Category Archives: Staffing

You Wish You Had Marissa Mayer As Your CEO!

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You know what I’ve learned in 20 years of being in HR?  It’s really hard to find a CEO that is worth a damn! Really hard!

To find a CEO who is willing to make tough calls, difficult changes and push an organization outside it’s comfort zone without caving to the pressure of the previous culture.  A CEO who is unrelenting in their beliefs of what it is going to take to make a difference for the organization they work for.  A CEO that demands better.

All you Yahoo haters – or should I say Marissa Mayer haters – can suck it!

Mayer was criticized publicly by almost everyone for wanting to hire better – from The Star:

Yahoo Inc. chief executive Marissa Mayer was asked at an all-staff meeting several weeks ago whether her rigorous hiring practices had caused the company to miss out on top engineering talent in Silicon Valley’s hyper-competitive job market.

Mayer dismissed the complaint that she had refused good candidates because they did not have degrees from prestigious universities, and instead she challenged her staff to get better at recruiting, according to an employee who was at the meeting.

“Why can’t we just be good at hiring?” Mayer said

Mayer didn’t say – “I only want engineering talent if they come from prestigious universities”, what she said was “I only want great engineering talent AND I want them from prestigious universities”.  She is raising the bar at Yahoo in terms of hires.  Which will raise the bar in performance at Yahoo.

Look, I hear you haters that believe you can find great talent at ‘B’ level schools and even great talent that didn’t even go to college!  I get it – I don’t disagree with you.  But when you’re trying to build a world class organization and culture – you need to draw some lines in the sand.  You need a vision.  You need, at some point, to be ‘exclusive’ – not ‘inclusive’.  To turn around an organizations culture, you need clear marching orders.  This is exactly what Mayer has done.  Which is very similar to other great leaders of our time.  I’m not saying Mayer is a great leader – but she is following a pattern of behavior which follows many great leaders of our generation. Great talent, with a clear vision, will help you get better.

I find it comical that anyone would ever criticize a CEO for sharing a vision of wanting to hire and attract world class talent from some of the best universities in the world. Who truly believes that is a bad plan? While it might not the plan you’ve chosen for your organization – I love the fact that Mayer is willing to come out and publicly state what Yahoo’s recruitment direction will be – it puts the entire organization on notice.  Kudos.

What say you Mayer haters?  Let me have it in the comments.

 

 

Do You Offer Unique Employment Experiences?

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It is said that:

“Experiences are the new Luxury goods.”

Think about what people are paying for –

  • Navy Seal inspired Bootcamp
  • Tough Mudder
  • Marathons
  • Haunted House Vacations
  • Survival Vacations
  • The Death Race
  • To be challenged mentally and physically beyond anything they have ever experienced!

We are spending our free time and our hard earned money, not on relaxation, but on experiences that we will never have or find in our daily life.  Experiences that make us feel good about ourselves – doing things we thought we would never be able to do.

Why?

You could go out and buy yourself a new Rolex for $5,000 or you could backpack across the desert over two weeks in brutal conditions.  Which one would you remember most?  Which one would you talk about more? Which one would make you most proud of yourself?  Experiences are the new Luxury goods.

I’ve thought about this recently in terms to employee engagement and loyalty.   In my company we have had a Sales Retreat a number of times in our history.  We don’t have one each year, but we’ve had a number of them in our history.  It’s part education, part team building, part motivation, part party.  Everyone of them offers a great ’employment’ experience and they are talked about often, months and years later.  During these retreats – no sales happen, no recruiting happens, our normal daily work stops.  Yet, these are the experiences my team remembers most.  Same with the chili cook-offs, the football tailgates, the Friday after-work happy hours.  We laugh, we share, we learn more about each other than we knew before.

My recruiters also get to travel to client sites – some are close, within driving distance – some they have to fly to.  All of them love going to meet with clients at their locations, seeing their operations, meeting the people face-to-face.  Maybe not totally ‘unique’ – but different from their daily tasks for sure.  This doesn’t happen weekly, maybe not even monthly – but they all get to get out from time to time.

I’m wondering how often do you give your employees unique experiences?  It doesn’t have to trips or picnics.  It can be something that fits right into your daily operations and your employees development plans.  These experiences can all be tied right to the betterment of your business.  Think about that up and coming leader who just isn’t that well known.  How hard would it be to have that person co-present at your next department meeting or even at a board meeting!  While that might not ‘challenge’ you – it might challenge the heck out of them!  What about having your HR Director go on a sales call with your VP of Sales?  And not just sit there, but have one portion of the sales presentation they have to answer to!

