Category Archives: Trench HR

It’s the Wednesday Before Turkey Day! Let Marie Kondo help you clean your desk!

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I’m a dude and like most dudes I know, I’m not super organized. I don’t think I’m sloppy, but that’s mostly due to some heavy training by Mrs. Sackett (like decades of training!). The thing is, once you get used to organization, you really notice when things are not organized!

One of the recent pop culture phenomenon’s recently has been that of Marie Kondo. Kondo is the queen of organization! It’s the Wednesday before you leave for that great long Thanksgiving weekend and quite frankly all you want to do is tidy up and get on with your extended holiday! So, I found a video on how to organize and tidy up your desk the Marie Kondo way!

Send me the pics of your desk after you follow her method!

Have a great holiday extended weekend if you’re in the states! See you all back here next Monday!

 

Do you believe your HR leadership style is that of a “coach”?

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I read an article in The New Yorker on the importance of “Coaching” by Atul Gawande.  Atul is a writer and a surgeon, smart and creative and I should hate him, but he’s so freaking brilliant! 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.

As an HR leader, I’ve always believed that HR has the ability to act as “coaches” across all vestiges of our organizations.  The problem we run into is this mentality, “You can’t coach me! You don’t know the first thing about Marketing, or Operations, or Accounting.” You’re right, good thing I’m not “teaching” you that! That’s why we hired you. Having a coaching culture in your organization starts during the selection process. Are you hiring people who are open to being coached? 

More from The New Yorker –

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.

I think this is critical in working with adult professionals. Coaches aren’t trying to “teach” them new concepts, but helping them self-analyze and make improvements to what they already do well. We/HR can make our workforces better, not by focusing on weaknesses/opportunity areas, which we spend way too much time on, but by making our employees’ strengths even stronger.

Coaching has become a fad in recent years. There are leadership coaches, executive coaches, life coaches, and college-application coaches. Search the Internet, and you’ll find that there’s even Twitter coaching. Self-improvement has always found a ready market, and most of what’s on offer is simply one-on-one instruction to get amateurs through the essentials. It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.

I’m talking about turning HR into “Life” coaches or “Executive” coacheS. Those types of “coaches” are way different and fall more into the “therapists” categories, than what I see HR acting as “professional” coaches. Professional coaches work alongside their Pros day-to-day and see them in action, and work with them to specifically improve on those things that impact the business. They don’t care that you’re not “feeling” as “challenged” as you once were, and need to find yourself.

I think the biggest struggle HR Pros will have in a role as “coach” is our ability to understand most employees have low self-awareness (including ourselves!). Being a great coach is measured on your ability to get someone to see something in themselves, they don’t already see, and make them truly believe it. If we can get there in our organizations, oh boy, watch out!

Reimagining HR and TA Leadership

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I’ve been thinking about this concept for the past few weeks. It keeps coming back to me and I can’t shake it. I talk about HR and TA technology a ton. When I look into the future of HR and TA technology I see a world where so much of the tactical work we do now is done through AI, Machine Learning (ML) and flat out just next-level automation.

I don’t find anyone who will argue this. I still see a bunch of consultant-types who will say “AI will not replace jobs!” Yeah, that’s wrong, it’s going to replace a whole bunch of jobs, and it will also create some jobs. The problem is the jobs it replaces, those folks are nowhere near the skill-talent we need for the jobs that will be created!

The thing is, when we think about traditional leadership, it’s usually about increased ‘responsibility’. You know what that means? More headcount! I was the head of HR for an organization where I had 25 direct reports, but I took this new gig because I now have 50 direct reports and more headcount means more money, which means a better, higher-level leadership position.

Play along with this idea. You’re working for an organization and you currently have 200 people that report up into your organization. You decide you’re going to be the most innovative HR/TA leader in the entire world, so you go all-in on technology and innovative practices. About two years into this endeavor you find, because of all the capacity you’ve been able to increase, you’re functional headcount is now only 125.

Is that a better leadership position (125)? Or is the 200 person function a better leadership position?

Of course, the more innovative function you created at 125 headcount is better, but traditional leaders will always be pulled to the higher headcount.  We tell ourselves that the more modern, innovative shop is better, and then we get a call that someone has a shop with 225 and we are pulled to the “larger” job.

