Category Archives: The HR Rules

2 Ways to Tell If You’re An Essential Employee

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I’ve had many conversations in my career with employees who “essentially” felt they were probably more important to the business than they really were.  You know who I’m talking about!   The ones who at some point let it slip: “This place would shut down if I wasn’t here” or “Let’s see how you do if I leave” or “I made this company what it is today”.  It’s usually a sales person, or technical person who have had big roles, no doubt, but they begin to get a little to big for their own britches (as my grandmother would say).  Over time I’ve developed a good two point test to determine if someone is Essential or Non-essential to your business:

1.  In a snow storm, is this person required to make it into the office/facility no matter what? (think large storm – more than one day)

Example: I worked in a large Health System – Doctors & Nurses had to get in – we actually had plans on how to get them to work in an emergency.  I on the other hand, being in HR – didn’t have anyone coming to pick me up in a 4 wheel drive SUV.

2.  Does the person in question spend way too much of their time trying to convince you of how important they are to your operation?

Examples:  “Without me are largest client wouldn’t be here.” ; “Our department (a non-revenue generating department) saved the organization over $500K last year.” – on a budget of $3.7M…

You know what is really interesting about looking at the life of an organization – when they start out, in their infancy, there is only Essential employees.  We make widgets, all you need is someone to get widget material, someone to make widgets and someone to sell widgets and someone to collect the cash and pay the bills.  Pretty basic.  No HR, No Marketing or Finance, No customer service – it’s a very straight line organization.   Most companies don’t even add an HR element to their organizations until they get over 100 employees – usually an office manager/payroll/accounting person or the owner takes on this responsibility.

I always like to remind myself of who is “really” essential in my organization.  It’s important.  It’s important that as a “client” to those people, I make sure I focus what I’m doing on things that will help them do what they are doing.  That only happens when I actually talk to them, face-to-face, and ask them – “What can I do, to help you do what you do?”  Doesn’t seem overly complicated – but somehow we try and make it harder than that.  You see, that’s what non-essentials do – we convince you that what we do is really important!

I like to look at organizations the same way you pick a team on the playground.  If you had the most essential person in your company begin picking a team – where would you get picked?  First, 10th, last?   It’s a good exercise to go through.  What you’ll see is your most essential person will pick individuals who will/can help them get the job done – without hassle, without issues, without extra work.

Are you Essential to your organization?

3 Reasons Women Make Less Money Than Men

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In the State of the Union speech last week, President Obama spoke passionately about wanting to end the wage discrimination between males and females.  He used the number $.77 in the context of women make $.77 for every dollar a man makes.  Is that actually true?  Probably not, when you look at all the data:

“[Women] still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. A woman deserves equal pay for equal work.”

Hard to argue with that, but the 77-cents statistic does not convey the point.

All it tells us is how the median annual earnings of full-time, year-round female workers compare with that of full-time, year-round male workers.

It doesn’t speak to any of the factors that determine one’s pay, such as the type of job chosen, education, experience, tenure, or hours worked. Nor does it reflect the host of less tangible factors that play a role, such as job performance.

Controlling for those factors would shrink the pay gap considerably in many jobs and in some cases all but erase it.

Does that mean there’s no gender discrimination in pay? No. But teasing out just how much exists is very hard. Assessments will differ depending on what methodologies are used and what specifically is being compared. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research, for instance, estimates that somewhere between a quarter to a third of the 77-cents pay gap may be attributable to discrimination.

But it doesn’t really matter, in my mind, if we are talking about $.23 or $.03 – any difference is too much.  Our reality is there shouldn’t be any difference in pay given all things being equal.  So, why is it that really, today in 2014, have pay discrepancy between men and women?  I’ll give you 3 reasons why we have it, and why it’s going to continue:

1.  HR still does not have enough influence in most organizations to stop illegal and immoral decisions by leadership.  72.7% of HR Professionals are female (based on 2012 BLS figures).  So, in the vast majority of our organizations women are actually in a position to influence this issue.  You would think with such a large number of females in HR this would take care of itself.  But here we are.  I’m not saying women don’t have influence, I’m saying HR doesn’t have influence. Having over 70% of HR positions filled by women, should make, and keep, this a top of mind issue to put an end to.

