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Do you have your CEOs cell phone number?

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The world is moving pretty fast right now. Seems like you can’t step away from the news cycle for a minute without something new popping up and changing what we thought to be fact just seconds before.

That’s why I found it refreshing this week when I read a story about Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick giving out his personal cell phone number to all of his employees. If you work for a small or even medium-sized business you might not find this to be a big deal, but Bobby has 10,000 employees!

“The uncertainty created by the coronavirus pandemic can take its toll on employees. For the 10,000 or so who work at Activision Blizzard around the world, one person they can call is CEO Bobby Kotick. 

“About a month ago, we sent out an email from my email address with my phone number and we encouraged every single employee that has a concern that relates to their health care to just contact me directly,” Kotick told CNBC’s Becky Quick on “Squawk Box.”

Kotick said “a few hundred” employees have reached out to him since that email. “But we’re fortunate. Very few actually tested positive so far for Covid-19.”

I’ve met a lot of great CEOs in my time. Some wonderful, extremely caring folks, and a few assholes. There are not many who would do this with this number. There would be meetings with PR and Comms and HR, and eventually, there would be this rollout of a hundred underlings who would be taking your call directly.

The decision would be made that the CEO would do a weekly town hall, live, and you could send in your questions to be answered, etc. All of those questions would be washed and pre-loaded, and the CEO would say the exact right thing. That is how the sausage is made kids!

The vast majority of CEOs would tell you they would do the exact same thing as Bobby, but they haven’t and they won’t. I don’t know if Bobby is a great leader, but that was a great leader move.

Your people are nervous and scared and frustrated. They don’t want a perfectly prepared Q & A. They just want to let you know how they are feeling. The best CEOs I’ve worked with would find that information priceless. They search out unfiltered news from the trenches!

Turns out, all you have to do is email your cell phone number out to the email list titled”
All Employees” and hit send!

 

#CoronaDiaries – Return to Work Protocols and Your MVPs! (video)

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This week on the Corona Diaries I dig into what the heck it’s going to be like when we finally all come back to work, from our Work from Home sentences! At least for the extroverts who can’t wait to get back to work, or those parents who have been locked in with their crazy kids!

I also talk about the concept of those employees who contract and get better from COVID (should we call them “Covivors” – shout out to Mary Kaylor at SHRM as we were discussing what we might tag someone who is on the backside of the virus) and now have a special place in society.

Are you working on your RTW Protocols – if so, share a tip you’ve discovered while talking through this and strategizing at your organization in the comments below!

Reader Question: Can I negotiate my offer during the COVID Pandemic?

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So, we like to think that no one is hiring right now, or the only people hiring are Amazon, Grubhub, hospitals, etc. The reality is, even in the worse economy, a lot of stuff still needs to happen.

Many organizations are finding out they can still get a bunch of their work done with folks at home, and collaborating in new ways, and the learning curve is steep, but everyone is working together to figure it out.

I had a call this past week from a soon to be college graduate, dual major, Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering from a great school, so it makes sense he already has an offer. He had some questions for me. He was excited, of course, and understood that he was the exception right now, not the rule. With historic unemployment, companies are still going to want him!

One of the questions he had was where and how do you negotiate during a crisis situation like this. The company that offered him the job, was also laying employees off! Not the best environment to play hardball negotiator! Plus, his school had stopped all career fairs, etc. So, he didn’t have a traditional route many college students would have in normal times to connect with some other employers.

Can I, and should I, negotiate my offer during this COVID crisis? 

My answer:

You can negotiate anytime you feel you need to, but having the political savviness to understand the situation and current timing might work for you best long term if you don’t right now.

That being said, here’s how I would negotiate right now! First, you have to play this very coy. You, and the person making the offer, both know the dire straights going on right now, especially when employees are being laid off, but they’re making you an offer.

There are two things I might try if you feel like you can play this very soft. First, you still have a semester left of school, you could politely ask if they have any kind of tuition assistance and would they be willing to help you out during this last semester? The other ask could be for a signing bonus, to be paid upon start, which is later in the year, but good to negotiate now.

There is little risk they will pull the offer because you are trying to negotiate, and if you play it right you will come out looking fine, no matter the outcome. The other option is to just wait until your actual start date in December and then ask for a sign-on bonus at that point, or as you get close to starting, make the call and say something like, “Hey, I’ve got some friends who have accepted at other companies and they are all getting some sort of sign-on bonus, is this something I can get as well?”

