Category Archives: The HR Rules

Pity Hires

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Some of the best business interactions I have each week are on the back channel with the gang over at Fistful of Talent.  It usually starts with one of our tribe asking the rest of us a question, and quickly spirals out of control.  Almost every time someone will say “this email string should be a blog post”.  Almost 100% it’s not, because the snark level is Defcon 1!  The concept of “Pity Hire” came from one of these recent interactions and I’ll give credit to the brilliant Paul Hebert (original FOT member and if you need an expert on rewards and recognition, and almost anything else, he’s your dude!).

The conversation actually started around “hiring pretty“, which I’m a huge fan of and have written about it several times.  It’s my belief that over hundreds of years, genetics has and will continue to build better hires.  Hires that are more attractive, taller, etc.  It’s just simple science and human behavior interacting.  I won’t go into detail here, you can read my previous post to get the background.  Let’s just say smart powerful rich men, get pick of women. They have kids. Better healthcare, nutrition, family wealth, access and education, lead to the cycle starting all over again. Eventually, pretty people are not just pretty, they are also smarter.  Looks at our business and political leaders for the most part – usually pretty people.

So, it’s not really that hard to then make the jump to the fact that all of us really like to hire pretty people.  Like it!  We actually love it!  Therein lies the problem.  There are only so many pretty hires to go around, and let’s face it, not all pretty people are genetically superior!  This gets us to Pity Hires.  A Pity Hire is a hire you make of someone out of shear pity for them.  They might not be so good looking, or smart, or they come from circumstances that are less than ideal.  So that you can identify and help stop this kind of hiring I wanted to list out the types of Pity Hires we tend to make:

Pity Hire Types —

Second Place Hire:  The second place pity hire is the hire you make when you someone doesn’t get hired initially because you actually had a really beautiful person to hire.  The second place hire was probably a better fit, but not as ascetically pleasing.  You find another lower level position, at lower pay, and offer that to them.  You feel bad, so you give them a lessor job.

Crappy Situation Hire: The crappy situation hire happens when you interview someone who is in, or has went through recently, a crappy situation. Newly divorced and the spouse left them for a younger, more beautiful person (happens to both males and females).  The boss from their old job, they were having an affair with, found a new younger, more attractive admin to sleep with.  Things like that – crappy situations.

Recent Breakup Hire: They were fired from their last job, when they were let go through a layoff where their past company was getting rid of the less attractive people.  You feel bad they had to go through those situations, so you hire them for your job.

No One Will Give Me My First Job Hire:  One of the most common Pity Hires is the entry level hire.  Many of us have given out this hire in our careers.  Entry level candidate, got some worthless degree in something like “Historical Urban Anthropology” and can’t figure out why no one will hire them!  They’re not good looking enough to get a job like a normal person, so you hire them.

 Pity hires aren’t necessarily bad hires.  It’s really a kind of HR charity.  We do them for friends kids, and favors for old co-workers.  They usually don’t work out well, but we can compartmentalize them for what they are, Pity Hires.  As I write this I’m wondering if we might have just come up on the next great Recruiting Metric for 2014!  Can you imagine going to your executive team — “Well, we lost 25 hires last year, but we aren’t counting 5 of those losses, they were Pity Hires!”

 

 

After The 4th Round Interview…

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I had a client recently that was undecided about a candidate after the 4th round interview.  They were thinking that maybe a fifth round would make the difference.  I told them that it wouldn’t.  In fact, it was a mistake to allow them to get to four.

Do you know what the fourth round interview says about your process?

It says that your process is broken.  No one needs four rounds of interviews to decide if a candidate is the right candidate for your organization.  A fifth round, or any number higher, is just adding insult to injury.

Here’s what anything beyond the third round interview says to your candidate:

 – “Hey, come work us, so we can totally frustrate you with our indecision culture.”

– “We need more interviews because we don’t have our shit together, but please don’t notice that.”

– “You are so mediocre we just can decide if we should pass on you, or hire you.”

– “I bet you can’t wait to come aboard and be a part of this process in the future!”

