Category Archives: The HR Rules

5 No-Cost Retention Fixes!

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

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

Having worked in big HR shops the one thing that frustrated me most was sitting around in large meetings, trying to figure out how to “fix” retention – and listening to all the ways and how much money it was going to cost.  In the end, I always came back to, if we just take all this money we are going to spend on the “fix” and just go out and hand to the employees, we probably won’t have a retention problem.

Large HR shop folks don’t like to hear that!  So, for you SMB HR shop folks out there, with little or no money to spend on increasing your retention, I came up with a few ideas you might want to try before you go spend all that budget money on programs with little return.

Large HR shop folks don’t like to hear that!  So, for you SMB HR shop folks out there, with little or no money to spend on increasing your retention, I came up with a few ideas you might want to try before you go spend all that budget money on programs with little return.

No Money Retention Fixes:

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

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

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

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

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

Seems like most of these retention fixes are just good old fashion performance management. Crazy how that works. Do performance management really well and people want to hang around for a while!

Building HR Service Delivery on a Global Scale – AMEX Edition!

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Hey, gang – I have American Express’s VP of HRIS, Adam Krahling, for a cool one-on-one SHRM exclusive where he shares how AMEX built their entire global HR Shared Service delivery model from design through production! This is a free SHRM Webcast with HRCI credits. It’s coming up next week June 8th, Wednesday, at noon EST.

Adam is an awesome speaker, and I’ll be doing my best Oprah impression to interview him and dig out all those hidden secrets!

Every major HR project has its challenges but, when you add in the global perspective, those HR projects just got exponentially more challenging! For large organizations in the banking and insurance industries, these projects also have the added complexity of major regulations and laws that change from country to country. This webinar will assist you in understanding where most organizations fail from a global perspective, how to launch and get a project like this off the ground, and how to ensure your organization is successful in the long run.

The global transformation of HR is upon us, and American Express is leading the charge. Come learn how AMEX’s HRIS team helped lead the company into this new frontier and what strategies and design it incorporated from country to country.

Adam Krahling, vice president of Global HRIS for American Express, and I will dig into the American Express case study on how the company expanded HR service delivery globally. Learn how a large organization like AMEX moved its HR operations forward on a global scale, the impact it had and the step-by-step process they used to ensure success.

You’ll be able to post your questions and thoughts on bringing your HR service delivery project into the modern era. –

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER! 

The Right To Disconnect From Work

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Did you hear that France is trying to pass a law that would allow workers to disconnect from the office without fear of disciplinary action? Here’s some more on the proposed bill:

The “right to disconnect” legislation, which would go into effect in 2018 if passed, would require companies to encourage employees to turn off phones and other devices after they leave work…

The law reflects the sense in France that white-collar workers in the digital age are vulnerable to burnout.

Technologia, a risk analysis firm, found that 3.2 million French workers were emotionally exhausted from work and at risk of developing burnout symptoms like exhaustion and chronic stress.

“It is a real problem,” said Yves Lasfargue, a sociologist who specializes in teleworking. “Twenty years ago, before emails had been invented and we could not reach colleagues, we would have to go and knock on their doors. Traditional courtesy teaches you to abstain from disturbing people. With these new tools, this form of courtesy has totally disappeared. This is why we need to legislate.”

“Traditional courtesy”.

Two things at play here. First, there’s no doubt that our new hyper-connected world is causing people to work in ways we could never have imagined twenty years ago.  Most white collar jobs currently have no ‘unplugged’ off the clock hours any longer. People are connected from the moment they wake until the moment they go to sleep, many even getting up during the night when they hear notifications coming in on their devices.

That’s a problem. That’s an organizational problem because we will see burnout at a faster rate than ever before. I am starting to hear about organizations that are shutting down email servers at 6pm and not turning them back on until 5am, trying to force their employees to shut it down and refresh, even shutting down during the weekends. It’s a drastic step, but one some organizations feel is the right one.

Secondly, is this concept of traditional courtesy.  This 1950’s idea of not disturbing someone who is at home for the evening. Most everyone in the workplace has no understanding of this concept.  We don’t come home at 5pm to a wife and kids sitting down for a hot meal the ‘Mrs’ cooked all afternoon. Our society has completely changed from this “Leave It To Beaver” idea of how our lives should look.

