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RESET – A Leader’s Guide to Work In An Age of Upheaval – new book by @JohnnyCTaylorJr and @SHRM

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I’m out at the SHRM Annual Conference this week and excited to see all my HR Peers and Friends! It’s a big event since SHRM didn’t have an in-person 2020 conference and by far the largest in-person conference I’ve gone two in a very long time!

SHRM CEO, Johnny Taylor, is also launching his new book, RESET: A Leader’s Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval, and it couldn’t be better timing for HR leaders and organizational leaders looking for ideas and solid data around managing through our new world of work.

One of the things I really like about this book right off the bat is that Taylor worked closely with SHRM’s Research arm to really pack a ton of data into this book. I think most modern HR and Organizational leaders want ideas backed by research and SHRM has a ton of data to pull from with such a large global membership.

  • Tim and Johnny at SHRM

The reality is with so many organizations adding remote and hybrid work environments we truly are in a new frontier of building an organizational culture around very different types of work, all combined into one very new digital culture phenomenon (which just happens to be my talk at SHRM Annual this year!).

Johnny Taylor is known as a very strong speaker and storyteller, and it comes out in his book as well. RESET does a great job of weaving in data, with real-life organizational examples, and Taylor’s strong storytelling to make this book an enjoyable and quick read. This should easily become the HR Book Club choice of the year for sure, as our HR and Leadership teams work to reinvent our organizational culture over this year and next.

RESET hits on all the important themes of today, talent retention, DEI, internal mobility, and solving the skills gap. And I love that Johnny and SHRM put together a new Culture Score Scale (NICE) around Net Promoter Score, Inclusion Factor, Curiosity Indicator, and Employer Brand. It’s a modern people measure for sure, and one that I think most HR and Talent pros will find very interesting!

RESET is officially being launched this week at SHRM Annual and it’s definitely designed to be a leadership playbook for organizations working to reinvent themselves around one of the biggest challenges, historically, any of us have ever faced. You can grab off the SHRM website and I’m sure all the normal places you buy books!

When Virtual Firing Goes Very Wrong! #HRFamous

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On episode 78 of The HR Famous Podcast, longtime HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to discuss campus recruiting, how terminated employees can cause damage, and some of our favorite firing horror stories.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights

1:30 – It’s conference season! Tim wonders if conferences will permanently have a virtual option now.

5:45 – Tim asks if the team has had any experience recruiting new grads or soon-to-be college grads. Tim calls out Handshake for changing the campus recruiting process. He asks JLee how campus recruiting at Marriott works and what the frustrations are.

8:45 – JLee mentions how a lot of career-center employees are out of touch with the corporate world and simply rely on their relationships to help their students.

11:15 – KD brings up John Nykolaiszyn from Florida International University (who was a guest on KD’s other pod Best Hire Ever) as an example of a campus career services leader doing it right.

13:30 – Tim harps on career services for hiding their students instead of making them really available for employers.

16:45 – Tim says that what CHROs want from universities and colleges is a LinkedIn for college students. They want some sort of database that is like LinkedIn that will allow them to search for new hires in their areas.

19:00 – Tim hired two new grads to his company and he had to reach out to career services directly to get on Handshake since he had a ”low trust score.”

21:30 – MarketWatch recently released an article about an upset HR executive that deleted 17,000 resumes from their system after being fired. Tim asks the crew to share their best resignation/firing story.

25:00 – KD tells a story about the termination of a blue-collar employee at a former company he worked with. He had to restrain the terminated employee to help save a manager.

27:30 – JLee’s story involves a fired employee and someone’s personal mini-fridge and helping them remove it from their office.

33:00 – Tim says that companies need to have their systems locked down when firing someone remotely or they can risk someone doing damage to their online systems and databases.

The LinkedIn Invite That Got Me to Click!

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The recruiter in me is constantly trying to figure out the best subject line for emails and Inmails to get a response. At the end of the day, I need people to click to open so I can potentially recruit them. That’s how we become successful in recruiting, getting people interested!

My #1 go-to subject line for years has simply been my last name “Sackett”. Just that one word in the subject gets more click-throughs than anything else I’ve used. Now my friends Stacy Zapar and Angle Verros will both kill me if I don’t mention that the real #1 click-through subject line is really anything personal to the person you are sending it to!

For me, being a huge Michigan State Spartans fan, if you sent me an Inmail or email that said, “Go Green” I would definitely open that message! It’s specifically personal to me and I know you had to take a few seconds to understand me as a person.

This Lady Got Me!

Here’s the LinkedIn Invite that got me to accept:

Brilliant LinkedIn Invite

So, I’m not making fun of Yvonne! I’m admiring her marketing brilliance!

