Category Archives: The HR Rules

Welcome to the Real-World Tesla Employees!

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You probably saw this last week but it came out that Tesla employees fear for their jobs more than any other technology company, of over 8000 tech workers surveyed:

A survey by workplace chat app Blind shows that out of all the major tech companies, Tesla’s employees most fear being laid off.

Blind surveyed 8,230 tech workers over a week at the beginning of this month. Overall, 35.9% of users surveyed said they were worried about layoffs at their current company, while 64.1% have job security.

Tesla had the highest percentage of fearful employees, with 77.2% saying they are concerned about job cuts. It was followed closely by eBay and Snapchat, with 71.9% and 71.3% respectively.

I’m not sure if you know this or not, but Tesla isn’t a ‘tech’ company. Tesla is a manufacturing company. They make cars and other stuff that has to be built in factories.

For the millions of other employees who work for manufacturing companies, the fear of being laid-off is super real!

Why?

  • Sometimes we design and market stuff that doesn’t sell.
  • Sometimes the Chinese steal our designs and tech and make our stuff cheaper and sell it back to us.
  • Sometimes economic conditions make it so people don’t have enough money to buy our stuff.

Layoffs happen.

The big joke here is that the company who did the survey actually thinks Tesla and Google are the same type of company. They aren’t. They are both super hot ‘brands’, but they are both not technology companies.

Sure the Tesla is loaded with technology, but so it every other vehicle on the planet right now, and it’s increasing in every model from every manufacturer.

Also, fear of layoff is real in every company, in every market, in every industry. Sure many technology companies are hot right now and need workers desperately and it looks like that will be the case for a long time, but that’s isn’t a guarantee. Blackberry was on top of the world for a hot minute, then they weren’t. (Oh, I loved my first Blackberry!)

Turns out, if you make crap no one wants to buy, or can’t afford to buy, jobs will be lost! I think people who buy Tesla’s love Teslas! I hear nothing but great things. Also, for many, a full electric car just isn’t practical, yet. And, they are super expensive. And quite frankly, Tesla isn’t very good at being a manufacturing company. Tesla is not Toyota.

After the Great Recession we have an entire Generation coming into the workforce that will place job security much higher than the generations before them. None of us wants our employees to be fearful for their jobs, when it’s not performance related. It’s an awful feeling and a culture killer.

It’s also part of business. Capitalism isn’t perfect, but I prefer it to the alternatives.

3 Ways to Increase Employee Productivity that Doesn’t Entail Pain or Torture!

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The holy grail of great leadership is simply getting the most positive productivity for an extended period from your team. That. Is. It.

If I take your current team and I get them to do more work that is of the same or higher quality, I am a better leader than you are. “Yeah, well, they don’t like you as much as they like me!”

I wasn’t hired to be friends. That’s a different game that I can also win if you want to play!

Productivity is the ultimate measure. It leads to better business outcomes. Highly productive employees stay at their jobs longer and have higher rates of job satisfaction. While that end measure of productivity is a great measuring stick, actually getting increased productivity in a positive way is super hard!

I’ve found three ways to get increased productivity where both the leader and the employee feel good about the outcomes:

  1. Deliver career value to the employee. 

An employee that truly believes you have their best career interest at heart will run through walls for you, but they really have to believe you are helping their career. That means you have to be very transparent about how this increase in productivity will lead to what they want, not what you want and the organization wants.

Also, if you lie about this and don’t deliver, you’ll lose this employee forever. You need to put in the time and work to put yourself in the position to start acting like their career mentor, it just doesn’t happen overnight. Be clear of the path and process you’ll be taking them on.

  1. Acknowledge individual productivity increases in a public way, especially to the senior most leaders of the organization. 

Appreciation is paramount in getting and extending productivity increases in your employees. One way I love to support the leaders in the organization is to manage-up to those leaders by giving them information on specific individuals that I want to have them give appreciation to.