Still, I hear this courtesy issue come up many times when speaking with corporate talent acquisition pros. Well, we don’t want to make calls to people after 6pm because ‘they’ don’t like it.  I still call bullshit on this! People don’t like getting calls after 9pm, otherwise, we’ve been conditioned by telemarketers to expect calls up until 9pm.

People don’t like being bothered at home with stuff that doesn’t have value to them! If you call them about a great opportunity, they would rather take that call from home, than from work. This has nothing to do with courtesy.  If someone has decided to ‘unplug’ for the evening, they simply won’t pick up your call. You believing this is a courtesy issue, is an excuse not to be an effective recruiter!

So, what say you? Should there be laws on the books encouraging people to shut it down at night?  I think our new world has given us more flexibility to work in our own way. I personally like that I can work when I need to. Do I need to ‘unplug’ more, especially around my family? There is no doubt. But don’t take my flexibility away from me!

Failure Is The New Black #DisruptHRCayman

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So, last night in the Cayman Islands DisruptHR Cayman went down!  If you don’t know what DisruptHR is, you need to check it out!  It’s the brainchild of my good friends Jennifer McClure and Chris Ostoich. Jen does most of the heavy lifting on this now, and it’s a global phenomenon sweeping across the HR world!

The concept was born from TEDx. You get 5 minutes to present an awesome idea, 20 powerpoint slides that automatically move every 15 seconds. Fast and furious. Alcohol is involved. Anything can happen. It’s the most fun you’ll ever see HR people have!  Contact Jen and bring this concept to your conference or event – it’s a great evening event to open or close a conference, or just to have in your city to energize the HR community!

Don’t think about grabbing DisruptHR Detroit!  I already have bought the franchise, so to speak! If you want in, connect with me and we can discuss a time and place!

I did my DisruptHR Cayman presentation on Failure is the new Black!  Safe to say, I truly believe all of this talk about failure leading you to success is a bunch of bullshit! Failure leads you to more failure, which eventually leads you to give up, not success! But don’t worry about, I’m in the minority, you can still suck up all that failure crap from every leadership guru on the planet!

Was I successful in my 5 minutes?  I don’t know, but you can check it out for yourself at DisruptHR’s website in a week or two. The brilliance of DisruptHR is that they video all the crazy ideas and put them up on the web, so you can’t hide!

Great stuff, check it out. They already have 250 videos of DisruptHR presentations for you to see!

Would You Be Willing To Pay For Interview Feedback – Take 2

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“I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.”

– Howard Marks

Yesterday I wrote a post called Would You Be Willing To Pay For Interview Feedback that caused some people to lose their minds.  I asked what I thought was a simple question: Would you be willing to pay for interview feedback?  Not just normal, thanks, but no thanks, interview feedback, but really in-depth career development type of feedback from the organization that interviewed you.  You can read the comments here – they range from threats to outright hilarity! Needless to say, there is a lot of passion on this topic.

Here’s what I know:

– Most companies do a terrible job at delivery any type of feedback after interviews. Terrible.

– Most candidates only want two things from an interview.

1.  To Be Hired

2. If not hired, to know a little about why they didn’t get hired

Simple, right?  But, this still almost never happens!  Most large companies, now, automate the entire process with email form letters.  Even those lucky enough to get a live call, still get a watered-down, vanilla version of anything close to something that we would consider helpful.

When I asked if someone was willing to pay for interview feedback, it wasn’t for the normal lame crap that 99% of companies give.  It was for something new. Something better. Something of value.  It would also be something completely voluntary.  You could not pay and still get little to no feedback that you get now — Dear John, Thanks, but no thanks. The majority of the commentators felt like receiving feedback after an interview was a ‘right’ – legal and/or G*d given.  The reality is, it’s neither.

The paid interview feedback would be more in-depth, have more substance and would focus on you and how to help you get better at interviewing.  It would also get into why you didn’t get the job.  The LinkedIn commentators said this was rife with legal issues.  Organizations would not be allowed to do this by their legal staff because they would get sued by interviewees over the reasons.  This is a typical HR response.  If you say ‘legal’ people stop talking about an idea.  They teach that in HR school so we don’t have to change or be challenged by new ideas!