2.   HR does not train, and consequently discipline, male leaders who over inflated performance of male employees over female employees who are similar or above in performance of their male counterparts. We see this happen all the time, and we (HR) turn a blind-eye to the practices, instead of putting a stop to them.  I think one could easily argue that an over-reaching competency amongst HR professionals in their inability to directly handle conflict, which definitely perpetuates this issue.

3.  Culturally, in America, we want women to make less.  That one hurts, right?  Before you react, think about it.  Who is expected to take off work when a baby is born?  Who is expected to stay home with a sick child? Or on a snow day from school? etc.  All of things attribute to Obama’s $.77 figure.  If 20% take off 12 weeks after childbirth, that has a huge impact to female average wage as compared to male wage!  Also, what about that thing we don’t talk about?  Men who can’t handle being with or married to a woman who makes more than them? You can scoff, but it is a very real thing!  In my career I’ve had to sit with female employees and have them tell me to my face they don’t want a raise, or to take on a new position, because it would cause them to make more than their husbands, and that was a bad thing.

#1 all by itself should make us furious with anger.  HR could put a stop to most of this wage discrimination, almost immediately, but we don’t.  It wouldn’t solve the entire amount, but it would make a huge dent in the difference!  I have been apart of trying to tackle this issue with major corporations.  I’ve stood in front of a CEO and showed this person the disparity and the solution.  The cost would be substantial, in the millions, and was told to ‘bury it’ and take care of the most critical outliers. Organizational leadership knows this is happening, they just don’t want to hurt their potential bonuses to stop it.

 

5 Crippling HR Behaviors That Keep Employees From Becoming Leaders

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In HR (OD, Training, etc. – pick your title) we like to believe we develop our employees constantly and ongoing to become the next generation of leaders.  But many times our actions tell a very different story.  We (HR and our Leadership teams) do and say things daily that keep people from truly reaching their full potential.  Self awareness of these behaviors is the key to making sure you are the roadblock to creating great leaders in your organization.

Here are 5 things you are doing to stop leadership development in your organization:

1. We try to mitigate 100% of risk.  Leaders need to understand and experience risk.  It’s part of the growth process to becoming a leader.  If we never allow our future leaders to experience risk, they’ll fail when they finally face it, or will be unwilling to face it, thus missing out on huge opportunities for your organization.

2. We don’t allow our employees to fail.  There are two parts to this. First, we get personal gratification by saving the day.  Second, we have this false sense that ‘great’ leaders won’t allow their employees to fail, so we step in quickly when we see things going south.   We tell ourselves that we need to let our people fail, and failure is good, etc. But we can’t stop ourselves from stepping in when failure is about to happen, or is happening.

3. We mistake what is expected with great.  Words are so powerful.  It’s so easy to say “You’re doing Great!”, when in actuality the correct phrase is probably closer to “You’re doing the exact job you’re paid to do!”  That’s not great. That’s is expected.  You can’t blow hot air up everyone’s butt and think they’re going to get great.  They have to know what great is, and then get rewarded with praise when great is reached.

4. We mistake high performance for the ability to lead.  Just because you’re great at ‘the’ job, doesn’t mean you’ll be great at leading people who do ‘the’ job.  This might be the one behavior that is hardest to change.  All of our lives we tell people the way to ‘move up’ is through great performance.  But it isn’t.  The way to move up into leadership, is to do those things that great leaders do – which does include high performance, but it also includes so much more than just being good at ‘the’ job you’re doing.

5. We are not honest about our own failures.  Developing leaders will learn more about leadership from you, if they know and understand your own failures at leadership.  We all have major failures in our lives, and many of those are hard to share because they are embarrassing, they show weakness, they might still be a weakness, etc. Developing leaders will learn more from your failures about being a great leader, then from any of your successes.

Developing future leaders has always been a critical part of HR in organizations, but we are quickly approaching a time in our history where your ability to develop leaders might be the most valuable skill you can provide to your organization.

(adapted from the Forbes article “7 Crippling Parenting Behaviors That Keep Your Children From Growing Into Leaders“

What Happens When You Write A Letter to Your Employee’s Parents?