I will send the leader a message that states specifically the person, their email address or phone number, and what they did that was above and beyond. Then, I go one more step! I will tell the leader specifically what I expect them to do with this information!

It sounds like a bit of micro-managing but in reverse. What I’ve found is leaders are busy and they love that I give them all the information and what specifically I expect them to do with that information. They know that the employee will love getting the appreciation, and they love giving the appreciation, and in how I’ve delivered this to them makes it super easy for the leader to execute!

  1. Define, specifically what ‘extra’ is and what the employee will get in return. 

Too often, I find, employees believe they are going above and beyond when the leader only sees them doing the job they were hired to do. Great performance management is about defining what is expected in the role, and specifically what it takes to thrive in the role.

Once you do this as a leader, getting more is just a function of seeing which employees want to reach that next step and rewarding that effort. No yelling. No kicking and screaming. Just acknowledgment of great work done by employees who want to be successful in their chosen job.

To learn more about Increasing Productivity in your Workforce check out the great resources at Trakstar!

The Latest Global Talent Trends from @LinkedIn

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LinkedIn recently released their 2019 Global Talent Trends and it’s loaded with great data for HR and TA Pros! Take a look at the Top 4:

91% believe that “Soft Skills” is the biggest trend in the future of work! Really!? Can we discuss this?!

What do does LinkedIn mean by “Soft Skills”? Here’s how it was defined in the report –

  1. Creativity
  2. Persuasion
  3. Collaboration
  4. Adaptability
  5. Time Management

Oh! Now that makes sense because about 90% of people I know suck at least 3 out 5 of these! So, yes, we have a crisis in the global workforce when it comes to the Big 5 soft skills!

I’m not sure I’ll go all old guy on you and tell you that technology and our smartphones have ruined our ability to have soft skills, but it’s had an impact for sure. I hear from elementary school teachers who have been in the field for years talk about the trouble they have with kids who were born digital native.

(Me going all old guy) When I was a kid my Mom forced me to leave the house. Like locked the door don’t come back for HOURS. I was forced to be creative. Now, I have three sons and I wouldn’t want them out galavanting around the world, in today’s world. I love my kids, I wanted to see them return home. I’m not sure my parents really cared that much!

But there was a reason some of these skills were developed in some people and not others. I have a friend who didn’t allow his kids to watch TV for like their first six years. I thought he was a freak! Those kids are more creative and have a great ability to stay on task. Then they got computers and they’re just like every other kid!

The reality is, we (HR) are in charge of teaching adults soft skills if we want them to have soft skills, and with a number like 91% it seems like we all agree this is a big problem!

So, how do we do it?

Welcome to the new world of learning and performance management! It used to be we would work with employees to help them craft their development plans. But adults hate being told they suck at collaborating with others! It feels like you’re in kindergarten when someone tells us we can’t get along with others!

How would you feel if your boss came in today and said “Hey, Tim, yeah, um, you know, you really struggle with change, we really need you to get better at ‘Adapting’. Okay, you understand, right? So, yeah, thanks, go take a class or just fix it okay?”

Soft skill development is very personal. I think most people improve with great one-on-one coaching where the coach/mentor actually gets to see the person work and interact, so they can be confidentially called out when the bad behaviors raise their ugly head!

Great report, great data. Go download it and check it out!

You’re Banned From Changing My Mind…at Work!

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Did you see Facebook’s internal announcement to their employees about banning an employee’s ability to change the mind of a co-worker about Politics and Religion? I think I need to use these for my family get togethers!

An internal memo was leaked (God Bless internal memo links) from Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer on some new workplace rules that Facebook is putting into effect immediately on all communication channels, and they are:

  1. Don’t insult, bully, or antagonize others
  2. Don’t try to change someone’s politics or religion
  3. Don’t break our rules about harassing speech and expression

Sorry workplace trolls at Facebook, your Employee Experience just took a major blow! (BTW “Workplace Trolls” is a great podcast name)

As you can imagine I have a few thoughts on this!