– “We like to where down candidates to see who ‘really’ wants out jobs!”

Organizations that can’t figure this out are always interviewing second tier talent.  Organizations that are talent attractors have determined that less is more.  Have a concise process. Move quick. We’ll get it right, more than we’ll get it wrong.  If we get it wrong, don’t take long to make the correction.

The reality is, is that 99% of your interviews should never need to go beyond three interviews.  It looks like this:

1st round – This is your pre-employment screening/assessments  and phone interview. Perfect placement for video screening tool (HireVue, WePow, etc.).

2nd round – Face-to-face with hiring manager and any other key stakeholders (i.e., people this person might support from other functions)

3rd round – if needed-  Face-to-face, phone, skype-type interview.  Executive sign off.  Really only needed if your line executive doesn’t have faith in the hiring manager.

More interviews after this point, yield negligible additional information, and actually might be a detriment to your hiring decision.  Why?  Here’s what happens happens after you talk about someone for so long, they turn into a piece of crap!  This is normal human and organizational behavior, by the way.  We start out talking about all the good qualities and experiences the person has, and how they can help us.  We then start searching for hickeys and, no matter what, we will find them!  Then we start talking about what’s wrong with the person and before you know it, that great candidate, becomes a piece of garbage and not good enough for your organization.

They’re not really garbage.  They’re still the really good person you initially interviewed.  We just let it go too long, and discovered they have opportunities and we don’t want to hire anyone with ‘opportunities’ we want perfect.  This is what happens after round three in almost every organization I’ve ever witnessed go to four, five, six, etc.   It might be the biggest misnomer by candidates who feel the longer you go in the interview process, the better the chance of an offer.  It’s untrue!  If you don’t get an offer after the third round, your percentages of getting an offer fall exponentially every round after!

 

How many hours of work are too many?

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An article out last week on NFL.com spoke to the Detroit Lions head coach’s, Jim Schwartz, work schedule which averages 100 hours per week!  That’s break that down:

– 7 days * 24 hours = 168 total hours in a week

– 100 work week / 7 days = 14.2 hours per day

What does a 14 hour day look like?  You get into the office at 6 or 7am and you don’t get home until 8, 9, 10pm.  Every day, every week.  I know what you’re thinking.  Well they only play 20 games.  He gets half a year off!  Plus, he makes millions of dollars.  First, NFL never stops working.  Off season might be busier than the actual season.

Why do so many of these coaches work 100 hour weeks? From the article:

“The mentality of most coaches borders on the paranoid-obsessive end of the spectrum. Good coaches care about the littlest details. It takes time to wade through film, meet with coaches and players, script practices, design game plans and perform the oodles of other responsibilities that need to be perfect…

“We’re here a ton, but then I go up and I talk to a coach about anything and I’m sitting in his office and I peek down and glance underneath his desk, and there’s a pillow and a blanket,” Lions wide receiver Nate Burleson said. “For a brief moment, I laugh and I’m like, ‘Holy smokes, this guy sleeps in his office.’ But then when you really think about it, it’s like, ‘This guy really sleeps in his office.'”

It begs the question, should the NFL or any employer put a limit on the amount of hours that a person can work?  Airlines do it for their pilots and flight crew.  Safety is paramount and the last thing you want is a pilot that has not slept for 18-24 hours.  Many other occupations do it for similar reasons.  Safety always seems to be the one factor in limiting work hours.  Is the NFL not concerned about the safety and health of their coaches?  They limit the amount of practice time for their players.

How many  of us wish we had employees who loved what they did so much they wanted to work 100 hours per week!?

BambooHR’s founders limit their entire staff to 40 hours per week.  They kick them out if they try to work more.  That seems a bit radical.  I’m sure my staff would love me doing that to them, but 40 hours in most workplace environments seems to be the minimum, not the maximum.