You will learn a few things in this process:

  1. You don’t get what you don’t ask for, but timing can be everything in terms of when you ask.
  2. You are the only person managing your career. If you wait for a company to do it, you’ll miss out on a lot. Manage your own career.
  3. The job offer is contingent on them actually needing you when it comes time for you to start. It’s not a guarantee the employer will need you, so you don’t need to act like you’re signing a guaranteed contract. Things can and will happen between now and December.
  4. Know your value. Just because it sucks for everyone else, doesn’t mean it sucks for you.

What do you think? Should you negotiate in trying times?

 

Trying Not to Lose in HR!

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I usually love this time of year, primarily for March Madness and because I love basketball.  I should have spent the weekend watching the NCAA Tournament but alas nature had other plans, and instead I spent that time watching past games which weren’t quite the same.

While enjoying this pastime I heard very often the sports cliche: “They are playing not to lose versus trying to win”.

For those who have competed in sports (and for many in business), you know exactly what this looks and feels like. It’s playing keep-away with the ball when you’re up 3 in the first half!  No! Stop! Run your normal offense. It’s your favorite NFL team going into a prevent defense up 10 points with 15 minutes to play (Don’t do it – it’s going to “prevent” you from winning!).  Playing not to lose is being conservative may be too conservative to the point of you stop doing what it took that got you in the position to win.

We do this in HR.

Too many times we tell managers “No” when we should be telling them “Yes” we become so risk avoidant that we miss out on some very good opportunities for our organization. It’s not HR’s job to avoid risk, it’s HR’s job to measure the level of risk and work with our organizational partners to determine if they are comfortable with the level of risk we are about to take. Those are two very different things and many HR Pros misconstrue this issue. They try at all costs to avoid all risks, which isn’t necessarily the right thing for the business. They aren’t trying to win, they’re trying not to lose.

The next time you find yourself in a position of giving advice to your operations partners at work, ask yourself this one question –

  • Am I trying to make the company/organization better right now, or am I trying to eliminate risk?

Then determine, what should I be doing? For some of you, the right choice will be to say – at this point, right now, I have to eliminate risk it’s the right call. But for many of you, you will have to circle back and truly try to make your organizations better by managing the risk that is presented.

Spend today trying to win.

Who are your “Essential” employees!?

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Karen in Payroll – can you come to the CEO’s office!

In Michigan, we got the governor’s executive order to work from home for all nonessential companies. Basically, the only companies that should still be working at the office are those saving or sustaining life.

The order was like 18 pages. One of the bullet points directed that HR professionals responsible for ensuring payroll checks were processed and benefits administration continued were considered essential!

Eat that you other HR and Talent Pros!

Payroll and Benefits are Essential!!! You’re all non-essential! If fact, why are you still here? Get out, let the pros work in peace and safety, you dirty, virus-carrying waste of space wannabes!

It’s true. If our folks don’t get their paychecks, it’s a problem! Right now, more than ever we need access to our benefits, and for many people, who rarely use their benefits, they’ll have questions and be in a panic! So, feel yourself right now Karen in Payroll! We salute you as a first responder!

Have you ever wondered if you were an “Essential” employee? 

Many of us are finding this out for the first time right now. For those who worked through 9/11 and the Great Recession, you’ve probably experienced this. At some point in crisis situations and terrible economies, organizations go through a strategy talk about who is essential and who is non-essential to the business.

A great example of being an “Essential” employee is I heard a story from one of our Utility clients recently where they have certain employees who will be locked in the power plants during the pandemic. They have beds, and food stores, etc. But, the utility has to ensure these employees don’t get sick or the power grid could come down!

I’ve been in the unenviable task, many times in my career, where an executive has said, “Tim I need a list of employees we can cut, and still deliver our critical services, products, etc.” Big spreadsheets, a lot of conversations with leaders, and ultimately the list of death.

It’s not fun. It’s not exciting. You go home each night and drink.

Almost every time I’ve put these lists together I did the one thing I thought was responsible, which was I put my own name on that list with all the other names. After making sure we have all these talks, and make the moves we need to make, the last move will be me locking my door and leaving as well.

Every single time, and CEO, CHRO, etc., who I was reporting to saw the list and said, “Take your name off the list” you are essential and here’s why. Now, I didn’t think I wasn’t essential, but it’s a great test to find out, because if they accepted the list with me on it, then I know for sure!

The thing is we always want to be essential. If you think about your current role and you can ask a few questions to determine if your role is essential:

  1. If you don’t come to work, your customers can’t get your products and services?
  2. If you don’t come to work, a system or process doesn’t get done that ensures your product or services function in the way they should?
  3. If you don’t come to work, and your work doesn’t get done, something catastrophic will happen to your organization?
  4. You are the only one in your organization that does what you do?
  5. Someone else makes decisions on what you do and has the ability to do what you do?

