Category Archives: The HR Rules

Open Office Spaces Now Suck…But wait for it…

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This just in! Google got it wrong! It seems like we keep hearing that more and more these days. The company that seemingly invited HR and Talent Acquisition keeps getting it wrong. This time, it’s around the open office concept. To be fair to Google, they weren’t the first ones to jump on the open office bandwagon. They just became the poster child for crazy office spaces gone wild. From The Washington Post:

Despite its obvious problems, the open-office model has continued to encroach on workers across the country. Now, about 70 percent of U.S. offices have no or low partitions, according to the International Facility Management Association. Silicon Valley has been the leader in bringing down the dividers. Google, Yahoo, eBay, Goldman Sachs and American Express are all adherents.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg enlisted famed architect Frank Gehry to design the largest open floor plan in the world, housing nearly 3,000 engineers. And as a businessman, Michael Bloomberg was an early adopter of the open-space trend, saying it promoted transparency and fairness. He famously carried the model into city hall when he became mayor of New York,  making “the Bullpen” a symbol of open communication and accessibility to the city’s chief.One more reason we should be allowed to work from home!…

…But employers are getting a false sense of improved productivity. A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem for them and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy. Meanwhile, “ease of interaction” with colleagues — the problem that open offices profess to fix — was cited as a problem by fewer than 10 percent of workers in any type of office setting. In fact, those with private offices wereleast likely to identify their ability to communicate with colleagues as an issue. In a previous study, researchers concluded that “the loss of productivity due to noise distraction … was doubled in open-plan offices compared to private offices.”

But wait for it…

Why is all of this Open Office hating coming out right now? Are open offices really that bad? My own opinion is that the office furniture industry is truly behind all of this anyway. Every decade or so, they need to sell new furniture and the way to do that is to tell executives that a new design will give them magical productivity gains and super happy employees! Just buy our new desk and chair!

I suspect this round of Open Office hating is coming from another corner of the universe. Can you guess?  So, closed offices don’t work. You don’t get collaboration. Open offices don’t work, because you don’t get privacy. So, what are we HR Pros to do?

Oh, I have an idea, came from the corner, of the employees who just don’t’ feel cozy enough at work!  The NEW research says that Working From Home is the real answer to all of our problems!  Yep. Open offices suck because working from home is soooo much better!

Did you see that coming?

There are seven-year-old kids in China making $100 Nikes by candle light, and amazingly their productivity goes up every day! Be careful about getting pulled down the rabbit hole of what next great office design will ‘fix’ your company.  Everyone has an agenda. Your employees who really would rather just work from home. The office supply companies who need to push product. The HR executive who needs productivity increases to show the board or at least, a reason we aren’t getting them!

What is the magical office design after work from home crashes?  I hear working from the beach in Cayman really, really increases productivity!

T3 – UltiPro – @UltimateHCM

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This week on T3 I take a look at one of the big boys in human capital management (HCM) software Ultimate Software. If you’re like me you probably have some confusion of what or who Ultimate Software really is. Are they Ultimate Software, UltiPro, UltimateHCM, I truly had no idea if these were all the same or different!

Ultimately (pun intended!), I found out that the main product of Ultimate Software is called UltiPro and its an enterprise level human capital management system, or in HR terms, it’s your system of record, plus some.  To give you some more perspective UltiPro runs in the same space as HR technology companies, Oracle, SAP, Workday, Ceridian and ADP.

At its core UltiPro provides you with HR, Payroll and Benefits software. All clients that use UltiPro have this core, plus they give you the ability to buy into the full enterprise for talent management, applicant tracking, compensation, time and labor, Business Intelligence/predictive analytics, payment and tax, etc.

5 things that I really liked about UltiPro:

1. Definite advantage for Canadian customers as UltiPro payroll runs both Canadian employees and U.S. employees on the same system. This is rare in the payroll world, and about 75% of Canadian companies have U.S. employees.  All of your employees in UltiPro, US and Canadian, will be housed in the same database.

2. UltiPro doesn’t seem like a cobbled together mess of technology. It was designed as one holistic system and reacts that way when you are using it. UltiPros manager and employee Self-service is one of the better ones I’ve seen in the industry.

3. The business intelligence and analytics within UltiPro is awesome. It’s built so that individuals can pull exactly what they want, in the way they want, not just pre-built reports where you get what they want you to have. I was especially impressed with their retention dashboard with retention prediction and succession management.

