3 Ways to make your office more productive during March Madness!

For those that know me, I’m a huge basketball fan.  Pro, college, AAU, high school, hell, if you really dig into my past you would probably find me hanging out at some playground breaking down the defense effort of a pickup game between grade school kids.  So, when March Madness time comes around each year I’m like many of your employees.  I’m trying to find the best ways to work and watch basketball, or at the very least stay up on my brackets and see who is getting upset!

With all the hype over the past few years about lost productivity, due to March Madness, in the workplace.  I felt it was my duty to provide HR Pros with some helpful tips and tricks to get your staff to highly productive during this time of year.  Here are my ideas:

1. Put up TVs throughout the office.  Let’s face it, you really only have one or two hoops junkies in the office, and those folks usually spend vacation time to ensure they don’t miss a minute.  Everyone else just wants to see scores and highlights.  They’re a casual fan.  They’re willing to work a perfectly normal day, and will probably be just a productive, if not more, with the TVs streaming all the games in the background.  Plus, if you get a close game or big upset, you’ll get some team excitement in the air.  This also stops most of your staff trying to stream the games on their desktops for the entire afternoon.

2. Call off work those afternoons.  Let’s face it, March Madness is pretty close to a national holiday as we will ever get.  Doesn’t matter if you’re female or male, young or old, what religion you are, we all love the drama and excitement of March Madness.  Just close the office.  Make a deal with your staff to reach certain goals and if they’re met, take them to the local watering hole yourself and have some fun with it.  Employees like to rally around a fun idea.  You don’t have to make everything fun, all the time, but once in a while, it helps to lift productivity.

3. Shut off all access.  Yep, you read that correctly. Have IT shut down all access to anything related to March Madness.  Threaten to fire any employee caught checking scores on their smartphone, or calling a friend to see how it’s going.  Fear!  Fear is a great short-term lifter of productivity.  Whether we like to admit it, or not, it’s true.  If you went out right now into your office and told the entire staff at the end of the day you’re firing the least productive person, you would see productivity shoot through the roof!  You would also see about half your staff, the half you want to keep, put in their notice over the next 4-6 weeks.

The reality is, most people will do business as usual.  While the CNNs of the world love to point to the millions of dollars American corporations lose during March Madness, it’s no different than so many things that can consume our thoughts in any given day.  I do think HR and leadership, each year, lose out on a great way to have fun and raise engagement during March Madness.  It’s something most of your staff has some interest in, and depending on your city and the schools your employees went to, it can get heightened pretty significantly.

For the record, I’m not picking Michigan State.  I want to with all my might, but I’m nervous that my bracket mojo would work the opposite, so I’ll pick someone else, and feel awesome when Sparty wins and I lose my bracket! Okay, well maybe I’ll pick them in a couple of my brackets!

Who is responsible for the lack of good workers?

It’s parents. First and foremost I blame parents. Parents are the number one reason you can’t find good workers because parents want their kids reach higher than they did. Thus, if Mom or Dad worked in a blue collar profession, they want their kids to look down on that work. It’s subtle. Most parents don’t come out and say “what I do is bad”, it’s more “I want you to be better than me”, by doing this, you’re telling your kids, what I do isn’t worthwhile.

It’s teachers.  It’s our job to prepare you for college! No, it’s not, it’s your job to help prepare them for life after high school. That doesn’t have to be college. When did we turn public education into college preparatory and not life preparatory? Public Education has gotten so bad that the only paths a kid has after high school are college, the military or prison.

It’s the government – oh there’s a popular one.  The government has subconsciously told kids that working with your hands isn’t worthwhile. How? They no longer give public education the funding that is needed to teach skilled and semi-skilled trades in schools. When I went to junior high and high school I took wood shop, metal shop, electrical shop, automotive repair, a cooking class, etc. I was told by my government, as part of my education, that these skills were important to society.

It’s the media. Besides “Dirty Jobs” which is played off as a goof reality show, what show makes you feel like working in a job that makes your hands dirty is a worthwhile and valued career in our society? None. Even if a manual labor type job is portrayed, it’s usually portrayed in a comedy sense of look how screwed up my life is for working this job. Our kids are blasted by the media constantly to only look up to people who work in white collar professions.

