The Change Code

What’s the one thing that drives employees crazy? Adoption new technology? No. Not enough PTO? Probably, but no. The biggest thing? Change.

Seriously, it’s the top contender for the most disliked thing a company can do to its employees. I know, some claim they’re all about change—love it, embrace it, advocate for it. But let’s get real. Those folks who shout about embracing change? They’re the same ones devastated when their favorite TV show gets the boot. Truth is, most people hate change. They like things steady—the same morning coffee routine, knowing their familiar doctor is on their insurance plan, the predictable paycheck schedule. That’s their jam.

So, here’s the secret to keeping your employees around.

Your folks don’t secretly plot their escape route. Starting a new job, dealing with a new boss, different location? It’s a headache! They actually want to stick with you. But, and this is a big but, they don’t want their job or the company to become unbearable. That’s where the problem lies: Change is bound to happen, but it’s also what they can’t stand.

How do you navigate this without causing an uproar?

Simple: Communication is key. Many HR departments tend to blow small changes out of proportion by drowning everyone in unnecessary info. New payroll system? Cue the panic. Checks arrive on different Fridays now! The usual reaction? Form a committee, plaster posters, rewrite policies, and talk about it endlessly for months. But hold on.

What’s needed is straightforward talk. At all times. Hey team, our payroll’s getting an upgrade. Less errors, more savings for the company. Checks will come on different Fridays. Get ready, and if you need help, your supervisor’s there for you. Change kicks in the next pay cycle. Done!

Here’s the thing: People hate change. So, let’s not make a big fuss over small changes! Only communicate the big stuff. When major changes happen less often, it won’t feel like a constant whirlwind. Your employees WANT to stick around. They HATE change. Stop bombarding them with unnecessary upheaval just to look busy.

Employee retention? Not rocket science. Because, deep down, your employees would rather stay put.

The Big List of Sh*t You Can Do in HR and TA for 2024!

The gift and the curse of a new year in business is we are tasked with doing stuff. Stuff that matters. Stuff that will have a positive financial impact on our organizations. We have the same issue in our personal lives, but unlike our professional lives, our personal lives don’t demand and pay us to get better.

So many of us spend the first week of the year, or many weeks last year before we left for the holidays, trying to decide what we would do in 2024. Some of us will have big projects ahead of us. I know more than a few who are implementing new tech this year. Some of us will just be looking for incremental improvements on things we put in place in 2023. But the work doesn’t stop. Our job is to get better. And something is motivating about that. It’s a very straightforward, clear direction. Get better. Be Better. Do better.

The question is, what are we going to do in 2024? Here are some ideas to get you motivated:

Fix your apply process. It’s the one thing I can almost always go and look at for a company and immediately see a number of things that can make it better. The first step is easy: go apply for your own job on your career site, but do it in the parking lot of some fast food joint, stealing the WIFI on your mobile device. It will be painful and take too long. Fix that!

Become a top 10% user of your current tech stack (I.E., Super User!). Have a plan to get on stage at the user conference to share your story. Most of us will never be super users of our technology, but it will move you forward more in our careers and our organization more than you can imagine. All it takes is interest and effort.

Start measuring one new thing that actually matters in your function. If you’re in TA, start measuring conversion ratios of screened candidates to hiring manager interviews and work on making that better. In HR, start looking at benefit utilization around preventative healthcare and develop a simple nudge communication strategy to get more of your employees to use their healthcare benefits before they get sick.

Create a Save Strategy around one role in your company that has the most financial impact. We let people leave us too easily. We can save many of these folks. I’ve seen save strategies reach 40% save levels one year out. Stop letting your good employees just walk away from you. You would not allow someone you loved in your life to just leave without fighting for them. Fight to keep your employees. Everyone will notice!

Mentor one person in your company, from your school, from your profession. Just one! We are surrounded by individuals who want and need a little help. Someone who can be part of their network and help them grow. It doesn’t take hours per week. It might take an hour per month. You think this is all about helping someone else, but every time I’ve done this, I’ve actually helped myself so much more. Get your best upcoming leaders in your company to do the same. Challenge them.

Find out what your CEO and senior C-suite team want from HR and TA. About twelve times per year, I meet with different senior teams, and one of the first questions I ask them is what it is they want from their HR and TA teams. The answers always blow me away because I already know what their team is working on, and it almost never aligns with what the senior executives want. This simple conversation can align your entire year. We don’t ask it because we think we are already supposed to know the answer. That is nonsense. Go ask! Almost always, the CEO will say to me, “No one has ever asked me this!”