I’m not even focusing on whether the hours in the ‘office’ or at home.  Just total work hours.  How many hours are too many?  Hit me in the comments.  My feeling is there are times in every occupation when more or less hours are needed to do a great job at whatever it is you’re doing.  One week I can be a rock star 40 hours.  The next week I might look like a total slack for working 60 hours.  I’m a big proponent of work when you need to.  The old farmers saying of ‘there are times to make hay’, runs true in every organization.  If you have someone who is consistently, over long periods of time, working 60+ hours, you’ve got a staffing problem.

 

12 Things Happy HR People Do Differently

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I always like to surround myself with happy, positive people – I have enough pragmatism for us all! – you should see the people I work with – it’s like one big happy convention everyday at work.  Which is great for pick-me-ups, not so great if you’re just having a bad day and need to punch someone!  It’s not say everyone is happy, every second, but I think when you search out happy people, for the most part – they are usually happy.  I going to list 12 things that Happy HR People do more than non-Happy HR People – see if you see yourself in any of these –

1. Express Gratitude – When I let someone know how truly thankful I am for what they do, or did, it makes me feel happy, and I’m sure it makes them feel happy.

2. Cultivate Optimism – I start everyday truly believing I can accomplish anything I set out to today.  Not in a naive way, but in a way where I don’t feel anyone is going to put up a roadblock in front of me – except myself.

3. Avoid over-thinking and Social comparisons – I know so many people that struggle with this one.  I’m truly one of those people who feel so happy and excited for others when they find success.  I always think that they finding success will have a positive impact to me finding success – so let’s just all be successful together! To many people think the opposite.

4. Practice Acts of Kindness – Just yesterday I almost let someone cut in front of me in traffic! Oh wait, that probably doesn’t meet this criteria!  So, I struggle with this – I like to think I’m a kind person, but I see so many people who are so much more kind than I am – I know I can do better!

5. Nurture Social Relationships – This is why I love HR!  We are put into a position within our organizations where this is/should be the majority of our job description.  We get to build relationships everyday, and we are getting paid to do it – isn’t that wonderful?!

6. Develop a Strategy for Coping – I’m a move forward person – this isn’t to say I’m going to forget about what just happened – I learn from it – but I move forward.  My organization needs me to do this – you take a step back on a Monday – it’s my job on Tuesday to take a step forward – not stand around and laminate about Monday. That’s how I cope.

7. Learn To Forgive – I think my wife would say this is by far my greatest strength – I Forgive – don’t hold grudges. It’s just not something I want to carry around – there is too much great stuff in my life not to forgive and move on.  Again, I don’t want to confuse forgiving someone vs. forgetting what someone did – I can move forward, but it just not might be as it was before – that life.  But I won’t be carrying around your issues anymore!

8. Increase Flow Experiences – Flow is a state in which it feels like time stands still.  Watching my sons play sports, listening to my son read aloud to me, laughing with my wife as we sleep in on a Sunday morning, hearing my sons laugh as they tickle each other.  In the end of life – you will never feel like you had too many of these experiences – you will definitely feel like you had to many “work” experiences.

9. Savor Life’s Joys – I love lying in bed, with the windows open and listening to it rain.  Sitting on a perfectly still, calm lake and seeing the ripples of the water.  Watching my sons concentrate when they are writing or doing art and seeing their tongue move around in their mouth, without them knowing they are doing it.  And Diet Mt. Dew – that’s pretty good to!

10. Commit to Your Goals – Have you talked to someone recently who set out to run a marathon or lose so much weight – and they did it!?  Talk about happy!  Committing to, and reaching your goals drives happiness beyond that which you can imagine.

11. Practice Spirituality –  I’m not a church goer, but I know there are forces in life bigger than myself.  Being able to understand we are just one small little piece of what’s really going on, helps put life into perspective.

