nails done and your Dad sees you doing circles in the driveway on that Green Machine and he goes “Hey, why don’t you take that into the street?!”  What do you do?  You immediately take that bad boy for a ride in the street! Dad “gave you permission” and you ran with it!

Referrals might be a “little” different but I’ve actually had conversation with employees who’ve said “Oh! It’s OK if I send this to my friends and family?”  Like our posting was sort of corporate secret or something!  We shouldn’t assume.  You’ll be surprised.

Now – go give your employees permission to get you some referrals!

 

 

The Law of Diminishing Title Return

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“I don’t care what you call me – my title is meaningless!”

Have you heard this?  If you’re in HR long enough – you’ll hear this a number of times over your career.  You know who says this?  People making a lot of money, people who’ve been out of work and are just happy to have a job, or people who’ve been around so long they actually really don’t care anymore!

Titles are important to people – although that is not the politically correct thing to say – so hardly ever hear the truth when it comes to titles.  Don’t think titles are important in your organization – try changing some – try going, let’s say, backwards in title!  You’ll see how important it is.  The issue I see in many organizations is the concept of Title Creep.  When for whatever reason, usually the business not doing well so you don’t have money to give out, the organization starts giving out titles over raises (“Hey, Janie, doesn’t look like we have any budget money to give you your 3% raise this year, but gosh golly you sure our important to us, so we want to “promote” you to Manager!).  And you know what? That crap works for a little while! Because people love titles!

Just look at banks – they’re really funny about titles!  Everyone at a bank – and I mean everyone – is either a Vice President or a President!  Banks really have screwed up the title thing worse than any other industry.  You will see banks now that the person’s title will be Vice President – Manager of Recruiting, or Sr. Vice President – Director of Human Resources – and I wonder to myself – “So, what is it – VP or Director!? What are you?”  This is where titles go very wrong and stop having value to the individual.

The main problem with title creep is when it’s used and people feel because they have, or have had, a certain title that means they should get that title in another organization.  I interviewed a sharp person a while back who had graduated from college in HR and over the course of about 6 years went from HR Generalist, to HR Manager, to HR Director, to VP of HR in the same organization. Impressive, right?  But wait, there’s more to the story!  She lost her position do to an organizational change (that’s what we call getting fired today so the GenY’s and millennials still feel it’s not their fault) and was struggling finding another “executive” role in HR.  I asked her a couple of questions:

1. From your beginning as an HR Generalist to your final role as VP of HR, how many direct reports did you pick up?

              A: 1

2. From your HR Gen role to VP role – what responsibilities did you pick up?

             A: Well…I still do everything, but I also am now more strategic.

Oh, boy.  So, I got to share with her some advice. Stop looking for an “executive” role, find a solid HR Gen or HR Manager role – you my friend are no VP of HR!   Title Creep really hurt her.

In HR we have a major role in this concept of Diminishing Returns in regards to Titles, and that role should be to stop handing out titles like it’s candy from the bowl on the receptionist’s desk at the front door.  We should protect titles and not allow them to diluted, because most people do like them, and they can be a valuable tool in your compensation tool box, but only if you don’t use them very often.

BTW – best title ever is from K Swiss Kenny Powers commercials!

New Recruiting Vendor – Intomi

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One of the most unique Recruiting vendors I saw when I was at HR Tech a few weeks back was a company out France.  The name of the company is Intomi – pronounced – “In-To-Me” and they’ve come up with a product that I dare say might change Corporate Recruiting as we know it, and when I say they’ve come up with something no one else has – believe me – NO One is selling this product!

Think about what is the one thing that Corporate recruiting is missing – what is it?

No, it’s not sourcing tools – they’ve got plenty of those.

No, it’s not screening tools – that market is flooded.

No, it’s not ATS’s, or CRM’s, or branding – and you’re not going to guess this because their product is unlike anything that has ever been scene in corporate recruiting.

