Category Archives: Trench HR

The Three Loves Job Theory

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Helen Fisher, PhD. is a Biological Anthropologist and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Internet dating site Match.com.  Helen’s life work is centered around the Three Loves Theory, which helps us better understand our relationships.

The Three Loves Theory basically says not all love we feel is experienced equally.  Fisher have studied the cognitive and neurobiological processes underlying attraction and love, and they’ve begun to pinpoint different emotions that occur at different stages of romantic relationships. She believes we have three kinds of love: Lust, Passion and Commitment.

So, what does this have to do with Human Resources?  I theorize that Fisher’s Three Loves Theory can be extended to our employees.

Think about it for a second and chart your employees, who ‘love’ their job, in the following categories:

  1. Lust – It’s that new love of the job and organization. They act a little crazy about it. Can’t stop talking about it. People at this job love level will tattoo the company logo on their body!
  2. Passion – You’re working in something you really care about. You feel it’s what you were born to do, at this time. You love discussing your job with people on a deep level, wanting to learn more about it.
  3. Commitment – It’s gone beyond the job and you feel deeply connected to the organization. In fact, you would change jobs within the organization if it’s what the organization needed from you. Your job love as evolved beyond the job.

While all of these employees love their job, we tend to think of them differently.  We tend to rank this job love and judge these employees who on who ‘really’ loves their job.

We tend to value one love over another. Some organizations value that job lust, they want to hire people who are lusting over their work. Some organizations what their employees to be committed to the organization over the work. Every organizations is different, one is no better than the other.

Think about your own career path. What level of job love are you in right now?  Maybe you’re not in job love at all.

To me that is always the measure. Are you in love with your job?  People tend to think of job love, on only one level, and that level is usually Lust or Passion, rarely Commitment.  It’s also how we usually judge our employees. Those with job love Commitment, get their love discounted, because they are no longer lusting or passionate about their job.

It’s all love. We should be celebrating job love, not judging it.

What phase are you in job love?

 

The 1 Reason You’re Afraid To Make Recruiting Simple

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Have you ever wondered why Recruiting Departments continue to make complex processes?  In reality, all of us, wants things simple.  But, when you look at our organizations they are filled with complexity.  It seems like the more we try to make things simple, the more complex they get.  You know what?  It’s you. It’s not everyone else.  You are making things complex, and you’re doing this because it makes you feel good.

From Harvard Business Review:

“There are several deep psychological reasons why stopping activities is so hard to do in organizations. First, while people complain about being too busy, they also take a certain amount of satisfaction and pride in being needed at all hours of the day and night. In other words, being busy is a status symbol. In fact a few years ago we asked senior managers in a research organization — all of whom were complaining about being too busy — to voluntarily give up one or two of their committee assignments. Nobody took the bait because being on numerous committees was a source of prestige.

Managers also hesitate to stop things because they don’t want to admit that they are doing low-value or unnecessary work. Particularly at a time of layoffs, high unemployment, and a focus on cost reduction, managers want to believe (and convince others) that what they are doing is absolutely critical and can’t possibly be stopped. So while it’s somewhat easier to identify unnecessary activities that others are doing, it’s risky to volunteer that my own activities aren’t adding value. After all, if I stop doing them, then what would I do?”

That’s the bad news.  You have have deep psychological issues.  Your spouse already knew that about you.

The good news is, you can stop it!  How?  Reward people for eliminating worthless work.  Right now we reward people who are working 70 hours per week and always busy and we tell people “Wow! Look at Tim he’s a rock star, always here, always working!”  Then someone in your group goes, “Yeah, but Tim is an idiot, I could do his job in 20 hours per week, if…”  We don’t reward the 20 hour guy, we reward the guy working 70 hours, even if he doesn’t have to. (Editor’s note: calling yourself an idiot in a post is cathartic in a number of ways!)

Somewhere in our society the ‘working smarter’ analogy got lost or turned into ‘work smarter and longer’.  The reality is most people don’t have the ability to work smarter, so they just work longer and make everything they do look ‘Really’ important!   You just thought of someone in your organization when you read that, didn’t you!?  We all have them, you can now officially call them ‘psychos’ since they do actually have a “deep psychological” reasons for doing what they’re doing. Harvard said so!

