Category Archives: Wellness

DisruptHR Detroit Speaker Applications Now Being Accepted!!! But, you probably can’t handle it! #8Mile

Posted on by
Reply

Look, I just like being honest. This isn’t DisruptHR Brentwood or DisruptHR Nantucket! This is Detroit! We do real HR in the D!

Come on, just be real with yourself for a moment, you can’t handle Detroit. It’s okay, you’ll do fine at DisruptHR Sun City. Just slow down and do some tour stops before you come to Detroit!

You see, we actually make stuff that sells for money in Detroit. We have employees who get their hands dirty. We have to live in snow and cold for six months out of the year, which tends to leave us a little less likely to be willing to consume your weak B.S. When you come to DisruptHR Detroit, you better bring it!

Alright, I hear you feeling yourself. You just might be ready to hit 8 Mile and the rap battle that is HR in Detroit. DisruptHR Detroit will take place on September 20th onsite at Quicken Loans awesome event space in the heart of downtown Detroit.

Want to speak at DisruptHR Detroit? (what you need to know) 

– It’s 5 Minutes, 20 slides, the slides automatically move every 15 seconds (this is not something you can change!)

– If you’re a vendor you try selling your product in the 5 minutes, we’ll Gong Show your ass right off the stage!

– DisruptHR is about emotion – make us laugh, make us cry, make us angry, make us motivated. Just make us feel something!

– There will be over 250 HR and Talent Pros in the audience cheering you on. (FYI – many in the audience will be drinking!)

– You will get a video recorded, professionally produced copy of your presentation!

Apply to Speak at DisruptHR Detroit! 

Upgrade Your Employee Experience with a “Nap Experience”!

Posted on by
2

Okay, I already know that there are some “ultra-cool” employers our their with sleep pods, but let’s face it, ‘real’ employers don’t have sleep pods in their work environment!

Yes, I just said it. If you have sleep pods in your work environment you’re not real. You are a Unicorn. That’s fine a lot of people love unicorns! The reality is, though, most of us in HR and Talent don’t work for unicorns. We just work on regular old employee farms.

But, just because you’re not a Unicorn doesn’t mean you can’t offer your employees that unicorn-level Nap Experience! Casper Mattress (you know the mattress company that for $1,000 will send you a mattress to your house in a box and you get to pop the plastic wrapper and watch it grow like a sponge animal in water) opened a “Nap Store” in New York City:

“Right next to its New York City store, Casper has launched a branded nap destination called the Dreamery. For $25, customers can catch a 45-minute nap inside little sleeping pods, furnished with Casper mattresses (obviously) as well as Casper sheets, pillows, blankets, socks, and an eye mask. Staff will provide fresh linen for every nap, and also on loan are pajamas by Sleepy Jones, a toothbrushing set from Hello, face wash from Sunday Riley, and audio tracks from Headspace — you know, all the necessary sleep accouterments any Instagram-fluent millennial could desire.”

Yep, for the low cost of $25 you can give your employees a little ‘nap’ bonus and it doesn’t even have to be taxed!

Let’s face it. No one really wants to sleep at work in some gross sleep pod that Ted from IT just spend the last two hours in hiding while playing Fortnite! What we want is our own private, clean area to sleep during work, before we go home to watch Netflix until 3 am, so we can then go back to work and get another one of those great Nap Experiences!

I want a Nap Experience right now!

I once spent a $125 to jump off the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. It took 12 seconds to fall to the ground. For $125 I could have a 225 minute Nap Experience!!! Let me tell you, right now, I’m always choosing the 225 minute Nap Experience over jumping off a building!

You in 2018 we really haven’t had anything come out yet that has had real impact on increasing the Employee Experience. That was until this week!!! I’m going to go out a limb here and say that the “Nap Experience” might become the biggest thing to ever happen to sustain a positive workplace culture!

The other idea that hasn’t been tried yet, but would also totally work is “Rent-A-Puppy”. If you combine Nap Experience with Rent-A-Puppy experience you might be able to take over the entire world!

So, hit me in the comments below – are you Pro Nap Experience or Con Nap Experience?

 

The Grass Isn’t Always Greener…

Posted on by
8

This is HR’s go-to advice for employees who put in their two-week notice, especially if that employee is heading to a competitor:

“Just remember! The grass isn’t always greener!” 