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For years I’ve been preaching to HR and Talent Pros all over the country that the easiest, cheapest and most effective way to increase engagement and loyalty in your employees is to write their parents a thank you note.  Now, the CEO of Pepsi, Indra Nooyi, has come out and admitted to doing this with her direct reports. From the Fortune article:

I became CEO in 2006, and it was a matter of some pride to my family, but not too much. So I went home to visit my mother in Madras, in India, and stayed with her. And she woke me up at 7 o’clock and said, “Come on, get ready.”  I said, “I’m on vacation, how about noon today?” She said, “No, people are coming to visit, so get up.”

So she made me sort of dress up and sit there, and then a steady stream of third cousins, fifth cousins, 20th cousins, three-removed, all started to show up. And each of them would walk into the house. They would sort of look at me and say, “Oh, hello,” and then go to my mom and say, “You should feel so proud that you brought up this daughter, and you brought up your child so well.”

So, this was not about me.  This was about what a good job my parents had done in bringing me up. It dawned on me that all of my executives who worked for me are also doing a damn good job, but I’d never told their parents what a great job their parents had done for them.  I’d never done that.

And I thought about my kids and I said, “You know what?  If I ever got a report card on them, after they’re 18, I would love it, because in the U.S., once they turn 18, we don’t get report cards.  We pay their tuition, but we don’t get their report card, right?”

…I wrote to them and I told them the story of my going to India and what happened with my mother, and I said, “therefore I’m writing to thank you for the gift of your son, who is doing this at PepsiCo, and what a wonderful job this person is doing.”  I gave a — it was a personal letter for each family member.

And it opened up emotions of the kind I have never seen.  Parents wrote back to me, and all of a sudden, parents of my direct reports, who are all quite grown-up, and myself, we had our own communication.

And one executive, I remember, he went home and he said to his mom, “you know, my boss is really giving me a tough time.” And his mom told him, “Nuh-uh, not about her.  She’s my friend!” 

Okay, I know this will not work 100% of the time.  There will be times, when an employee of yours has had a very bad relationship with their parents, and this kind of ‘engagement’ practice will not be welcomed.  I would still argue, those times are rare.  One of things this exercise forces a leader to do is to ensure they at least know their direct reports. IF that is the case, you would know which reports would not want this to happen, and you adjust accordingly.

Read the full article. Nooyi takes it one further step and talks about retention and talent attraction.  Image you are in a heated talent fight for a certain type of person. The candidate interviews with your firm, as well as others, and you all make offers.  Which company will the candidate choose? Nooyi has made calls to parents of candidates, telling the parents why this position, with Pepsi, is the best fit.  Now, she has the parents also helping her recruit!  Powerful stuff, visionary leader who really gets it!

Would your CEO write thank you letters to your employee’s parents?

Right To Play

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Football players at the Big Ten University Northwestern are taking steps to launch, for the first time in history, a labor union for college athletes.  College athletics is a growing business worth billions of dollars to the higher education institutions that sponsor these activities.  It was just a matter of time until either the athletes, current or former, would come up with the idea that they wanted, and needed, a larger voice in the activities in which they participate.  Let’s face it, the billions being made are being made on the backs of these young men and women.

From the article:

Backed by the United Steelworkers union, Huma also filed union cards signed by an undisclosed number of Northwestern players with the NLRB — the federal statutory body that recognizes groups that seek collective bargaining rights.

“This is about finally giving college athletes a seat at the table,” said Huma, a former UCLA linebacker who created the NCPA as an advocacy group in 2001. “Athletes deserve an equal voice when it comes to their physical, academic and financial protections…

“The action we’re taking isn’t because of any mistreatment by Northwestern,” Colter said. “We love Northwestern. The school is just playing by the rules of their governing body, the NCAA. We’re interested in trying to help all players — at USC, Stanford, Oklahoma State, everywhere. It’s about protecting them and future generations to come.

“Right now the NCAA is like a dictatorship. No one represents us in negotiations. The only way things are going to change is if players have a union.”