I love simple.  I love simple HR.  I love simple Recruiting.  I hate HR and Talent Pros that make things complex, because I know they have ‘deep psychological’ issues!  Please go make things simple today!

Can HR out Crazy a Crazy Employee?

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In HR we run into employees all the time that do “Crazy” pretty dang good!  I’m always interested in how we work around crazy.  Almost never do we just fire crazy and get rid of it, we tend to keep it around. In fact, we tend to try and fix crazy.

I’m not talking about legitimate mental illness. I’m talking about employees who are perfectly “fine” but act crazy for a number of reasons: attention, they love drama, they love pushing buttons, they love being in the middle of shit, you know, work crazy.   We see it every day in our organizations.

I’ve found something that works really well for me in dealing with crazy.  Do crazy, better than the employee does crazy. Sounds crazy right?!  Here’s how it works.

Crazy employees have power because they act crazy, and no one wants to jump into their crazy storm.  So, people just stay silent, try to stay away, change subjects, ignore, etc.  These are all great mechanisms to stay out of the crazy storm.  Unfortunately, this just feeds the crazy storm and helps turn it into a crazy hurricane!  You see, crazy employees hear silence  and silence to them is agreement. Now, they’ve got justification for their crazy storm because in their mind no one told them they disagree, so that must mean they agree!

You can’t reason with crazy.

So, how do you stop crazy?  You do crazy better than they do crazy.  But you do crazy under control. You fight a crazy storm with a crazy calm.  But, let’s be clear, you still need to go crazy.  Let me give you an example:

Crazy Employee:  “My boss is out to get me!  Yesterday he told Jill “great job” and he didn’t tell me great job.  I think he’s sleeping with Jill – you need to investigate.  Also, Jill might be stealing – you didn’t hear that from me, but she just bought a new car and we make the same amount, I think – what does she make? – anyway I can’t afford a new car!” 

Me: “You know what?  I want to thank you for giving me this information – I’m pulling in your boss right now and we are going to have this out!  Just sit here while I call him in – we are going to blast him!”

Crazy Employee: “Hey! Wait! Don’t call him in while I’m here – he’ll know it’s me that told you.”

Me: “Yeah – but to fire him I’m going to need you to testify at the trial. Once I fire him for sleeping with Jill, he’ll want to fight it – happens all the time – no big deal – we got him!  You’ll do fine on the witness stand.”

Crazy Employee: “Um, I don’t want to do that – just forget it”

Crazy doesn’t like to go public in front of others. Crazy works best one-on-one behind closed doors where there aren’t witnesses.  You can stop crazy very quickly by going public and asking them to be crazy in front of others.  I’ve found that if I can do crazy behind closed doors better than crazy can do crazy, it tends to snap crazy back into semi-reality.  Plus, it’s fun to act crazy sometimes, as long as it’s behind closed doors!

1 Sign That Shows Google Now Controls HR

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It was just a matter of time. The company that vows to do know evil, would eventually take over the function that is the most hated in the world.  Don’t get me wrong, Google didn’t come into your organization and start giving your employees performance reviews, yet.  What Google does is much more stealth.

Remember back in April of this year (2015)? Laszlo Bock, the head of HR for Google, released his book “Work Rules!” He then went on a national book tour and was famously interviewed, everywhere, telling anyone who would listen that you don’t need a college degree to work at Google. In fact, Google has found that your college GPA and transcripts to be ‘worthless’ in terms of making a quality hire.

We all kind of chuckled.  Well, there goes Google, being Google again.

Let’s fast forward to today. Jobvite recently released their 2015 Recruiter Nation Survey.  It’s always an interesting read, with great data and metrics, but one metric stood out, to me, above all others:

“57% of Organizations now report that GPAs are unimportant.”

Do you see what just happened?

If Jobvite would have asked organizations and recruiters in January of this year, this same question, prior to Laszlo’s announcement, how do you think this number would be different?  I’m telling you the number would have been around 5% or less!

GPA are unimportant. Really?

Here’s what Google, I mean Laszlo, forgot to tell everyone about why Google can hire people who have never gone to college.  THEY HIRE FREAKING GENIUSES THAT HAVE BEEN CODING IN THEIR PARENTS BASEMENTS SINCE THEY WERE 12! These kids don’t need college. College would bore them. They know more than the professors teaching them. Google gets to hire the top 1% of people, not just college grads.