We all stopped valuing hard work. Dirty work. Difficult work. Unpretty work. Not socially acceptable work.

We are all to blame.

We need to start telling kids, little kids, it’s okay not to be a doctor or lawyer or banker. That being a plumber is a wonderful, fulfilling career. Being a line cook, creating someone’s meal, can be a really good job. Building some’s car is a noble profession.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped telling our kids that ‘working’ is a good thing, and started telling them, you need to go to college, because ‘working’ is bad. We have generations of kids being raised that think ‘working’ is bad. We should strive to get jobs where you don’t ‘work’. You should manage. You should lead. You should facilitate.

Not work, lord no. You might get your hands dirty. You might get a stain on your trousers. Someone might see you working! We are not a working-class family! Worst of all? You might actually like it! You might like fixing something. You might like building something. You might like creating something.

I miss a time when working was as valued as education.  When you could look up at your Mom and Dad and be proud of them for working at a job that brought them home dirty, but brought them home for dinner.

Does my black face make me look more diverse?

I’m sitting at the conference room table. It’s surrounded by my peers, most of which are white, one other, besides me is black, sprinkle in a couple of females, welcome to corporate America. We’re here because the white folks want to talk about how diversity is important. The entire time this conversation is happening they just keep staring at me and my black face. I do believe they think diversity is important.

I agree, diversity is important. We need to do something about it at our organization.  But, I’m not who they think I am.

Yes, I’m black.  But, I’m not diverse. In fact, the color of my skin is the only diverse thing about me!

I grew up in an upper-middle-class suburb. Not an upper-middle-class black suburb. An upper-middle-class white suburb. So, most people would actually call this a rich suburb. I was classically trained as an opera singer. I didn’t play basketball. I was a great student. I work in a white collar profession. I eat at the Olive Garden with my wife and three kids. I drive a Toyota SUV, the big one.

I might be more ‘white’ than the other white people at this table, but I have a black face. Apparently, because of my black face, I should be chosen to ‘run’ diversity for the organization. Apparently, I understand the ‘struggle’.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a black person living in America. The white female CEO of our organization walked past me on the first month on the job. I recognized her immediately and said a jolly, “Good Morning”. She said nothing and walked past me. Not an hour later she realized the black man she rudely walked past wasn’t some random black guy, but a mid-level executive in her organization, and she stopped by to give me an excuse and a jolly good morning back.  I know she wouldn’t have walked past a white peer of mine without a greeting.

So, my black skin does present a challenge, but it does not make me diverse.

I ask the group, “why not Tom?” Tom, you see grew up in the inner city. Blue collar environment, with a single mom. Tom walked past a GM plant every day on his way to school. Once in a while, he would the workers selling dime bags out of the trunk of their cars in the GM parking lot. Tom played basketball and went to school on a scholarship. It was his only chance to get out of his neighborhood. Tom’s friend network has more black faces than mine, by a lot!

Tom grew up poor. Grew up surrounded by black people, Hispanic people, Asian people, people on the fringes of society, people I didn’t grow up around. Tom saw things I only saw when I went to the movies, which my parents paid for. Tom went to Baptist church, not because he was close to Jesus, but because the black women would cook a hot meal each day for the kids in the neighborhood. Tom has lived a diverse life.

“Tom!? Tom can’t lead up diversity, he’s…”, they stop before stating the obvious, like somehow saying “he’s white” out loud will change the color of his face.

Tom is diverse. Tom actually is passionate about diversity.  The only thing Tom doesn’t have is my black face.

It’s decided, I’ll take on diversity. I’m better “suited” for it, they say.

(Before you lose your minds and wonder why a white guy wrote this, understand that this came from a friend of mine. A friend with a black face who doesn’t have this platform. He told me the story, I wrote it. It was a story that needed to be told. Diversity isn’t about color, yet most organizations still make it about color. It’s the sad state of diversity in organizations in America.) 

Google Announced They Discovered The Secret to a Great Workplace!

Over the past five years, I’ve been outspoken over my dislike of Google HR.  But I have to give them credit now, because they spent years of work, really digging into the concept of teams and employees to figure out how we, HR Pros, help our organizations make the whole thing work. Kudos to you Google!

