Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @TheVIPCrowd

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Today on the Weekly Dose I take a look at the engagement technology, VIP Crowd. VIP Crowd is a technology that organizations can use to get their employees, and their customers, to engage in a number of things.

Want to get more feedback from employees on what the like or dislike about your benefits package? Want to see what hiring manager is most admired in your organization? Want your employees to share a really important, hard to fill job with their network? VIP Crowd’s platform allows you to do this with ease.

VIP Crowd solves that aged old issue we all have in HR and TA when we can’t get our own employees and hiring managers to give us feedback or engage in our programs by making them a VIP! “Why doesn’t anyone respond to the email I send!?”

VIPs are people in your network who you’d like to keep updated and whose feedback, input and ideas can help your business. These might be co-workers, top customers, or peers. VIP Crowd is invite-only, and you decide who gets invited.

It works by you basically posting a challenge to your VIP network, and you can add ‘points’ for completely that have real money value that can be turned in for prizes, given to charity, etc. So, the gamification aspect really raises the engagement to finish these challenges.

Challenges can be something like “share this blog post”, or “give us feedback on Glassdoor”, or refer a friend, etc. The challenges are only limited to your imagination, and they don’t always have to be for points. Send a challenge out to your workgroup to see who can come up with the best place to go eat lunch!

What I like about VIP Crowd:

  • You can easily segment out departments, locations, workgroups, etc. So, you can truly personalize the challenges for more targeted groups.
  • You can post a challenge anonymously and interact with those people who respond, the entire time maintaining the anonymity of those responding!
  • The VIP platform runs the loneliest number game each week to keep your VIPs engaged, even if you don’t challenge anyone this week, for free.
  • Runs on both mobile and desktop, with about 65% of those engaging in the platform using the mobile version.

VIP Crowd is definitely worth a demo. Super simple to use and a great way to increase and measure engagement. While I see a number of uses on how HR and TA would use this, the reality is this is technology that will be used across your organization, so you might want to bring some cross-functional peers along to the demo!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

It’s 2019, Money still motivates more than anything else!

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NO IT DOESN’T, TIM! YOU ARE AN IDIOT!

Well, you’re half right! I’m an idiot most of the time, but finally we are beginning to see what I’ve been saying for a decade, money is still the best motivator when it comes to getting extra effort.

For almost a decade the media and influencers perpetuated this belief that it was other things, rather than money, that motivated individuals to do more. They sited weak studies, if at all, but mostly it was antedotal evidence from people saying it wasn’t money, it was time off, it was feedback, it was…

A recent study puts this to rest, and it clearly shows that if you want ‘extra’ effort out of an employee, money is the single biggest motivating factor, overall, to get the effort your organization is looking for.

What I love about this study is they went out to over 200 experts in the field and first asked them what they thought. They were comprehensive in their analysis of the results and the most recent literature on the subject and the findings were straightforward:

We find that (i) monetary incentives work largely as expected, including a very low piece rate treatment which does not crowd out incentives; (ii) the evidence is partly consistent with standard behavioral models, including warm glow, though we do not find evidence of probability weighting; (iii) the psychological motivators are effective, but less so than incentives. 

Psychological motivators are effective, but less so than monetary incentives!

It’s not that things like working for a great leader or having time off aren’t also effective motivators to getting extra effort out of your employees. They are. But we have to stop telling ourselves that they are more important, because they aren’t!

Again, this is overall. You might have some individuals working for you that are more highly motivated by non-monetary incentives. But overall, in a large workforce, money will still get you better results.

So, why do we love saying that it’s not about the money?

If you think about how this concept became popular, it really tells the story. A decade ago we were coming out of the Great Recession. We didn’t have a ton of money to throw around, so it became popular to espouse the idea that people were really motivated by other things, rather than money.

And, it wasn’t really a lie. We are motivated by many things, money just being one.