HR is mostly right. I’d say here’s the actual breakdown of ‘greenest’:

  • 50% is actually about the same shade of green. You’re moving to just move. You’ll find the job, the people, the money, everything is almost the same. The only change is the name and maybe the location by a bit.
  • 30% is going to be a nice shade of light brown, meaning the grass isn’t green at all, it’s dead! HR wants to believe this number is higher but it’s not, but it’s high enough to give some folks some pause before making such a big decision.
  • 10% is way greener! Like green M&M green. Dream job green! Everything is better and you’re so happy you made the move. You found your dream job!
  • 10% isn’t grass at all. Someone replaced the grass with some other material, like in Phoenix where grass can’t grow so they pave the front yard and paint it green, or just put in rock and cactus. This is completely something you didn’t expect. You were hoping for a better job, and you got something that isn’t better but not worse, it’s not even the job you expected, so you can’t really compare.

So, you have about a 10% chance of getting what you think you’re getting. Not good odds, but like I said, most employees way overthink their odds on this and probably believe they have a 70-90% of bettering themselves when they move. Most will just stay the same or get slightly worse.

Why do we believe moving is better?

1. You’re being sold. Sold by a recruiter and a hiring manager that you’ll be moving from a trailer park to Disney World. You really, really want to believe that’s true, so you buy!

2. You over-value that what we don’t know, over what we already have. This happens in so many areas of our life. Relationships. Jobs. A table at a restaurant.

3. You over-value what others have, over what you have. Think about this for a minute. You’re so eager to get out of this job, yet others are so eager to get this job. What does that say? You’re brilliant and everyone else is an idiot? Probably not. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

Everyone keeps telling me all these ‘new’ young workers just want to jump from job to job. They don’t have loyalty, etc. The reality is much less about their desire to move, and more about them being more naive to the realities of changing jobs.  We all loved changing jobs until it backfires and you leave something good, for something crappy.

Once that happens, you’re less likely to change jobs the rest of your career, even if you’re in a bad job! Don’t underestimate what you currently have. It’s probably way better than you’re making it out to be, and the new gig isn’t as good as it sounds. That’s not sexy, that’s just reality.

Career Confessions of Gen Z: What Would ‘Siesta’ Look Like in America?

Posted on by
Reply

One of the hardest things for me to get used to during my time abroad is the different schedule. The meals in Spain (and in many other countries) are later, generally, lunch is eaten around 2 and dinner is eaten around 9 or 10. These late eating times are killing me, and I am constantly hungry all morning and late afternoon.

Although I can’t stand the eating schedule, one of my favorite things about Spain so far is the siesta time. If you’ve never heard of it, there is a built-in time after lunch for everyone to rest or take a little nap before they head back to work or do their other afternoon activities. Everyone heads home from work or school, eats a huge meal, and then takes a quick, little nap.

A big cultural difference between Spain and America centers around the schedules and hours that people work. The average American from age 25-54 works about 40 hours a week, while the average Spaniard works about 38.5 hours a week. Although there isn’t a huge difference in this amount, the hours of the day worked is really different. In America, you hear about the “9-5” or as my Dad likes to tell me “now everyone works 8-5”. In Spain, people go to work around 9, come home from about 2-4:30/5 and return to work for another 2 or 3 hours.

In Spain, this break in the middle of the day allows families to spend quality time together in the middle of the day. There were many years of my life where my whole family would maybe have one meal together a week, and my parents made it a priority to eat together as much as possible. There are many important benefits of spending time together as a family, such as building self-esteem and relieving stress.

In a society where depression rates among teens are at an all-time high, I think that a schedule with built-in family time (and nap time!) is a pretty freaking great idea. Every year that I’ve gotten older, I see my family less and less and that sucks! People around my age in Spain get to see their entire family every day!

Now, we can blame my lack of family time on the fact that I live in a different city but I lived at home for the majority of my life and there were many days where I got to see my Dad for maybe 10 minutes. My Dad is pretty great and I want to see him for more than 10 minutes a day! (Editor/Dad note: FYI – I did not add this line!) 

I’m not saying that I think this type of schedule would work in America. This schedule works in Spain because of the culture here, and I don’t believe that this would work well in America, but we can learn a lesson here. In my opinion, sacrificing a little bit of work time to spend time with your family can have some really great benefits. And who doesn’t love a little afternoon nap?!