Here’s what they found:

“The tech giant charged a team to find out. The project, known as Project Aristotle, took several years, and included interviews with hundreds of employees and analysis of data about the people on more than 100 active teams at the company. The Googlers looked hard to find a magic formula—the perfect mix of individuals necessary to form a stellar team—but it wasn’t that simple. “We were dead wrong,” the company said.

 Google’s data-driven approach ended up highlighting what leaders in the business world have known for a while; the best teams respect one another’s emotions and are mindful that all members should contribute to the conversation equally. It has less to do with who is in a team, and more with how a team’s members interact with one another…
Matt Sakaguchi, a midlevel manager at Google, was keen to put Project Aristotle’s findings into practice. He told Charles Duhigg of The New York Times how he took his team off-site to open up about his cancer diagnosis. His colleagues were initially silent, but then began sharing their own personal stories.
At the heart of Sakaguchi’s strategy, and Google’s findings, is the concept of “psychological safety,” a model of teamwork in which members have a shared belief that it is safe to take risks and share a range of ideas without the fear of being humiliated…
…In short. Just be nice.”
Wait, what?
Be nice.  That’s what Google found after ‘years’ of work? Be nice!?
You got that HR pros? Just tell your employees to be nice.  Google has it figured out. You can stop working now. Just listen to Google. They spent three exhausting years of research on this.  RELAX. They know what they’re doing. They’re Google. We all just want to be Google.
Mrs. Wilson was my kindergarten teacher. She was this young, beautiful black woman who seemed to be about 7 feet tall. To be fair, I was five and three feet tall, so she might have only been around 5’7″. Anyway, in 1975, she told me something very similar. In fact, I think she used those exact same words, “Be nice, Tim.”
Maybe Google should have just hired Mrs. Wilson, and saved all that time and work. Apparently, she also figured out the secret to a great workplace!

Does it matter if a POTUS has ever hired anyone?

In the last Republican Presidential Debate, candidate Ted Cruz got in a nice jab on candidate Donald Trump about hiring illegal aliens. At which, Trump fired back (he always fires back) that he was the only candidate to ever have hired anyone.

That last part gave me pause. I don’t care who you might be voting for, Republican, Democrat, Socialist (hey, Bernie!), etc., is it important for a President to have experience hiring people?

It’s a great question to ponder. All of us who hire, as part of our jobs, know how difficult it is, and how frustrating and wonderous of an experience it can be.  We know how difficult it is to select the right candidate, and how disastrous it can be when the wrong candidate is selected.

I do get that while most political lifers have probably not hired in a sense we have hired, they do some kind of ‘hiring’ in their various political offices. They have to select staff to run their campaigns, to work with them in their elected positions, etc. So, while they haven’t had to hire for a private business, they have had to select individuals to come work for them.

Now, if you ever witness government hiring you could easily argue, as Trump did, that none of these people have ever really hired! Government hiring isn’t really hiring as much as it’s selecting the tallest of the seven dwarfs.  Not much recruiting ever takes place, it’s post and pray of the worst kind.

So, I tend to fall into the camp of I want my POTUS to be someone who has really had to go out and hire and fire. Don’t take this as I want Trump to be POTUS, I’m also of the camp that I don’t want my POTUS to be crazy!

If all you’ve done in your career is ‘appoint’ friends and associates to positions, you probably aren’t really ready to run the country. Both parties have this issue. Lifetime politicians don’t understand real world business. They understand politics, which has nothing to do with actually running a business, creating jobs, creating value, having your neck on the line for results.

I want a POTUS who has felt the pressure of having to truly perform, or you lose everything, or you get fired. At that point, they understand what the vast majority of real Americans feel every day.  Elected people don’t feel this. They get elected, and they immediately go back to work on getting re-elected, which mainly constitutes telling people what they want to hear. Again, both parties do this the exact same way.

Yes, I want a POTUS that has real world business experience. One that’s sat across a desk and had to make real hiring decisions that had a bottom line impact to the success, or failure, of a business.  I understand that person. I don’t understand politicians.

 

What the Hell is Financial Wellness & Why Should HR Pros Care!

I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t raised in an environment where much of anything was given to me. In my world, Financial Wellness meant our check didn’t bounce when we went to the grocery store or having to go to a different grocery store where we hadn’t bounced a check in a while! Luckily, my kids have no idea what it means to ‘bounce’ a check!