Sounds very legitimate.  This is a very hard topic for me to argue for – I hate Unions!  With a passion and fire of a thousand suns.  I see absolutely no use for labor unions in today’s society.  That being said, I think are strong arguments on both sides of this fight. Here are some thoughts I have about the Unionization of College Athletics:

1. Universities continue to empire build on the blood, sweat, talent, brand, and hard work of these athletes.   It’s time that the athletes get a piece of this pie.  Yes, I know they get a scholarship and free education.  Yes, I know what that means for lifetime earnings.  We’re talking about billions of dollars per year.

2. Only a few sports, in a few schools actually make money, and that money is usually used to fund all the other athletic teams.  No, Volleyball, Baseball, Tennis, Golf, Wrestling, Swimming, etc. are not revenue generating sports.  It take big time Football and Basketball in college athletics to make money.  Unionizing College Athletes, could actually hurt more people than it helps.

3. The NCAA has a monopoly on major college athletics and I would love to see it broken up.  Unionization might be the first step to that.

4. We shouldn’t need Unions to keep college athletes safe.  That should be the universities responsibility over all else.  Aren’t these athletes students first?

5.  Players want an equal voice in Academics?  I’m sure that’s what they were thinking when they used that athletic waiver to get into the school they couldn’t have if it wasn’t for athletics.

6. Players want financial protections.  Isn’t that what they are getting by getting an education?  The ability to make a living outside of their physical attributes?

I always say that I see no use for Unions in today’s society, with one small caveat, if there isn’t legitimate competition and that group is then being taken advantage of.  The problem is we aren’t really talking about ‘college athletics’, we are talking about major college Football and Basketball.  No one cares that the rower at Cornell isn’t getting extra payments for the big win last weekend.  With no competition, the NCAA has put their member schools in a precarious position of making unionization a real threat.

Newest Employee Benefit – Divorce Insurance!

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You know what happens when you go through a prolonged recession?  Divorce rates drop.

It’s pretty simple economics.  It costs more money to live alone in two separate spaces, then to live together in one.  It cost money to get divorced, you can live in misery together much cheaper!

You know what happens when the economy rebounds and everyone is getting those new shiny jobs!? Divorce rates increase.

It’s pretty simple economics.  Why live with an asshole when you have your own money and can find someone who will treat you like the princess that you are!

Yep, HR Pros it’s that season, the season when you’re going to once again become a marriage counselor.  You should know that with increased employment opportunities come increased desires to finally take that step out of a bad marriage and into the awesome life of online dating and eating Ravoli out of can with your cat at 9:30 pm on Friday night while watching Bachelor reruns.

I know. I know. You hate being a marriage counselor to your employees.  First, they never will listen to your advice. Second, they will never listen to your advice. But, I think I have a solution for you. Did you know you can now purchase Divorce Insurance for your employees!  I mean what tell an employee that you care so much about their well being that we, your great employer, will help you break up your marriage!? I say nothing!

Trying to get your employees to call EAP and go to counseling is so 1990’s!  Employers who truly care about their employees in the 2010’s get them Divorce Insurance.  Yes, it’s real.  Check it out – DivorceInsurance.com – basically you pay premiums, like all insurance, and in the ‘rare’ case you get divorced, they pay your cash to help with the financials costs of a divorce. It’s like Aflac, but for Love! (Hey, don’t try and steal that now for you commercials DivorceInsurance.com!)

Look if you’re going to talk me into Pet Insurance for your stupid cat, you can definitely talk me into Divorce Insurance!  In fact, maybe we could just set up a cafeteria plan of worthless insurances and let you pick like 2 out off the list as one of the benefits the company will offer you.  “Yeah, I’d like the Divorce Insurance and the Immaculate Conception Insurance.”

Being a former child of divorce maybe one of these companies could come up with “Creepy Step Dad Insurance” – oh wait, they’re in the business of probability.  Probably not a good bet on their part…

 

 

 

Bad Hires Worse

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I wrote this 2 years ago.  It still rings true.  I still need to be reminded of this.  I still run into examples of this monthly. Enjoy.

If I could take all of my HR education, My SPHR and 20 years of experience and boil it down to this one piece of advice, it would be this:

Bad Hires Worse.

