Category Archives: The HR Rules

A Field Guide To “Nice Bosses”

Posted on by
2

Sarah White shared an article last week from Jezebel called “A Field Guide to “Nice Guys” which was really funny! From the article:

“When using the phrase ‘Nice Guys’ with a capital NG, I don’t mean a man who happens to be a genuinely kind person. Hooray for kind, caring, conscientious people! I mean the sort of Guy who has declared himself to be Nice, and thus deserving of positive (usually sexual) attention from the female of his choice, upon whom he has often projected an elaborate fantasy of perfection and willingness that rarely has anything to do with the subject’s actual feelings or desires. When a Nice Guy is romantically rejected by a woman he wants, he lashes out at her, wondering why that dumb cunt won’t go out with him. After all, he has been Nice!”

This concept works with Bosses as well!  We’ve all had the Nice Boss (Capital NB), right?  Here’s my list of the Nice Boss (NB) types:

The BFF Boss

BFF Bosses are the type that want to be your friend, or at least they want you to think they’re your friend.  That way you’ll do more them, that they can take credit for!  Plus, it’s so much easier to tell your subordinates that they won’t be getting a raise, again, this year when you’re BFF’s!  “Hey, guys, it’s me, you know me, if I could get you anything you know I would, but there’s nothing!” As they drive to the bank to cash their profit sharing check.

The Cool Boss

Can you dress casual on Tuesday? Sure! Can you leave early on Friday to get a head start on your weekend? Of Course! Is it alright you’re 15 minutes late coming back from lunch? No you weren’t!  But as soon as Cool Boss is held accountable by his/her superiors somehow they also get amnesia and place the blame back on you. “I never told them they could take an hour and a half lunch!”  Cool Boss will do whatever it takes to be the Cool Boss, except have your back.

The Concerned Boss

Come in and tell me everything that’s going wrong with you – I want to know, I need to know – I’m only concerned about you and your welfare! Plus, I need some information to hold over your head the next time I need to make cuts, changes or promotions.   This boss could probably be called the Blackmail Boss as well, because that’s really what’s going on.  I’m going to acted concerned so you’ll spill your beans and now I’ve got you on the hook to do whatever I want!

The Work Spouse Boss

I love my boss!  She is so great, not like my wife who doesn’t understand me.  My boss really gets me, and supports me, and knows what I want in my future!  Oh, and she really only wants to ruin your marriage in some game of spouse Twister that will never work – but what the hell, let’s suspend reality – it seems to work in the movies until someone gets shot. The Work Spouse Bosses are even better than Work Spouses because they also support your career development – they’re ‘really’ trying to help you get ahead in your career – just not higher than them – that’s not part of the game!

What kind of “Nice Boss” do you have?

What Your Office Holiday Party Drink Selection Says About You

Posted on by
5

My friend, and newly named Chair of the HR Technology Conference, Steve Boese, made a comment on the back channel recently about how he was ‘looking forward’ to all the HR bloggers writing their annual posts on how employees can keep themselves out of trouble at the annual holiday office party.  Let’s face it Steve – HR folks aren’t the most creative – plus, we usually stick with what got us here! (namely safe, lame posts, preaching crap everyone already knows)

But, Steve got me thinking – I wanted to do the annual office holiday party post one better and add a little spice – so I asked a few of my friends to give me their annual Office Holiday Party drink selections – and then I would analyze what this said about them and their possible career!  What could go wrong!?

First up – let’s start with the idea generator himself – Steve Boese:

Drink Selection: Light Beer

What ordering Light Beer says about your career:  I’m going ‘light’ because I want to give the impression I still care about my appearance, and I’m also a guy of the people.  I like to fit in and nothing says ‘fittin in’ like a Light Beer.  Plus, I don’t want to get to drunk, I’ve got the midnight SportsCenter DVR’d to watch when I get home.

***********************

Laurie Ruettimann:

Drink Selection: Prohibition Punch

What ordering Prohibition Punch says about your career: Please get me drunk as fast as possible because I can’t stand being around any of these people, but 3 PP’s into the night and I’ll be selecting who’s going to be taking me home tonight. Classic HR lady cocktail choice and move!