Unique experiences challenge people.  They challenge people to sharpen their saw, to get out of their comfort zone and stay engaged with your business.  It’s something money or extra benefits can’t touch.  Unique experiences are priceless.  They don’t cost of anything, yet it’s one of the most valuable things we have to offer.  Great leaders and great HR Pros can make these experiences happen.  It doesn’t have to be a crazy position description or job design, it just has to be different from what the person normally does.  An average day for one of your operations leaders, could be a crazy day for one of your marketing associates, and vice verse.

 

Na-na Na-na Boo Boo, I’m Better Than You!

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Quick question:  Would you rather have $50,000 salary or $100,000 salary?  (Same job – no strings)

$100,000, every single time.

File this under why we are all very stupid – From Fast Company:

A few years ago, students at Harvard University were asked to make a seemingly straightforward choice: Which would they prefer, a job where they made $50,000 a year (option A) or one where they made $100,000 a year (option B)?

Seems like a no-brainer, right? But there was one catch. In option A, the students would get paid twice as much as others, who would only get $25,000. In option B, they would get paid half as much as others, who would get $200,000.

What did the majority of people choose?

Option A. They preferred to do better than others, even if it meant getting less for themselves. They chose the option that was worse in absolute terms but better in relative terms.

We (yes – all of us) are so stupid that we will logically decide to make less money for the simple fact that it would be more than those working with us versus making more but making less that others!?  Compensation Managers take note!   Social Comparison Theory is very real.  If we think we are better off than others, we feel better about ourselves.  If we feel worse off than others, we feel worse.  Even if the reality is that we are better!  We compare our own self by those who are around us, doing similar things.  It’s one reason why your employees get so upset when they feel like they are paid less than someone else doing the same job – even though that other person might have more experience, more education, higher performance, etc.  “I’m going the same job – I should make the same!”

The awesome part of this, is that it’s totally adaptable to HR programs and doing what we do better.  Think about your dying referral program.  You launched it – had a really cool new poster in the break room – spent weeks crafty catchy communications to go along with your very creative theme “Here We Grow Again!” – it was going to solve all of your recruiting problems – 6 weeks later it was dead – no referrals.  One way to engage the concept of social comparison in a work environment is through gamification.  Weather you like it or not, competition within your work environment will deliver more results, almost always in the short-term.  Put up a scoreboard – and people will work to get their name up on it! Or their department, their function, etc.  Individual or team – both work.

If you have a monthly contest on which department refers the most candidates that month – and you’re showing it visually and communicating it often – Accounting will want to be beat Marketing! And, Marketing will want to be Operations, and the end result will be more referrals.  The key to gamification is keeping the game fresh.  Having a new game each week, month, period, etc. is key to giving everyone another shot at winning, and keep them motivated to play the game.  It’s not about the prize – it’s about the friendly competition and having fun with your competitions in your work environment.  It’s also about kicking their peer’s butts!  Sound like a lot of work? It might be to get started – but it’s more work to recruit talent on your own – then creating a great referral program and having your staff do the heavy lifting for you!

 

The Propinquity Effect

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Ok, kids – it’s Readers Digest Word Power time!

I’m constantly trying to get my HR and Talent peers to spend more time with those they serve.  Shared time – face-to-face – lunch, coffee, cigarette breaks, drinks after work, Thursday night bowling league – it doesn’t matter.  The time and space is the important thing.  More time. Closer together.

There’s a name for this, it’s called the Propinquity Effect:

The propinquity effect is the tendency for people to form friendships or romantic relationships with those whom they encounter often, forming a bond between subject and friend. Occupational propinquity based on a person’s career, is also commonly seen as a factor in marriage selection. Workplace interactions are frequent and this frequent interaction is often a key indicator as to why close relationships can readily form in this type of environment.[1] In other words, relationships tend to form between those who have a high propinquity.

It’s hard to get most HR Pros to believe this.  It’s science that has real personal value to your overall HR effectiveness within your organization.  Spend more time, building a relationship with another individual outside of HR in your organization, and you’ve just added to your organizational influence.

I’m not saying you have to become close friends and go on vacation with each other.  What I’m saying is you need to find value in building personal relationships at work – if – and this is a big ‘if’ – you have a goal to be more effective in HR.  That might sound slightly facetious – but it’s not.  Some of you are fine with where your role in HR is in your organization.  Others of you are not satisfied with how your role is seen in HR.   Propinquity is easiest way to change that.

 

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.

 

HR – An Autopsy

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HR is Dead. I got called yesterday to come down and ID the body.