The reality is, as an HR Pro, I’m never going give someone ammunition to sue my organization.  If I didn’t hire someone for an illegal reason, let’s say because they were a woman, no person in their right mind would come out and say that.  Okay, first, I would never do that. Second, if I did, I would focus the feedback on other opportunity areas the candidate had that would help them in their next interview or career. No one would ever come out and say to an interviewee, “Yeah, you didn’t get the job because you’re a chick!”

This is not a legal or risk issue.  It’s about finally finding a way to deliver great interview feedback to candidates.  It’s about delivering a truly great candidate experience.  So many HR Pros and organizations espouse this desire to deliver a great candidate experience but still don’t do the one thing that candidates really want.  Just give me feedback!

So, do you think I’m still crazy for wanting to charge interviewees for feedback?

Are Happy Employees The Answer? #WorkHuman

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WorkHuman is this week and it’s one of the new transformative conferences on the landscape within the HR industry. The next generation of user conference (WorkHuman is sponsored by GloboForce) which is how do you engage an audience with awesome content and engage your brand without constantly shoving a sales pitch down your throat! WorkHuman has it figured out!

One of the best sessions had to be from happiness researcher Shawn Achor. The former Harvard researcher laid out a compelling argument on why organizations at all levels should be focusing on helping their employees be more happy. He had great examples from organizations that have focused on his research (see video below) that have gotten great results on higher productivity, higher retention and creating an environment that is more human to work in!

The whole conversation got me thinking of the chicken or egg scenario. What comes first an employee who is happy, or a happy employee?  Can you really make an unhappy person happy?

We all have that co-worker that never seems happy. They’re Eyore! Nothing ever goes right for them, nothing will ever be good, they always see the worst in every situation. I believe if you went backwards in their career with your organization, and you could see their interview, you would immediately pick up on the fact this was their core personality!

It makes sense to think that chronically unhappy people are going to be hard to make happy, thus, will probably be less effective as an employee. If as the research shows that happy people are more productive than unhappy people, or less happy people.

All skills being relatively the same, I would bet my career on the fact that if you then only focused on hiring the most happy people, you would have the same results that Shawn speaks of, without all on the ongoing programs.

Happy people, tend to be happy people almost always. It’s their natural zen. It’s where they like to live. Their natural state is to be happy. So, I would theorize that hiring those happy people would have a lasting positive impact to your organization.

Now we just need a great pre-hire assessment that measures someone’s natural level of happiness. I would think Shawn probably has the actual validated questions we could use. It would be nice if he just handed those over and let us started doing this!

Chicken or the Egg. You can try and make your employees happy, or you can hire happy people. Or, you could do both!

7 Steps To Turn Around a Broken HR Department

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I had a friend start a new HR leadership position recently. When I spoke to her the other day, she talked about how the department she has inherited is completely broken. Her first question to me was, “how do I turn this thing around?”

We all have asked ourselves this question, haven’t we?

So, often you get your first shot at leadership because something is broken and a change needs to be made. Rarely, as a first leadership position, do you walk into Disneyland! Oh, look, everything is perfect, all the processes are great, all the people are hard working and get along, the budget has more money than I know what to do with!

It’s just not reality. If the department had all that, they wouldn’t be hiring you!

I gave her my steps to turning around a broken department, from my experience of turning around broken departments!

Step 1 – Don’t start by thinking you’re going to change the culture immediately. The culture is bigger than you. The only way you could truly change the culture is to go in day one, fire every single person, and implant your own new team. Culture will always win.

Step 2 – Look for low hanging fruit and pain points. Anytime you walk into a broken environment there are always simple little things you can do and change, that will be big wins. Do those first. This will buy you time to do some of the bigger things you need to do, and at least you’ll be starting with positive energy.

Step 3 – Fire bad people fast. I don’t care that they’re the only one who knows how to make changes in the system. If they’re bad, fire them. Again, the organization will thank you. And if you’re truly broken, being broken a little longer won’t matter, and now you’ll have an excuse.

Step 4 – Hire people who are loyal to you, first, the organization second. Broken departments eat up and spit out more HR leaders than you can imagine. It would be the first question I would ask when interviewing – so, how many leaders were here before me? Oh, five in five years, thanks, I’ll pass. If you’re going to put up a good fight, you need people who will die by your side.