The lie was that the other things motivated us to a higher level than money. Those don’t. I’m completely motivated by a great leader, if I’m getting paid what I think I should be. I’m super motivated by extra time off, if I think I’m getting paid what I should be. I’m not motivated by any of that, if I have a monetary issue I’m facing in my life, which most people do.

If my partner is a successful doctor and she makes way more than we need to live very well, money isn’t my primary motivation for effort, it might be a lot of other things. But, if I’m struggling to pay my mortgage, and my kid is about to go to college, I could care less that my boss is nice to me. Just pay me!

When Did Causal Friday Die?

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I love the fact that at some point almost every industry decided that it was mostly stupid to wear suits and ties and dresses to work. Even more, Business Casual has mostly died out as well.

I can’t tell you how many F500 organizations I go into where the head of HR or head of Talent is wearing jeans. At my company we went casual pretty late, primarily because we are a service organization and we match that dress of our clients we go to visit.

You’ve probably seen some of these sayings going around social media:

  • There was a day when you picked up your child for the last time. You didn’t know it the time, but you’ll never pick them up again.
  • There was a day when you went outside to play with your friends. You didn’t know it at the time, but you never went out again to play.

We do a ton of stuff then one day we stop doing it and we don’t even realize it. I like to think that’s what happened to Casual Fridays.

For the longest time Casual Fridays were the thing! Some companies used them as motivation, some used them as charity vehicles to raise money for great causes, etc. Then one day, every day was casual and we no longer needed Casual Friday.

I’m not 100% sold that being casual at work all the time is the answer and there is some growing research that says the same thing. There are certain times when dressing up puts you in a better psychological state of mind!

In the study, The Cognitive Consequences of Formal Clothing, researchers found that when a person puts on formal clothing (business formal, not wedding formal) our brain gets us to believe we are better than maybe we really are! 

When wearing formal business clothing we tend to do certain things better, like negotiating. If you were going to close a deal with a big client, it’s best you don’t show up in jeans and a hoodie, even if those you’ll be negotiating with will be. In fact, you’ll have an advantage over them if you did show up fully suited up! 

Billionaire, Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA Mavericks recently shared a post he wrote in 2007, doubling down on his belief we should never wear suits and he says he only does, to this day, for weddings and funerals. 

Mark doesn’t believe in the psychological impact of wearing a suit and tie (despite what the research says) and believes letting your employees be casual is the way to go. Since his post in 2007, I would dare to say 100% of tech companies are casual! 

I’ve worked in a business that went from a formal dress code, to a business casual dress code, to a casual dress code. I’m not sure I can tell you one made a difference over another.

I know from a client relationship standpoint when I was in formal clothing, clients felt a little uncomfortable when I was dressed up and they weren’t. But, those same clients when I was meeting them for the first time knew I looked at their business with the utmost importance. Once the relationship was established, I’m sure they felt more at ease when I showed up looking like they did.

From an employment brand standpoint I never understood the large organizations where they executives still wear suit and tie but the rank and file are casual. But I feel the same way about coaches on sidelines wearing suits, or even politicians. There is definitely a psychological power play with all of these.

So, raise one up for Casual Fridays or pour one out or whatever it is you do when something you’ve known for so long dies. Casual Fridays, you’ll be remembered well, or at least remembered as ‘why the hell did we do that?”

What Dog Walkers Can Teach us About Managing Up!

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You might not have noticed but Americans treat their dogs and cats much better than we treat most people. I’m not sure exactly what that says about our society.

I like to believe that it’s an evolved behavior. A society that treats animals well probably on average treats all things better, but the cynical part of me says it’s more likely we treat animals well because we all craze unconditional love and aren’t finding it other areas of our live.

Either way, my Scout thinks I’m the best and is always excited to see me!

Because we love our animals so much, we spend a ton on them and want them to be taken care of well. This has created a new profession of animal caretakers, and specifically, for Dog Walkers! 

The Washington Post had a great piece on this recently and what struck me from the article was how the most successful Dog Walkers have figured out that managing up to the animal’s owners is the key to their success! 