***********************

Matt (aka Bruno) Stollak:

Drink Selection: Rusty Nail

What ordering a Rusty Nail says about your career: No one here is going to want to talk to me, so I better order something odd, so I have a small topic of conversation ready to go at a moments notice.  The Rusty Nail also let’s everyone know you’re dangerous, like an accountant willing to go home with the drunk HR lady drinking that weird punch.

***********************

William Tincup:

Drink Selection: Sidecar (times 20 apparently also goes with William’s order)

What ordering a Sidecar says about your career: Basically, after 20 Sidecars, you’re saying I give a shit about my career, but the owner’s wife is really hot – I mean hot enough, that I think I’m in love – I mean so f’ing hot that I’m going to propose to her tonight, right now – YOLO! By the way, which one of those people over there is the owner’s wife?

**********************

Me:

Drink Selection: Bombay Sapphire and Tonic, with a lime

What ordering this drink says about my career: I’m paying the bill and I have a personal pilates session in the morning with my life coach, Surge – and I don’t want a headache.

Drink Selection #2: Red Bull and Grey Goose

What ordering this drink says about my career: I work with young people and they were ordering it, so I wanted to look hip or cool or whatever they call it now days.  Plus, I have no idea what I’m doing by ruining perfectly good Grey Goose with a mixture of Red Bull.

True Story Alert – Two Office Holiday Parties ago, at a small tucked away bar in Lansing, MI – I had 4 Red Bulls and Grey Goose.  I never had, had one and some of the ‘kids’ in the office were ordering them.  I played along.  At 40 I turn into a pumpkin after the 11 o’clock news, so what the hell – what trouble can you get into before 11:30pm?  Apparently, the ‘kids’ didn’t tell me you shouldn’t keep drinking Red Bull and Grey Goose – that’s just a starter drink, to get you going.  At 3:30am I was finally able to fall asleep.

Drink Selection #3: Kamikaze shots

What ordering this drink says about my career: My office holiday party doesn’t really get started until one of the ‘kids’ begins to order Kamikaze shots.  I like to get the party started, because I turned into a pumpkin around 11:30pm.  Kamikaze’s seem to do the trick.

 

So, what drink will you be ordering at your office party this year?

P.S. – thanks to my friends for playing along!

Everything You Ever Needed To Know About Compensation

Posted on by
6

Let me start by saying I don’t really understand Comp Pros.  Seems like a lot of spreadsheets, market analysis, internal analysis, 48-72 hours of waiting, followed by me getting approval to offer the candidate less than what they originally asked for, followed by the hiring manager sending a nasty email to their line executive, followed by me getting approval from said Comp Pro to offer what I wanted to originally, followed by the hiring manager believing I have no idea what I’m doing. But what do I know…

If I ever get the chance to run a Compensation Department (please G*d never let this happen) I would concentrate on only one thing: which positions drive the largest percentage of revenue in my organization.  Now that is much harder than you think.  First, I’m sure you’re organization is like mine in that ‘every’ position is important…wait, I have to stop laughing…and as such, we really need to look at the whole.  No, I wouldn’t do that in my made up Compensation Department – I only want to look at the important people.  It’s not that I’m getting rid of anyone – Comp doesn’t do that – we leave that to the Generalist!  My focus is finding out who is the most important in driving revenue (thus profit) in our organization.  I need to know this because I need to ensure we are leading the market in compensation plans for those specific skills.  Why? Because I want to go out and give my HR/Talent team all the ammunition they need to hunt down the best possible revenue driving team for my organization that has ever been assembled by man, beast or robot.

Bam! – that is all you need to know about Compensation.

“Oh, but Tim you’re so naive! We need to pay all of our people fairly to drive the best productivity. We need to ensure we don’t have internal pay equity issues. We have to have proper bonus plan designs and executive pay structures. We need…” Shut it!  You know what happens when you lead any industry in revenue?  All that crap tends to take care of itself.  You know what happens when you’re chasing revenue in an industry?  All that crap becomes issues.