That is one of our challenges as HR pros to define Financial Wellness. For some of us, having the bills paid means we have financial wellness, for others, having the means to go on that annual trip to Florida means we have financial wellness. Some of your employees feel they have financial wellness, while others, in the same capacity, would feel on the verge of financial ruin!

Financial wellness, by definition, is a program or set of programs designed to improve employees’ financial behavior and outcomes while also driving business impact. Basically, it’s helping to ensure, the best we can, that our employees aren’t overly concerned with their personal money issues, that it impacts their work performance. An organization provides a good financial wellness program so that it can have happy and productive employees, who help drive great financial results for the organization.

Why do we as HR Pros need to care about our employees Financial Wellness?

In the history of HR, we really didn’t.  Sure there were some empathetic HR Pros who cared about someone going through a tough time, but rarely did HR, in the most well-meaning sense, ever want to touch the personal finance issues of an employee! Mostly, we would listen, try and pawn them off on the Employee Assistance Program, and hope it all went away.

The expectations of how we work with our employees, especially concerning things that impact their performance, have changed drastically over the past few years. The great recession is probably the main culprit for this mind-shift. We went through a part of our history where having financial issues, wasn’t rare, it was the norm for so many of our employees. Organizationally, we had to find ways to help our employees cope, get better and stay productive.

What we learned, through all of this, was that HR can make a huge difference in our employees quality of life. Having a great quality of life means that employees will stay around longer. Longer tenured employees, who love their jobs and feel supported, mean better overall outcomes for your organization.

The best HR leaders are now keenly aware of the organization’s bottom line, and what programs have a positive impact financially. Financial Wellness is one of those programs that drive overall better organizational financial performance, which makes it one of those programs HR pros need to care about, and need continue to drive across their organization.

Financial Wellness isn’t an easy program to just go and launch. We still live in a culture where talking about your finances, especially when things aren’t going well, is an extremely hard conversation to have. None of us want to admit we did a bad job managing our finances, and now we are in trouble. This is why HR is in a great position to own financial wellness and help employees. We are trained to be able to handle these types of situations and help our employees.

I joke about growing up in a family that bounced checks at the grocery store. I can do that now since I’m far from that scenario, but it was soul crushing to be a kid and have your mom handing you items to go put back on shelves because we couldn’t afford them. You have employees who are doing this. They need your help. They don’t need a handout, they need the knowledge to change their situation forever.

(By the way, if you’d like to hear me, and my special guest Laurie Ruettimann, get even more passionate and detailed about this topic, don’t miss the free webinar I’m hosting with ALEX, March 8th at 2pm EST. It’s called “Show Me the Money (Tips)! Six Ways to Improve Your Financial Wellness Program!” P.S. You’ll get an amazing Financial Wellness Communication playbook from ALEX as part of the deal too. A twofer!)

 

5 Ways to Create a More WorkHuman Workplace!

Okay, what the hell is WorkHuman?

I get asked that a lot as I talk about it. WorkHuman was a concept started by Globoforce, a recognition and rewards technology solution for your employees. Last year Globoforce held their first WorkHuman Conference with the focus on how do we make our workplaces better for ourselves and our employees.

They were really the first ones to drive home and start talking about the Employee Experience. Employee engagement is more than a program. We need to focus on providing a great experience for our employees, and the engagement will be there.So, what does this WorkHuman workplace look like?  I’ve got five ideas on how you can create a more WorkHuman workplace: 1.

So, what does this WorkHuman workplace look like?  I’ve got five ideas on how you can create a more WorkHuman workplace:

1. Hire glass half-full people.  You can’t teach optimism. You can’t create it. People either have it when you hire them or they don’t. High optimism also won’t guarantee you a great employee. What it will guarantee you is someone who will continue to work to get better. People are drawn to that. Hire talented people, and make sure they share your organization’s optimism!

2. Hire people who love to recognize others. Creating a culture of recognition isn’t just about giving them the tools and resources to recognize others. That will help, but you also need people who do this naturally, given no tools or resources. This is one you can also pick out fairly easy with some well-planned interview questions.

3. Get your Leaders to be human!  Normal human, not themselves! This is an easy and cheap way to create a better employee experience. Ensure your leaders get out and talk with your employees, and not the employees they usually talk with. Actually, get them out to meet and learn who your employees really are, personally. Employees love working for companies where they feel the leader actually knows them.