In a nation where people lead ever more busy lives and increasingly view their dogs as family members, professional dog walking is flourishing. And along with it is what might be viewed as the unusual art of dog walker communication. Many of today’s walkers do not simply stroll — not if they want to be rehired, anyway. Over text and email, they craft fine-grained, delightful narratives tracing the journey from arrival at the residence to drop-off. They report the number of bathroom stops. They take artistic photos, and lots of them.

“For an hour-long walk, I send six or eight, depending,” said Griffin, 44, who holds a treat in her hand when shooting to ensure her charge is looking at the camera. “Then I give a full report that includes not only peeing and pooping but also kind of general well-being, and if the dog socialized with other dogs.”

Turns out that leaders want from you, exactly what we want from our Dog Walkers! More details about what’s going on when we can’t see it or hear it!

Managing up is simply the skill or task of telling someone what the heck is going on with the ‘proper’ amount of detail. “Proper” being the key the element! Too much and you’re kissing up and being annoying, too little and you’re forcing more communication to take place because you didn’t give enough detail.

The reality is, we all want to know what’s going on with enough detail that doesn’t require us to go back and ask additional questions. The perfect response to a great Managing Up message is “Thanks for this! Keep me updated.”

Where Managing Up goes wrong is when you tell yourself you’re just ‘managing up’ but when in reality you’re managing up to get feedback about yourself, your team, your project, etc. That’s not managing up, that’s you trying to train a leader to give feedback and that usually goes wrong for you!

It’s key to know the difference. Someone who is truly managing up, doesn’t want a ton of feedback or additional questions from their managing up note. A simple thanks is perfect and it’s truly all you want. It’s like when two partners share some details about their day the other should know, “Hey, that package from Amazon came with the parts we needed for the whatever…” No further comment or explanation needed, just an FYI, a common courtesy.

The Dog Walkers have this down. I’m going to give you the details, send some pics, and say great things about your animal that you love more than any other thing in your life. While you’re at work, that’s all you want to hear!

Starting 2019 off with a Recruiting Bang!

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If you’re like me you took some time over the holidays to reflect and to think about how you could make your next year on this earth the best one yet!

One of my “areas of opportunity” (HR speak for “stuff I suck at”) is I’m rarely satisfied with my outcomes. So, of course I want to do more in 2019!

I’m an advocate of doing the hard stuff first. The stuff we don’t want to do. The stuff we put off way too easily. So, as we all get back into the groove, let’s get the stuff done we don’t want to do!

Here are some things you might want to put on the list:

  • Discover and establish the measures that have the actual most impact to your recruiting success. I’m going to tell you right now, those probably aren’t “Time to Fill” and “Quality of Hire”. Those actually have little impact to you recruiting talent to your organization and filling jobs.
  • Start measuring recruiter activity metrics and establish a baseline of activity, then work to increase those outputs. Every year the recruiter in my environment who sends out the most screened candidates to hiring managers makes the most placements. This is not by accident.
  • Fire the person on your team that needs to be fired. Well, I had a talk with Timmy and he assured me he’s going to try harder in 2019. No, he isn’t. Do yourself and your team a favor and give Timmy a gift of finding a job and place where he actually wants to give great effort.
  • Sit down with the hiring manager of your most difficult to fill position and have them tell you what they will be doing over the next 30 days to fill that position. Not what you will do, what they will do! One suggestion to help them – bring in their entire team and take thirty minutes to source their networks live all together in the same room.
  • Figure out which part of your technology that your team is not using and call that vendor and tell them you need the entire team retrained on how to get the most out of that tool or you won’t be signing a contract with them to continue in 2019.

I start with measurements because that will have the fastest impact on your recruiting success. If you don’t measure now, or have weak measures, understand when you put in strong measures your team will revolt. So, it might get worse before it gets better, but it will get exponentially better!