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a Gen Z? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Career Confessions of Gen Z: Is Humor Generational?

Posted on by
2

Growing up, I had to deal with many instances of embarrassment. Not only was I a normal awkward pre-teen that had braces and didn’t know how to talk to people, I also had Tim Sackett as my father. As many of you know, my Dad has a very interesting sense of humor. My Mom likes to explain it like this: when you’re making a joke, there’s a line and if you cross that line, you enter a place where you can offend someone. My Father has no regard for this line whatsoever and is constantly crossing it. Many people (me included) think my Dad is hilarious, but I always was constantly worried that my Dad was going to embarrass me in some way or offend someone.

Recently, there seems to be a gap between certain generations and what they find funny. We are seeing more and more instances of people getting offended or feeling uncomfortable from a joke made by someone from a different generation. While this type of thing isn’t uncommon, it can be particularly tricky in an era where being more culturally aware or politically correct is more of a concern. There are two types of situations to watch out for when thinking about humor in a workplace: instances of potential insulting or instances of a lack of understanding.

When it comes to offensive jokes, the bottom line is just don’t be a dick. My best advice is to follow the age-old Golden Rule: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. If you avoid making negative jokes about a certain group, then you most likely are avoiding any potential harm.

There is some gray area with this and I would say to avoid anything that might be slightly perceived as negative in situations where you are new or you might not know the receivers of your joke super well. In these instances, a good general guideline is to not say anything you wouldn’t want your Mom hearing you say. If you’re more comfortable with the people around, then go for it. Also, I am not a woman but I will do my best to speak for them, so please don’t say anything creepy. It’s just gross (I’m looking at you old men).

The other category of humor problems is a lack of understanding. In certain circumstances, there is an obvious age gap and this can lead to a difference in humor. One of my favorite recent examples of this is the obsession with Tide Pods. Personally, I hate Tide Pods because on multiple occasions, they have stained my clothes but that’s beside the point. Gen-Zer’s love to claim that Tide Pods looked good enough to eat and every parent in the world lost their mind. My generation thought that the countless memes about Tide Pods were hilarious, but Moms everywhere thought that the teens of the world were really stupid and wanted to eat laundry detergent.

While some idiot probably did try one, this wasn’t a generational movement to kill ourselves by ingesting harmful chemicals. In these cases, maybe just let it be. If you don’t understand something from a generation, then try to avoid making a joke about it. And if you really don’t understand something, just ask! For the most part, people are nice and more than willing to explain something.

Growing up with my Father, I have gained a pretty good tolerance for offensive jokes but my overall point is don’t be an asshole. My Dad may have made some pretty vulgar and raunchy things in the day, but he’s only done them with good intentions; he wasn’t actively trying to piss anyone off (Editor/Dad note: Yes I was!). If you approach your jokes in this same way, then you more than likely will be fine.

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a Gen Z? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Career Confessions from Gen-Z: What is Gen-Z looking for in a Mentorship Program?

Posted on by
Reply

Hey everyone, I’m back! I took a week hiatus (finals week man) and more Gen-Z posts are coming your way! (Dad editor’s note: I didn’t give him a week off for finals! Buck up, son! Welcome to the show! It’s called multi-tasking! Sure I’m paying you nothing, but I still expect a post each week!) 

For my freshman year of college, I wanted to get away from Michigan and the Mid West. So, I decided to move to New York and attend a school called Marist College. At Marist, I was on the swim team and was immediately overwhelmed. Swim was hard, being away from my Mom was hard, having no friends was hard. It was a rough time.

Before I had gone to college, I had signed up to be apart of a student-athlete mentorship program, where upperclassmen athletes at Marist got paired with freshman athletes of different sports. I got paired up with a guy from the cross country team and I immediately knew that I didn’t want to be apart of the program. The purpose of the program was to meet up, maybe get lunch or coffee, and talk through any problems you’re having at school and in your sport. After a few forced hangout sessions, we stopped talking altogether and went our separate ways.