4. Manage outcomes, not hours.  It’s exceptional freeing to everyone when you start actually managing by results and stop believing that hours in a seat equal results.  Don’t take this as soft. Managing by results will get you to decisions much quicker than watching someone sit in a cube! But allowing people to manage their life around their work, and still produce great results, well, that’s workhuman!

5. Care about the health of your employees, not just physical. The financial wellness of your employees might have as much impact on your employees giving you their best, as their physical health. Help them manage their financial health. The stress many of your employees feel over their finances is staggering. This isn’t about retirement. This is about paying bills, childcare, student loans, buying a house, etc. Your employees are unhealthy. Like major drug problem unhealthy, and you’re ignoring it!

Want to learn more about creating a WorkHuman workplace?  The WorkHuman Conference is May 9-11th in beautiful Orlando, FL, with speakers Michael J. Fox (he’s an awesome story teller), Mr. Happy Shawn Achor, TEDx start Ann Cuddy, and so much more. $300 off your registration by clicking on this link!  Also, if you come, I promise to get up and do sunrise meditation with you! Okay, I’ll probably sleep in, but I will definitely do sunset champagne with you! See you in Orlando! 

P.S. – If you’re looking to recharge your HR batteries, there is no better HR conference to go to!

5 Habits that are making you a Bad HR Pro!

I had someone challenge me recently on my performance. It was good. It made me think about what I was really doing, and how I could get better. We all need this. We get so caught up in our day-to-day stuff, it’s difficult to sometimes realize what’s holding us back from being even better!

I started to notice habits that creep up from time to time that hinder my own performance. Also, recognizing habits of my staff that are holding them back from reaching their full potential (oh great, they are saying right now to themselves!).

This came full circle when I thought of what it is that makes great HR pros great, and what habits are holding us back as a profession, so here’s my list:

    1. You send an email (or G*d forbid text) before walking over or calling the person you want to get your message to.  HR is about relationships. If you don’t like this, you are in the wrong profession.
    2. You have a hiring hang-up.  A what? You won’t hire someone, ever, for some stupid reason – they went to State U., they didn’t shake your hand firmly enough during introductions, they worked at a job less than a year, etc.
    3. You have compensation issues.  It drives you crazy that people in other parts of the business make considerably more than you (IT, sales/marketing, etc.) for a similar line-level position.  If you want to make more money, then go into one of those areas, otherwise, shut it.
    4. You have a power complex. A what? You feel good about your “perceived” ability to control someone else’s professional life.  “Well, you better never wear those flip flops on a Thursday again or I’m going to have to write you up.”
    5. You believe HR is more important than the rest of the business. But, Tim – nothing is more important than our People!  Stop it – stop focusing on you and focus on how to help everyone else, that makes you valuable.  Use your “power” in HR for good, and make everyone else’s life easier.

Do you really want to be a better HR Pro, right now, today? I mean really?  I mean actually small incremental steps of making you a better HR Pro.

Alright then, do these things often:

  • Go talk face to face with your line peers in other functions and ask them what is their biggest challenge they are facing. Not an HR challenge (although it might be), but an overall challenge. Figure out a way to help them, not as an HR pro, but really help solve their problem (this is what “Business Partner” means for all of you with the HR Business Partner title).
  • Go talk to them again.
  • And again.

But, Tim! I don’t know anything about software architecture. So, it doesn’t matter, they’ll tell you, they will walk you through it, you’ll use your smarts to find ways to be helpful and most importantly “they” will feel supported.  And you? Well, you will be a better HR Pro for it.

6 Things That Will Make You A Great HR Pro

Yesterday, I wrote this post on a question someone asked me about How do I become a great HR Pro?  I told them to stop sucking. Then I remembered I wrote this about three years ago – it’s better than just ‘stop sucking’, although, that’s brilliant advice as well! 

The one great thing I love about going to HR and Talent conferences is that you always get reminded about what really good HR should look like.  It doesn’t mean that your shop will be there, but it gives you something to shoot for.  I’ll admit, sometimes it can be frustrating listening to some HR Pro from a great brand tell you how they ‘built’ their great employment brand through all their hard work and brilliant ideas.  All the while, not mentioning anything about “oh, yeah, and we already had this great brand that marketing spends $100 million a year to keep great!”