You won’t get these geniuses, who don’t need to go to college.  You get half-baked nitwits who need college, a good spanking, a few years to grow up and probably deep therapy.  You are not Google.

Yet, here we are, and you are answering Jobvite’s survey questions and acting like your Google.  Thank you Google.  Thank you for setting HR back a decade.  For not telling the full story, just swaying opinion by making bold statements.  We now get a generation of workers who think they can just jump off their Xbox and into a job paying six figures.  That’s really helpful.  You’re brilliant Laszlo.

Check out Jobvite’s 2015 Recruiter Nation Survey, it’s good stuff, even the stuff that Google brainwashed you to answer.

What is your Organizational Expiration Date?

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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. They help us understand when something goes bad, protects us from ourselves and what we think is good and bad, which can be subjective.

All this makes me think that we should have expiration dates on our employees!

It was recently rumored that Detroit Tigers Manager, Brad Ausmus, is probably going to get fired after this season.  He was a popular hire two years ago and led the Tigers to the playoff.  This year, though, the Tigers have not met expectations, with a team filled with high price talent.

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 Ausmus get’s more successful is to win the World Series, which is tough to do.

There are a number of other reasons 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 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 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!

The Undercover Job Start

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I’ve had quite a few friends start new positions in this past year.  It’s exciting to see so many people get great opportunities after living through the recession!

One common thing happens to all of these folks. It goes something like this:

1.  Social announcement that they got a new position!  Yay! Congrats! When do you start?! We all know the drill.

2. Actual announcement on the first day they start the job.  This happens in a number of forms, social, press release, etc. This is Day 1 on the job, they don’t even know which bathroom they should be using based on their position, and Bam!, you’ve been announced to the world you’re open for business in your new role.

3. Everyone in the world is contacting you on your first day for a variety of reasons. Some will want to just congratulate you. Some will want to pimp your for business. Some will want dirt on why you left the last place. All will want time you don’t have because YOU JUST STARTED A NEW JOB AND YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE THE BATHROOM IS!!!

4. You spend the first week trying to find the bathroom.

5. By week #2, you found the bathroom, your email works on your smartphone, and your new company is already beginning to discount your ideas and opinions. Welcome to the show kid, it moves pretty fast!

That’s why I think you should do away with the current job announcement practices, and do something else.  Here’s my new Sackett Job Announcement Plan for Success (like a Trump policy, but it works):

1. Day 1, will now be called Day A.

2. Day A – E, will be your first days of employment, but no one will actually be told that you started.

3. Day 1 (which is really day 6) will happen on the first day of week #2.  Now, you’re actually ready to announce your new position, and take on the coming storm of emails, phone calls, tweets, etc.

Better, right?

We can call it the Undercover Job Start.  You’ve started, but let’s keep it on the down-low until I find the bathroom and stuff.  It’s like the same job start, but without all the stress.

They do this in the restaurant industry when they open a new restaurant. They ‘soft’ open a week before the actual Grand Opening.  People trickle in. It gives the staff a chance to work out the kinks and fix stuff without having a full restaurant to deal with.  That’s how you want to start your job!

How to Gently Crush Your Employee’s Dreams!

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I get the feeling that many of your employees feel that HR Pros are Dream Crushers!  It’s the main reason almost everyone hates HR, right?

I don’t actually buy into this theory, but there are some valid things we do in HR that don’t help our reputation.  Here’s how we crush dreams on a daily basis:

  1. We don’t allow our employees to develop.  Let’s first start with the concept of development vs. training.  You giving job training is not development. While it might help the employee get better at the job they have, it’s not exactly personal or professional development. Development is very individualized.
  2. We don’t listen or act on your employees ideas.  I get to go in and work with companies a lot and almost always the employees already know what needs to be done, but leadership isn’t listening to them.  So, I’m not really brought in to tell them something they don’t know, I’m brought in to them their employees are smart and you should start listening to them!
  3. We don’t allow our employees to dream about the future. This is really difficult for most organizations.  We won’t promise an employee where they’ll be in 1 or 2 or 3 years, because we believe if we can’t deliver it, it worse than not giving them anything to begin with.  Actually, that’s a false premise.  Allowing your employees to dream about the future and giving them something to shoot for, will give them hope. Hopeful employees stay around and work hard.
  4. We micromanage the work, not the result.  I don’t care how you get there, just get me there.  We have been taught for way too long to ‘manage’ people. This means we tell them how to do the job exactly, instead of letting do the job in a way that works best for them, and holding them accountable to the result, not the path. This not only crushes your employees dreams, it crushes their soul.