12. Take Care of Your Body – It’s crucial to your well being – and I know most of us can do much better than we do – but don’t ever underestimate how important this is to the over scheme of your happiness.  Energy is such a critical part of maintaining long-term happiness, and picking yourself up when we hit rough patches.  It’s just that they keep making these stupid restaurants that prepare such wonderful food! 😉

(adapted from 12 Things Happy People Do Differently – by Jacob Soko)

 

 

To Haze or Not to Haze at Work

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If you follow sports, especially NFL football, you haven’t been able to get away from the nonstop coverage of the hazing issue that took place with the Miami Dolphins between two of their offensive lineman. Long story short, veteran offensive lineman, who is white, decides rookie offensive lineman, who is black, isn’t being man enough (whatever that means).  So, veteran begins hazing him to get him tougher by leaving racist voice mails, threatening the rookie’s family, trying to force him to pay for $30,000 dinners.  This Miami Dolphin veteran feels this is normal NFL rookie hazing behavior, which usually includes carrying a veteran’s luggage at away games, carrying shoulder pads off practice field, maybe buying some donuts for morning meetings, or picking up some pizzas for lunch.  The rookie he decided to haze was a Stanford graduate, with parents who are Harvard graduates. Where do you think this is going?

The question comes up constantly in workplaces, of which the NFL should be considered a workplace, shouldn’t ‘some’ hazing be allowed?  It’s easy for all of us to say “NO!”   It’s hard for us to know that in many, many instances our positive, not negative, workplace culture is built on many forms of hazing.  Phil Knight, the Godfather of Nike, wrote in his own autobiography, Just Do It, that his own sales reps, called ‘Ekins’ (Nike backwards), all got Nike swoosh tattoos on their calf when they were hired.  It wasn’t required, but if you wanted to ‘fit’ in, you got it.  Hazing at one of the largest, most successful companies in the world.

At my own company we tell new recruiters that they have to use their first commission check to buy everyone a round of drinks.  Knowing that this check will never cover the amount of what that tab will be.  (For the record – we just threaten this and don’t tell them the truth, but I always get the tab!) Hazing, all the same.

I’m sure, as you read this, that you are thinking of things that happen in your own company.  “We decorate peoples cubes for their birthdays” or “We make the new employee stand up in a meeting and share their most embarrassing moment” or “We don’t let the new employees know when it’s jean’s day”.  All harmless, all hazing.

Show it comes down to one small question: Should you allow hazing or not?

Or do you just call it something different like, cultural norms, team building, trust exercises, initiation, rite of passage, a test of loyalty, etc.?

I wonder how many of us admonish this veteran Miami Dolphin player (who for the record isn’t a choir boy) as a monster, while we turn a blind-eye to what is going on in our organizations.  What is happening in Miami, and I’m sure many sports franchises, fraternities/sororities, college locker rooms, etc., is very similar to what is happening in the hallways of your office building, on the floor of your manufacturing facility, sales bullpen and cube farm.

We allow hazing because it has become a societal norm.  “Well, I went through it, so should everyone else that comes after me.”  “Getting the tattoo is part of ‘who’ we are.”  “She’s ‘one’ of us, she gets it.”  This is what a NFL player was doing.  He was doing what he was taught to do by those before him.  By the culture he was working in.  No controls.  Just culture.  The funny thing about culture is that ‘it’ happens.  Whether we like it or not, our culture happens.

Yahoo’s Mayer Fails At Performance Management, Again

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It hit the news wire last week Yahoo’s embattled CEO, Marissa Mayer, is set to fire 500 lower performing employees.  Sounds all well and good, right?!  It’s about time!  The HR blogging community as a whole kills managers and executives for not moving fast enough on getting rid of under performing employees.  Mayer is finally doing it! Well, not so fast…

From Business Insider:

“The reviews were part of Mayer’s plans to trim the Yahoo workforce “very surgically, very carefully,” according to a source close to the company.

Now, Swisher reports, Mayer is planning to let go any employees who were rated “misses” or “occasionally misses” at least twice during the past five quarters.

Swisher says as many as 500 employees could eventually be effected. She says that some Yahoo employees are already being let go.

Yahoo has many thousands more employees than many industry experts believes it needs to have.”