We have a fundamental problem across all leadership right now. Leaders view success as empire-building, not empire shrinking. Of course, we want to work for growing organizations, but at the same time, most of us work in bloated, traditional, task-oriented shops, that need to be totally overhauled through technology and innovation. We think we run lean, but we still have three people in recruiting operations setting up interviews. We think we’re run a high-tech modern organization but we have twenty sourcing pros mining databases all day.

Great modern leaders are not about more, they are about less. How can we get to great, by using the least amount of resources possible? Don’t tell me that’s your philosophy because I see you. I see how your team works. I see so much of what actually gets done, still being done by human hands, when for a fraction of the cost there are technologies that can do it better, faster, and cheaper.

It’s a super hard paradigm shift in leadership. Less is more. We tell our teams this, but we don’t think it applies to us. As a leader, traditionally, we are always taught to try and get more. Don’t let them take headcount away from you, you’ll never get it back, add headcount whenever you can!

Modern technologies are giving us the opportunity to shrink the manpower we need. And it will force the question, what kind of leader are you? Empire-builder or Empire-shrinker?

 

Adoption of HR & Recruiting is NOT Hard! #iNFLUENCE19

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Hey, gang! I’m out this week spending some time at iCIMS Influence event. It’s part analyst event, part iCIMS customer event. Basically, bring a bunch of recruiting nerds together, that think alike, and see if some cool stuff happens. Turns out, no matter where you are in the world of TA, we all basically have the same problems! We need to fill jobs.

One of the topics that came up is the adoption of the recruiting technology we purchase. How do we get higher user adoption, etc? A very classic issue that won’t go away and there’s all this wonderful research around how we should ‘gamify’ and ‘reward’ and tell folks how great they are, even when they aren’t!

I get that ‘forcing’ someone to do something they don’t want to do, does not have great long term success! Especially in an ultra-low unemployment market. I get that we want our recruiters to have a great experience and love their jobs. I get that we want candidates to have a great experience and love our companies. I. Get. All. Of. That.

So, can get real for a second?

The adoption of technology is not difficult. It’s actually a super easy concept. Here are the 4 steps:

1. Integrate your actual work processes within the technology so that work can’t be completed without using the technology. I.E., Workarounds will not show up on data, virtually meaning, the work did not happen.

2. Do you believe the technology you purchased actually makes you a better organization? If so, then it is a condition of employment that we/you/they use the technology to make our organization more successful. Yes, Karen, that means you’ll have to change and use the new system, even though you’ve used the old way for 32 straight years. If you decide not to use the technology that will make our organization more successful, we will find someone who will. Period.

3. Part of technology adoption is a continued desire to test and innovate, so ensure our technology is still our most successful choice, or maybe something better has come along and we need to adapt and adjust. So, we’ll have an actual measure around testing potential new technology to replace or enhance our stack.

4. Repeat steps 1-3 on an ongoing basis.

Numbers one and two should be very clear to you. Great process design fully utilizes your tech. Great performance management ensures your people use the tech.

Number three is the one some folks will decide isn’t needed, but here’s why it’s critical! Billy decides your tech sucks and his way is better and Billy goes rogue. You tell Billy that a decision, above his pay grade, has been made that to ensure the success of our organization we are going to utilize the technology we’ve purchased to its fullest capabilities (step 1).

You also let Billy know that he will not be forced to use this technology, and we will certainly miss having him around the office. (step 2). But, Billy, we have another option for you, because we love you and value you, we want you to work the tech we have 100%, but we have a side project that we want you to test, and maybe, this side project will demonstrate to our decision-makers there is a better, more effective way to run our process (step 3).

Adoption is maintained. Billy is helping us get better. All is right with the world.

The adoption of technology is not a technology problem, it’s a leadership communication problem, and it’s easily solved.

 

What we say versus What we want in a Job!

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My wife always tells me it’s actions, not words that make a difference. You can say all of this great stuff, but if you do nothing, it’s meaningless. I think we would all agree with this.

So, when we hear graduating students, candidates, and employees tell us what they really want is “Meaningful Work” in their careers, we have to understand that those are “Words”! Not actions, just words. A new study from Olivet Nazarene University Meaningful Work Survey asked this question and, predictably, found this:

So, yeah, 90% of us believe that meaningful work is critical for our career and happiness. Sounds about right, those ‘words’ tend to always come out when we talk about our dream job, etc.

Then the study asked another question. It was basically, given your current career, job, etc. what is the one thing that would make it better? An action. But, remember those words!? What you would believe would make their career/job better should be “more meaningful work”! 90% of you idiots just answered that is was super important for your career and happiness!