Ok, so I make one giant assumption – I assume if my organization can drive revenue, that we can also drive profit – that isn’t always the case – but it will be in my organization because I know how to performance manage the morons out who don’t get these two need to be on parallel paths.  My compensation philosophy is simple – over pay the people who drive my revenue, and make sure I always have the best revenue driving talent in the game, at all times.  Pay everyone else at the market rate – I don’t need racehorses in those roles, I need plow-horses.  Most organizations don’t have the guts to do this and it’s why most organizations are always struggling around budget time to determine where to cut.  I don’t want to cut, I want to grow, I want to take over the world – or, well, at least lead my industry.

The 6 Best Holidays

Posted on by
Reply

We’re right in the midst of this big holiday season and everyone seems to have a favorite.  I think most kids love Christmas and Halloween.  I mean my kids are Jewish and they still love Christmas – well, let’s face it, they love getting gifts and like any good Jewish Mom and Dad we make sure they get more gifts then their Christian friends!  Many adults love Thanksgiving – all the food, football, black Friday shopping, etc. But everyone has a favorite!

I’m going to give you my list of favorite holidays:

1. Tim Sackett Day – Yeah, how soon we all forget! January 23, 2013 will be the 2nd Annual Tim Sackett Day, and it is the one day of the year we can all come together as one, and just think about me for a while.  In lieu of gifts this year, I’ll be asking people to just make cash donations directly to my bank account, that way when I think about all the poor and needy children in the world and it makes me depressed, I can afford good mental healthcare for myself.

2. The 4th of July – Yep, I like blowing crap up, drinking and the sun – it’s like the triple threat of holidays!  I won’t give $50 bucks for your lame charity walk, but I’ll drop $500 on fireworks and think I underspent.  I mean it’s America!  Red, white and blue. Hotdogs with mustard. 2nd degree burns on your feet from stepping on those metal sparkler wires (pro tip – put a pale of water out when the kids are running around with their sparklers then as they run at you with that red hot wire, they can just throw it in the pale and hear the cool hissing sound it makes!).

3. Labor Day – It’s the official end summer blowout.  The weather is great, you have your grilling skills at peak seasonal shape and you’re only a few days away from your kids returning to school! Let’s be honest, we love our kids, but we love our kids a little more when they are in school all day and we just have to deal with them for about 6 hours between end of school and bedtime.

4. Halloween – There is nothing better than watching your kids sprint for 2 hours straight lugging around 15-20 pounds of candy, and I don’t have to do any of the work!  It can be 13 degrees below zero out and my kids will be sweating on Halloween night.  I love the candy trading negotiations that go on later that night – it’s when you get to see which one of your kids will actually make it in the real world!

5. Hanukkah – 8 crazy nights and none of your Christian friends get it! “Isn’t that your ‘Jewish’ Christmas?” – no, idiot, not even close! “I wish we had Christmas for 8 days!” and I wish you’d burn down your house again deep frying a turkey! Hanukkah is cool for the simple fact its the one time a year, as a kid, your mom let’s you play with fire! Plus the gelt! Yep, it’s not a Jewish holiday until you involve some money!

6. New Years Day – No work, football games all day and starting anew!  For me New Years takes on a special time as well because my first son was born on New Years Day – so we throw a birthday party into the mix, just to ensure we have enough food and cake to make it through all those football games!

Receiving votes, but didn’t make the list: Cinco De Mayo – Tacos and Margaritas – you have to  love Mexican holidays!; St. Patrick’s Day – Green Beer and pinching butts – a HR nightmare!; Father’s Day – I get to do what I want, or what my wife tells me I want to do that day!; Black Friday – I mean who doesn’t want to see idiots get trampled to death at Walmart!

So, friends, what is your favorite holiday?

It’s hard, but it’s fair

Posted on by
3

I heard this quote recently, it was used by an old football coach to his players:

“It’s hard, but it’s fair.”