Hit me in the comments and tell me what’s number 1 on your list for 2019. I’m told that putting stuff in writing and making it public gives you a much higher chance of actually making it happen! Let’s do this!

My top 5 most read posts of 2018!

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I love lists! I love lists when I’m on them. I love lists when I make them. Lists are great!

I had an incredible year. I had the most traffic ever in my decade of blogging. I launched my book, The Talent Fix, in April and the traffic to the blog has been exceptional! I’ve got some great stuff planned for 2019, so please keep coming back and enjoying the content.

Here are my most read blog posts of 2018:

#1 – My New Favorite Interview Question!

This one post was read by over 70,000 people, and I didn’t expect it to actually do this well. Interview question posts always do well. For some reason people Google “Interview questions” a ton, both on the candidate side and the hiring manager/HR side. Want some easy clicks? Write a post on interview questions!

#2 – I’m in Indeed Jail, Help me! #FreeTimSackett

Yeah, my co-dependent relationship with Indeed got me into trouble in 2018, and it all started with this post. I wrote another post later in the year – Indeed takes away free traffic from Staffing firms! Which also got a ton of traffic, and I thought was pretty ‘fair and balanced’ from the Indeed side.

#3 – The Reason You’re Being Ghosted After an Interview

Like I said above, interview content tends to be popular! In 2018 we saw a ton of ghosting happening on both sides of the fence. Companies are ghosting candidates and candidates are ghosting companies, and apparently we have all lost our minds! I mean come on, treat others like you want to be treated!

#4 – The Top 100 Applicant Tracking Systems in 2018!

Hat tip to my buddy Rob Kelly, this was actually mostly based on his content, which I sited and love! Turns out most of us have issues with our ATS systems and we love seeing what everyone else is using, because it must be better than what we are using! BTW- we started using Loxo in 2018 and LOVE it!

#5 – Lifesaving Advice I Gave My Son When Someone Starts Shooting Up his School!

This one breaks my heart. This post was directly from my heart, shouting out to the world, as a father, for help. A lot of people agreed with it, and yet, here we are basically in the exact same place.

How to get promoted to the job you want!

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I read an article recently where a “former” Google HR executive shared his wisdom. (editor side note – are all Google HR executives “Former”? Have you ever heard from a “current” Google HR executive? Why does Google have a hard time keeping HR execs?)

The dude’s name is Justin Angsuwat and he’s the current VP of People at Thumbtack, which not ironically does not make thumbtacks but it would awesome if they did. And he give his inside Google advice to Business Insider on how to get promoted. Are you ready?

Why is this promotion important to you?

Justin Angsuwat

Um, what?!

Seriously, that’s your advice Justin?

Okay, I’m sure Justin is brilliant, he’s Australian and worked for PwC and Google, and let’s face it, American’s will hire any idiot with an Australian accent, but I’m sure Justin is not an idiot, but I hate the “I’m going to answer your question with a question” because that’s how ‘real’ leaders do it.

What Justin is saying is most people have no idea why someone wants to be promoted. We just get this idea in our head that’s what we are supposed to do, so as leaders we need to figure out why, because most don’t really care if they get promoted, they just want you to pay attention to them!

Okay, Justin, I’ll agree with that. Now tell me why there are so many former Google HR executives!?

What do you really need to do if you want to get promoted?

  • Tell you current boss you want to get promoted and why.
  • Tell the boss that you’ll be under when you get promoted that you want to get promoted and why. This is a must-do if your current boss is a tool and won’t raise you up to the organization.
  • Get a specific development plan around what the organization needs to see from you to get promoted. If you can, try to get some realistic timing around the plan. Understand, 90 days, is not realistic. 3 years, might be. I find most people who want to get promoted believe they have already put in the work, but those above them don’t see it that way.
  • Do the work and be patient.
  • Be a positive advocate for your boss and for the company. Yes, you might even cheerlead a little. Don’t ever underestimate the power of positivity on your ability to get promoted. Executives hate promoting assholes. Right, Justin?