I can ask them for you and send you the results. Just share this survey link with them, and I’ll send you the overall results. Also, if your CEO or senior executive team fills this out, I’ll put your organization’s name in a hat and do a raffle for a full team TA meeting with me for free! That’s a $5000 value!

The What the Hell Does Your CEO Want From HR/TA Survey!

Whatever you decide to do in 2024, make it something you will actually do. So, I recommend you only commit yourself to one thing. Stay laser-focused on that one thing! Our life and job is hard. I can do one thing.

Work From Home Real Talk

This holiday season, I’m stepping away from my usual writing to bring you some of the top-read posts from 2023. Enjoy!

Working from home is not more productive for most people!

The WFH home army hates to hear this! Yikes! But it’s true. While a small percentage of workers, overall, around 10% are actually more productive, the vast majority of people just don’t have the self-awareness and drive to be as productive as they are when they are in an environment that is designed to have them do work.

The media will never tell you this because it’s not popular and won’t get clicked.

Do you know what has happened since the beginning of the pandemic? The golf industry has exploded! Some Stanford researchers, who golfed, started to realize that the golf courses seemed busy. Like really, really, busy! And these courses were busy during times when they shouldn’t be busy, like mid-afternoon on a Wednesday. You know, the time when folks should be working!

They discovered they could use satellite technology paired with GPS and cell phone data to map out traffic at golf courses. This gave them a picture of what this looked like pre-pandemic and what it looks like today. What do you think they found?

First, you have to understand that before the pandemic the golf industry was hurting. Average rounds of golf were down and trending down year over year for a long time. They had this old white guy problem. This means that old white guys were the biggest participants in golf, and that demographic was getting older and dying.

Here’s what Stanford discovered about working from home and golf:

  • There was an 83% increase in mid-week day golfing from pre-pandemic to post-pandemic. All those WFH folks weren’t working all they said they were working!
  • There was a 278% increase at 4 pm. So, we have some hope for those who maybe just were cutting out a little early.
  • The pandemic has led to a golf boom with folks wanting to get outside, but weekend trips to courses were far less of an increase to weekday visits. So, yes, more people are golfing overall due to the pandemic, but weekday golf has exploded with WFH.

I know! I know! This is only one small little study. I’m sure you’re still WAY more productive working at home than you were in the office. But you’re not, or most likely you’re not, but that’s just because you have low self-awareness!

I think most of us just get confused with short-term productivity vs. long-term sustained productivity. The BLS shows productivity of workers has dropped off a cliff, so we really can’t make the WFH productivity argument any longer. I do think for short-term bursts of productivity working from home or someplace where you don’t get interrupted can make you feel way more productive. But day in, day out, over the long haul, working around others who are working will help you sustain your productivity.

I know you hate to hear this. Working at home is so lovely! Plus, you get those great golf tee times during the day!

Posted on  by Tim Sackett

Are Layoffs During the Holidays Wrong?

I find it interesting that so many people are concerned when someone gets laid off in December but don’t even notice when they get laid off in March or September. “OMG! How could a company be so heartless to lay off staff right before the holidays!?”

In reality, getting laid off at any time sucks! The time of year has very little to do with timing. When you look at the average layoffs by month, over time, companies do fewer layoffs in December on average. Again, this data is particular to industry and economic timing and has very little to do with the month of the year.

The chart above shows total separations, which includes layoffs, in recent months. You can see that hiring and separations follow the economy, not the seasons. Unless, of course, your hiring is seasonal. Again, this is all baked into the overall numbers.

Should you do layoffs during the holidays?

Here’s my unpopular take. You lay off people as soon as you know you have to protect the business and as many jobs as possible to remain healthy and viable. Being good at business is about making the right business decisions. If you kill the business, you will kill every job.

Sometimes, those layoffs have to happen when it seems heartless. “What’s the difference of a few weeks!?” Maybe that difference is another dozen people getting their notice and the company being less viable. The goal should be to save as many jobs as possible.

Layoffs are a negative situation every time they happen. What you hope to do is make a negative situation the least possible negative for all involved who are trying to maintain the success of the business. To give them as many resources as possible to make it work. If that means we lay off people during the holidays, it’s going to suck, but that is the right decision.

As I said, it’s an unpopular opinion, but it’s the right one.

