Ok, before we get started, stop it – I could have titled this “The One Thing HR Wants for the Holidays” or “The One Thing HR Wants for Chanukah”, etc., but I didn’t the majority of people celebrate Christmas, so I used Christmas – breath in HR people. (for the record we celebrate both Chanukah and Santa in my house – my kids are equal gift getters!).

So, what would it be? If you could have one thing in HR for Christmas, what would you ask for?

And don’t be lame – “Oh Tim, I would just ask for world peace and that Snapple brought back Compassion Berry” No you wouldn’t – not if it was real, I mean really real!

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for a new HRIS System. I mean that’s what we do during the holidays, we want the biggest baddest fastest new electronic device that will make our lives easier and make us look 10 pounds thinner!   Maybe just an add-on system like Jobvite or Sonar 6 or Rypple – they are all cool and hip!  Who wouldn’t like one of those!?

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for the ability to Hire more employees!  What a gift that would be.  Not only for the people getting hired, but for your overwork staff and hiring managers who have worked double and triple duty during the recession.  It would be so nice to be back to those days when we fretted over our days-to-fill because we couldn’t find talent (so few have this issue right now).

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for a new Employment Brand!  Oh to be as sexy as Google, Zappos or Sodexo – wouldn’t that be a wonderful environment to work in HR.  Life just seems easier when you work for a sexy brand.  It isn’t actually – but that what great branding does, it makes some idiot like me think it must be easy to work in a great place like that – they should hire me!

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for better Talent for their organizations (which is technically way more than one gift – but let’s face it, some of us HR Pros don’t follow directions well!).   This is the freaking holy grail, right!  If we only had the top talent (instead of saying we only hire top talent – then hire those who respond to our posts) our lives would be so much easier!

There are so many things we could ask for in HR, but this is why I love HR – for all those gifts I listed above, and for so many more you and I could come up with, we work in a profession where we have the ability to deliver each and everyone of those to our organizations.  With enough time, patience, influence, strategy and luck – not one of those things I couldn’t give my organization.  Maybe that’s the best gift of all.

For the record – Visionary Leader – that’s my one gift – the one I would ask for.  Those are rare, those are hard to find.  Not many of us get the opportunity to work with a true visionary. Great managers, strong leaders, charismatic personalities – yes; But a Visionary Leader, that is something few get the opportunity to experience.

What would be your One gift you want for HR this holiday season?

There is an interesting Psychological phenomenon that happens when you do something over and over, it’s called “decline effect.”  Decline effect, simply, is when you first go out and measure something, then put some focus on bettering that one thing, as you continue to do it, you don’t get better results the more you do it, you actually start to see declining results.  I bring this up as I see so many articles recently written on declining Employee Engagement, and almost all of those articles focus on the economy and the lack of additional or more choices for the employee to change, as being the primary culprit for lower engagement scores.  That could definitely be one answer, and it fits well with the timing of our economic collapse – all though I think many companies actually saw engagement scores increase as the economy started to go south.  So, maybe this decline effect fits for some organizations.

Here’s my theory.  Over the past 5-10 years employee engagement has been a huge focus of HR shops around the world.  An entire consultancy industry has sprung up to support increasing organizations employee engagement levels.  As organizations do, meaning we usually go right ditch – left ditch, we focused on Engagement!  We began by measuring our baseline – we then implemented programs – and we saw the fruit of our labor by increased scores.  Every year we went out to increase those scores, damn the torpedoes, we need more engagement, I don’t care if you have 100% engagement – Google has 105% engagement – we need that as well!  So we double-triple-quadruple our engagement efforts, but something strange started to happen – our scores weren’t getting better, they started to creep the other way – oh no – they’re getting worse!

Has to be those lazy managers – more leadership training is needed – more focus. Still lower scores.  Oh wait, those lazy employees, we need to change some of them as well. Still lower scores. Must be that crappy engagement vendor we are using  – go find a new one! Still lower scores.

Give up?