Here’s what they actually said:

Show. Me. The. Money!!!!

Yep, you know I love this! “We just a job that saves puppies! That would make me so happy!” Oh, wait, saving puppies only pays $23,000 per year!?! Yeah, screw those puppies! I want to work for a private equity firm! I’m a boat, bitch!

Want to retain your employees? Stop trying to make your employees believe that the rubber vomit you’re manufacturing matters and pay them more and give them flexibility! Stop asshole managers from treating their people bad! And magically, you’ll have high retention and your people will love working for you, even though you don’t save puppies!

I get it, deep down, we all want to do something that changes the world for good. We want to help others, and save puppies. And the concept of meaningful work does really matter, given all other things, like compensation, flexibility, great leaders and co-workers, etc. are equal.

If I can make six figures a year saving puppies, I’m saving puppies. You’re saving puppies. We are all saving puppies!

But it doesn’t, so our actions speak way louder than our words when it comes to career choices and change. Meaningful work is not the most important thing for people in their careers. Its something to consider, but don’t get too caught up in believing it’s going to fix all of your employee experience issues!

Want Better Work Teams? Hire More Women!

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There is a Harvard Business Review study by Professors Anita Woolley and Thomas Malone, in which the researchers studied how team/group diversification would impact overall team intelligence (you can view their explanation of the findings in Defend Your Research: What Makes A Team Smarter? More Women).

Big surprise to all us husbands, they found that teams with more women are smarter!  From the article:

“The standard argument is that diversity is good and you should have both men and women in a group. But so far, the data show the more women, the better.  We have early evidence that performance may flatten out at the extreme end—that there should be a little gender diversity rather than all women.

You do realize you’re saying that groups with women are smarter than groups with men? 

Yes. And you can tell I’m hesitating a little. It’s not that I don’t trust the data. I do. It’s just that part of that finding can be explained by differences in social sensitivity, which we found is also important to group performance. Many studies have shown that women tend to score higher on tests of social sensitivity than men do. So what is really important is to have people who are high in social sensitivity, whether they are men or women.” 

So, why didn’t the study find that regardless of women or men, the group with just the smartest 10 people was the smartest group?   Conventional wisdom would say give me the 10 smartest people and I’ll have the smartest team.  Here’s the problem, in almost any example in real life, this doesn’t work out. Take the top 5 scorers in the NBA in any given year, put them on one team, and they’ll almost always get beat by another team that was put together as a “team”.

There are many ingredients that need to come together to make a great team. and yes, intelligence is one, but it takes more than just intelligence, and those other items are why women performed better in this study.  Here are some of the factors that the researchers pointed to why women dominated teams performed better:

  • Communication: women team members tend to listen more to each other
  • Constructive Criticism: women tend to share criticism more constructively than men
  • Open to other ideas: the women had open minds about others’ ideas and theories
  • Authority: the women weren’t as autocratic as their male counterparts

What this study really does is speak more about team dynamics and what makes a team successful than the differences between men and women.  The researchers also found that extreme diversification, i.e., all women or all men teams performed the worst of all so some level of gender diversification is needed for high performance.

Not in a position to fire all of your male employees and hire more women?! Not to worry, the ingredients aren’t secret, but the training of the soft skills needed to be successful might be more work than just “de-manning” your company and moving forward.

Is Time or Money More Valuable?

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You might have seen this in the news that Estonia has started experimenting with a new way to punish speeding drivers. Instead of making them pay a fine for speeding, they are giving them an option to ‘take a timeout’ instead for 45 minutes to an hour, right then and there. Which brings up the question, what is more, valuable to these drivers, their time or their money?

From the article:

Drivers caught speeding along the road between Tallinn and the town of Rapla were stopped and given a choice. They could pay a fine, as normal, or take a “timeout” instead, waiting for 45 minutes or an hour, depending on how fast they were going when stopped.

The aim of the experiment is to see how drivers perceive speeding, and whether lost time may be a stronger deterrent than lost money.

Early results of this pilot program are unclear, as it seems that those who can pay the fine will, while those who would be hit harder by a financial fine will tend to take the timeout.

These types of tests are what we should be doing with our own employees within organizations. Everyone has different values of certain things, but we tend to build rewards and punishment programs all the same. Do well and you’ll get a $500 bonus! Or do well and you’ll get an extra day off!