In HR we love to talk about our hiring and screening processes, and how we “only” hire the best talent, but in the end we, more times than not, leave the final decision on who to hire to the person who will be responsible to supervise the person being hired – the Hiring Manager.   I don’t know about all of you, but in my stops across corporate America, all of my hiring managers haven’t been “A” players, many have been “B” players and a good handful of “C” players.  Yet, in almost all of those stops, we (I) didn’t stop bad hiring managers from hiring when the need came.  Sure I would try to influence more with my struggling managers, be more involved – but they still ultimately had to make a decision that they had to live with.

I know I’m not the only one – it happens every single day.  Everyday we allow bad hiring managers to make talent decisions in our organizations, just as we are making plans to move the bad manager off the bus.   It’s not an easy change to make in your organization.  It’s something that has to come from the top.  But, if you are serious about making a positive impact to talent in your organization you can not allow bad managers to make talent decisions.  They have to know, through performance management, that: 1. You’re bad (and need fixing or moving); 2. You no longer have the ability to make hiring decisions.  That is when you hit your High Potential manager succession list and tap on some shoulders.  “Hey, Mrs. Hi-Po, guess what we need your help with some interviewing and selection decisions.”  It sends a clear and direct message to your organization – we won’t hire worse.

Remember, this isn’t just an operational issue – it happens at all levels, in all departments.  Sometimes the hardest thing to do is look in the mirror at our own departments.  If you have bad talent in HR, don’t allow them to hire (“but it’s different we’re in HR, we know better!” – No you don’t – stop it).   Bad hires worse – over and over and over.  Bad needs to hire worse, they’re desperate, they’ll do anything to protect themselves, they make bad decisions – they are Bad.  We/HR own this.  We have the ability and influence to stop it.  No executive is going to tell you “No” when you suggest we stop allowing our bad managers the ability to make hiring decisions – they’ll probably hug you.

It’s a regret I have – something I will change.  If it happens again, I won’t allow it.  I vow from this day forward, I will never allow a bad hiring manager to make a hiring decision – at least not without a fight!

How Much Pregnancy Leave Is Too Much?

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So, I’m up north at HRPA 2014 and I’m learning so much about our Canadian HR brother and sisters (like the US it’s still mostly sisters!).  Did you know the maternity leave in Canada is 52 weeks!  That’s one year if your slow at math like me!  And that can be divided in any manner between the mother and father.  Plus, from the peers I spoke to, many get up to 55% of their salary for the entire time they off!

Obviously, the US has FMLA for only 12 weeks. By the way, the women I spoke to, who didn’t know this about the US, were completely shocked by this.  But, I was completely shocked by 52 weeks and 55% pay!

My question to you today is: How much pregnancy leave is too much?

Here are some thoughts I have between the US and Canadian policies:

1. 12 weeks is too short.  52 weeks seems too long.

2. I’m not sure how companies manage, especially those with a large female workforce, it would seem like a huge competitive disadvantage to lose your talent for so long, and still have to pay out so many resources for not having that talent.

3. I wish I would have had my 3 sons in Canada.

4. Should a government force a corporation to pay an employee for a very personal decision?  The company didn’t ask you to have babies, why should they pay 55% of your salary?  How is that decision different than many life decisions we make.  I want to train for an Ironman Triathlon – I expect it will take me 6 months. Pay me for that!

5. Canadians game the system just like Americans!  My Canadian HR peers had the same war stories as my American peers.  One was of a female business owner who got pregnant.  Since she owned the business she didn’t have to claim 52 weeks off.  So her husband took all 52 weeks and got paid 55% of his salary.  The HR person knew this was going on and couldn’t do anything about it.  People are people – given a set of rules, they’ll find ways around them.

I run a company that has had many pregnancies over the years, I hire an age that falls into the perfect age for baby making!  Each time we have one person out for 12 weeks, it’s a stress on the entire team.  I can’t even imagine how we would manage for 52 weeks!  A part of me is glad I don’t have to deal with that.  Another part of me wishes we had better maternity leave in the US.

I don’t know what the perfect number is, I’m sure it’s different for each family going through it.

What do you think?  What is the perfect amount of pregnancy leave?  If you were given the chance to design a plan, taking into account both the employee and the company resources, what would you do?

 

 

The Bigger You Are, The Smaller You Need To Act

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Do you know why most restaurants fail?  They don’t do anything really, really well.  There are a number of new burger chains popping up all over the country who are doing great.  These chains have decided to have only a few menu items, but do each of those items better than anywhere else. You can get a burger, fries, shake and a soda. That’s it.  Small, focused, the best you’ll ever taste – each item.