When I bough my first house, I was very happy with it.  I had never had a house and my first small, cozy house was perfect.  3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a lawn – and I was happy.  Then I bought my next house and it had more, it had more bedrooms, more bathrooms, more lawn – and I was even more happy!  Then I bought my next house and it had all my last house had, but it more garage and it was on the water and it had more space. But, I really wasn’t happier – it seemed like the more space had some issues as well – it cost more, it took longer to clean, it was just more work.

We spend so much time and effort on making our employees happy.  New chair – you’ll be more comfortable.  Free lunch – you look hungry.  Let me wash your cat – you look overworked. Have a free massage – you look tired.  Let me fix your boss – he doesn’t seem very nice.  Then all of sudden we don’t have more of offer, anything else to make better.  It’s not that our employees weren’t engaged before all of this, they were – we just wanted more – but more comes with a price.  To keep more, you have to keep giving more and eventually you’ll run into a wall where more isn’t the answer. When more won’t give you more – it will start giving you less.

Employee Engagement is tricky – don’t fall into the “more” trap – you won’t like what you will create!

We got home from vacation recently and like most families we were foraging through the cupboards and refrigerator to make dinner our first night back home.  I poured some milk for my son and he asked me “is that milk alright?”, like somehow I hadn’t considered its feelings, but he mostly meant was it still good.   Sure the expiration date had passed a day, or so, prior – but I did the Dad smell test, and that milk was more than alright!  He wasn’t in agreement, so our “alright” milk took a trip to never-gonna-get-drank-land down the sink.  Expiration dates on food are great – it helps us understand when something goes bad, protects us from ourselves and what we think is good and bad – which can be subjective.  It makes me think that we should have expiration dates on our employees!

During the recent holiday weekend I got to watch a ton of football – both college and NFL – and if coaches don’t have an expiration date on them, I’m starting a movement that we should add these to all coaches.  The Philadelphia Eagles head coach, Andy Reid, is an excellent example.  Here’s a guy who has taken his team to 5 NFC Championship games and 1 Superbowl – but still it seems like his expiration date is up in Philadelphia.  It’s not that he’s a bad coach, in fact he’s arguably the most successful coach the Eagles have ever had with a winning percentage over .600%, 2nd only to Bill Belichick during that same time.  So, why has his expiration date come up?  It’s all about expectations.  Once you gain success, it’s not good enough to maintain that success or, G*d forbid go backwards – you have to keep getting more successful.  The only way Reid get’s more successful is to win the Superbowl – which is tough to do.

There are a number of other reason people should have expiration dates with organizations, these include:

• Chronic Average:  This is for the people who just never really do anything- they just exist in your organization.  After a while, they need to just go exist at another organization.
• Convicted Idiot: This is the person who makes a certain bad decision, so bad, that their expiration with your organization must come up. Think, hitting on the bosses wife at the holiday party, or worse!  Probably can’t legally terminate them, but they need to go someplace else.
• 1997 Top Salesman/woman:  This happens way to much – yeah, you were top sales person a decade ago, either get the trophy back or go give another organization your attitude!  We tend to keep them around because we are hoping they’ll regain their top form – but they don’t – let them expire.
• My Boss Is Dummer than Me: An organization can take only so many of these, for only so long – Ok, you win – go be smarter than us someplace else.
• No Admins Left To Sleep With: I’m hoping the title of this one explains it as well – otherwise you might have reached your HR expiration date at your organization!

I was reading a short interview recently in ESPN the Magazine about Nascar up-and-comer Brad Keselowski, who is having a great year on the track.   The article was really around Brad’s advice/opinion on why he is having success and one point stood out to me over everything else. He said:

“I worry about job security every day. If you ain’t worried about losing your job, you can’t drive at the right level.  Even after winning at Pocono on August 7th, I remember thinking, at least this buys me a little more time. When the day comes that I’m not afraid of getting fired, I’ll lost my edge.”