They ran an Autopsy to discover the cause of death and to know one’s surprise they found a number of issues, including:

–Deficient creativity – apparently HR bored itself to death.  So caught up in ‘creating’ process, it forgot what ‘creating’ actually meant.

–Lack of Soul – Organizations need that immortal essence that is given by it’s people.

–Formality Glutinous –  To be stuffed so much with formality that you explode from the inside that people can’t stand being around you.

–Analysis Paralysis – Stuck in indecision unable to move forward surrounded by so many metrics.

–Feline Rabies – Yep, in the end, having 4+ cats on average, did in HR.

HR wont’ be missed by many.  The fact is not many really knew HR.  For years locked behind a department door that had not only a keycode to gain entry, but a palm and retinal scanner as well – security of your employee files being of the utmost importance to the organization.  Where we once knew them from the annual company picnic, alas, it has been years since HR was willing to plan that employee event.  Even our annual open enrollment meetings were cancelled for online, interaction-less, enrollment – efficiency over relationship.  Survey Monkey engagement surveys, email follow-up, phone screen interviews – some have questioned was HR really ever a person at all.  One time, through the sliding window, I once spoke to someone, “Here” I said, as I handed in an exchange of address form, “Thanks” she said.  HR seemed friendly enough.

I don’t mean this to be an anthem to a dead profession, but let’s face it – HR as we have known it, thankfully, is almost there.  I’m asked frequently – “What’s the future of HR?” and I say, “HR will change organizations more than any other single functional area in business.  We have ways to hire a more talented workforce.  We have ways to increase engagement of our workforce. We can increase performance and productivity that has a direct bottom-line impact.  We can make the workers we have better, faster, stronger.  The future of HR – won’t be like ‘HR’ at all.”  But let’s forget the future.  Let’s focus on the present. Let’s make HR not HR.  Let’s make HR everything we want it to be.

Let HR be technology leaders. Let HR be financial leaders. Let HR be Performance leaders.  Let HR be operational leaders.  Let’s plan the picnic and at the same time drive the highest productivity our organizations have ever seen.  Let’s flawlessly administer benefits and simultaneously attract complete freaking studs and studettes to our organizations.  Let HR not be HR.  Let HR be a driver of every part of our business – not a functional area – but an integration into what we do best.

And if we don’t, then yes, HR, as we know it, will be completely dead.

Better Performance Through Hanging Out with Ugly Coworkers

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Girls and guys both do this at the bar.  Want to look prettier?  Hang out with your ugly friends! Believe me, being a 5’7″ ginger, I’ve had my share of invitation from my better looking friends to hang out, knowing I was just a prop in their little scheme to look great.   Don’t feel bad for me, gingers are resilient, being the ugly prop has a ton of advantages – you can negotiate free drinks with your good looking friend, maybe even free dinner.  This is why I was so excited this week when Science finally validated what I’ve always known – The better looking you are, the better performance people will perceive you to have!

Check this out from the Time article, Guppies Use Ugly Friends to Seem More Attractive:

“An article published Wednesday by Britain’s Royal Society says that male guppies prefer to associate with their drab-colored counterparts when females are around.  Males actively choose the social context that maximizes their relative attractiveness,” the article said. Or, as lead author Clelia Gasparini put it, “If you are surrounded by ugly friends, you look better.”

Gasparini and her colleagues at Italy’s University of Padua built their theory on a kind of guppy dating game. An aquarium was set up with one female in partition on either end. Guppy bachelorette No. 1 had two attractive, brightly-colored males placed on either side of her. Guppy bachelorette No. 2 was stuck with uglier, drab-colored fish.

When a male guppy was put in the middle of the tank, and given the choice of which female to sidle up to, Bachelorette No. 2 was the more popular pick, with male guppies spending about 62 percent of their time hanging around her side of the aquarium.”

Science!
I know that no one who reads this blog would ever mistakenly give higher performance feedback versus that of their uglier peers!  My readers are Pros! They’re above this.  This begs the question, though, why is it executives, male and female, on average, are better looking and taller than their workforce on average?
Answer: We’re all stupid.  We like pretty things.  It’s why makeup is a multi-billion dollar industry.  It’s why we all want to date the prom queen. It’s how the fashion industry gets you to believe you need that new outfit.  We’re all lemmings.
We, deep down in our subconscious, believe that how someone looks, outwardly, speaks positively about how they perform (or will perform if we’re talking about selection).  We’ve heard it since we were kids from our parents and grandparents – “Oh, I like him, he’s ‘sharp'” or “Look the part”. Physical attractiveness =’s Better Performance, is one the hardest stereotypes you’ll ever face as an HR Pro – because it seems like a victimless crime.  What’s wrong with have a sharp looking, smart team!?  Nothing. But you’re selling yourself fools gold.  Physical attractiveness and High Performance do not correlate at all – Zero.
I will tell you, though, if you’re struggling with your performance, you’re probably hanging with a coworker peer group that is substantially better looking than you. Stop that.  Go find a whole bunch of ugly coworkers and start hanging with them.  It’s the cure for bad performance, guaranteed!