4. UltiPro makes HR and organizational compliance extremely easy. You can tell this was built with input from real HR pros. Need your EEOC annual report? Pull it instantly by clicking one button! UltiPro delivers over 150 different business processes, designed to be best practice right out of the box, but with your ability to change and adapt to your specific processes.

5. This might seem small but it’s a big differentiator in the HCM space, in that UltiPro does the tax side of payroll beyond most payroll systems. Each UltiPro client is indemnified, and they ensure you have the right tax forms, rates, and they’ll actually file for you as well! This is huge for SMB clients!

So, why should you use them over the other big guys in the HCM space?  Ultimate Software sells from a philosophy of ‘we’re the small, big guys’, they’re the nice guys of HCM.  If you’ve dealt with some of the big HCM players recently, you’ll understand this!

So, what size do you need to be to really be an organization that would use UltiPro? They’re primarily an enterprise level software, but do play in the SMB space more than most. So, roughly 300-1500 on the SMB side, they’re enterprise clients average around 5,000, but rise to well over 10,000.

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.

When Did Attitude Become a Skill?

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I know for sure that this hasn’t always been the case.  My parents and grandparents did not see Positive Attitude as a skill.  It was something you had, or faked, while at work.  You didn’t question it, it was a given.  You either showed up with it, or you got sent home to find it!

I’m now, seriously, hearing from hiring managers who only skill they desire from a candidate is someone with a positive attitude!

No, Tim, I don’t need someone who can do the job. We can show them that part. I just need someone who actually shows up to work and seems to like being here, working, making money, helping the company, our customers and their fellow employees.

By the way, these aren’t $12 an hour jobs.  These are professional, you can make a good living, with benefits and retirement and manage people, level jobs!  Career level jobs!

Here is all anyone really has to do today to get hired by, keep and have a long successful career at most companies:

1. Show up to work, almost every day.

2. Come across to others that you actually like your job and the company you work for.

3. Don’t be an asshole to your boss, coworkers and customers.

4. Be slightly positive about what the future holds for yourself and others.

5. Don’t be creepy.

1 + 2 +3 + 4 + 5 = a great career and multiple employee awards!

Yet, most people in the world can’t even come close to meeting the expectations I’ve listed out above.  Not. Even. Close.

Positive attitude is not a skill. It’s a basic human trait that all of your employees should have.  If they don’t, please give them the gift of finding this ‘skill’ working for another employer.

Also, don’t give me some crap about having a bad day.  Everyone has bad days, weeks, months and years.  It doesn’t change the fact that you need to show up to work and put on a positive front. Look, I don’t care if its real or fake, and no one else does either! Just do it. Here’s a little secret, none of know that your faking being positive, and even if we did, we really don’t care! We like hanging around positive people, more than negative people.

Attitude is not a skill. I refuse to allow it to be!

You’re Not Bill Simmons!

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On Friday, right before the end of the business day, ESPN announced that it was shutting down its very popular site Grantland.  Grantland was a site started by sports author Bill Simmons, and it was purchased by ESPN a few years ago and Bill came over to ESPN to continue to run it successfully. Bill Simmons is an exceptional writer, and assembled a great writing team, and Grantland was a blog I read every day.

This is from ESPN on the announcement of shutting down Grantland:

“Grantland distinguished itself with quality writing, smart ideas, original thinking and fun. We are grateful to those who made it so. Bill Simmons was passionately committed to the site and proved to be an outstanding editor with a real eye for talent. Thanks to all the other writers, editors and staff who worked very hard to create content with an identifiable sensibility and consistent intelligence and quality.”

So, what happened?

Bill Simmons was let go by ESPN in May.  Bill had creative differences with ESPN executives. This happens with great talent and management. One is trying to make great art. One is trying to make great money. Those two things many times don’t travel a parallel path.

Since his leaving, many of the great writers and editors that he brought onboard at Grantland, and stayed at Grantland, left ESPN, either to follow Bill to his new projects, or to other media outlets. These were really talented people, who worked at Grantland because of Bill Simmons.

You are not Bill Simmons!

In my career in HR I’ve seen a ton of talented people decide to leave companies I was working at, and they truly believed the company couldn’t go on without them.  In every single case the company did go on, and usually prospered.  You see, very few us are a Bill Simmons.

Bill left Grantland, and it failed.  Some would say, he was Grantland, or Grantland was him, either way, the site could not live without him.