Nothing like professional sports to bring out performance anxiety!  The fact is professional sports like Nascar, golf, tennis, etc., is the ultimate pay for performance model.  For the most part, professionals in those type of individual sports only get paid if they perform well, and only keep getting paid if they continue to perform.   It’s like the commission sales person – you either sell, or your kids don’t eat this month.  Most people hate living and working under this pressure – but some thrive and Brad gives you a little insight to how they do it.  Don’t ever get comfortable.  Don’t ever stop feeling what it feels like to not have a job. Because when you do, you might as well start looking for a new job at that very moment.

I love this!  This is an insight to one’s soul.  It sucks to be unemployed, especially is you’ve worked for a long time.  To get up in the morning and not have some place to go is very unsettling, to say the least.  But as HR Pros, how many times do we see people who have gotten to “comfortable” – who have forgotten what it feels like to be unemployed?   Maybe even you are at this point right now!   This is a gift that we can deliver to our employees.  To sit down and have the “looks-like-you’re-really-comfortable-right-now” conversation.  It’s not a threat, it’s a developmental conversation around – “what else” – what else could you be doing that you’re not, what else is out there for you to accomplish and how can I help you get there, what else do you need to do to ensure you keep this job?

To often we have these types of conversations with employees who are struggling, instead of with those who are coasting.  If we had more of these conversations with our coasters, we would probably have very few struggling conversations – and believe me the coaster conversation is much easier to have – because it’s being had with positive intent.

So, what can you do today?  Think about unemployment – in fact – think about it every freaking day.  About what it feels like, about what it will do to your life, about how you can stop it – because you can – don’t believe the hype that says you don’t have control – it doesn’t matter  – Mr. Corporation will just lay you off.  Those people who are pushing each day for better performance, who don’t settle, who don’t get comfortable – they aren’t getting laid off.  Unemployment sucks – remember that!

I got a chance to spend some time this past weekend with a group of veterans and here’s what I came away with…

As HR/Talent Pros we are constantly looking for “silver bullets” when it comes to hiring.  We’ll pretty much try and do almost anything it we think it’s going to bring our organizations better talent.  This is why I’m perplexed at the one huge Talent miss most organizations are not fully invested into using – Veterans!  Think about the following benefits of hiring veterans:

•  Team Work – if anyone has been drilled on team work – it’s our military men and women.  Many of us struggle in our organizations to get our people to play nice with each other – and here we have this huge pool of talent that is all about team work (No One Gets Left Behind isn’t a slogan, they have lived it!).

•  Follow & Give Directions – HR Pros have classic stories about employees who can’t follow simple directions – and/or can’t give simple directions. I’d bet 90% of HR Pros nationally will at some point this year be having conversations with their senior leadership about “leadership” training – that simply consists of getting their managers to give straightforward, concise directions and feedback.

•  Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines – When someone’s life or safety is at risk, you learn how to work under extreme pressure, which probably pales in comparison to much of the pressure we put on ourselves and our employees in normal work situations.  Regardless, having individuals who can not only handle pressure, but thrive under pressure, are skills our organizations need.

•  Planning and Organization – One thing our military veterans are known for is the training they receive in regards to planning and organization – and it’s the one thing we struggle with getting our employees to be good at.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken to hiring managers where they’ll say “it’s critical this person be highly organized” – veteran’s military training turns them into organization machines.

•  Flexibility and Adaptability – One thing is constant in all of our organizations – Change!  We spend so much of our resources on change management – primarily because we know our employees, for the most part, will freak out at the slightest change.  Not veterans – they have lived in a world where they were forced to adapt and change constantly, based on external environmental changes they had no control over – again – their training takes over – they move on and work to continue the mission of the organization.

So, why do we as HR/Talent Pros struggle to hire Veterans?  First off I have to say, from personal experience, not hiring veterans is not an issue of the veterans, but it’s an issue of HR Pros!  We (the HR collective) are very set in a single mindset that we can only hire people, and our hiring managers will only accept people, that meet every qualification listed on the job description – which is complete BS – but we allow this to continue.  Am I going to go out and hire a former Army tank mechanic to run my accounting department? No – they don’t have that background – but could I hire a great person and train them to be a machinists, or an inspector, or a hundred other positions in our organizations!   We are a “instant gratification” society – so we struggle with the concept of hiring great solid citizens, then training them to do what we need.  “But Tim! You don’t get it – we train them, then they take off on us!”  Yeah, I get it – stop using that as an excuse – people don’t leave great work environments – and by the way – veterans have a higher loyalty index than your average employee.