Step 5 – Have a plan. Gain executive buy-in of that plan early. Continue to update executives on the plan. It won’t be fixed overnight, but managing up on the progress you’re making, will ensure success over the long run.

Step 6 – Build extensive relationships with your peer group in other functions as quickly as possible. To fix awful, you need friends. Friends in IT, Marketing, Finance, Operations, etc. You need those champions on your side, supporting your change. I don’t need everyone in my department to like me, I do need my other functional peer group to like and respect me if I’m going to turn this puppy around.

Step 7 – Stop saying HR is broken, or bad, or you’re fixing it. Start using language that we’re building best-in-case processes, world-class technology, market-leading functions, award-winning talent, etc. The organization needs to change the language of what HR is, to make it what it can be.

It’s the hardest, most challenging, thing you’ll ever do is turn around a broken department, but it will also be the most rewarding and best thing that ever happened to your career!

 

T3 – Pimp My Job Descriptions

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I think there is one thing we all still agree on, most job descriptions flat out suck! This leads to a conversation around job descriptions versus job postings. HR pros will say job descriptions are boring because a job description is a legal document. That can be debated, but it’s why most job descriptions are boring and awful and don’t work in attracting candidates!

This is how most technology is developed. Something sucks and a technologist believes they can build a better mouse trap.

Right now most boring job descriptions are ‘jazzed’ up by outside marketing and design firms that charge you a ton and basically give you either a branded template that looks the same for all job descriptions. This is similar to dropping a SmartCar engine into a Porsche. It looks great, but its still crap on the inside!

The other thing they do is basically take your job description and totally build a microsite for that position. It looks like it’s own mini-website. This is ideal but usually very expensive. Many of the new Recruitment Marketing technologies are now doing this for a fraction of the cost.

Then along comes two new technologies that basically take your boring, stale job descriptions and make them exciting and fresh for a really low cost!

These two companies are GoSizzle.io and ViziRecruiter. I’m not writing them up separately because they virtually do the exact same thing for the a very similar price. You send them your lame job description and they give you back a landing page that is fully branded, interactive and professionally designed. For pennies on the dollar that you would spend working with a big design firm to do the exact same thing.

Both have similar metrics to show that their visual stimulating microsites will drive up to 40% more traffic to your postings.  These technologies also use machine learning to recommend to you better wording for higher SEO and higher levels of engagement from job seekers.

After uploading your job description you basically get back a hyperlink URL that you can use to socially recruit on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, etc. For those organizations that do a lot of outbound recruiting this can be highly valuable.

If you’re mainly a post and pray shop (which most organizations are) I think this technology won’t necessarily do a lot for you. The one weakness both systems have is that while these microsites drive candidates back to your ATS process, they really do nothing for anyone who is visiting your career site and searching your jobs, or for candidates finding your job on Indeed or a job board.

This ATS integration is critical, and both are working on finding ways to make this happen. I expect some of their larger customers will help get this done soon. I’m somewhat surprised that ATSs haven’t picked up on this technology already and integrated it into their own systems. That would be ideal!

Check out both GoSizzle.io and ViziRecruiter. What they do for your job descriptions is 1000% better than what you have right now, and well worth a look, especially for the price!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

Death of the Millennials

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I was at a conference recently and one of the keynotes actually gave a presentation on how to work with millennials. I thought to myself, “how 2009 of this person to do this!” I’ve vowed at this point to never sit through another presentation on millennials in the workplace. Millennials are now dead to me.

Just as Baby Boomers, GenXer’s, GenZs, The Founders, etc., are all dead to me. All of us are people. All of us are in the workplace. All of us have to work together and get along. Focusing so much on one group over another just perpetuates dysfunction and confusion. I actually heard executives talking about kids graduating high school and believing they also are ‘millennials’. Just stop!

That all being said, IBM came out with an infographic about the myths, exaggerations and uncomfortable truths of millennials, last week, which sparked my little rant. I wanted to share these five myths and add some commentary:

1.Millennials’ career goals and expectations are different from those of older generations.

Turns out we all still, for the most part, want the same thing. Good job. Good pay. Stability. Don’t buy into the hype that any of your workers want to jump around from company to company. They don’t.