You probably don’t have one employee in your entire company that is that important that if they left the company would fail to go on without them. Most of us are in similar situations.  Your executives know this as well, even if they won’t admit it. The organization will live on without them. It’s a tough pill for us all to swallow, but it’s 99.9% true in almost all cases.

We are not Bill Simmons!

Which is to say, you don’t have a defining discernable talent that is unique enough to carry or bring down a company. That’s okay! The world needs ditch diggers, and lawyers, and accountants, and developers, and clerks, and trash collectors, etc. It sucks to replaceable. It’s just a fact of life for almost all of us.

Bill Simmons couldn’t be replaced.  That’s might be the ultimate job performance review you could ever have.  I’m so f’ing good at my job, if I leave this place will fall apart.  We all want to believe we are that person, but we aren’t!

 

10 Solutions to Your Worst HR and TA Headaches!

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CareerBuilder did a funny thing at their booth at the HR Tech Conference this year and had people vote on their worst HR and TA headaches. CB then had a running total scoreboard on which headaches were the worst.  Kris Dunn and I loved the idea and we are putting on a webinar next Tuesday, sponsored by our friends at CareerBuilder, called, “Why Can’t All My Recruiting Tools Get Along?!” – which is one of our biggest TA headaches!

In this webinar, you’ll get our Top 10 HR and TA Headaches, but also the solutions to those headaches!  Basically, KD and I will give you are secret headache solutions!  Here are some the headaches we’ll be discussing:

  • “My hiring managers won’t give me feedback on candidates!” 
  • “I can’t get 100% of my employees to complete our mandatory training!?”
  • “We just had another candidate no call – no show! Our we allowed to shoot them?!” 
  • “Hey, Recruiter Tim, I ‘really’ like the candidate you sent me, but can I see just a few more?!” 
  • “I know I told you I would accept $75K for the job, but I really meant to say $90K!” 
  • And many, many more!

Do you need an aspirin? I do.

But, don’t fret, Kris and I will give you our guaranteed migraine knockout solutions, and none of which include you having to hire a hitman to ‘take care’ of business for you!  This webinar will be fun and lively, but like everything we do, also give you some real practical ideas and advice on helping you solve your worst HR and TA headaches!

WHEN:  Tuesday, November 3rd

TIME:  1 pm EST

WHERE: CLICK HERE! 

5 Tips for Creating a More Human Workplace #WorkHuman

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Better Than Robots: Why Your Employees Deserve a More Human Workplace

This is a Free Webinar sponsored by Globoforce – Register Here – Wednesday, October 14th at 2 p.m. ET | 11 a.m. PT | 1 p.m. CT | 6 p.m. GMT

This is going to be fun! We won’t be coming to live from my Camry, but we will be Live! Just two HR guys sharing the tips and tricks on making your workplace and environment more human!

Admit it. Life would be a lot easier if our employees were robots. They’d be more predictable, and a heck of a lot more manageable. As we seek to gain more and more big data in HCM it seems like that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. Measure and manage our cultures into a robot paradise. But that way lies danger. It is the humanity in our employees that provides the creativity, the innovation and the heart that makes our businesses really succeed.

We’re in the ‘real’ people business, and our employees need a real human workplace and culture to thrive and prosper. This webinar will give you the insight to what works and what doesn’t, and help you reimagine the concept of work-life balance.

You will learn:

  • 5 tips for creating a more human workplacGloboforce
  • A case study of how one company built a better culture
  • HR “best practices” that actually hurt workplace culture

 

What else will you get? 

Kris Dunn is coming on to talk about how he and his team are building a more human workplace at his company Kinetix.  Get some great insight and tips from Kris on how you can begin building this in your own workplace as well! The Kinetix team has one of the best cultures around, and you’ll want to hear how they’ve built from the ground up.

This isn’t your normal webinar. This is real advice, brought to you by real practitioners, letting you know what works and what doesn’t!

Register Today! 

 

The 1 Reason You’re Afraid To Make Recruiting Simple

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Have you ever wondered why Recruiting Departments continue to make complex processes?  In reality, all of us, wants things simple.  But, when you look at our organizations they are filled with complexity.  It seems like the more we try to make things simple, the more complex they get.  You know what?  It’s you. It’s not everyone else.  You are making things complex, and you’re doing this because it makes you feel good.

From Harvard Business Review:

“There are several deep psychological reasons why stopping activities is so hard to do in organizations. First, while people complain about being too busy, they also take a certain amount of satisfaction and pride in being needed at all hours of the day and night. In other words, being busy is a status symbol. In fact a few years ago we asked senior managers in a research organization — all of whom were complaining about being too busy — to voluntarily give up one or two of their committee assignments. Nobody took the bait because being on numerous committees was a source of prestige.