He wasn’t the first to use this and probably won’t be the last – but the line stuck with me because of how I don’t think many people in today’s age really think this way.  Many want to talk about what’s fair, few want to discuss the ‘hard’ part.  The football coach’s son described the meaning of what he feels the phrase means:

“It’s about sacrifice,” Toler Jr. said of the quote. “It means that that if you work hard that when it’s all said and done at the end of the day, it will be fair based on your body of work. It’s about putting in the time, making sure that you’re ready for the opportunity.”

I think we all think our parents are hard on us growing up.  I recall stories I tell to my own sons of my Dad waking me up on a Saturday morning at 7am, after I was out to late the night before, and ‘making’ me help him with something, like chopping wood or cleaning the garage out.  He didn’t really need my help, he was trying to teach me a lesson about choices.  If I chose to stay out late at night, it was going to suck getting up early to go to school.  He shared with me stories of his father doing the same thing – one night my Dad had gotten home late, so late, he didn’t even go to bed, just started a pot of coffee and waited for my grandfather to get up, figuring that was easier than getting a couple of hours of sleep and then hearing it from my grandfather the rest of the day.

As a HR Pro, we see this every day in our workforce.  There are some who work their tails off, not outwardly expecting anything additional, they’re just hard workers.  Others will put in the minimum, then expect a cookie. It’s a tough life lesson for those folks.  Most usually end up leaving your organization, believing they were treated unfairly, so they’ll go bounce around a few more times.  Eventually they’ll learn to put in the work, put in the time and more times than not, things work out pretty well.  Sometimes it won’t – so you go back to work even harder.  It’s been very rare in my 20 year HR career that I’ve truly seen a really hard worker get screwed over – very rare!  Do some idiots who don’t deserve a promotion or raise sometimes get it – yep, they sure do – but that doesn’t happen as much as you think.  The hard workers tend to get the better end of the deal almost always.

I hope I can teach my sons this lesson:  Life is going to be hard, but if you keep at it and put in the work, it’s going to be fair.  I think that is all we can really hope for.

HR’s Unwritten Rules

Posted on by
Reply

Welcome back! How was your long holiday weekend?  I ate too much and watched a ton of sports – so mine was wonderful!

For those NFL/Professional Sports Fans out there I give you one of the dumbest unwritten sports rules that is out there:

You can’t lose your starting spot due to injury.

San Fransisco 49’ers starting Quarterback, Alex Smith, was injured recently and potentially could have come back this past week, but his ‘backup’ Colin Kaepernik did such a good job in the one game he started in place of Smith, that the coach decided his starter wasn’t quite ready to go and let’s give the backup another game! This got sports news, radio and fans talking about ‘the rule’ – if you’re the starter and you get injured, once you are better, you automatically get your starting job back.  But, why?  Where does this come from?

I can think of a couple of reasons why an organization might want to have this type of rule, in sports:

1. You don’t want players playing injured and not wanting to tell the coaches for fear if they get pulled, they’ll lose their job.  Thus putting the team in a worse spot of playing injured instead of allowing a healthy player to come in. Also, you don’t want the player furthering injuring themselves worse.

2. If the person has proven themselves to be the best, then they get injured, why wouldn’t you go back with the proven commodity?

I can think of more ways this unwritten rule makes no sense at all:

1. No matter the reason, shouldn’t the person with the best performance get the job?  No matter the reason the person was given to have his or her shot – if they perform better than the previous person, they should keep the job.

2. If you want a performance-based culture, you go with the hot hand.

3. Injuries are a part of the game, just as leave of absences are a part of our work environments, the organizations that are best prepared for this will win in the end – that means having capable succession in place that should be able to perform at a similar level, and if you’re lucky – at a better level.

It’s different for us in HR, right?  We have laws we have to follow – FMLA for example, or your own leave policies.  But is it really that different?  In my experience I see companies constantly make moves when someone has to take a personal or medical leave, and go a different direction with a certain person or position. Let’s face it, the truth is our companies can’t just be put on hold while someone takes weeks or months off to take care of whatever it is they need to do.  That doesn’t mean we eliminate them – we can’t – but we do get very creative in how we bring them back and positions that get created to ensure they still have something, but at the same time the company can continue to move forward in their absence.