What Intomi does is quite simple, which makes it even that more powerful.  That’s really what every recruiting and HR vendor should be striving for – designing a product so simple that it needs no explanation – just pick it up or turn it on – and go.  Simple is difficult to do – Intomi gets this!  I’m sure it was the simplicity of their design that first drew me into their product, but it was the functionality that kept me looking at it.

In 20 years of being in the talent/HR space I’ve never seen a product that had such an immediate impact to the amount of talent that was brought into our organization, and was so cost effective at the same time.  When job boards first came out 20+ years ago – that was a big deal – and over the past 10 years social tools have really changed the game – but all of these things had one fundamental flaw – Intomi changes all of that – it eliminates the one struggle that corporate recruiting still has.

Intomi does one thing and one thing only – Intomi will immediately separate you from your competition – as you can tell I’m a huge fan!  So, what is this super simple, super powerful solution to all of your recruiting problems?

Intome forces your recruiters to physically pick up the phone and dial the number of a candidate – and won’t allow the recruiter to hang up the phone until they say at least one word. Freaking Brilliant!   This will be HR Tech’s 2013 Award winner for sure!   How does Intome do this?  Glad you asked.  They use something called metrics – which actually tracks the number of calls a recruiter makes, how long they spent on the phone and how many qualified screened candidate profiles they send on to hiring managers.  If those metrics aren’t met, the recruiter is then coached and if they are continually not met, Intome will fire them for you!  I’m just really in love with this product!

I’m not their sales person – but if you want more information on this product, then you have no idea what you’re doing in recruiting.

 

Talent is a Zero Sum Game

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There is a mathematical concept called Zero-Sum, what is says is basically where one person, organization, etc. will gain, there is an equal loss by another person, organization, etc. of that exact same amount.   An example might be market share of a corporation – if GM has 17% market share of U.S. car buyers, and it gains 1%, to 18% total market share – the 1% came at the expense of their competition.  GM didn’t miraculously grow/build/birth 1% of new car buyers out of thin air. It’s a Zero-Sum game, their competition loses the exact same number of car buyers that GM gained – you rob Peter to pay Paul. 

Hiring Managers never get this!

Talent and HR Pros feel this all the time.  Hard to fill requisition, limited talent pool and the hiring managers makes you feel like you should be able to go down to the vending machine and just select C-3 and another Software Developer will fall down into your hands, ready to work! (by the way C-3 in my office is Peanut Butter M&M’s which seem to make everything better at almost any time of the day!) But it’s not that easy, right?!  Talent is a Zero-Sum game.  Now, I know my OD and Training friends will be all – “No it’s not! We can grow and build new Talent!”  Not really – not in the time I need it – which is NOW – or – YESTERDAY!  That’s my timing – it’s not 3 months or a year down the road.

That’s are main problem in Talent in 99.9% of organizations, are lack of organizational understanding of the simple concept of Zero-Sum.  If organizations really got this concept they would have robust, funded, succession planning programs that would be attempting to build future talent, to expand their internal talent pools,  but we don’t.  Less than 1% of organizations in the world really fund succession the way it needs to be funded if you want to be self sufficient in terms of talent.  Organizationally, you’re paying either way – you either pay the money up front in terms of talent attraction, or you can pay it on the backside with retention and training – so why does almost every company choose the front side of this equation?  I think most choose the talent attraction spend because we (HR/Talent/OD) have done a horrible job of working with our finance teams to come up with a plan that shows our organization there’s a better way to spend our money.  We haven’t given our leadership a better option – so we/they continue to choose to do more of the same.

Some could argue that we are currently in a less than Zero-Sum game with our employee demographics.  We have more of our population reaching retirement age, than we have potential workforce reaching the age/education/experience to replace our leaving workforce.  But, even at zero – you still see the problem we are in, it’s never ending, it’s just how do you choose to play the game.  I like thinking about our HR/Talent problems in terms of mathematics, because it gives me the feeling there are actually solutions and it’s just a matter of building the solution/process.   I think most will argue that the solution is to do all of it in combination – some attraction, some succession, some training – which I agree with, but I think the percentages of your current combination need to change if you truly want to get off the treadmill.