Managers also hesitate to stop things because they don’t want to admit that they are doing low-value or unnecessary work. Particularly at a time of layoffs, high unemployment, and a focus on cost reduction, managers want to believe (and convince others) that what they are doing is absolutely critical and can’t possibly be stopped. So while it’s somewhat easier to identify unnecessary activities that others are doing, it’s risky to volunteer that my own activities aren’t adding value. After all, if I stop doing them, then what would I do?”

That’s the bad news.  You have have deep psychological issues.  Your spouse already knew that about you.

The good news is, you can stop it!  How?  Reward people for eliminating worthless work.  Right now we reward people who are working 70 hours per week and always busy and we tell people “Wow! Look at Tim he’s a rock star, always here, always working!”  Then someone in your group goes, “Yeah, but Tim is an idiot, I could do his job in 20 hours per week, if…”  We don’t reward the 20 hour guy, we reward the guy working 70 hours, even if he doesn’t have to. (Editor’s note: calling yourself an idiot in a post is cathartic in a number of ways!)

Somewhere in our society the ‘working smarter’ analogy got lost or turned into ‘work smarter and longer’.  The reality is most people don’t have the ability to work smarter, so they just work longer and make everything they do look ‘Really’ important!   You just thought of someone in your organization when you read that, didn’t you!?  We all have them, you can now officially call them ‘psychos’ since they do actually have a “deep psychological” reasons for doing what they’re doing. Harvard said so!

I love simple.  I love simple HR.  I love simple Recruiting.  I hate HR and Talent Pros that make things complex, because I know they have ‘deep psychological’ issues!  Please go make things simple today!

Can HR out Crazy a Crazy Employee?

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In HR we run into employees all the time that do “Crazy” pretty dang good!  I’m always interested in how we work around crazy.  Almost never do we just fire crazy and get rid of it, we tend to keep it around. In fact, we tend to try and fix crazy.

I’m not talking about legitimate mental illness. I’m talking about employees who are perfectly “fine” but act crazy for a number of reasons: attention, they love drama, they love pushing buttons, they love being in the middle of shit, you know, work crazy.   We see it every day in our organizations.

I’ve found something that works really well for me in dealing with crazy.  Do crazy, better than the employee does crazy. Sounds crazy right?!  Here’s how it works.

Crazy employees have power because they act crazy, and no one wants to jump into their crazy storm.  So, people just stay silent, try to stay away, change subjects, ignore, etc.  These are all great mechanisms to stay out of the crazy storm.  Unfortunately, this just feeds the crazy storm and helps turn it into a crazy hurricane!  You see, crazy employees hear silence  and silence to them is agreement. Now, they’ve got justification for their crazy storm because in their mind no one told them they disagree, so that must mean they agree!

You can’t reason with crazy.

So, how do you stop crazy?  You do crazy better than they do crazy.  But you do crazy under control. You fight a crazy storm with a crazy calm.  But, let’s be clear, you still need to go crazy.  Let me give you an example:

Crazy Employee:  “My boss is out to get me!  Yesterday he told Jill “great job” and he didn’t tell me great job.  I think he’s sleeping with Jill – you need to investigate.  Also, Jill might be stealing – you didn’t hear that from me, but she just bought a new car and we make the same amount, I think – what does she make? – anyway I can’t afford a new car!” 

Me: “You know what?  I want to thank you for giving me this information – I’m pulling in your boss right now and we are going to have this out!  Just sit here while I call him in – we are going to blast him!”

Crazy Employee: “Hey! Wait! Don’t call him in while I’m here – he’ll know it’s me that told you.”

Me: “Yeah – but to fire him I’m going to need you to testify at the trial. Once I fire him for sleeping with Jill, he’ll want to fight it – happens all the time – no big deal – we got him!  You’ll do fine on the witness stand.”

Crazy Employee: “Um, I don’t want to do that – just forget it”

Crazy doesn’t like to go public in front of others. Crazy works best one-on-one behind closed doors where there aren’t witnesses.  You can stop crazy very quickly by going public and asking them to be crazy in front of others.  I’ve found that if I can do crazy behind closed doors better than crazy can do crazy, it tends to snap crazy back into semi-reality.  Plus, it’s fun to act crazy sometimes, as long as it’s behind closed doors!