Here’s what will happen in reality.
Anytime you ‘decide’ to make cuts based on a large group is rated, as Yahoo is doing above, you’ll always end up with rater error.  Hiring managers are going to know what’s going on.  “Oh, so if I rate Timmy “occasionally misses” on completing projects on time, you’re going to make me fire him? No problem, Timmy “never” misses, now.”  What you’ve done is completely take out your managers ability to develop talent through your performance management process.  You’ve decided to use your performance management process as a weapon.  This will not end well.
When you begin down this path, you end up in a death spiral corporately.  You’ve handcuffed your managers’ ability to manage their teams. “Well, I can’t deliver effective performance messages because you’ll just fire the person. So now, everyone is ‘completely’ average or above!”  Even when their not.  You’ve taken away your ability as an organization to get better internally, and driven home the message “You either be a rock star or we will hire a rock star from the outside”.  No longer can you ‘work’ to get better in our environment.  Most people do not want to work in that type of environment.
How should Yahoo handle this issue?
First and foremost you can’t have a ‘black and white’ cut off.  This doesn’t work anywhere!  What is an employee had two “occasionally misses” three quarters ago, but since has been great.  Under your plan, they’re gone anyway.  Does that really make sense?  Ultimately you need to let your individual leaders make these decisions and hold them accountable to the budget.  This is real world stuff, the budget is desperately important in Yahoo’s case.  Leaders get paid the big bucks to make tough decisions.  Make them, make those decisions.  If they can’t, or won’t, you know who really needs to be replaced.
I get it, Yahoo is in a really bad position.  They need to get leaner and they are attempting to do this by letting the weak performers ago first.  I actually admire that.  Way to many companies just layoff based on seniority and end up cutting great talent and keeping bad talent.  This is better, but I think they could have made it even more effective with a little more leadership influence to the decision making process.

Failure is the new Black

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This inspiration came from my friend William Tincup.  If you don’t know him, you need to know him, he’s brilliant.  Like my head hurts after talking to him brilliant, in a good way.

He made a comment recently which was just this:

“Failure is the new black.”

Another friend of ours, Jason Seiden, has been saying this for years, in a little different way, with his “Fail Spectacularly” motto.  Either way, you get the point, it’s now ‘in’ to talk about your failures. It’s a really popular and motivating thought process for a lot of people. Basically, it’s alright that you failed, go do it again and eventually you’ll get it right.

Past generations would go to great lengths to hide their failures.  Think about your parents and grand parents, you never heard them talk about things they failed at.  Think back about how your own parents spoke to you. Was failure really an option?  It wasn’t in my household.  We’re Sacketts, and Sacketts are winners, and winners get to do what they want (oh wait, that was me weekly to my own kids!).

I’m just wondering who originally decided that it was alright to fail?

You can’t go anywhere anymore without everyone telling you “Success starts with Failure” or “The Secret to success is failure”.  This comes from the concept of traditional scientific theory.  Have a theory. Test theory. Fail. Try another approach. Fail. Keep trying and eventually you’ll be successful.  Straightforward. Makes sense.  But that really only plays out when you’re testing scientific theories.

Can we agree real life might be a bit different?

Malcolm Gladwell’s new book David and Goliath talks about the concept of failure and what it does to the brightest college students in the world.  His research found that the top 50  PhD students going into schools like Harvard, are all smarter than the smartest kid going into Missouri.  But at the end of their schooling the brightest kid at Missouri is more successful than the number 50 kid at Harvard.  Why is that?  The number 50 kid believes they are a failure because they are not as smart as the 49 kids above them at Harvard. While the kid at Missouri, who wasn’t as bright as all the Harvard kids, became a rock star at Missouri. That success, that confidence, led him/her to more and more success.  Put that same Missouri kid at Harvard and he/she would have failed miserably and may have even dropped out of the program.

Let me give you an example.  Your kid goes up to bat.  Strikes out, which is a failure. Goes up the next time and strikes out.  Goes up again and strikes out. Continues game after game, never hitting, only striking out.  Continued failure will not lead to this kid’s success.  In fact, continued failure will lead to more failure as their confidence is shattered.

The path to success, for most life situations, is not through failure, it’s through success.  Continued little successes that will eventually lead to big successes.