I think it would be funny to see someone has that as a title in HR: Dream Crusher, VP of Crushing Dreams, Chief Dream Crusher!  Sad, but funny.

What are you doing with your employees today?

Sometimes a Job Isn’t Worth It

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Linds Redding, a New Zealand-based art director who worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi, died last month at 52 from an inoperable esophageal cancer. Turns out Linds didn’t really like his old job and mad hours he spent creating a successful career. Here is what Linds wrote before he died:

“I think you’re all f—— mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a f—— TV commercial. Nobody gives a s—.

This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.

Countless late nights and weekends, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and anniversary dinners were willingly sacrificed at the altar of some intangible but infinitely worthy higher cause. It would all be worth it in the long run…

This was the con. Convincing myself that there was nowhere I’d rather be was just a coping mechanism. I can see that now. It wasn’t really important. Or of any consequence at all really. How could it be. We were just shifting product. Our product, and the clients. Just meeting the quota. Feeding the beast as I called it on my more cynical days.

So was it worth it?

Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling.”

When faced with death, I wonder how many of us will look back on all the time and effort we put into our career and will feel the same?

That all being said, sometimes I think a job might be worth it as well.  Here’s the other side of the coin.  I frequently see articles and blog posts, recently, written by people who have given up their careers to travel the world.  It  all seems so glamorous and adventurous. Until you realize you had a career and job to pay for all those glamorous adventures! From Adweek, “The Couple Who Quit Their Ad Jobs to Travel the World Ended Up Poor and Scrubbing Toilets The uglier side of a year-long creative journey”:

 “You remember Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger, the South African couple who quit their agency jobs this year to travel the world and document the experience. It sounded like a dream, and the lovely Instagram photos have made it look like one.

But halfway through their year-long odyssey (they’re currently in Athens, having traveled 25,000 kilometers so far), they’ve posted a reality check on their blog—a post titled “Why We Quit Our Jobs In Advertising To Scrub Toilets”—in which they share “the uglier side of our trip.” It turns out that following one’s dream—while working odd jobs in exchange for room and board—involves a lot of dirty work, and more than a few tears.

“The budget is really tight, and we are definitely forced to use creativity (and small pep talks) to solve most of our problems (and the mild crying fits),” Cartell writes. “Don’t let the bank of gorgeous photography fool you. Nuh uh. So far, I think we’ve tallied 135 toilets scrubbed, 250 kilos of cow dung spread, 2 tons of rocks shoveled, 60 meters of pathway laid, 57 beds made, and I cannot even remember how many wine glasses we’ve polished.

“You see, to come from the luxuries we left behind in Johannesburg … we are now on the opposite end of the scale. We’re toilet cleaners, dog poop scoopers, grocery store merchandisers and rock shovelers.”

We work for a reason. Your reasons might be vastly different than my reasons, but we all have reasons. I hope if I look death in the face I won’t regret my choices to work and create a successful career. I’ve missed my fair share of school events and sporting events that my kids have participated in. I’ve missed many of their most joyful and sad moments. Those I already regret. What I won’t regret is that I work to allow my family to have so many of these moments.

I lived poor.  I lived with a single mother who wasn’t quite sure how she was going to pay for dinner that night. I work because I never wanted my family to feel this anxiety.  Sometimes a job is worth it, sometimes it isn’t.  It’s all up to you to decide, though.

Today, Go Fill Someone’s Bucket!

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A few years ago my son got to lead a small part of an assembly at his school.  He was really excited about his part, he got to get up in front of everyone at the end and kind of lead a cheer — you know kids love being loud at school!

I asked him what the assembly was about, and he said, “fillin’ buckets”.  “What?”, was my reply.  He said, “you know, you can say some things that will fill someone’s bucket, or you can say some things that will empty their bucket.”  My reply, “Oh, you mean like making deposits into someone’s emotional bank account.” His reply back,  “No, filling buckets, it has nothing to do with banks.”