I teasing Justin, but I actually really like his question. Way too many people chase titles, but don’t really know why they’re chasing it. They get there and it feels unsatisfying because the reality is it’s not what they expect it to be.

Getting promoted because you want more money, probably isn’t the reason you really want. It’s legitimate, but you won’t be happy. Wanting to lead teams or functions is better, wanting to help others reach their goals is even better, wanting to help the company reach its mission and you’re all in on the company is probably the best.

Most of us don’t even think about those things, though.

HR Pros! How often are you going to court?

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There’s one thing we as HR pros are pretty consistent on. We never want to go to court! We do just about anything to mitigate risk for ourselves and our organizations.  The first rule of HR Club is don’t go to court!

Now, that’s how most HR pros feel.  I don’t.  I don’t believe it’s HR’s job to mitigate risk. I believe it’s HR’s job to advise our decision makers of risk. Of course, if you are a decision maker, in HR, then it’s your job to mitigate risk over what you’re responsible for. All that being said, I’m in the minority of that opinion.

So, why do I feel this way?  It’s all numbers to me. Check this out from FloridaOvertimeLawyer.com:

  • In 2014, there were 88,778 Employment Related Charges Filed in the U.S.
  • In 2014, from those charges, a total of $372,100,000 dollars was awarded to the winners of those cases.
  • That averages out to just: $4,191.35 per case.

Here’s the reality of employment related cases:

  • Most cases are won by the employer.
  • Employee and Past Employees believe their cases are worth millions.
  • Most end up settling for a few thousand dollars.

First, I’m not advising you to not be safe and just go all willy-nilly and go to court!  Don’t be stupid.  Also, don’t allow yourself and your organization to be held hostage by an employee or past employee threatening a lawsuit. Most you can settle for way less than you can ever believe!

When I first started in HR I was always shocked by how small of amount of money it would take to make ‘problems’ go away, from a legal standpoint. The numbers above say the same thing. Sure, there is always a risk of a big score.  Usually, the companies that get hit with those are truly doing something very bad.  If you’re doing good work and trying to follow the letter of the law, rarely do those cases turn into major scores for employees.

Do you want to go to court? Of course not.  You, also, don’t want to allow your organization to be bullied by an employee who is taking advantage of your fear of going to court.  Judges are really smart people. They see through most con-artists pretty quickly.  I’ve been to court on employment matters a number of times, and each time the judge was fair to my organization, and called out bullshit when they saw it.

Do good work. Do good by your employees. Don’t allow your organization to do bad stuff. Trust our legal system will do what’s right.  Don’t allow yourself to be held hostage!

3 Things HR Pros Should Never Apologize For!

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I think HR Pros apologize way too much, and I got the idea from the Fast Company article – “3 Things Professional Women Should Stop Apologizing For“, which are:

  1. Their Financial Expectations (I.E., pay us the same!)
  2. Their Physical Appearance (I.E., Sorry we aren’t club-ready – I was up with a sick kid all night!)
  3. Their Professional Accomplishments (I.E., Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I can’t brag about what I do great!)

It’s a great article, check it out.  This got me thinking about all things we Apologize for in HR – that we should stop apologizing for – so here’s the Top 3 Things HR Pros should stop apologizing for:

1. You Getting Fired!  Oh, boy this could be #1, #2 and #3!  I can’t tell you how many HR folks I’ve trained over the past 20 years that I’ve specifically said: “When you let this person go, Don’t apologize!”  I mean truly, what are you saying! “I’m sorry you are terrible at your job or made the decision to sexually harass your co-worker,  you’re fired!”  When you really stop and think about it, it even sounds funny.

2. You Not Getting Promoted.  This is almost the same as apologizing for getting fired.  Instead of apologizing to someone for not getting promoted, how about you give them a great development plan so they can actually get promoted!  Organizations can be big hairy breathing things, and sometimes decisions are made and you won’t know the reasons.  HR Pros shouldn’t apologize for you not getting promoted, but they should help you navigate the political and organizational landscape.