Celebrating failure, like it’s some sort of a success, doesn’t lead to success.  Is it alright to fail?  Of course it is. But should we be celebrating it?  I have children.  I want them to be successful at anything they do.  When they fail, we don’t throw a party.  We talk about where failure leads, what we/they need to do to ensure we don’t fail the next time.  Many times that entails a ton of hard work.  Failures enemy is hard work.

I don’t like that we are getting comfortable as a society with failure.  That failure has become something to celebrate. Something that is now cool.   That we give a trophy to the team that lost every game.  It doesn’t make us better as a society.  It doesn’t make our organizations better.  Failure leads to more failure, not to success.  Here’s hoping ‘Success’ becomes the new black!

My Favorite HR Mistake

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I’ve made more mistakes in my HR career than I care to even remember – I could probably write a book!

It’s funny to think about your mistakes, because I think invariably every person takes those mistakes and tries to turn them into some type of “learning”.   It’s a classic interview question – so, Mr. Sackett, tell me about your biggest mistake in career and what did you learn from it?   I even have asked it myself when interviewing others.   Just once I want someone to answer: “well, besides coming to this lame interview, I’d have to say drinking my way through college, getting average grades, and having to take positions within HR probably is my biggest.  What I’ve learned is that all those kids in band, in high school, on the debate team, really were smarter than me, and my ability to be third team all-conference point guard, in hindsight, probably didn’t get me into the career I was hoping for.”

But it never happens – no one is really honest about their mistakes – because in making most mistakes you do something stupid – something so stupid, you’d would rather not share it with anyone.  So, we come up with answers like – “my biggest mistake was working to hard on a project with my last employer, and not getting others involved, and I’ve learned while you can get the project done and on time by yourself, you really need to include everyone.” Vomit. And somehow has HR pros we accept this answer and move onto the next question, almost like that question was just a test – a test to see if you were stupid enough to actually tell us, and brighten up our day!

But, I’ve got one – I do have a favorite and two friends of mind recently made me think about it.  My favorite HR mistake – Telling someone to go after a promotion and  more money, leaving a position they truly enjoyed.  When I started my career right out of college, I gave myself 12 years to become a Vice President.  Seemed like a logical goal at the time – but in hindsight seems obviously stupid now.  It took me 16 years, and only after I realized it no longer mattered did I reach that level.  My two friends both recently had opportunities to leave organizations and positions they really liked – I gave them both the same advice – you can’t even come close to measuring the value of truly liking the job you have – you just can’t.  So, answer me this one question: Do you love what you are doing, and who you are doing it for? If it’s yes, stay put.  It’s that simple, that was my learning.  I’ve left two positions in my life where I loved what I was doing, and loved the organizations – both to take promotional opportunities with other companies.  Both times I made the wrong decision. Tough mistake to make twice

I use to give out this advice to people – go ahead and leave – you’re going to have 10+ jobs in your life, might as well move up as fast as you can.  I don’t do that any longer – in fact I spend time now trying to talk people out of taking new jobs – which I know is ironic since at my core I’m a recruiter! I think we all hope we learn over time from our mistakes.  Once in a while I actually do!

How To Tell An Employee They Suck

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You have an employee who sucks don’t you?

I know, I know, you’re wondering how I knew that, aren’t you?

Well, you came to this post and we all have employees who suck! (Dear My Employees – this is for effect — none of you really suck! Just everyone else reading this post has employees who suck.)   I’ve been out on the road quite a bit lately meeting with HR pros.  I meet with people under the reason ‘we can’t find talent’, but usually what I find is ‘we can’t get rid of people who suck, so we hire more people to cover up their suckiness’.

Don’t feel bad.  Almost every organization I know has a problem getting rid of people who suck.  We hire people. They become a part of the family.  We find out they suck.  Like your drunk uncle who ruins holidays, these employees are similar.  You don’t stop asking your uncle to come to Christmas, and we don’t ask these employees not to come back to work.  So the sucky employees keep coming to work.