Regardless, seeing great HR always reminds me that great HR is obtainable for everyone.  Great HR has nothing to do with size or resources.  It has a lot to do with an HR team, even a team of one, deciding little by little we’re going to make this great!

I think there are six things you need to know to make your HR department great:

1. Know how to ‘sell’ your HR vision to the organization and your executives.  The best HR Pros I know are great storytellers and, in turn, great at selling their visions.  If you don’t have a clear vision of what you want your HR shop to look like, how do you expect others to get on board and help you get there.  Sit down, away from work, and write out exactly what you want your HR shop to look like.  Write it long-hand. Write in bullet points. Just start.  It will come.

2. Buy two pairs of shoes: one of your employees and one of your hiring managers. Try them on constantly.  These are your customers, your clients.  You need to feel their joys and pains and truly live them.  Knowing their struggles will make you design better HR programs to support them.  Support them, not you.

3. Working hard is number 1.  Working smart is number 1A.  Technology can do every single transaction in HR.  Don’t allow tasks and administrative things be why you can’t do great HR.  Get technology to do all of this busy work so you can focus on real HR deliverables.

4. Break something in your organization that everyone hates and replace it with something everyone loves.  This is usually a process of something you’ve always done, and people are telling you it still has to be done that way. Until it doesn’t, and you break it.  By the way, this doesn’t have to be something in HR.  Our leaders and our employees have so many things that frustrate them in our environments.  Just find one and get rid of it.

5. Sometimes the path of least resistance is the best solution. HR people love to fight battles for the simple act of fighting the battle. “NO! It has to be done this way!” “We will NOT allow any workarounds!”   Great HR finds the path of least resistance.  The path of greatest adoption.  The path which makes our people feel the most comfortable, even if it isn’t the path we really, really want to take.

6. Stop being an asshole. You’re in HR, you’re not a Nazi.  Just be nice.  We’re supposed to be the one group in our organization that understands.  Understands people are going to have bad days and probably say things they don’t mean.  Understands that we all will have pressures, some greater than others, but all pressure nonetheless. Understands that work is about 25% of our life, and many times that other 75% creates complete havoc in our world!

Great HR has nothing to do with HR.  Great HR has a lot to do with being a great leader, even when that might not be your position in the organization.

How do you become a great HR Pro?

From The Project mailbag:

Tim,

I’m a recent HR graduate and I want to be great in HR.  How do I become a great HR pro like you? Is there certain things I can do, read, etc.?

Marcy

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

I get asked this kind of question a lot.  I want to be a great HR pro. What do I need to do?

Ugh! That’s a hard question. There’s a lot of things you can do. There’s a lot of things you have no control over. 

S0, what do you need to do?

Just start doing great HR work! Stop waiting around for someone to allow you to do great HR work. If you want to be great, you have to show people you can be great. 

Derek Jeter didn’t wait around for someone to let him show them he was a great ShortStop. He just went out and played Shortstop. He made mistakes. He corrected those mistakes. He just kept doing it. 

You need to go ‘play’ HR. You’ll be bad at some of it. You might actually find you’re pretty damn good at some of it.  The more you play, the better you’ll get. It’s probably unrealistic you’ll be great right off the bat, but who knows, you might.  

You’re going to find that most HR pros don’t become great because they wait for someone else to tell them what to do.  You won’t become great waiting to be told what to do. You need to find out what to do on your own. How do you do that?

Educate yourself. Network with other HR pros. Find out what others are doing, and what’s working and what’s not working. Start testing things in your organization in small ways. If it works, test it in a bigger way.

Ask the people in your organization that are in charge of driving or generating revenue what they would do if they ran HR. Try some of those things. Ask them what roadblocks they have in the organization. Then work to break those down.

Walk away from other HR peers who seem to hate HR.  Great HR pros love HR. They love being involved and making a difference. They are not happy with keeping things the same.

How do you become a great HR Pro?  You just have to go and do it. If you do enough stuff, you’ll find some things that are really good. Do more of those. Do less of the stuff that sucks. Being great is really easy. More good stuff, less sucky stuff! But, you have to do stuff.