2.Millennials want constant acclaim and think everyone on the team should get a trophy.

Again, every generation wants feedback and told they’re a rock star, even when they’re not. As we age, we start to gain a little better self-insight that we might suck. When we’re young we think we’re awesome, even when we’re not.

3.Millennials are digital addicts who want to do everything online.

I have 8 aunts who are all in their 60’s, pushing their 70’s, all of whom spend most of their day on digital devices gaming and on social sites. This is the world we live in. My Mom would rather order a pizza online then pick up a phone. Welcome to modern day life.

4.Millennials, unlike their older colleagues, can’t make a decision without first inviting everyone to weigh in.

No one wants to be the one who made a decision that went wrong. In most corporate settings all workers play the CYA game by sharing decision-making responsibility. We all say we want to make decisions until we’re actually given that responsibility, then we turn into bowls of jello on the floor hoping we didn’t ruin our careers!

5.Millennials are more likely than others to jump ship if a job doesn’t fulfill their passions.

Guess what? Young people today have a ton of debt. That means you have to work and make money to pay down that debt. Then you decide to buy a house, get married, have a litter of puppies, etc. Passion is awesome. If you get a job you’re super passionate about, good for you, you’re winning at life. 99% of people will work in a job they like, make decent money, pay their bills, and probably will be passionate about other parts of  their life. I think they’re winning as well.

For the record, the last Millennials entered the workforce two years ago. Can we start talking about these snotty-nosed, spoiled brats who are beginning to enter the workforce right now with their Snapchatting and their video and their ability to brand themselves and never-ending gaze to the glow of their smartphone!? They’re calling themselves “The Founders”.

Go have fun with that. They named themselves…

Maternity/Paternity Plans in 2016 #HRTF16

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Hey, gang! I’m at HR Tech Fest in Washington D.C. and so far there has been some exceptional content and keynote sessions!

One of those keynotes was given by Jim O’Gorman who is the SVP of Talent and Organization at Hulu. Jim spoke about the organizational evolution of Hulu going from startup to becoming a teenager. What I loved about the entire presentation was he works for a big brand, but he shared real world HR issues they have faced and how the solved them.

You don’t always get this from major brands. You usually get this very washed, clean view of how great everything is and perfect they are, and you leave really learning nothing. Jim gave solid ideas and examples of stuff any of us could do in our own shops!

One great idea he had was sharing their Maternity and Paternity programs that Hulu has recently put in place, and the challenges and results. Ironically, Dawn Burke and I just had this same conversation about her own HR shop and the challenges they have had with instituting a modern maternity program.

What does this have anything to do with an HR Technology conference!?

That’s the cool part. Jim, and Hulu, used their HR analytics and technology to prove that developing a new Maternity/Paternity program would increase engagement, loyalty and retention. The money it was going to cost, would come back in spades by the increase in these other metrics.

Sure it was the “right” thing to do, but it also have to make financial sense to the organization.

The Hulu program gives the primary caregiver 20 weeks of pay (12 weeks in a row – think the traditional FMLA time that is required but with pay), and 8 weeks of pay that can be used as transition time.  These 8 weeks is to be used to slowly transition those primary caregivers back into their work life.

Primary caregiver is defined as birth mother, same-sex parent who is going to primary caregiver or father if the father is going to be the primary caregiver.

On top of this, the secondary caregiver in Hulu’s program, traditionally the father, also gets 8 weeks of paid leave to use as they need to support the primary caregiver. That means a secondary caregiver can decide when this time needs to be used, within the first year of life of the child.

Hulu’s philosophy was we can’t build just one maternity/paternity program because everyone’s situation is different. It has to be flexible for all of our arrangements. Each family is different and unique, and if truly want this program to deliver our desired outcomes (increased retention, high engagement, and loyalty) we need to develop a program that is customizable for each person.

“Customizable”!? HR? Benefits? Policies?  Wait, that sounds different!

Sounds pretty cool to me. Sounds like the future of HR to me.

Combine great ideas with what our employees actually want and need with technology and organizations can make great things happen!

Check out HR Tech Fest – it’s their first year in the U.S., and they put on a really great conference. No detail was forgotten, the content was world-class and the attendees were highly engaged! I’ll be back!