The tech industry is getting pounded right now for doing layoffs, and many are happening during the holidays. Many of these tech companies got caught up in a new reality around raising money when interest rates shot up. Most are finding it extremely hard to raise money to maintain their businesses and are forced to cut expenses. This is their business reality. They overhired in previous years when interest rates were near zero, and VCs were throwing money at them, and they shouldn’t have done this. They are now paying the price to try and become profitable.

This is Capitalism. For how much it can suck, I still prefer it to all the alternatives. You have amazing upside, but that means you also have down side risk when you don’t run your business to spend less money than you actually bring in. Many in the workforce in the tech sector have never experienced this, so this is extremely hard to take when it’s your first time.

Layoffs don’t happen by month or holiday. They don’t happen because some executive is trying to be cruel. Layoffs happen when business financials are failing, and something has to be done to save as many jobs as possible and cut expenses. Those times come when they come, and it has almost nothing to do with the calendar.

HR Meets ChatGPT

Are you tired of the same old HR routines? HR and Talent Acquisition pros across the world are diving headfirst into the realm of ChatGPT. This AI wizard must be able to spice up their strategies, right!? Here are 5 popular prompts that HR and Talent Acquisition are throwing at ChatGPT:

  1. “ChatGPT, is this candidate a real person or a catfish?” HR isn’t meant to be Sherlock Holmes. We’re sick of desperately trying to unmask phony candidates – just tell me if they’re real or not! Expect a wild mix of advice in return, but how else will we know if this candidate is actually some weirdo scam artist living in his mom’s basement?
  2. “Craft a compelling job pitch for this job description!” When faced with the challenge of selling the unsellable—a lackluster job—we to ChatGPT for a miraculous solution. Yeah, it might be for the most boring job ever with a terrible salary, mundane tasks, and awful company culture, but make it irresistible!
  3. “Invent a mascot that represents our company culture!” Introducing “Happy Hootie”! Hootie is a wise owl wearing headphones, adorned with vibrant colors reflecting diversity and inclusivity. Their wings feature a mosaic of interconnected puzzle pieces symbolizing teamwork and collaboration. Hootie’s nest is a cozy library, showcasing our value for learning and knowledge-sharing. With a microphone in one claw and a book in the other, Hootie embodies our culture of harmony, where every voice is heard, and learning is celebrated. This mascot flaps around, spreading the message of unity, knowledge, and harmony throughout our workplace nest!
  4. “Craft a ‘thank you’ email to an applicant using only emojis!” 👋🙏📬📩🙏📝🤝🗣️🔜🌟 … oh sorry, you don’t speak emoji? Translation: Hello! Thank you for applying. We appreciate it! Let’s keep in touch! Talk to you soon. Best wishes.
  5. “ChatGPT, write a job description that makes even a pet rock excited to apply!” No really, that unsellable job description we mentioned earlier, we still need help. Please make this boring ass job description more appealing.
  6. “What do I respond to this candidate to show them that I’m interested, but not that interested, but still interested enough to show my interest?” *Inserts full email chain, with no regard to privacy and copyright laws* Response: I’m just a robot, I have no clue what you’re talking about.

A Holiday Wishlist for HR Pros

As the holiday season approaches, let’s get into the gifts that HR professionals across the board are actually asking for this Christmas. And no, it’s not just about world peace or the wishful return of a discontinued Starbucks flavor—let’s get real about what the HR world truly desires.

Among the top items on this list are new HR AI Tools. Imagine getting our hands on some AI Tools that could turn us into HR superheroes, making us 10 times more efficient! It’s like getting a power-up in a video game, but for real-life HR adventures in 2024.

Another contender for the ultimate gift? The ability to hire more staff. It’s not only about filling positions but about alleviating the burden on overworked teams and managers. And a gift that keeps on giving to the candidates hired!

Then there’s the gift of a revamped employment brand. Imagine having the appeal of companies like Google, Marriott, and Apple. Being in a workplace that has that kind of pull seems amazing. Even though it’s not all glitz and glam, having a standout brand makes you daydream about being part of that crew.

Of course, there’s also the quest for top-tier talent. This isn’t merely a single wrapped present but more of an ongoing pursuit. Securing the cream of the crop is the ultimate aim and promises to make an HR professional’s life exponentially easier.

Working in HR is like having a secret Santa superpower. With a sprinkle of time, a dash of influence, a pinch of strategy, and a dollop of luck, we wield the magic to grant these wish-list items to our organizations. It’s like being the HR wizards making holiday miracles happen all year round!

What’s your ultimate gift for HR this holiday season?