The Undercover Job Start

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I’ve had quite a few friends start new positions in this past year.  It’s exciting to see so many people get great opportunities after living through the recession!

One common thing happens to all of these folks. It goes something like this:

1.  Social announcement that they got a new position!  Yay! Congrats! When do you start?! We all know the drill.

2. Actual announcement on the first day they start the job.  This happens in a number of forms, social, press release, etc. This is Day 1 on the job, they don’t even know which bathroom they should be using based on their position, and Bam!, you’ve been announced to the world you’re open for business in your new role.

3. Everyone in the world is contacting you on your first day for a variety of reasons. Some will want to just congratulate you. Some will want to pimp your for business. Some will want dirt on why you left the last place. All will want time you don’t have because YOU JUST STARTED A NEW JOB AND YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE THE BATHROOM IS!!!

4. You spend the first week trying to find the bathroom.

5. By week #2, you found the bathroom, your email works on your smartphone, and your new company is already beginning to discount your ideas and opinions. Welcome to the show kid, it moves pretty fast!

That’s why I think you should do away with the current job announcement practices, and do something else.  Here’s my new Sackett Job Announcement Plan for Success (like a Trump policy, but it works):

1. Day 1, will now be called Day A.

2. Day A – E, will be your first days of employment, but no one will actually be told that you started.

3. Day 1 (which is really day 6) will happen on the first day of week #2.  Now, you’re actually ready to announce your new position, and take on the coming storm of emails, phone calls, tweets, etc.

Better, right?

We can call it the Undercover Job Start.  You’ve started, but let’s keep it on the down-low until I find the bathroom and stuff.  It’s like the same job start, but without all the stress.

They do this in the restaurant industry when they open a new restaurant. They ‘soft’ open a week before the actual Grand Opening.  People trickle in. It gives the staff a chance to work out the kinks and fix stuff without having a full restaurant to deal with.  That’s how you want to start your job!

Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (not Evil)

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Let’s face it. HR pros have a long history of being uncomfortable with sites like Glassdoor.com. After all, the only people that use Glassdoor.com and sites like it are disgruntled ex-employees that you fired, right?

Wrong. It was wrong 5 years ago, and it’s horribly wrong today. Rather than view these types of sites as a threat, smart HR and Recruiting pros are learning how to use the reputation/rating sites to manage their employment brand, connect with candidates and make better hires.

The days of the employment brand strategy with scripted photos, smiling faces (just the right amount of diversity!) and PDFs are over.

That’s why we’re going deep on reputation sites like Glassdoor in the September version of the FOT Webinar entitled, Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (Not Evil). Join Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett from Fistful of Talent on 9/17 at 2pm Eastern, and we’ll hit you with the following:

– How the the yelp-ification of America—the trend towards consumer-based reviews in almost every area of our economy—is changing the way employees and candidates think about job search and employer brands. It’s second nature for your employees to rate a restaurant, a book or a movie online. That means that employees of all types (not just the ones who want to complain) are more willing than ever to participate in your brand through user review.

– We’ll cover the 5 Biggest Myths about company reputation sites like Glassdoor and tell you which ones are completely BS and which ones you actually perpetuate by not fully engaging on sites like Glassdoor. We’ll hit the usual suspects here: “The only comments are from the bad employees”  and “The salary data out there isn’t factual,” and tell you why things have changed. More importantly, we’ll cover how you actually may make the myths a reality by not fully engaging on reputation sites.  Think about that last sentence: You’ve got to be in the game to influence the game.

– Last but not least, we’ll give you a 10-step playbook on how to engage on reputation sites and become more of a Marketer as an HR/Recruiting Pro.  It’s true—you wouldn’t have read this far if you didn’t want to learn more about how to use reputation sites like Glassdoor to maximize your company and your career. We’ll help you get started.

The outside world now has a huge say in how your company/employment brand is perceived, whether you engage or not. FOT thinks you should engage.  Join us for Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (Not Evil) on 9/17 at 2pm Eastern and we’ll show you how.

(FOT Note: Glassdoor is sponsoring this FOT webinar. We’re happy to have them as a sponsor and, true to their commitment to transparency, they’re letting us talk about the myths and a lot of other realities HR and Recruiting pros have experienced related to Glassdoor—without restriction. That type of balance makes them a great partner.  Join us and we promise you’ll get a balanced view—no sales pitch—as well as an insider’s guide to how to use sites like Glassdoor to become a better marketer as an HR/Recruiting pro.)

Fill out the form below to register today!