Fillin’ Buckets. Simple, yet hard.

Today, I want to make it easy for you to do two things: 1. Fill your own bucket; 2. Fill some buckets.

Here’s a list of things that will help:

1. Surround yourself with positive people. Even if it’s only one person.  Even if it’s only yourself.

2. Connect at a deeper level.  Anyone can talk about the weather or what TV show they watched last night.  Strive to go deeper.

3. Hug someone who doesn’t expect it.

4. Spend a little money on someone else.

5. Take 5 minutes to appreciate all that you have.

6. Eat lunch or dinner outside.

7. Tell one person, you don’t normally talk to, one positive, genuine thing about why you like what they do.

8. Unplug and listen.

One last tip.  Leaders, as many of you are that read this, tend to be bucket fillers, because it’s part of the ‘job’.  Great leaders are genuine in this, but it’s harder than it looks, because many times our employees feel like we might just be doing this because it’s part of our role.  Catch 22.  How do you combat this?  Fill the buckets of those above you.  Leaders rarely get their buckets filled.

Try it, you’ll be amazed at how it makes you feel.  There’s something remarkable that happens when you start filling buckets, you realize it doesn’t matter who it is that you’re filling, it feels good!

What am I doing today?  I’m fillin’ buckets!

 

Not Enough Cooks In The Kitchen!

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Last weekend I spent some time with a restaurant owner friend of mine.  He runs a great place, everyone loves it, but he’s having a problem.  They are having a hard time hiring cooks.  We can commiserate on this because of my background running HR at Applebee’s, he knows I understand his pain.

In the restaurant business you don’t just shut your doors when a cook doesn’t show up to work. You put on an apron and start cooking. Customers are coming, and they don’t care that some kid would rather get high, then cook their steak.  Welcome to the show!  Oh, you thought some upstanding educated professional was back in the kitchen cooking your $50 steak!? That’s cute.

I told my friend good luck, and we went on our way.

Then I read this from the Washington Post:

The shortage of able kitchen hands is affecting chefs in Chicago, where restaurateurs said they are receiving far fewer applications than in past years. “It’s gotten to the point where if good cooks come along, we’ll hire them even if we don’t have a position. Because we will have a position,” Paul Kahan, a local chef, told the Chicago Tribune last week.

It’s also an issue in New York, where skilled cooks are an increasingly rare commodity. “If I had a position open in the kitchen, I might have 12 résumés, call in three   or four to [try out] in the kitchen, and make a decision,” Alfred Portale, the chef and owner of Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant Gotham Bar and Grill, told Fortune recently. “Now it’s the other way around; there’s one cook and 12 restaurants.”

And it extends to restaurants out West. Seattle is coping with the same dilemma. San Francisco, too.

Looks like it’s not a local hiring dilemma, but a national trend!

It’s not just cooks. All over the U.S. HR and TA pros are struggling to find people for low and semi-skilled jobs that want to work.  You know, the kind of people who will show up each day when their shift starts, for more than one day in a row! That is the new sought after skill in America! Just showing up for work.

So, why do we have a shortage of cooks?

  1. Many, many, many cook positions are filled by Mexican workers. Over the past five years the U.S. has seen a flat or negative growth of Mexican workers entering the U.S.
  2. We have entire generations that don’t cook and eat at home.  If you never learned how to make your own grilled cheese, there is a good bet you won’t apply for a cook position.
  3. The pay is lower than it probably should be (see #1 above). Restaurants have gotten away with paying low wages to cooks because many used illegal workers with shared or fake papers.  No one wants to pay $20 for a burger and fries.

Something interesting is going to happen, slowly. Prices will rise, because wages of cooks will rise to attract people to these jobs.  Menu prices will rise to meet the wage demand. Eventually that will drive prices to a point where many people will decide to cook and eat at home.  Restaurants will go out of business.

It’s the $15/hr fast food debate.  Do you want to pay $9.99 for a Happy Meal for your kid? No. Fewer happy meals sold equals fewer fast food jobs.

It’s all simple economics, not politics.  We make choices based on the perceived value we get.  If the perceived value is too low, we will make other choices.  Give it time, you’ll see.