Cracking the Code

In the world of recruiting, most conversations I’ve heard come in coded language. Understanding the true meaning behind these terms can be both revealing and enlightening. Let’s decode a few together:

1. “Offer Pending”

  • What it implies: “I’m preparing to extend an offer.”
  • What it means: “I’m uncertain about the candidate’s willingness to accept, or they haven’t responded yet.”

2. “Professional References”

  • What it implies: “Previous supervisors providing insights about your work.”
  • What it means: “References like your parent’s friend or your old coach don’t cut it. My boss wants your previous boss to tell us how great you are versus your priest telling us how great you are.”

3. “Market Offer

  • What it implies: “Salary based on local industry standards.”
  • What it means: “We didn’t anticipate market changes; here’s what we can afford based on projections from a couple of years ago.”

4. “Excellent Benefits Package

  • What it implies: “Comprehensive benefits covered by us.”
  • What it means: “Similar benefits to others, but ‘Excellent Benefits’ definitely sounds more appealing.”

5. “An “A” Candidate

  • What it implies: “Top-tier talent with impeccable credentials.”
  • What it means: “This is the best person (and only person) we could find to accept your marginal pay rate, crappy location, and iffy company culture.”

6. “Niche Recruiter

  • What it implies: “Specialized in specific skills or industries.”
  • What it means: “You think you need someone who specifically recruits only for what you are looking for. The reality is a great recruiter can find you whoever you need regardless of skill/industry, but it makes you feel better if we tell you we have that specific niche.  So, YES, we are “niche.”

This recruiting jargon effectively masks reality and creates a culture of polite misdirection. We “dance” with each other and tell each other what we want to hear – and we leave with this wonderful false sense of security that everything is fine. Yet, when crucial decisions are at stake, transparency does matter. When in doubt – Speak the truth.

The Role of HR as Coaches

There’s an article by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker discussing the importance of “Coaching.” Gawande, a writer and surgeon, talked about coaches as not just teachers but as observers, judges, and guides. From the article:

The concept of a coach is slippery. Coaches are not teachers, but they teach. They’re not your boss—in professional tennis, golf, and skating, the athlete hires and fires the coach—but they can be bossy. They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.

Gawande, A. (2011, October 3). Personal Best. The New Yorker.

In my HR role, I’ve always believed that HR can act as coaches across our organizations. But there’s often pushback, like “You can’t coach me in Marketing, Operations, or Accounting.” Exactly—I’m not here to teach you those things; I hired you for that. Building a coaching culture starts with hiring people open to being coached.

More from the article:

Good coaches know how to break down performance into its critical individual components. In sports, coaches focus on mechanics, conditioning, and strategy, and have ways to break each of those down, in turn. The U.C.L.A. basketball coach John Wooden, at the first squad meeting each season, even had his players practice putting their socks on. He demonstrated just how to do it: he carefully rolled each sock over his toes, up his foot, around the heel, and pulled it up snug, then went back to his toes and smoothed out the material along the sock’s length, making sure there were no wrinkles or creases. He had two purposes in doing this. First, wrinkles cause blisters. Blisters cost games. Second, he wanted his players to learn how crucial seemingly trivial details could be. “Details create success” was the creed of a coach who won ten N.C.A.A. men’s basketball championships.

Gawande, A. (2011, October 3). Personal Best. The New Yorker.

In working with adult professionals, coaching isn’t about teaching new stuff but helping them analyze and improve what they already do well. Instead of fixating on weaknesses, HR can help make employees’ strengths even stronger.

Coaching has become popular lately, with various types like leadership or life coaching. But coaching for professionals is less common. I believe in HR professionals acting as more hands-on coaches, working daily to improve skills that directly impact the business, not focusing on personal challenges.

One big challenge for HR transitioning into coaching roles is that many employees lack self-awareness, just like us! A great coach helps someone see things in themselves they didn’t notice before.

If HR can build this self-awareness in organizations, it could lead to some amazing changes.

The UAW is making its last stand, but really it’s already dead!

I’ve never been a fan of unions. I grew up with many grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and parents who belonged to unions. One of my first jobs forced me to join a union and pay dues. Since I was “summer help,” I had to pay full union dues, but I got no protections or benefits from the union. I was told that specifically. I was then repeatedly threatened by union members to slow down my work, even though I was struggling to barely keep up with what was expected.

In Michigan, you are surrounded by organized labor, mostly UAW. Generations are raised only knowing two sides: labor and management. Kind of reminds you of a two-party system in politics, almost like the two are working together to keep everyone in line!