Now, I think that mentorship programs are a great idea. Having gone through a program myself, and not getting much out of it, I have gathered my own list of how to make a successful mentor program and what I would like to get from a mentor:

  1. Be Relatable: A key characteristic of having a good mentor relationship is being able to relate to them. The mentor needs to be able to relate to their “mentee” and vice versa, or there won’t be any necessary help given or received. This is the main reason that my mentor relationship wasn’t successful. We had absolutely nothing in common and neither of us could relate to the other. 
  2. Be a Role Model: As a mentee, I would like to be able to look up to my mentor. I want my mentor to have some quality that makes me want to be like them. Although it would be nice, it isn’t vital for a mentee to want the same exact position as their mentor but is vital that the mentor possesses some qualities that the mentee aspires to have.
  3. Share Advice: This feels like a no-brainer, but it relates back to the type of mentor/mentee relationship you have. In order to give worthwhile and helpful advice, you need to be able to relate to your mentor/mentee AND the mentor needs to be a role model figure. In my mentor relationship, I received a lot of advice but none of it was necessary to my experience. The things that I needed advice on, like how to choose a major or how to handle being far from home, weren’t areas that my mentor had any advice to give.

****Bonus factor! Experience: This is my extra little bonus factor to making a mentor program top notch. Any experience that a mentee can directly gain with their mentor by their side will not only be the best form of “advice” they can get, but it will help to strengthen the relationship. Something that a mentor/mentee duo can do together to gain experience is a group project in whatever field the mentee is interested in. This may feel a little intern-y but most of your Gen-Z employees will be interns anyways!

You can follow as much or as little advice as you want from this but the bottom line for a successful mentor program is effort. If both sides are willing to try and get something positive out of the experience, then they probably will! Not every mentor you have can be like Yoda (I know very little about Star Wars but hopefully this analogy works), but just be willing to try and make it a worthwhile experience!

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

What Paid Holidays Should You Be Paying Your Employees?

Posted on by
1

Every year, American employees leave 430 million vacation days up for grabs. (If you were wondering, that’s 1,178,082 years of unused vacation every year.)

Or in other words, way too much time.

We already know Americans are by and large workaholics. But still, if you own a small business, there are some days you should definitely give off to your employees. And it’s helpful to know what that mix of days should be.

That’s where I come in. I’ll show you how to build your own paid holiday schedule for your small business, using benchmarking data as our trusty guide.

The bigger PTO picture.

Let’s start with the main question on your mind: How much time off do people normally get? An average full-time employee in a small, privately-owned business in the U.S. receives about 7.6 paid holidays per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number also breaks down even further:

  • Technical/professional employees get 8.5-ish days a year.
  • Clerical/sales employees get 7.7-ish days a year.
  • Blue-collar/service employees get 7 days a year.

While that’s the average, other studies have shown most employees report getting about nine paid holidays per year. Think about these benchmarks as you decide on the number that will work best for you business.

There are no federal laws requiring employers to give PTO, but most companies offer it anyway. Why? Because it’s a must to attract and retain great employees. In fact, PTO is the second most important benefit to employees, right after health insurance.

Now, onto the next layer of the paid holiday puzzle: Choosing the actual days you give off.

So, what paid holidays should I offer?

Click through this link to my Gusto post to get the rest of this riveting content! 

No, really, I promise, it’s good stuff! Have I ever steered you wrong?

3 Ways Employers Should Be Encouraging March Madness!

Posted on by
1

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, do 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 steaming 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 CNN’s 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!

 

How Many Beers Does it Take to Get Your Employees to Peak Performance?

Posted on by
Reply

Did you see that winter Olympic athletes were using beer as a recovery drink!?

The science says that non-alcoholic beer, used as a recovery drink for sports, is better than normal sports drinks like Gatorade. From the NPR article:

Appalachian State University’s David Nieman has studied phenols’ health effects. On the whole, phenol-rich diets tend to lower inflammation and reduce the risk of sickness, he says. “[Polyphenols] have a very unique molecular structure that can actually regulate the genes that control inflammation,” in addition to general antiviral properties, says Nieman.

In 2011, Nieman and the University of Munich’s Johannes Scherr investigated the effects of beer, which contains around 50 phenols, on athletes — whose intense physical activity can compromise their immune activity. When marathon runners were instructed to drink 1.5 liters of nonalcoholic beer a day, their risk of upper respiratory infection was reduced. The activity of white blood cells, a good indicator of inflammation, was lowered 20 percent.

All over the world, we were trying to figure out why the Germans were kicking our butts in all these events and the secret was they drink a bunch of this new ‘sports’ beer!

If non-alcoholic beer helped athletes recover more quickly from grueling workouts, then it could allow them to train harder. Scherr credits the nonalcoholic beer’s salubrious effects to its high concentration of polyphenols, immune-boosting chemicals from the plants with which its brewed.