Non-essential doesn’t mean you’re not important. It just means you might not be critical to keeping the lights on and making the donuts. When it comes to career security, being “essential” is truly the ultimate security.

 

What’s Wrong with Virtual Conferences? #Covid19 #Coronavirus

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My Spring is usually filled with travel. This year because of the “Great Outbreak’ (I used this on Twitter before everyone, once you start to see it everywhere, just know, you and I, will know where it truly came from!) I’m not traveling at all, but I’m still doing a few conferences, virtually.

Virtual conferences have been around for a long time. Almost every organization I know has tried them at least once. Most of these were free events and while most have fairly high numbers organizations go back to the “real’ thing. Most of us tend to not like virtual conferences over the in-person conferences. Why?

I have an opinion that most virtual conferences fail to prosper is because we try and take the in-person experience and we just transfer it to online. Here’s everything we did at the in-person show, now it’s online and just via video. The thing is, an in-person presentation is quite different from an online presentation. It’s one reason so many people hate webinars! It’s just some person talking at you through your speakers with a deck in place of their actual face.

The reality is, these two experiences, in-person vs. virtual are truly two extremely different experiences. Just throwing content up online doesn’t make it the same. In fact, it kind of sucks for most attendees!

So, how could we make virtual conferences better? Big question! One no one has really figured out. We just keep throwing the same garbage up thinking it’s the future of conferences. It’s not, in its current format. Here are some things I think we should be doing to make virtual conferences something people will want to attend and pay for:

– Live interaction with the community attending. One way to make this something people will remember is to get them more involved. I once did a “live” virtual event, which wasn’t really live. My presentation was recorded and then ran at a specific time and date, but I actually went into the chat while I was presenting and started asking questions and responding, etc. The chat blew up and everyone was interacting.

– Live video feed of the presenter, not just the slides. We know people are more likely to watch a live person speak versus just watch a static slide for two minutes while you tell some story or make your point. Virtual conferences need to find out how to put the real person on screen.

– Full professional production. You know what we love, all of us? Watching a well-produced TV show. If I’m running a virtual conference I’m not renting out a hotel ballroom and stage, I’m renting out a production studio and I’m going to make sure I’ve got great sound and lighting, etc. If you want someone to pay $1,000 or $2,000 to attend a virtual event, I better be entertained and it better look and sounds amazing. In the middle of the presentations give me live “anchors” talking about what we just saw and what we are about to see. Bring on a guest to talk shop, etc.

This will cost some money. It will cost way less money than an actual in-person conference, but if you want to make money doing virtual events, you need to up the production value a million times more than it is right now. No one is going to pay you big money to jump on a pseudo-Zoom conference call!

Navarro Cheer Coach, @MonicaAldama, is the Greatest Leader of our Time!

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If you haven’t watched the series, Cheer, on Netflix yet, you must! It’s great.

Honestly, I wasn’t thrilled to watch a series about cheerleading. Just not something I thought I would be interested in, but it’s so much more than a show about cheerleading. It’s about getting to great performance, about inclusion, about leadership, and about how a great leader with a vision and no-how can take any organization to the next level.

For those who haven’t seen Cheer, I’ll give you the quick rundown. Navarro College is a two-year community college in the middle of nowhere Texas, that has a multi-time national championship cheer team. It’s led by hometown coach, Monica Aldama, who just happens to have a degree in Finance from the Univ. of Texas, Austin, and her MBA, but decided to come back to sleepy Corsicana, TX to get married and raise her family.

She was a cheerleader in high school and decided to take a job as cheer coach at the local college, and her type-A personality, world-class attention to detail, superior drive, business knowledge, lead her to become the greatest cheer coach in the country at any level, where kids from all over the US are looking to come to Navarro College if you want to reach the highest level of cheer.

Why is Monica Aldama the Greatest Leader of our Time? 

– She’s performance-driven at a world-class level. She seeks perfection and understands to get there she has to rely on 20-ish 18 to 21-year-olds who have to be pushed to levels they can’t even imagine.

– She’s a relationship-based leader. To get the highest performance out of someone as a leader, that person must believe and trust 100% that you have their best interest in mind. Their future. That you are helping them become the best version of themselves and nothing else.

– She is a data-driven leader. Early on Monica found out her background in finance and numbers would serve her well in how these competitions were scored and understood beyond her peers what it would really take to win at the highest level.

– Practice, practice, practice. Another thing that most people don’t understand about the show is Navarro Collge, being a two-year college isn’t under NCAA rules for practice time, scholarships, etc. There is an NJCAA governing body, but having a kid who played two years of JUCO baseball, I can tell you there are no real rules! So, Monica being at a two-year school gives her a major advantage over traditional four-year schools bound by NCAA practic rules. Is that fair? Is that too much on these kids? If you want to be the best, and this coach and these kids do, you don’t care. They don’t care!