I wonder if ‘our’ thinking about the NFL’s unwritten rule of losing your position comes from our own HR rules and laws we have in place in our organizations.  It would seem, like the NFL, most HR shops figure out ways around their own rules as well!

How Much Money Do You Budget To Protect Your CEO?

Posted on by
Reply

Did you know that the Secret Service of the United States budgeted $113,000,000 in 2012 to protect the two Presidential candidates during the election?  From Slate:

“The Secret Service is authorized by law to protect major party presidential candidates beginning 120 days before the general election, but the statute doesn’t say when that protection should cease. It appears that the service makes this decision on case-by-case basis. Historically, agents have stuck with a defeated challenger for about a week after the election, not waiting for the Electoral College vote or inauguration. If the incumbent loses, he is entitled to protection for 10 years as a former president. (Presidents who served before 1997 are guarded for life.)

The Secret Service is limited in its mandate in part because the protection it provides is so expensive. By some estimates, it costs the government around $40,000 per day to ensure the safety of a presidential candidate, and the Secret Service budgeted $113 million to protect candidates in 2012. The expense became an issue earlier this year when Newt Gingrich continued to travel with a Secret Service detail long after he stopped actively campaigning. Candidates are entitled to decline protection. Deficit hawk Ron Paul has refused a Secret Service detail.”

I love the fact that Mitt Romney was so important we would spend $113M to protect him, until he loses, then he get’s dropped after a week!  2nd Place is clearly the first loser!   Can see Mitt now zigzagging through the parking lot at Starbucks so no one gets off a clean shot, and people looking at him like he’s lost his mind!?  Oh, poor Mitt, losing the election made him crazy…

 

I’ve seen a ton of Corporate HR budgets in my day, but I’ve yet to work for a company that budgeted money for CEO or Executive team protection.  I’ve seen budget money for personal air travel, country club memberships, spa memberships, clothes shopping allowances, you name it – but never personal protection – body guard type stuff.  I’m sure there are many CEO’s and Executives that do have this budget money set aside for them, I just haven’t seen it – and you don’t see it publicized very often – I assume because employees and share holders would lose their minds if they saw the cost!

 

The security I love most, when it comes to securing our executives, is the locked executive offices and private bathrooms!  When I worked for Applebee’s you couldn’t just walk up to the President’s office and say “Hi” – he was behind locked doors – probably keeping the secrets to serving beer and burgers safe.  And god knows we don’t want any of our employees knowing that our executives use the toilet!  I mean, please, if I found out my executive team actually went to the bathroom, I would lose all respect for them!

 

I’m just noodling here but don’t you think the political parties of each candidate should cover this cost – not the U.S. tax payers?  I definitely like Ron Paul much more now – can we re-vote?!  That’s what I want to see in 2016 – a Presidential election with no secret service!  I’m sure there would probably be less lying going on.

 

So – do you have money in your HR budget to protect your CEO?

 

 

Um, I didn’t take this job to do work…

Posted on by
Reply

I took this job because you guys have a rocking careers website…

I took this job because of your awesome culture…

I took this job because you your employees wear whatever they want…

I took this job because you serve unlimited gourmet coffee, all day…

I took this job because you give unlimited time off…

I took this job because you offered me more than anyone else…

I took this job because you have the coolest office with a ping pong table…

I took this job because you take your staff to Vegas each year…

I took this job because I don’t have to pay anything for my benefits…

I took this job because you buy beer and pizza on Thursday’s after work…

I took this job because you allow me to bring my dog with me…

I took this job because there are no start or end times…

I took this job because of the free dry cleaning service…

I took this job because everyone is on the same level…

I took this job because, oh wait, you have to do work here…

When is Gutting Payroll the Right Thing?

Posted on by
Reply

HR-Sports Post Alert!