My actual first reaction to this had nothing to do with “the rules”, but had everything to do with who was communicating this message! Why is this coming from the CTO and not the CEO or CHRO? Definitely different than most organizations.

This tells me one of two things: 1. The CTO made these up on his own; and/or 2. Facebook’s leadership team wanted to make this seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal, so let’s not have it come from the CEO or CHRO, which normally would handle formal employee communications like this.

This is a bit of an employee experience course correction that I think we’ll start seeing in many organizations over the next couple of years with a softer economy. In an ultra-low unemployment economy the inmates run the asylum.

As we back to a bit of normal unemployment environment, employers will focus less on becoming a playground you get paid to attend, and more of a ‘back to work’ mentality. You shouldn’t have time to berate Billy all day because he worships Pokemon. Get your a$$ back to work!

Over the past couple of years with #MeToo and Trump, our workplaces have become littered with landmines of employee strife. We want and value inclusion, and at the same time this increases the communication issues and the need for rules like Facebook are instituting.

So, what do you think? Does your workplace need to adopt rules like this?

It’s 2019, Money still motivates more than anything else!

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NO IT DOESN’T, TIM! YOU ARE AN IDIOT!

Well, you’re half right! I’m an idiot most of the time, but finally we are beginning to see what I’ve been saying for a decade, money is still the best motivator when it comes to getting extra effort.

For almost a decade the media and influencers perpetuated this belief that it was other things, rather than money, that motivated individuals to do more. They sited weak studies, if at all, but mostly it was antedotal evidence from people saying it wasn’t money, it was time off, it was feedback, it was…

A recent study puts this to rest, and it clearly shows that if you want ‘extra’ effort out of an employee, money is the single biggest motivating factor, overall, to get the effort your organization is looking for.

What I love about this study is they went out to over 200 experts in the field and first asked them what they thought. They were comprehensive in their analysis of the results and the most recent literature on the subject and the findings were straightforward:

We find that (i) monetary incentives work largely as expected, including a very low piece rate treatment which does not crowd out incentives; (ii) the evidence is partly consistent with standard behavioral models, including warm glow, though we do not find evidence of probability weighting; (iii) the psychological motivators are effective, but less so than incentives. 

Psychological motivators are effective, but less so than monetary incentives!

It’s not that things like working for a great leader or having time off aren’t also effective motivators to getting extra effort out of your employees. They are. But we have to stop telling ourselves that they are more important, because they aren’t!

Again, this is overall. You might have some individuals working for you that are more highly motivated by non-monetary incentives. But overall, in a large workforce, money will still get you better results.

So, why do we love saying that it’s not about the money?

If you think about how this concept became popular, it really tells the story. A decade ago we were coming out of the Great Recession. We didn’t have a ton of money to throw around, so it became popular to espouse the idea that people were really motivated by other things, rather than money.

And, it wasn’t really a lie. We are motivated by many things, money just being one.

The lie was that the other things motivated us to a higher level than money. Those don’t. I’m completely motivated by a great leader, if I’m getting paid what I think I should be. I’m super motivated by extra time off, if I think I’m getting paid what I should be. I’m not motivated by any of that, if I have a monetary issue I’m facing in my life, which most people do.

If my partner is a successful doctor and she makes way more than we need to live very well, money isn’t my primary motivation for effort, it might be a lot of other things. But, if I’m struggling to pay my mortgage, and my kid is about to go to college, I could care less that my boss is nice to me. Just pay me!

When Did Causal Friday Die?

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I love the fact that at some point almost every industry decided that it was mostly stupid to wear suits and ties and dresses to work. Even more, Business Casual has mostly died out as well.

I can’t tell you how many F500 organizations I go into where the head of HR or head of Talent is wearing jeans. At my company we went casual pretty late, primarily because we are a service organization and we match that dress of our clients we go to visit.