– Attention to detail is off the charts! The way you practice. The way you look. The way to represent the team and the community. Every single step, movement, she is watching. I find that the greatest leaders I work with have extremely high attention to detail. They see things others don’t, all the time, and then make sure those things are changed for the better.

– She embraces diversity and inclusion. Monica was raised and lives in a very conservative area. Many of her athletes, especially on the male side, are gay. Many are people of color. Many come from disadvantage homelives. She embraces it all and helps these kids grow into adults.

– She has high rational compassion. What’s that? She cares about everyone on her team as an individual, but she isn’t willing to hurt the overall team, for the sake of one individual. You are injured. You were on the performing team. If we keep you, you might not perform to the level we need to win. You are now off the performing team, and we’ve replaced you with an alternate. The team needs this, and you need to support it, as you are still a part of this team, and you having drama right now hurts our team.

Here’s what I know. You could put Monica into the CEO role of any Fortune 500 company, today, and she would succeed. She has all of the DNA needed to be great at leading people, leading an organization, reaching extremely high performance.

Set a goal. Have the vision. Do the work. Hold people accountable. Care for each other.

Don’t @ me trolls! Monica Aldama is the greatest leader of our generation and you can’t convince me otherwise!

The 3 Rules for Kissing Your Boss on Valentine’s Day!

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May 20, 2013, I published a silly little post on my blog called “The Rules About Hugging at Work”. The post might have taken me twenty minutes to write. It was just an idea I got, like thousands of others, I thought it was funny, so I wrote about it. To date, it’s been read over 1 Million times. Huff Post picked it up, it went viral on LinkedIn (I got over 1300 comments), I’ve been interviewed and called, “The World’s Foremost Expert on Workplace Hugging”.

Twenty minutes of writing, a throwaway idea.

Months later I posted the exact same post on LinkedIn’s publishing platform. This was before everyone could publish (remember that), you had to be invited. I got a call from the LinkedIn chief editor offering me access. I didn’t know if it was really anything so I just threw up old posts I had already written but added a few new pieces.

On the Hugging post, I added at the bottom my next post would be: The 3 Rules About Kissing Your Boss! as a joke. I never wrote it. Until five years later I got a message last week from someone who found the hugging post for the first time asking how they could find the kissing post! I didn’t even know what they were talking about!

So, here’s the kissing post! 

It would be easy to dismiss the notion of kissing your boss as something that would never happen. When I say ‘never’ I mean never. I mean honestly do any of us ever feel it would be appropriate to kiss your boss!?

This one is hard for me. I come from a family of huggers and kissers! My father is 73 and he still kisses me on the lips when I greet him or say goodbye. Some folks would find that super weird. Different cultures do different things.

My son went overseas visiting friends in Belgium and it was quite common for new people he met to give him that traditional kiss on the cheek, but he said those same people would not give you a hug or a handshake. This kiss on the cheek greeting is very common in many parts of the world (I wonder if this is changing with Coronavirus!?!).

In America, you would probably get punched in the face if you tried kissing someone on the cheek you were meeting for the first time! I mean, look, if I don’t know you, I certainly don’t want your germs all over my face! Most Europeans I meet for business purposes in the states who come here often have gotten used to handshakes, rarely do I see one of them do the cheek kiss greeting.

All of this is way different, though, then kissing your boss! Kissing your boss would have to be a special circumstance or special occasion. I’m guessing if you’re kissing your boss one of a few things probably hasn’t happened in that relationship. You’ve probably become very good friends, some once in a lifetime event is happening, or you’ve become romantically involved, in which case, not really your boss any longer!

So, if we can see a time in which you might kiss your boss, the great HR pro in me says we better put some pen to policy and make some rules! Here are my three rules for kissing your boss:

1. No kissing on the lips. Kissing on the lips is a slippery slope you can’t put back in the bag! Wants that happens you might as well just get undressed, stuff just got real! We’re going to assume this kiss is not romantic in nature, completely as professional as kissing your boss can be professional!

2. Do not leave moisture on your boss’s cheek. Okay, somehow we got down this rabbit hole to a point where I’m kissing my boss on his or her cheek, let’s not make this super awkward by leaving a nice big wet spot on the side of their face. If you’re so excited to be kissing your boss’s cheek that you leave it wet, you should be checked into a mental ward.