Rarely do we build them where we give people the option – do you want more time or more money as your reward, or on the flip side, for your punishment do you want money or time taken away?

I’ve used both and not one is 100% correct. I’ve had goals set that would reward is something was met, but also if it wasn’t met then the person or team would have to come in and work extra time. I can tell you, no one liked coming in extra to meet their goals. So, making some work extra, for the same pay, seems to be a big deterrent, but also a pretty crappy work experience.

On the flip side, being able to take more time off is really liked by some, but not all. You’ll have some folks who actually really enjoy coming into work, and taking a bunch of extra time off gives them anxiety to be away from the office.

Is there a magic solution? 

The one thing I see that consistently has the biggest impact on a positive employee experience in any environment I’ve worked in is simply flexibility. Treat employees like adults and let them integrate their life with their work and make the choices they need to make to make both work as effectively as possible.

Sounds easy, it’s super hard and complicated in real life! Because it’s complicated, we tend to do the opposite and have a bunch of rules, which then just makes it miserable for everyone. I prefer to give the flexibility, but and then take care of the outlier issues that crop up. We believe there will be many issues, but it’s fewer than you think.

One easy way to control for all of this is to have really great, non-subjective, measures of success. The reality is if someone working for me is successful, then they should have the freedom to have the flexibility they desire.  What I know is time and money are both valuable depending on the situation you are currently in, and those values can change daily for some people.

What is the biggest driver of Employee Engagement?

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I got to see Marcus Buckingham speak at the HR Technology Conference in Vegas a couple of weeks ago. I think it’s the 2319th time I’ve seen him speak. I’m not sure if I’ve seen Marcus or Josh Bersin speak more, it’s probably almost a tie. Basically, if you go to HR conferences, you get to see those two dudes speak, a lot!

That’s not a bad thing. Both bring great data and are strong presenters, Marcus has the English accent which all American’s love. Marcus and ADP’s Reseach Institute released some new data on Engagement and that was the main focus of the talk. The research shows that 85% of employees are just showing up to work, because only 15% are ‘fully’ engaged, and if you’re not fully engaged, you’re basically showing up to collect a check.

That was pretty shocking, but the most shocking piece the research showed was the number one driver of engagement in any organization had to do with one simple thing: Are you a part of a team.

The research shows that being a part of a team is the strongest predictor of full engagement. There are others, like being new to an organization is fairly strong and makes sense. When we first start working at a new job, we are usually more engaged. Do you trust your team leader is another strong predictor, but first you better be on a team!

Being a member of a team.

It seems fairly simple, but for those of us who are constantly working on teams, we know it’s not. You could simply just throw everyone who works for you on teams and think, “okay, I just fixed engagement!” It’s really more about the dynamic of being on a team where you feel you belong and have a role that is valuable to that team.

Belonging is a big part of being on a team and being fully engaged. There are plenty of people who are on teams but don’t feel like the team they’re on needs them or wants them. Or you are on a team that isn’t successful. Turns out, failure is a big deterrent to engagement as well.

Once you are on a team, it then becomes critical that you trust the team leader. Lack of trust of the team leader is another negative driver to engagement. This then becomes more about the leader themselves establishing trust, and having team members who are open enough to first assume trust. Too often we get on teams and immediately believe the team leader is keeping things from us, probably because many times they are.

In any team, in the beginning, or when new team members come in, they should do a transition meeting. A meeting designed to establish trust from the beginning. It’s a time to get everything out in the open, at the beginning (or when it’s new for someone else) and do things like ask all the questions that usually go un-asked but then become issues down the road, establish communication likes and dislikes, share items that you should know, but might not, etc. I always have this facilitated by someone outside the team, so the leader doesn’t try and control the outcomes.

Go download the research paper, there’s great information about how to drive higher engagement in your organization and more information about the importance of the team dynamic.

The 7 Words That Turn Candidates Off!

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Communication is a tricky thing. It’s so easy to turn off another party by simply using just one wrong word, especially when you’re trying to build a relationship with a candidate you potentially want to hire.

I think there are some words and phrases that have a high probability of turning off a candidate to want to come work for your organization. I speak to students a few times a year about interviewing and I tell them something similar, which is what you say can automatically make a hiring manager not want to hire you!

Think about being an interview and the candidate starts to tell you why they’re no longer working for ACME Inc. “Oh, you know it was just a ‘misunderstanding’, I can explain…”

“Misunderstanding” is a killer word to use while interviewing! It wasn’t a misunderstanding! You got fired! The ‘misunderstanding’ is you not understanding the crap you were doing was wrong! 