Are You Great At Faking It?

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In our zest to have high employee engagement, HR has once again outsmarted itself.  Follow the logic:

1. High Employee Engagement is a desired measure.

2. HR creates programs to drive Employee Engagement upwards.

3. Employee Engagement thresholds are reached with said programs.

4. HR needs more.

5. If we ensure every new hire comes in ‘loving’ their job/company/industry – we will ‘pre-buy’ some of the engagement measure.

6. Only hire people who ‘love’ our job/company/industry.

7. Candidates have brains.  “Oh, you only hire people who ‘love’ your job/company/industry”

8. Candidates now become really good at ‘faking’ their ‘love’ for your job/company/industry.

9.  Employees are smart to – “Oh, you mean if our ‘engagement’ score comes back higher, you’ll stop making us do these stupid team building exercises?”

10. Employees become really good at ‘faking’ it.

Being male, I was never good at faking it.  I’m Popeye – “I am, what I am, and that’s all I am”.   Fast Company had a solid post on why “Faking Enthusiasm” has become the latest job requirement. From the post:

“Timothy Noah wrote in The New Republic about how Pret A Manger requires its employees to master “Pret behaviors,” such as “has presence,” “creates a sense of fun,” and “is happy to be themself.” Yes–in order to sell you a bacon sandwich, employees must be fully self-actualized. And the amount that they touch fellow-employees is considered to be a positive indicator of sales, not a red flag for sexual-harassment lawsuits.”

It’s such a slippery slope.  Every action we take in leadership has consequences – some of which we know, some we don’t know until they happen.  The best leaders thoroughly try to anticipate these consequences their actions will create.   Requiring employees/candidates have high levels of enthusiasm might seem like a really great idea – but you better have authentic ways of measuring, or you’re just setting yourself up to fooled by those who ‘get’ the game.

Ultimately time and pressure always win out.  Given enough time and/or enough pressure an individuals true colors will show.  This is why it’s important to job requirements that are actually needed.  Authentic enthusiasm is not needed for high performers in most jobs.  Trying to hire for it can create some negative hiring scenarios when time and pressure take their tolls.  Is it great to have enthusiastic employees? Yep – it sure is.  I love being around those employees.  Do I set out to hire that ‘skill’ as a requirement – no – I have great even keel employees as well.  While I might not stop and interact with them as often – they are just as good as the enthusiastic ones.

Here’s what I know. If you’re hiring for a skill that can be faked – candidates will attempt to fake it, if they really want to work for your company.  How do you combat this – eliminate as much subjective stuff as you can from your selection process.  One other thing, if you do decide you need that high-energy personality, understand that personality just doesn’t come when you want it – it’s a person’s core – you get it all the time – there’s no light switch when you decide you’ve had enough.  I see hiring managers all the time that want a ‘certain personality’ – so we find it for them – only to have that same hiring manager come back 6 months later complaining it’s too much!

The Importance of ‘Dear John’ Letters

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Check out this great letter from Coach K to Michael Jordan, after Jordan told Coach K he was going to North Carolina:

Jordan letter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coach K gets it.  Yeah, Jordan went to North Carolina, won a national championship and became the greatest basketball player of all time.  But Coach K gets it!

Coach K understands what over half of HR and Talent Pros don’t get – in recruiting top talent – you never burn a bridge.  I’m sure he was upset about losing MJ to UNC – but he never let on that he was.  He sent a very cordial letter, complimenting him and wishing him well.  How many of you do that when a candidate turns you down?  My guess is – not many.  Better yet, how many actually have these letters coming from the hiring manager that interviewed the person, hand signed?  BETTER YET, how many of you have these letters coming from the CEO of your company, hand signed?

The world is a small place and you’re going to be on for a long time.  MJ respects Coach K, because Coach K treated him with respect and always left the door open.

People make mistakes all the time.  Candidates take jobs thinking its going to be great, and some times it turns out to awful.  Many of those folks believe, since they turned you down, and her nothing after – you were pissed.  So, they’ll never reach back out to you and say – “Hey, give me a second chance – this current place sucks!”  Takes about 33 seconds to send this letter out – could have years worth of payback.