3. You not liking your Boss, your Job, your Pay.  Ugh!  We tend to apologize for all these personal ‘happy’ choices a person makes.  The last time I checked, I never forced anyone to take a job, or forced them to accept the pay I was offering them, or forced them to work in the occupation or career they chose.  These are their own personal choices, if you don’t like it, LEAVE!  Go be happy somewhere else.  I hope that you’ll be happy here, but I can’t force you to be happy. I’ll try and give you a solid leader, with good pay and challenging work, but sometimes what I see as solid, good and challenging might not meet your expectations.  That’s when you need to make a happiness decision!

So, what should you apologize for a HR Pro?  I can think of two things that I apologize for on a regular basis:

1) Things I can Control (If I control it, and I screw it up, I need to offer you an apology);

2) Surprises!  (I might not be able to control a surprise, but they suck when it comes to business and your livelihood.  I apologize for surprises because in HR it’s my job to make sure those don’t happen to you as an employee).

The Non-Smoker Smoke Break!

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Let’s break down some math on the amount of time smokers take, paid, in smoke breaks daily: 

An average smoker smokes 15 cigarettes per day. I’m going to assume that when awake the smoker smokes about 1 cigarette per hour, so that’s 40 cigarettes per week smoked at work.  It takes about 5 minutes to smoke a cigarette. 

I’m going to assume that it takes probably 5 minutes round trip to get to your designated smoking area, 5 minutes to smoke your cigarette, so 10 minutes per break. I’ll say a good worker only smokes 6 cigarettes on the clock, so 60 minutes per day, one hour, paid to smoke. 5 hours per week paid, to smoke, 255 hours per year to smoke.

Is everyone following me? 

255 hours of paid smoke breaks – or basically taking an in-office vacation for roughly 6 1/2 week per year, on top of their actual away-from-office vacation time. 

So, what I’m trying to get to is how can we/HR build in non-smoker smoke breaks!? We know HR won’t do that! Can you imagine an official policy to take breaks not to smoke!? Does anyone have an official Smoke Break policy in today’s world? 

Here’s my idea: 

  1. If you don’t smoke and you have a co-worker that does smoke, just go out with them every single time they smoke. In fact, get a group of people to go with them and build and strengthen relationships, just don’t try to breath too much! 
  2. Petition to get paid 12.5% more than someone who smokes, because that’s basically how much more your working than the average smoker. 
  3. Take a two-hour lunch break and when HR tells you that you can’t do that, take them into a conference room and run them through the math on a white board! 

I don’t understand smoke breaks. It’s kind of like sexual harassment. For the longest time we thought it was completely normal for a boss to sleep with his secretary and now we know it’s very wrong! 

I’ll be honest. I feel the same way about how it became the norm to offer free coffee at work. No one has every offered me free diet Mt. Dew at work! (I take that back, my friend Jim D’Amico did at Celenese when I went to visit!) 

So, we let people go take smoke breaks, paid, and it’s somehow completely fine. 5 hours per week, paid. Completely fine, to actually for real not do work. Just stand outside and slowly kill yourself and you get paid for it! How great is work!? 

Let’s face it, I’m not actually mad at smokers, I’m super jealous! I can’t tell you how hard it is for me not to start smoking knowing all the great benefits you get! I’ve actually tried hanging outside with smokers, but because I was in HR, and didn’t smoke, I think they thought I was trying to get them in trouble or spying on them. I wasn’t, I just wanted all that free time off! 

I’ve been thinking about starting that meditation, mindfulness crap. That might work. I could just randomly stop working, sit down in the middle of the hall all criss-cross-applesauce and just put on some headphones and close my eyes. Make people walk around me and my mindfulness break! 

I wonder what HR would do? “Hey, Tim, we’re not paying you to relax, get your butt back to work! Now, if you want to get all jacked up on nicotine, that’s fine, get off the floor and go light one up!”