So, what are the 7 Deadly Words you should never use as a recruiter? Don’t use these:

-“Layoff” – It doesn’t matter how you use it. Even, ‘we’ve never had a layoff!’ “Layoff” isn’t a positive word to someone looking to come to work for you, so why would you even add it to the conversation!

-“Might” – Great candidates want black and white, not gray. “Might” is gray. Well, we might be adding that tech but I don’t know. Instead, use “I’m not sure, let me check for you because I want to get you the truth.  Add

-“Maybe” – See above.

-“Unstable” – You know what’s unstable? Nothing good, that’s what! If something isn’t good, don’t hide behind a word that makes people guess how bad it might be, because they’ll usually assume it’s worse than it really is!

-“Legally” – “Legally” is never followed by something positive! “Legally, we would love to give you a $25K sign-on bonus, but…” It’s always followed by something that makes you uncomfortable. When trying to get someone interested in your organization and job, don’t add “Legally” to the conversation!

-“Temporarily” – This is another unsettling word for candidates. “Temporarily” we’ll have to have you work out of the Nashville office, but no worries, you’ll be Austin soon enough! Um, no.

-“Fluid” – Well, that’s a great question, right now it’s a fluid situation, we’re hoping that hiring you will help clarify it! Well, isn’t that comforting… Add: “Up in the air” to this category!

We use many of these words because we don’t want to tell the candidate the truth. We think telling them exactly what’s wrong with our organization, the position, our culture, will drive them away. So, we wordsmith them to death!

The reality is most candidates will actually love the honesty and tend to believe they can be the one to come in and make it better. We all want to be the knight on the white horse. Candidates are no different. Tell them the truth and you’ll end up with better hires and higher retention!

Amazon just got 200,000+ Applications and That is a Giant Problem!

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You probably saw the headline from Amazon: “Hiring 30,000!” Let’s face it, Amazon is a rocketship. Have you seen the Amazon vans coming down your street? I’m 100% sure the “Amazon Guy” who drives the van in our neighborhood stops by our house about 250% more times then the mailperson stops by our house!

I’m not actually surprised they have 30,000 openings, but I am surprised that they only got 200,000 applications!

The headline is from Business Insider and they’re mostly professional journalist thinking that when they write the headline everyone will be wowed by the big number, but in reality, that number is scary low! Do the quick math 200,000/30,000 = 6.6 applications per position.

Also, we (Talent Pros) know the reality. For positions that Amazon has no trouble filling, they probably got 600 applications per positions and for the ones they are having trouble filling they got zero or one, and that one wasn’t even close to being qualified!

I’m not sure exactly what Amazon’s applicant funnel looks like but if the top of the funnel only has 6 applicants, that’s a problem! A giant problem! The big question is how many applicants does Amazon need to fill 30,000 currently open, or anticipated open positions. If Amazon has 30,000 positions to fill, right now, how many applicants would they have to plow through to fill those jobs?

This is where the rubber hits the road with your Talent Strategy. There are a number of factors:

  • What’s the average pay per position?
  • Can we group these positions into various categories to better understand how long the process will take?
  • How many are skilled vs. unskilled vs. semi-skilled vs. white-collar?
  • What are the locations?
  • How fast do these need to be filled?
  • How picky are your hiring managers?
  • What’s our comp strategy? Trailing, leading, etc.?

Let’s just throw out some numbers assuming the average pay is around $15/hr. Probably low for many of the openings they are filling, but I’m also assuming the vast majority are warehouse, drivers, service level type roles. Scattered all over the country, but most white-collar positions will be in highly competitive markets.

Let’s say you need at least 20 applicants on average per position. That would mean at a minimum they will need around 600,000. But, there is a massive turnover of those lower-level positions, plus Amazon is known to have a demanding work culture that tends to push folks out even quicker, so you would probably need at least double that to around 1.2 million applications to fill 30,000 openings.

That means, in the real world, Amazon’s TA team is probably right now having a panic attack! A panic attack of being around 1 million applications short to fill 30,000 positions, and that’s not even considering current turn and churn of their giant employee base already, plus who knows what Bezos and the team have cooked up for future growth.

The numbers are staggering, but at scale this the job. It’s just a funnel whether you’re filling 30,000 or 30. You better know how many applications you need on the topside to ensure you get the hires at the end!