Also, there are some misnomers we truly need to dispel –

1.People go into the military because they were trouble makers or not smart enough to get into college.  Not true – I know plenty of stupid, trouble makers who went to college! And I can show you pictures!  The fact is, at 18 years old many of us didn’t know what we wanted, but they might have known going to school for another 4 years wasn’t something they wanted.  The military seemed like a better option – and for the majority – it definitely was.

2.  Veterans are rigid and only know top-down management style.  In the 1950’s this was true – but today’s veterans have gone through so much soft skills leadership training it would make the most skeptical OD person smile.

3. We don’t have the time or money to train veterans for our work environment – we need fully trained people now!  No you don’t – is that why you’ve had that position open for 6 months – because you need it “Now!”?   The fact is, this is an organizational choice and you as an HR Pro have the influence to change it.  There is so much money out there for organizations to train returning veterans it borders on ridiculous – but you’ll have to do some work with your local veteran’s employment offices to get it – but it’s there.

We live in a great country – no matter what the 99%ers are telling you.  We have great men and women who make a personal choice to keep this country great – in our military veterans.  As employers, as citizens, we owe these men and women a chance – a chance to make our organizations great, a chance to pay them back with opportunity for their service, a chance for them to show us they made the right decision to serve our country and become highly functioning, loyal, mature adults ready to work their butts off for your company.  All they want is a chance to show you they can be great.  They are asking for a handout – just an opportunity.  We hold that opportunity – are you willing to give it to them?

Think you got employees problems – check this out from CNN Money – America’s Biggest Boomtown:

In the town of Williston, N.D., America’s newest oil boomtown, more than 6,000 job seekers have come from every corner of the country looking for work. Yet, oil companies and other developers haven’t been able to build housing units fast enough.

In the past year, only about 2,000 new housing units have been built, leaving many workers out in the cold.

With dozens of job seekers arriving by the day and fewer and fewer spots for them live in, people are taking some desperate measures.

Newer arrivals who can’t find vacant hotel rooms or apartments sleep in their cars or in sleeping bags on spare patches of grass along the highway. The luckier ones nab a spot in one of the dozens of dorm-like facilities, known as “man camps,” that the oil companies have built to house their workers.

The living conditions are far from ideal, but to some of these workers the lure of doubling or tripling their salaries far outweighs the physical and mental toll it can take…

Halliburton, one of the major drilling and hydraulic fracturing companies in the region, even went so far as to have the Olympic Village housing units that were used for the security guards from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics relocated to the town for its workers.

Benjamin Lukes, 31, has been living in Halliburton’s “man camp” for almost a year now.

Lukes is bringing in roughly $100,000 a year (including overtime pay), nearly triple the amount he made back in Minnesota when he was manufacturing plastics. But it means being far from his family and living in quarters that he likens to a “prison cell.”

The facility is wall-to-wall white, with long empty hallways and flourescent lighting. Lukes’ room is about 160 square feet, the walls are bare — except for a drawing from his daughter — and there’s a metal-framed twin bed.

In HR we talk about having “High Class” problems – this is a perfect example of having a high class problem!   It wouldn’t matter if these people were making $300,000 they would still be sleeping in an RV in the Walmart parking lot.  One of the most stressful and fun times you can ever have as an HR Pro is to a be a part of a company growing so fast, and so profitable, that you have “high class” problems.  When senior leadership is coming to you, not just asking for more talent, but to find a way to house all of the talent you’re bringing in – and you actually get to use those creative juices that HR has locked away in your soul.