You’ve probably seen some of these sayings going around social media:

  • There was a day when you picked up your child for the last time. You didn’t know it the time, but you’ll never pick them up again.
  • There was a day when you went outside to play with your friends. You didn’t know it at the time, but you never went out again to play.

We do a ton of stuff then one day we stop doing it and we don’t even realize it. I like to think that’s what happened to Casual Fridays.

For the longest time Casual Fridays were the thing! Some companies used them as motivation, some used them as charity vehicles to raise money for great causes, etc. Then one day, every day was casual and we no longer needed Casual Friday.

I’m not 100% sold that being casual at work all the time is the answer and there is some growing research that says the same thing. There are certain times when dressing up puts you in a better psychological state of mind!

In the study, The Cognitive Consequences of Formal Clothing, researchers found that when a person puts on formal clothing (business formal, not wedding formal) our brain gets us to believe we are better than maybe we really are! 

When wearing formal business clothing we tend to do certain things better, like negotiating. If you were going to close a deal with a big client, it’s best you don’t show up in jeans and a hoodie, even if those you’ll be negotiating with will be. In fact, you’ll have an advantage over them if you did show up fully suited up! 

Billionaire, Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA Mavericks recently shared a post he wrote in 2007, doubling down on his belief we should never wear suits and he says he only does, to this day, for weddings and funerals. 

Mark doesn’t believe in the psychological impact of wearing a suit and tie (despite what the research says) and believes letting your employees be casual is the way to go. Since his post in 2007, I would dare to say 100% of tech companies are casual! 

I’ve worked in a business that went from a formal dress code, to a business casual dress code, to a casual dress code. I’m not sure I can tell you one made a difference over another.

I know from a client relationship standpoint when I was in formal clothing, clients felt a little uncomfortable when I was dressed up and they weren’t. But, those same clients when I was meeting them for the first time knew I looked at their business with the utmost importance. Once the relationship was established, I’m sure they felt more at ease when I showed up looking like they did.

From an employment brand standpoint I never understood the large organizations where they executives still wear suit and tie but the rank and file are casual. But I feel the same way about coaches on sidelines wearing suits, or even politicians. There is definitely a psychological power play with all of these.

So, raise one up for Casual Fridays or pour one out or whatever it is you do when something you’ve known for so long dies. Casual Fridays, you’ll be remembered well, or at least remembered as ‘why the hell did we do that?”

My top 5 most read posts of 2018!

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I love lists! I love lists when I’m on them. I love lists when I make them. Lists are great!

I had an incredible year. I had the most traffic ever in my decade of blogging. I launched my book, The Talent Fix, in April and the traffic to the blog has been exceptional! I’ve got some great stuff planned for 2019, so please keep coming back and enjoying the content.

Here are my most read blog posts of 2018:

#1 – My New Favorite Interview Question!

This one post was read by over 70,000 people, and I didn’t expect it to actually do this well. Interview question posts always do well. For some reason people Google “Interview questions” a ton, both on the candidate side and the hiring manager/HR side. Want some easy clicks? Write a post on interview questions!

#2 – I’m in Indeed Jail, Help me! #FreeTimSackett

Yeah, my co-dependent relationship with Indeed got me into trouble in 2018, and it all started with this post. I wrote another post later in the year – Indeed takes away free traffic from Staffing firms! Which also got a ton of traffic, and I thought was pretty ‘fair and balanced’ from the Indeed side.

#3 – The Reason You’re Being Ghosted After an Interview

Like I said above, interview content tends to be popular! In 2018 we saw a ton of ghosting happening on both sides of the fence. Companies are ghosting candidates and candidates are ghosting companies, and apparently we have all lost our minds! I mean come on, treat others like you want to be treated!

#4 – The Top 100 Applicant Tracking Systems in 2018!