The reality is that we once lived in a time when companies took advantage of workers and did horrible things—locked workers in unsafe working environments. Paid low wages, one could barely survive. Unions had a time and place when they protected workers. Unions no longer do that. Labor is too competitive. The Big 3 vehicle companies now struggle to hire hourly workers. They are getting their lunch handed to them by foreign manufacturers and Tesla.

Union membership is at an all-time low, and it continues to decrease and will decrease because Unions have reached the point where they no longer make companies competitive. In fact, they work in the exact opposite direction. They work to make corporations as least competitive as they can make them without going under, and in many cases, they put them under.

We used to have strikes when companies treated workers like shit. Unions then began to realize strikes aren’t good for business, which is why you barely see them happen anymore. You cost millions, if not billions of dollars, to the companies you are supposed to be partnering with, and that makes the next negotiation really hard. Kind of hard to negotiate for more when there isn’t more.

The UAW knows this, but when you have union leaders who are constantly stealing union dues and doing other bad stuff, you have to take the focus off of your own bad deeds and do something spectacularly stupid, like striking an industry that is going through a major transformation.

But Tim! These CEOs are making millions of dollars per year!

Yep. They are. Do I think that’s right? In some cases, maybe. In most cases, no way. It’s outrageous. Two wrongs don’t make a right, my grandma always said.

We tend to forget that a hundred years ago, when you worked until you were 65, if you lived that long, a company could afford to pay you a generous retirement because if you did make it to retirement, you were most likely dead soon after. That’s a reality. Today, if you retire after thirty years of working an hourly job, you’ll probably live another thirty. Hello, Teacher’s Unions have entered the chat…

Organizations. Companies. Society. Can not survive on that math. It turns upside down where you know 80 cents of every school budgeted dollar going to pay for retirement and benefits of teachers and not educating kids.

What’s the solution? Hell, if I know, but it’s not continuing down this path, thinking that it’s all just magically going to work out in the end. News Flash – it won’t. It ends in bankruptcy. The UAW will eventually bankrupt the Big 3, and all those members and former members who are getting benefits will be high left and dry. I know this because this cycle continues to repeat itself with unions. This is why unions are dying across the world. The system doesn’t work.

The UAW is the walking dead at this point. They fail to realize that the entire auto industry is going through fundamental change, and because these companies have seen record profits, they feel like it’s time for them to get some, which I can understand the desire for. But getting what they are asking for now will hasten the inevitable.

Unions, at one point, could claim they have the most productive and best-trained workers. They can no longer claim this and haven’t been able to in a long time. Now, all they can claim is they have the most entitled workers. I don’t blame the workers. They’ve been taught this by a corrupt complex of people who got rich off their labor. No, not management and CEOs, but their own union leadership.

At some point, the strike will stop. The UAW will claim victory. The truth is they are a dying vestige of time long gone. Because of demographics, workers have the power and will continue to have the power for a long time. Younger generations don’t believe they need older people to represent their best interests for a portion of their wages. That concept seems silly to them. Why give someone else your money when you have the power?

5 Mid-Year HR Trends You Should Be Thinking About for 2024!!

Is the world moving faster after the pandemic or is it just me?! It seems like for all the bad that Covid brought, it did make us slow down a bit. Now, we are back on the treadmill running faster than ever.

I’m sitting down this week and doing a live webinar (if you can’t make the live time, just sign up and we can send you the recording) discussing the biggest trends in HR and Talent Acquisition that are happening right now but that will also have a tremendous impact to our 2024 planning!

The webcast will be live on Wednesday, July 19 at 3 pm EST.

Shout out to the amazing team at Pillar for making this happen…

Here are some more details.

We’re halfway through 2023 (crazy, right?!), so now seems like the perfect time to reflect on the top 5 trends that have shaped the year thus far. And who better to do it with than Tim Sackett, President of HRU Technical Resources & top 100 Global HR Tech Influencer?! Join us as we sit down with Tim to discuss what is trending today in the HR & talent acquisition space and what he sees as the trends that will continue into 2024 and beyond.

Here’s what you can learn during the session:

  • Practical strategies to leverage these trends for maximum impact
  • How to gain a competitive edge by understanding how these trends can transform your HR/TA practices
  • The key drivers shaping the way organizations attract, engage, and retain talent

…& more! Looking forward to seeing you on July 19th as we have the opportunity to learn from one of the industry’s most respected thought leaders! It’s also been a year since we launched our webinar series with Tim himself, so join us as we celebrate our webinar series 1-year anniversary.