3. Do not have bad breath. First impressions are critical and even though your boss knows you, your boss doesn’t know the kissing you. Do not go in for that first boss kiss with bad breath! I love Ice Breakers Mints and I have some close by almost always. Why? I can’t stand bad breath. Coffee breath is the worst and I know a lot of you are major coffee drinkers! Guess what? Diet Mt Dew breath smells like a flower garden! Think about that next time you go for a fill-up at the coffee station at work!

See? That’s how you do it. That’s how the World’s Foremost Expert in Workplace Hugging becomes the World’s Foremost Expert on Boss Kissing. You can’t be a one-trick pony in this world folks, we all need to keep striving on reinventing ourselves. Watch out this season’s conference circuit! If you see Sackett coming, I might have just raised the game!

So, hit me in the comments. What are your rules for kissing your boss!?

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Talkpush #HRTech

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This week on The Weekly Dose I revisit a recruiting technology called Talkpush that I originally took a look 5 years ago! Guess what? Quite a few things changed in five years!

Talkpush, now, is the Recruitment Automation Platform that makes hiring conversations happen faster and more naturally. Talkpush is also a tool for high volume hiring, so if you’re not hiring at least 1,000 hires per year, this is something that probably doesn’t make sense for you to have. If you’re hiring 1,000 and over, then you have to check it out!

Five years ago, Talkpush was basically a voice screening solution and a good one. Since then, Talkpush has moved with technology to include screening over messaging apps like Facebook and WhatsApp, career sites, micro-sites for hiring events, and live chat between recruiters and candidates.

Talkpush figured out early on great candidate experience and your ability to hire at volume meant you needed to automate as much of the up-front recruitment process as necessary. Candidate applies to a job or shows interest on a messaging app, and the AI-driven chat technology takes over and engages each candidate, until a point where it’s far enough down the process that a real-live recruiter needs to jump in.

What do I like about Talkpush’s technology? 

– It gives you the ability to communicate with candidates in the way they want to communicate. We all have our preferences. You might prefer someone contacts via text message, or Facebook Messanger, or a phone call, or email, or WhatsApp. No judgment, we all have our favorites, and if you’re a global organization, it changes drastically depending on what country you’re trying to hire in!

– Truly global hiring technology. Eight+ languages and variations of those languages. The majority of their mass hiring clients are actually out of the U.S. So, if you’re hiring global, they know the ins and outs of what a global workforce is demanding in terms of candidate communication.

– It’s a hybrid technology model and brings in a real-life recruiter at just the right time. So, it’s not about automating the entire journey, but putting in as much automation as possible until it’s time for a real candidate and a real recruiter/screener/hiring manager to connect. Then they make that happen in real-time, seamlessly.

– Post jobs, capture candidate video, make a phone call all from the Talkpush dashboard. In five years, they’ve turned their technology into a full end-to-end recruitment automation that hires at volume. From the first click as a candidate to the first day of hire, your hiring team can live within Talkpush.

– Their funnel analytics and data are way ahead of the competition. And with how they measure and collect data across your hiring process, their insights are substantial. Plus, I think most leaders want a component of visual data and Talkpush’s “arts and charts” are far and away the best I’ve seen in the market.

I’m a huge advocate for text messaging in recruitment. But I’m also naive to global recruiting in so many aspects. The reality is text messaging in many parts of the world, outside the US, is expensive and unreliable, as a form of candidate communication. But technology like Facebook Messanger and WhatsApp are the go-to technology in many other countries when it comes to contacting candidates.

If you are currently, or preparing, to do mass hiring in the US or globally, Talkpush is one of those technologies you really need to demo! It’s one of the most economical mass hiring solutions I’ve seen. Check them out!

5 New Years Recruiting Resolutions You Need to Follow and How!

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(Boy! Someone needs a shave!)

Free Webcast: January 28, 2019 at 1 PM EST (12 PM CST, 10 AM PST)

Come join me and Jessica Miller-Merrell as we break down 5 of the biggest areas every Talent Acquisition department should be focusing on in 2020!

Session Description:

It’s a candidate-driven job market right now. And there are no signs of the frenzied pace of hiring slowing down. With the rapid-fire pace everyone is moving, it’s a challenge to slow down enough to plan and prioritize. With this webinar, we’ve got you covered. Join this webinar presentation sharing the top 5 recruiting priorities you need to be focusing on in the new year. We’ll go beyond talent acquisition buzz words sharing real-world application that is designed to put you in a competitive advantage in the talent marketplace. Hear how to prioritize your efforts, where to focus, and how to drive the most qualified candidates in the quickest way possible using these 5 strategies for success.
This webinar is worth 1.0 HRCI Business and SHRM credit.

A replay will be available for those unable to attend the webinar live. 

Register Here!