“After that, we really had the proof: It’s really healthy and not only a marketing gag,” said Holger Eichele, the chief executive of the German Brewers Association. From 2011 to 2016, German consumption of nonalcoholic beer grew 43 percent even as overall beer consumption declined, according to Euromonitor International. New brewing techniques helped to diversify and improve the flavor, and now there are more than 400 non-alcoholic beers on the market in Germany. Germans drink more nonalcoholic beer than any nation, except Iran.

So, making beer available to our employees became super popular as a ‘benefit’ to offer up over the past decade, as employers looked to attract millennials and show how ‘super cool’ they are to work for. Work hard, play hard!

What we didn’t know, was that we had it just a tiny bit wrong! We should be giving beer to our employees, but it should be non-alcoholic beer, not the normal stuff!

The one aspect of both articles I thought had particular interest to employers was the social aspect of drinking beer. All over the world, people drink beer in mostly social settings. We tend to see drinking beer as a social activity.

So, having a beer at work isn’t necessarily a bad idea, if it was non-alcoholic and it increased our employees to interact more with each other. Plus, if it actually helps your employees recover faster from those grueling all-night coding sessions, heck, we better give it a try!

Lifesaving Advice I Gave My Son When Someone Starts Shooting At His School

Posted on by
15

Last night I had to sit my 14-year-old son down and have “the ‘talk”.

It was uncomfortable, it should be, having “the talk” is never easy for parents and their kids. Unfortunately, this wasn’t “the talk” I thought I would be having with him. This talk was about what he needed to do to stay alive when a shooter comes into his school and starts mowing down innocent kids because our American government refuses to do anything about it.

I need to take my shoes off to get on an airplane because I might have a shoe bomb and want to blow up a plane. I have to do this because 1 person, 1 time, got on a plane with a shoe bomb and burned himself.

Hundreds of school shootings have happened and thousands of kids have been killed or hurt, and we can’t figure out a way to stop this from happening. It’s not important enough for our society to change this.

This isn’t a political statement. This is a dad crying out to the universe to please stop this so I won’t be that parent on CNN telling my own child’s story because they were never given a chance to tell it on their own.

Those who were voted into a position of political power in our country, every party, every single person, have failed this nation. This isn’t a party issue. This is a kid’s are getting killed issue. You don’t need an arsenal of guns in your house to go deer hunting. You need one rifle that shoots one bullet at a time.

The 2nd Amendment in our Bill of Rights that gives us this ‘freedom’ as Americans to bear arms was written and approved by Congress in 1789. 229 years ago we needed to bear arms because a bear actually might kill you! Now, we don’t need to bear arms. We have the world’s best, most highly funded military force to protect us.

That we live in a society that allows any kind of access to teens to get their hands on guns is shameful. Teens are mostly crazy! They’re emotional. They act impulsively. They don’t think beyond the minute they’re living in. That is not a good combination to mix in access to guns and ammunition. Every single parent in the world understands this simple concept.

But, now I have to give tips and strategy to my son on how to save his life when a school shooter commences to mowing down innocent victims because Timmy’s Dad had to have an arsenal in his basement because this is “America!”

Fuck you, Timmy’s Dad!

So, here’s the advice I gave to my son, and I’m sure you’ll give to your sons and daughters. I told him to survive. Do anything you have to do to survive. Like the Hunger Games, you survive. That’s an order. For some reason, we’ve regressed hundreds of years as a society that my ‘life’ advice to my son in 2018 is simply to “Survive”.

So, ultimately, this is a failure of parenting. We have failed as parents that we elected people in our own image who have refused to fix a problem that we all want to be fixed. We failed because we don’t think this will happen to ‘our’ kid. We hate that it happens to any kid, but it won’t happen to “my” kid.

We’re stupid. It is going to happen to my kid and I can’t sleep at night knowing when I drop my son off at school tomorrow there isn’t one thing being done to save his life by those in charge of our laws in this country. Not one single thing.

Just survive, I told him…

We can stop this. In our world, it takes money to beat the bad guys who have more money right now. I donated to Everytown.org – The Movement to End Gun Violence. I’m not associated with Everytown, but I donated money so I support them. If you want to support them, great! 

(Photo cred: Larry Nodarse)