I only accept about 40% of my LinkedIn invitations because, like you, I get so many that are just spam and/or sales outreach for things I do not want or need. The moment you accept comes some cheesy sales pitch and you end up hating yourself for accepting! So, I’m pretty picky. This one got me!

Right away I was leary. “Private Coach” – no thanks! “Business Owners” – Ugh, sales pitch coming…but Yvonne did something special. She personalized it, or at least it felt personal to me! “I’ve decided not to send you the generic LI invite…” And then the magic, “Fingers crossed”!

FINGERS CROSSED!

I got duped by a generic mass invite message, by a person saying “THIS ISN’T GENERIC” and then saying “Fingers Crossed”! My mind couldn’t comprehend that this wasn’t an actual personal message. It seemed so personal and yet was not personal at all once you really dig into it.

I was the idiot. The moment after accepting came the auto-response cheesy sales pitch! Ugh! Damn you, Yvonne (if that’s even your name!) you go me!

I actually was super impressed and told her, right after removing the connection! Give credit where credit is due. She got me and I had to give her a hat tip. It’s pretty rare that I find a truly magical wording that can get someone to click, and I think she found it. And I think we all should steal it because it’s actually marvelous in its simplicity!

G*d Damn, fingers crossed got me. I feel like such an amateur right now!

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 ones 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!

Why is Google Cutting Pay for Remote Workers?

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On episode 76 of The HR Famous Podcast, longtime HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to discuss back-to-school season, Google’s new internal calculator for pay cuts and secretly working two remote jobs.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights

1:30 – It’s back-to-school season! JLee is feeling ready for the season after getting back from a vacation to Turks & Caicos. Her kids are going to be in person at school all day.

3:45 – Tim’s last child is a senior in high school and they are ready for him to get out of the house. His wife doesn’t know how she’s going to make it through the year…

5:30 – In a shoutout to “no one really knows anything,” KD mentions a report from the UAB that said 40% of a state is going to get Covid between July and September because of the Delta variant. The majority will show no symptoms. Is that bad? No one really knows. Songs from the band Chicago are cited.

9:30 – Google’s rolled out a new internal calculator explaining potential pay cuts to employees who choose to work remotely and people are getting penalized. Reuters reported on screenshots of this calculator.

12:00 – JLee gives Google a thumbs up for being a leader on the forefront of salary changing by location.

14:00 – Tim discusses the thought process that this is built on: I should get paid the same regardless of where I live. The reality is that every market substantiates different pay levels.

17:45 – JLee mentions that this decision is a hard one to make and someone has to be the leader on this forefront. She also mentions that there’s definitely room to change if there’s backlash.

22:45 – Are people taking on second jobs while they work from home? There’s a book coming out from an individual about their story working two remote jobs. Check out more at their website. They came out with 12 rules about working two remote jobs, the top of the list is “don’t talk about your other job.”

26:50 – One of their rules is “be average.” JLee says that this is when it falls apart. She says to kick butt at job No. 1 and work your way up there, instead of being average at two different jobs.

29:00 – KD asks the crew what percentage of adults work two jobs. JLee says 10% and Tim and KD say 1%.

30:30 – Tim had this happen to him with a contractor who was working two jobs.

34:30 – Tim thinks that people are too afraid of retaliation/being found out so he’s sticking with his 1% guess of people that work more than one job remotely.

How Much of a Pay Cut Are You Willing to Take to Work Remotely?

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A new study says 65% of Americans are willing to take a pay cut to work remotely! I thought that seemed high. Also, the concept didn’t really make sense to me. Why should someone take a pay cut to work remotely?

So, I decided to do a poll of my own on LinkedIn! It’s currently live, but it got massive traffic, and here are some of the initial results:

Tim’s Super Official LinkedIn Poll

Are People Really Willing to Take a Pay Cut to Work Remotely?

Yes, and no.

The vast majority of folks commented that there is no reason for someone to take a pay cut. But, my guess is, based on the results, if push came to shove, they probably would be willing to take a pay cut to work in the environment of their choosing.

So, you have what people say, and then you have what people actually do when faced with a real choice.

Also, I had a number of folks tell me my poll was flawed (well, of course, it is!) because I didn’t give the option of saying “No, I won’t take a pay cut to work remote, and remote is for me”, and “I expect a pay increase to work remote”. The problem is LinkedIn only gives me 4 options for poll results. So, it’s fun, but it’s limited.

Should someone take a pay cut to work remotely?