I work with a lot of big companies, and the hiring managers love me!  You know why?

I’m small (okay, I walked into that one!).  My company is small.  When you’re small you do a number of things that most big companies don’t do.  Here’s a short list:

  • You take full responsibility (no one else around to blame)
  • You’re responsive to everything (or you go out of business)
  • You’re in the know of what needs to be done
  • You say ‘Yes’ to almost everything
  • You treat the business like it’s your own

I meet with a lot of HR executives who work for big companies and almost 100% have the same issue.  They feel like their department doesn’t have the credibility and influence it should.  They are concerned that their department’s reputation is that of a roadblock and not of a valued partner.  They don’t know how to get the organization to view them differently.

It’s really easy.

Big HR departments have to act like they are small HR departments.  While their is a business necessity to have specialist in large HR shops, everyone must act like they are generalist.  Leaders have to make sure that it’s known that lack of response, lack of solutions, lack taking full responsibility to ensure someone gets the answer they need will not be tolerated, at any level, within their HR shop.

Hiring managers, executives, individual contributors, etc. only want to hear one thing when they call HR – “Yes, we’ll take care of it, right now”. Not an endless loop of we can’t do it, I’m not the person, I’ll try and find out, I don’t know, call such and such, etc.  Small shops don’t have this luxury. If they would say these things, they’d be out of job, because they wouldn’t be needed.

The key to great HR in a big HR shop is to act small.  Yet most big HR shops work really, really hard on trying to be big.  When you act small you get very good at pinpointing what is really important and getting that accomplished.  You do this because you just can’t do everything, you don’t have the resources.  By doing a few things really, really well, your organization knows what they can’t count on you to deliver.  Large HR shops try to do everything, and usually do it all really average, or below average.  They are trying to do too much.  Don’t get bigger, get smaller – smaller on your focus, smaller on your deliverables, smaller on your accomplishments, but make those things world class.

Work Clothes That Measure Your Performance

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One of the big things that came out of the CES 2014 technology show is wearable technology.  We already are aware of wearable technology like Google Glass and various bracelets that do everything from working as your smartphone to measuring if your fat butt is moving enough.  I think what CES did this year, though, was to stretch our imagination to what could wearable technology become.

Here’s my idea – work clothes that measure whether or not you’re on task or doing exactly what you should be doing.

Think about that for a second:

1. All employees must wear company issued ‘uniform’

2. Company issued uniform has integrated wearable fibers that not only measure movements, but also give you the exact time and location of said uniform, measure the health of the worker, measure the interactions with worker tools, etc. (Hello Big Brother!)

3. Your systems measure everything to the point you can tell which employee is the most productive, which employee takes too many bathroom breaks, which employee said they were going to deliver a load to a client but also decided to stop and have a refreshing adult beverage on the way.

4. Not only measuring performance and output, but also relaying exact ways that an employee can get better at their job. “Tim continues to drop his arm down to his side after every motion “X”, if Tim would keep his arm at a 45 degree angle he would get 14% more output” – now that is some serious specific feedback!

5. Wearable uniforms could also reduce workplace accidents.  If the clothes new the operator was getting too clothes to a dangerous situation, or forgot to put down a safety gate, the clothes could shut down the system before an accident could happen. That’s really cool!

6. Wearable technology could measure the health of your workers, and deliver warning signs to HR. Have you ever had someone die of a heart attack at your place of business?  I have. It sucks really, really bad to see a coworker die.

Some of this seems Star Wars, super techy, fantasy kinds of things, but it’s not.  Technology is getting very close to begin doing some these things in the next years.  While some will think of these things as intrusive to their privacy, I’m guessing companies and worker’s compensation insurance companies will not.  You want this great job, with great pay and benefits, at our great company, please put on this company issues uniform.

It’s not about control. It’s about becoming better, faster.  For all the training we do, nothing could get folks up to speed, with 100% compliance, faster than your shirt not allowing to continue to do a work around that is dangerous and delivers a less than quality product.

What do you think?  Would you wear clothes that measured everything you do in your job?