We meet with them and have ‘conversations’ and tell them we need them to “step up” and “reach higher” and “give maximum effort”.  What we never say is “Hey! Stop Sucking!”

We don’t do this because we’re professionals!  Also, we would never allow their managers to say this, that could very well hurt the feelings of these employees who suck.

So, do you want to know how to tell an employee they suck?

Here’s 3 ways you can do it:

1. Send them a personalized cookie with the words “Stop Sucking!” Kind of like a Happy Birthday cookie, but instead replace Happy Birthday with Stop Sucking! For those really outgoing, caring HR Departments you can actually order “Stop Sucking” cookie bouquets that spells this out in letter cookies. How fun!

2. Offer FREE “Stop Sucking” tattoos, but only to them.

3.  Decorate their cube or office door after they leave at night so the next day when they come to work they’ll get a big Stop Sucking surprise!

These also sound ridiculously stupid, don’t they? (except of the cookie bouquet – that’s a good one)

Almost as ridiculous as not getting rid of employees who suck and hiring additional employees to cover up for an employee who doesn’t carry their own weight…

I get it. We don’t hire employees to fire them.  We hire them to productive contributors to our organizations.  The problem is, sometimes we make mistakes.  Sometimes our selection process fails.  Sometimes we make bad hiring decisions.  Sometimes the hire we thought so highly of, sucks.  We usually know it right away, but we give it time, we hate believing what our gut is telling us.

Telling an employee they suck is an awesome experiment, with no downside.  One of two things usually happens when telling an employee they suck. They will either realize you’re right and you can start making departure plans, or they’ll want to show you your wrong and work to demonstrate they don’t suck.  For me, this has really gone about 50/50.  I’m not saying that the employee 50% will stop sucking.  They’ll try not to suck really hard, but at their core they suck.  I love seeing the passion, many times that alone will bring them up to a performance level to at least get by, but rarely do you go from sucking to rock star.

A third thing might happen when telling an employee they suck.  They won’t agree with you. That’s okay as well.  It’s not their call.  You’re the leader.  Your opinion is what counts.  If you feel they suck, they do, for you at least.  Let them go and be ‘great’ somewhere else, like your competitor.

 

 

The Office Halloween Party Rules

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Is your office dressing up for Halloween?

Mine isn’t.  It’s not that I wouldn’t.  Okay, I wouldn’t.  But if others wanted to, I wouldn’t say “no”.  I mean everyone has that one person in their office that’s a little way too excited over Halloween.  I get it.  I have kids.  They lose their minds at the thought of free candy and dressing up.  But you’re an adult, let’s try and keep it together here at the office.

That is why I think it’s important to Rules for your Office Halloween Party.  Here’s mine:

1. Racism theme costumes never go over like you thought they would when you were drunk and came up with the concept. “No, really, we’re going as the black KKK!” Just don’t do it.

2. Anything with ‘naughty’ in the title isn’t work appropriate. Naughty Teacher, Naughty Nurse, Naughty Witch — you get the idea.  The only time this would work is when taking the opposite stance — Naughty Human Resource Manager is totally appropriate.  This costume consists of a cat sweater, hair in bun, long skirt (pants or skort), old lady panty hose and 6 inch pumps. Sexy!

3. Don’t be the ‘guy’ offering “tricks” all day. That’s just creepy.  Also, don’t be the ‘gal’ offering “tricks” all day. That’s just slutty.

4. Anything that interferes with your ability to do your actual job, shouldn’t be a costume selection.  “Well, I didn’t think about how me being a Rubic’s Cube for the day would get in the way to me being a nurse.”

5. Dressing up like the boss is always in good taste, but only if your boss doesn’t hate you.

6. If you have to put a sign on to explain what you are, go back to the drawing board.  ” Wait, you see I’m ‘Hard to Get Along With'” Yeah, we got it…

7. If less than half your staff will be dressing up, you need to cancel dressing up.  At that point it’s just sad.

In HR we love our dress code rules and for Halloween parties why should we be different!  What your favorite Halloween party rules at the office?