It all makes me think of just one thing:

If you haven’t been following the UAW negotiations with the Big 3 Auto’s it provides about as good a theater as watching any of the great reality TV shows out there.  This week Ford came to an agreement with their UAW workforce that includes:

• 5750 new jobs
• $6000 ratification bonus payments (basically this is a bribe to get them to vote “yes”)
• About a $3.75 per hour increase
• 4 – $1500 inflation bonuses
• Profit sharing checks that will average about $3,752
• Oh, and $250 dollar year-end bonus for meeting performance objectives (I guess they aren’t big on pay-for-performance compensation at the UAW!)

Pretty cool if you’re a UAW member!  GM and Chrysler UAW members get slightly different stuff, but it all basically equates to around the same thing – a lot of money.

If you work in a union environment, but you’re not union, the classic next step is to complain about everything the union is getting, that you are not getting as a salaried worker for your company:

1. Union workers get better health insurance, and pay less for it.

2. Union workers get paid overtime, double-time and well, heck, more than me.

3. Union workers get to complain about their boss and when they do, they get sent home with pay!

4. Union workers get more breaks throughout the day!

5. Union workers get those “cool” jackets to wear that say stuff like “Local 825 – Working Less, 4 More”.

In which, as an HR Pro, I look at Mr. Salaried Worker, and I listen, and I shake my head agreeably (so they really know I’m listening – HR Pro Tip!) – then I firmly, but softly tell them one thing –

“I hear what you are saying – if you would like I will start your transfer paperwork immediately – would you like the position where you put the nut on the bolt, or the one where you push the button all day?”  

I then walk back into my air conditioned office, check my facebook, call home to see how the wife is doing, pull a cold soda out of the small fridge that is in my office, by the small conference room table, turn up Pandora (because my favorite song is on), shut my door (so not to bother anyone), close my eyes and think what it will be like when I finally get to retire and not have to listen to people whine about what others have, and what they are unwilling to do to have the same thing.

The TechCrunch Disrupt conference was in San Fransisco last week, and as always a few pretty cool things come out of this event.  One in particular caught my eye and gave me a great idea for HR Pros!  From Forbes – The Craziest Company At TechCrunch Disrupt:

I give you Talk O’Clock. The “social alarm clock” with the tagline: “Let a stranger wake you up.” Instead of using a regular alarm clock, you can have a random person you don’t know call and wake you up. You don’t know who will call you, though you can choose the gender of the caller. Users don’t get each others’ phone numbers because the company will dial the caller first, then connect him or her with the sleeper.

People who want to, say, yell and scream to wake others up, can choose who they want to call–they only see the person’s first name–and select who they want to call.  If the caller isn’t there or no one is available at that time to wake a person up, Talk O’Clock has a robot caller.

Why in the world would you want a stranger calling you and why would you want to talk to someone when you’re half asleep? Sometimes it’s hard to wake up and hitting the snooze button doesn’t work, says Alexy Kistenev, founder and CEO of Talk O’Clock. But a real person is much more likely to wake you up if they’re talking to you.

Isn’t that the coolest thing ever!  Some random person in the world calling you to wake you up!  No me! You!  If they tried calling me, that wouldn’t be cool at all.  But! It got me thinking – what if we designed something similar for HR Pros to use to wake up their employees who have trouble getting to work on time!  Now we have a useful tool.

Just think about this for a minute.

This could have awesome Corporate Cultural benefits.  I’m talking rope course-if-one-goes-over-the-wall-we-all-go-over-the-wall life changing, culture changing kind of momentum.  Stick with me.  Let’s say Mike struggles to get to work on time.  Mike isn’t a bad guy, he just has a thing with mornings, in that, mornings aren’t his thing.  Otherwise he’s your above average performer.  Most companies put him on some sort of “Progressive Discipline” process, and eventually Mike gets fired.  What if, instead of firing Mike, you let random employees at your work wake Mike up each morning!  Wouldn’t that be fun!  I mean, for the employees doing the waking.  Plus, Mike gets to feel the love to – the company cares enough about him to get his butt out of bed every morning.

I haven’t come up for a name yet for my new company that wakes employees up, by using their co-workers as alarm clocks – so I’m open to suggestions – hit me up in the comments and let me know what you think.