Hat tip to my buddy Rob Kelly, this was actually mostly based on his content, which I sited and love! Turns out most of us have issues with our ATS systems and we love seeing what everyone else is using, because it must be better than what we are using! BTW- we started using Loxo in 2018 and LOVE it!

#5 – Lifesaving Advice I Gave My Son When Someone Starts Shooting Up his School!

This one breaks my heart. This post was directly from my heart, shouting out to the world, as a father, for help. A lot of people agreed with it, and yet, here we are basically in the exact same place.

HR Pros! How often are you going to court?

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There’s one thing we as HR pros are pretty consistent on. We never want to go to court! We do just about anything to mitigate risk for ourselves and our organizations.  The first rule of HR Club is don’t go to court!

Now, that’s how most HR pros feel.  I don’t.  I don’t believe it’s HR’s job to mitigate risk. I believe it’s HR’s job to advise our decision makers of risk. Of course, if you are a decision maker, in HR, then it’s your job to mitigate risk over what you’re responsible for. All that being said, I’m in the minority of that opinion.

So, why do I feel this way?  It’s all numbers to me. Check this out from FloridaOvertimeLawyer.com:

  • In 2014, there were 88,778 Employment Related Charges Filed in the U.S.
  • In 2014, from those charges, a total of $372,100,000 dollars was awarded to the winners of those cases.
  • That averages out to just: $4,191.35 per case.

Here’s the reality of employment related cases:

  • Most cases are won by the employer.
  • Employee and Past Employees believe their cases are worth millions.
  • Most end up settling for a few thousand dollars.

First, I’m not advising you to not be safe and just go all willy-nilly and go to court!  Don’t be stupid.  Also, don’t allow yourself and your organization to be held hostage by an employee or past employee threatening a lawsuit. Most you can settle for way less than you can ever believe!

When I first started in HR I was always shocked by how small of amount of money it would take to make ‘problems’ go away, from a legal standpoint. The numbers above say the same thing. Sure, there is always a risk of a big score.  Usually, the companies that get hit with those are truly doing something very bad.  If you’re doing good work and trying to follow the letter of the law, rarely do those cases turn into major scores for employees.

Do you want to go to court? Of course not.  You, also, don’t want to allow your organization to be bullied by an employee who is taking advantage of your fear of going to court.  Judges are really smart people. They see through most con-artists pretty quickly.  I’ve been to court on employment matters a number of times, and each time the judge was fair to my organization, and called out bullshit when they saw it.

Do good work. Do good by your employees. Don’t allow your organization to do bad stuff. Trust our legal system will do what’s right.  Don’t allow yourself to be held hostage!

3 Things HR Pros Should Never Apologize For!

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I think HR Pros apologize way too much, and I got the idea from the Fast Company article – “3 Things Professional Women Should Stop Apologizing For“, which are:

  1. Their Financial Expectations (I.E., pay us the same!)
  2. Their Physical Appearance (I.E., Sorry we aren’t club-ready – I was up with a sick kid all night!)
  3. Their Professional Accomplishments (I.E., Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I can’t brag about what I do great!)

It’s a great article, check it out.  This got me thinking about all things we Apologize for in HR – that we should stop apologizing for – so here’s the Top 3 Things HR Pros should stop apologizing for:

1. You Getting Fired!  Oh, boy this could be #1, #2 and #3!  I can’t tell you how many HR folks I’ve trained over the past 20 years that I’ve specifically said: “When you let this person go, Don’t apologize!”  I mean truly, what are you saying! “I’m sorry you are terrible at your job or made the decision to sexually harass your co-worker,  you’re fired!”  When you really stop and think about it, it even sounds funny.

2. You Not Getting Promoted.  This is almost the same as apologizing for getting fired.  Instead of apologizing to someone for not getting promoted, how about you give them a great development plan so they can actually get promoted!  Organizations can be big hairy breathing things, and sometimes decisions are made and you won’t know the reasons.  HR Pros shouldn’t apologize for you not getting promoted, but they should help you navigate the political and organizational landscape.