So, a lot of pro-remote folks got a bit defensive in the comments over this. I wasn’t personally asking anyone to take a pay cut. I was asking (and actually it wasn’t even me asking, I was just reacting to the new survey linked above) is working remotely valuable enough to you that you would be willing to take less pay to work in a remote environment?

I’m actually in the camp that if someone works remotely, their organization should probably be discussing with them the cost they face working remotely verse working on-premise. There are probably cases all across the spectrum of three options:

  1. It costs me more to work remotely, and my company should pay me more because of this fact, or force me back to work because it’s more cost effective, or I’m willing to take less pay because of this difference. (probably very rare)
  2. It costs me the same as working on-premise, and my company should at least pay me what it costs them to house me on-prem.
  3. It actually costs less for me to work remotely, and my company should probably give me a pay raise because I’m saving them so damn much money!

At the end of the day, everyone has a choice.

Some organizations will ask their teams to come back on-premise. This decision will be made after a lot of leadership discussion, and a decision will be made this is what’s best for the health of our organization. As an employee, you might not agree with that and thank god we live in America and are free to make the choice to work someplace else if you don’t agree with that.

Some organizations will decide to go full remote with their teams. Some will succeed, some will stay the same, some will fail. That’s the reality of being a leader and making leadership decisions. Not one of these decisions is actually right or wrong until we know the outcome.

I do think organizations, who are in a competitive talent fight, are going to have to add more flexibility. This does not mean full remote, but it does mean probably be way more flexible than they are used to being. I also think employees in general who work remotely have a rude awakening coming when it comes to technology monitoring and measured performance outcomes.

Organizations tend to bottom line. If it works, awesome, how do we do more of it. If it’s not working, we’re going to change, and find out what’s wrong. Too many employees believe they can perform better working remotely, but when I speak to CHRO’s, CFO”s, and CEO’s, the numbers have yet to reflect that that performance level. Some do perform better, but many don’t.

The question remains, would you take a pay cut to work remotely vs. on-prem?

TransfoRM Recruitment Marketing Conference! Sign Up Today!

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The World’s largest Recruitment Marketing Conference is Back for 2021! You can sign up for free here using the code “TIMTRANSFORM” to join TransfoRM 2021! The conference will be held on August 5th, coming to you live from DETROIT!

For the 5th year, I”ll be the Emcee for this event, and I’ll also be bringing you the 4th edition of my popular walk & talk series “Recruitment Marketing Bootcamp” and in this episode, I’ll be discussing AI in Recruitment.

TransfoRM is such a unique conference that has been breaking barriers since it was started five years ago, and it has created a community of some of the greatest Recruitment Marketing Professionals in the world. The interaction is tremendous, and I wish more conferences would take note of what TransfoRM does! It’s fast, fun, and informational. No back-to-back, one-hour sessions – sessions that are short and sweet, get to the point, and make us smarter!

Who else will be joining me for TransfoRM 2021 Virtual?

  • Torin Ellis – my friend and who I believe is the top Diversity Recruitment Strategist in the world, will be dropping his amazing knowledge on us!
  • Debbie Tuel – The Chief Joy Officer and the Queen of the Joy Roadshows for Symphony Talent
  • Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman – From the popular HR Tech podcast Chad and Cheese
  • Julie Sowash – Amazing disability advocate and star of the podcast Crazy and the King
  • Roopesh Nair – the CEO of Symphony, and one of the smartest dudes you’ll ever hear from in Recruiting!
  • Advent Health will bring you Talent Attraction Strategies you haven’t thought of!

What else? TransfoRM 2022 will be coming back LIVE and if you register using my code “TIMTRANSFORM” you will get $500 off the live event also, for next year, on top of getting into the virtual 2021 conference for FREE!

Even if you can’t make the live event on August 5th, sign up and you can get the content sent to you afterward so you don’t miss a minute of great ideas and motivation!

Can You Find Cheaper Talent in the Midwest? #HRFamous

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On episode 68 of The HR Famous Podcast, longtime HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to discuss their new diets for a post-quarantine summer, Apple’s return to work plans, and the managers finding cheaper domestic talent outside of elite/expensive labor markets.

Show Highlights

2:15 – JLee is currently on a vegan kick and she is very hungry.

5:00 – Tim is also trying a new diet for his upcoming family trip to Hawaii for Thanksgiving. He’s seeing some changes so far!

8:00 – KD did 100 pull-ups in the course of 90 minutes and it destroyed him. He said it took five days for his body to recover.

12:00 – One of the movies that cemented JLee’s switch to a more plant-based diet is called Game Changers (on Netflix), and it’s about a UFC fighter who went vegan and had life-changing results.