Many of you probably cared less about the recent trade between Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins and Toronto Blue Jays (check out the details here) – suffice to say the Marlins were able to decrease their annual payroll from $188M to around $35M in one giant trade!  Classic rebuilding type of move, right?  People/fans are saying the Marlins shouldn’t do this to their fans and they gave up on some great talent.  Let’s take a look back at recent Florida/Miami Marlins history:

1997 – Won the World Series (payroll at $47.8M)

By 1999 – they gutted their roster of high priced talent for younger up and coming talent (payroll at $15.2M)

2003 – Won the World Series (Payroll at $76.9M)

By 2006 – they gutted their roster again (payroll at $15M)

The difference the Marlins and large market teams like the Yankees and Red Sox is that the Marlins can’t make giant financial talent mistakes without something major happening in the next year or two.  They took some gambles over the past couple of years trying to assemble a world series capable team (they’ve done this before – twice!) and it didn’t work out.  So, change needed to happen – rebuilding needed to begin.  Any fan of the Marlins could have predicted this.

So – what does this have to do with HR – or my company?

There is some huge wisdom in how the Marlins manage their talent finances that we can all learn from.  Let’s make no mistake about this – this is not Moneyball, in fact he might be the opposite of what Billy Beane had envisioned.  But, many would argue that the Marlins version, had worked out better, certainly from a results standpoint.  My question is – could this type of talent financing work in a corporate setting, or in your company?

Think about it that for a minute.

How could you make this happen?  I tend to think about it in terms of your high priced – A talent – not necessarily your executives.  What if your company was looking to drive and increase in market share in your industry.  Your main competitor currently had 50% of the market, while you only had 25%, with the other 25% spread amongst competitors 3-10.  Your goal was to grow your market share to 35% in 3 years – a large task for most companies in most industries.  Conventional corporate wisdom would work this way – Step 1 – we hire away one of competitor 1’s executives to tell how they did it; Step 2 – The new executive brings over as many people as he can get, usually starting with a solid player from competitor 1’s marketing department; Step 3 – you re-brand and spend a crap ton of money; Step 4 – 3 years later you’re at 28% market share with less margins. Ouch.

If the Marlins management ran your company here is what they would do:

Step 1 – Go hire the top sales person from your main competitors – all of your competitors and pay them double what they are making.

Step 2 – Go directly after every single account the competitors have with the inside knowledge you just gained in your sales staff.

Step 3 – Build their market share to 40% within 24 months

Step 4 – Systematically let go of all of their high priced sales people – losing about 5% of their market share.

Step 5 – At 3 year mark be at their 35% market share with roughly the same payroll as they had 3 years prior.

I mean it could happen that way!

We/HR/Management tend to believe we have to keep our people on forever – even after they stop being rock stars, but are still getting paid like rock stars.  The Marlins have said, ‘look this is a dual benefit play – we get our championships and the players gets a giant check, then we both move on’.  It’s not “traditional” so everyone tends to think its wrong.  I don’t know if it’s right, but I’m sure their are some Chicago Cub fans that would take 2 World Series championships in the last 15 years!

Being on a Mission

Posted on by
Reply

When I hear someone say “I’m on a Mission” or “We’re on a Mission” it always reminds me of the Blues Brothers movie:

It seems like part of our new way to lead is to let everyone know that you’re on a mission.  It makes complete sense, set a goal, make it public, now you’ve got some investment into making sure you truly do go after that mission.  I think there is one more piece to our Mission that we have to make everyone aware of, but few actually do.  When you have a mission, there are going to be some bad days.  Few leaders ever really want to acknowledge this and then when those bad days happen – people panic.  When the bad days happen, people begin to believe that the mission won’t be accomplished.

As leaders we often fail in our missions because we fail to let our troops know that this mission won’t be a walk through the park.  We’ll probably get dirty, there is a good chance not all of us will make it and there will be some days when it feels like we are taking a step backwards.  And, that’s OK.  Our job as a leader is to prepare those we lead for all we might encounter. Part of that is motivation – but it can’t always be motivation – sometimes it’s the slap of reality that our folks will look back at and most appreciate.

The greatness of being on a mission is the end – it’s the accomplishment.