3. You not liking your Boss, your Job, your Pay.  Ugh!  We tend to apologize for all these personal ‘happy’ choices a person makes.  The last time I checked, I never forced anyone to take a job, or forced them to accept the pay I was offering them, or forced them to work in the occupation or career they chose.  These are their own personal choices, if you don’t like it, LEAVE!  Go be happy somewhere else.  I hope that you’ll be happy here, but I can’t force you to be happy. I’ll try and give you a solid leader, with good pay and challenging work, but sometimes what I see as solid, good and challenging might not meet your expectations.  That’s when you need to make a happiness decision!

So, what should you apologize for a HR Pro?  I can think of two things that I apologize for on a regular basis:

1) Things I can Control (If I control it, and I screw it up, I need to offer you an apology);

2) Surprises!  (I might not be able to control a surprise, but they suck when it comes to business and your livelihood.  I apologize for surprises because in HR it’s my job to make sure those don’t happen to you as an employee).

The Non-Smoker Smoke Break!

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Let’s break down some math on the amount of time smokers take, paid, in smoke breaks daily: 

An average smoker smokes 15 cigarettes per day. I’m going to assume that when awake the smoker smokes about 1 cigarette per hour, so that’s 40 cigarettes per week smoked at work.  It takes about 5 minutes to smoke a cigarette. 

I’m going to assume that it takes probably 5 minutes round trip to get to your designated smoking area, 5 minutes to smoke your cigarette, so 10 minutes per break. I’ll say a good worker only smokes 6 cigarettes on the clock, so 60 minutes per day, one hour, paid to smoke. 5 hours per week paid, to smoke, 255 hours per year to smoke.

Is everyone following me? 

255 hours of paid smoke breaks – or basically taking an in-office vacation for roughly 6 1/2 week per year, on top of their actual away-from-office vacation time. 

So, what I’m trying to get to is how can we/HR build in non-smoker smoke breaks!? We know HR won’t do that! Can you imagine an official policy to take breaks not to smoke!? Does anyone have an official Smoke Break policy in today’s world? 

Here’s my idea: 

  1. If you don’t smoke and you have a co-worker that does smoke, just go out with them every single time they smoke. In fact, get a group of people to go with them and build and strengthen relationships, just don’t try to breath too much! 
  2. Petition to get paid 12.5% more than someone who smokes, because that’s basically how much more your working than the average smoker. 
  3. Take a two-hour lunch break and when HR tells you that you can’t do that, take them into a conference room and run them through the math on a white board! 

I don’t understand smoke breaks. It’s kind of like sexual harassment. For the longest time we thought it was completely normal for a boss to sleep with his secretary and now we know it’s very wrong! 

I’ll be honest. I feel the same way about how it became the norm to offer free coffee at work. No one has every offered me free diet Mt. Dew at work! (I take that back, my friend Jim D’Amico did at Celenese when I went to visit!) 

So, we let people go take smoke breaks, paid, and it’s somehow completely fine. 5 hours per week, paid. Completely fine, to actually for real not do work. Just stand outside and slowly kill yourself and you get paid for it! How great is work!? 

Let’s face it, I’m not actually mad at smokers, I’m super jealous! I can’t tell you how hard it is for me not to start smoking knowing all the great benefits you get! I’ve actually tried hanging outside with smokers, but because I was in HR, and didn’t smoke, I think they thought I was trying to get them in trouble or spying on them. I wasn’t, I just wanted all that free time off! 

I’ve been thinking about starting that meditation, mindfulness crap. That might work. I could just randomly stop working, sit down in the middle of the hall all criss-cross-applesauce and just put on some headphones and close my eyes. Make people walk around me and my mindfulness break! 

I wonder what HR would do? “Hey, Tim, we’re not paying you to relax, get your butt back to work! Now, if you want to get all jacked up on nicotine, that’s fine, get off the floor and go light one up!”