13:20 – Starting in September, Apple employees will have to return to the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. JLee likes that there is some balance but she doesn’t like that there isn’t more flexibility.

18:30 – In juxtaposition to Apple, Facebook has come out and said that they will stay completely virtual for the foreseeable future.

22:00 – A trend we’re seeing in hiring is “offshoring of talent.” Since there are different costs of living in different places, managers are seeing a potential gain from hiring those who live and work in cheaper places.

27:00 – Tim doesn’t think that this is a salary cut across the board but it’s more of a market correction on the places that had extremely high costs.

30:00 – JLee is interested to see if there will be retention or turnover issues post-Labor Day when a lot of companies will start to enact their return-to-work plans.

Naomi Osaka and Mental Health in the Workplace #HRFamous

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On episode 67 of The HR Famous Podcast, longtime HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to discuss Zoom backgrounds, Naomi Osaka and mental health, and LinkedIn’s acquisition of the platform Hopin.

Show Highlights

3:15 – Tim has read that it is healthier not to make your bed. What do we think? It sounds pretty gross.

4:00 – Are we sick of virtual Zoom backgrounds? Tim was bamboozled by someone’s background recently.

7:40 – First topic: Tennis star Naomi Osaka recently refused to partake in press at the French Open due to mental health reasons and later withdrew from the competition. Tim asks the crew whether high-profile people like athletes and celebrities should be forced to do press.

10:30 – JLee thinks that people like Osaka and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have extenuating circumstances because they are so famous and have such immense pressures that most people cannot understand.

13:00 – KD thinks that a lot of people in the “toughen up” camp have really grown and learned from the normalizing of mental health concerns. However, Naomi is different from the run-of-the-mill employee.

17:30 – JLee thinks it’s important to try to have empathy and grace for what people are going through without always knowing what is going on.

18:30 – KD shares his life during the pandemic where he got too into working and has had to set some boundaries in his personal life for when he can and should be working.

21:00 – Tim is concerned that there is a “mental health trap” where people that are underperforming may use mental health concerns as a faux crutch to explain their poor performance on the job.

23:20 – Naomi Osaka is dating rapper Cordae. Tim quizzes KD and JLee on his music and whether they know any of his songs.

24:30 – LinkedIn recently bought the virtual events platform Hopin. Tim thinks it’s a little clunky and isn’t great from a user experience. JLee is a fan of attending their virtual events, but wants in-person events back!

Are Your Executives Addicted to Leadership Porn?

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On episode 65 of The HR Famous Podcast, longtime HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to discuss electric vehicles, leadership porn, and ride-sharing companies ramping up signing bonuses for drivers due to wait times and fares being up significantly.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights

3:00 – KD asks JLee what the first electronic vehicle (EV) she’ll own will be. JLee’s husband wants the Tesla Model Y. Tim wants the Hummer EV Edition 1, but he might have to get it used.

8:00 – First topic: CEO and leadership clickbait! All HR people have seen a leader who will create a big email thread about an article they’ve become obsessed with.

10:00 – This is the CNBC article by Compass CEO Robert Reffkin about five quick tests for hiring. Some of these include the “good person,”, “energy,” and “another offer” test.  KD thinks it’s a hoot and representative of everything that’s wrong with leadership content.

12:30 – Tim thinks that Reffkin sounds like he’s trying to hire a grandmother with some of his rules. Do we really want everyone to live by the golden rule? And how do you freaking figure that out in an interview process?

14:30 – Reffkin discusses in the article how the term “culture fit” can be a disguise for discrimination, then proceeds to add ways he can hire whom he wants with his own, made-up principles.

18:00 – KD says the problem with “leadership porn” is when it gets passed down to the masses who maybe don’t have the experience or expertise to critically look at the lessons getting passed down.

20:30 – Don’t try to match your navy’s folks!

21:30 – Time for the CHRO move of the week! Snap (formally known as Snapchat) hired Darcy Henry as their new CHRO. She was poached from Amazon.

24:00 – If you want an entry-level HR job, try recruiting!

27:00 – Driver shortages are really crushing the ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft as reported by The Verge. KD reports that rid-sharing companies are adding their own stimulus program by way of signing bonuses for drivers.

29:00 – JLee reports that Peter Cappelli says that companies need to stop complaining about the labor shortages because they “broke trust” with workers in his new article. KD acknowledges that JLee is simply reporting what he said, then mocks Cappelli for blaming companies for eroding trust because they had to cut payroll or go out of business because of a global pandemic.

31:30 – Tim says that once the stimulus ends in September, hiring is not going to get magically easier and it’ll still be hard to hire hourly workers.