The Number One Benefit Your Employees Want (That Will Cost You Exactly Nothing)

Posted on by
7

Every few months you see news media organizations come out with rankings of what benefits employees rank as most desirable, or most valuable to them, or ones they wouldn’t give up, etc. And the list always includes stuff like:

  1. Compensation
  2. Health Insurance
  3. Paid time off
  4. Retirement

blah, blah, blah…

It’s always the same crap, usually just ranked slightly different based on age, sex, where you live, etc. But, this data never tells us anything new. “Oh, look! Free lunches moved up from 8th to 7th! We better take a look at the choices we’re offering, one company said all organic really helped them recruit more talent!” No, it didn’t.

This is the new reality in employee benefits: we’ve reached an era where certain things are now expected.  If you want talent that actually is talented and will show up to work, and work, you are now expected to have health insurance, competitive PTO, retirement of some sort and life insurance. As an employer, you no longer get credit for acting like these are “benefits”! These are now status quo, and practically required. You better have them, or you’re not even in the game.

So then, what is it that can really set you apart from everyone else that basically has the exact same benefit package as you?

To me, the holy grail is this: flexible work schedules.

The difficult part of this is that flexible work schedules work great for some employers because they fit their business model. But for other employers, it’s just not realistic. An insurance company can have some folks come in at 10am and work until 7pm, and it’s probably not going to affect their business much. Applebee’s on the other hand, can’t have a cook decide to show up at 2pm when the lunch rush is at 11:30 am!

This is the talent divide of 2016.  If you can run your business the way you need to and offer flexible work schedules, you have a talent advantage. If you can’t, you’ll likely be fighting for talent that’s second tier.

So why aren’t more companies making a real effort to add this choice benefit to their roster? Well, I think a ton of industries and organizations that traditionally haven’t offered flexible work schedules easily could with very minor adjustments, but they’re being run by baby boomers (and some Gen Xers) who still believe if I can’t “see” you, you must not be working!

In my opinion, there is no longer a reason to believe time-in-the-seat is an actual productivity measure. Most of us now have technology that measures the productivity and performance of our workforce. And unless one of your workers (let’s call her Jenny) is working a cut-and-dried shift, is there really a need for her to come in at 7:30am and leave at 4:30 when she’s would probably rather come in at 9am and work until 6pm?

The other argument I hear people make against flexible schedules is that it’s not fair to offer them unless everyone can do it. But think about it: everyone doesn’t get a company car either, but does that stop you from getting them? People who can’t work flexible schedules because they absolutely need to be present at certain times aren’t going to be upset. They get it. So instead of penalizing everybody in the name of equality, why not do what you can for the folks who could be more flexible, and take a more individualized approach?  Not only is it going to be appreciated, you don’t have to spend a dime.

(Want to know how to keep your remote or working-weird-schedules folks in the loop and happy once you’ve hired them? Check out this great blog post by the folks at ALEX: Five Ways to Maintain a Human Touch in the Virtual Workplace.)

 

 

Would You Be Willing To Pay For Interview Feedback – Take 2

Posted on by
4

“I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.”

– Howard Marks

Yesterday I wrote a post called Would You Be Willing To Pay For Interview Feedback that caused some people to lose their minds.  I asked what I thought was a simple question: Would you be willing to pay for interview feedback?  Not just normal, thanks, but no thanks, interview feedback, but really in-depth career development type of feedback from the organization that interviewed you.  You can read the comments here – they range from threats to outright hilarity! Needless to say, there is a lot of passion on this topic.

Here’s what I know:

– Most companies do a terrible job at delivery any type of feedback after interviews. Terrible.

– Most candidates only want two things from an interview.

1.  To Be Hired

2. If not hired, to know a little about why they didn’t get hired

Simple, right?  But, this still almost never happens!  Most large companies, now, automate the entire process with email form letters.  Even those lucky enough to get a live call, still get a watered-down, vanilla version of anything close to something that we would consider helpful.

When I asked if someone was willing to pay for interview feedback, it wasn’t for the normal lame crap that 99% of companies give.  It was for something new. Something better. Something of value.  It would also be something completely voluntary.  You could not pay and still get little to no feedback that you get now — Dear John, Thanks, but no thanks. The majority of the commentators felt like receiving feedback after an interview was a ‘right’ – legal and/or G*d given.  The reality is, it’s neither.

The paid interview feedback would be more in-depth, have more substance and would focus on you and how to help you get better at interviewing.  It would also get into why you didn’t get the job.  The LinkedIn commentators said this was rife with legal issues.  Organizations would not be allowed to do this by their legal staff because they would get sued by interviewees over the reasons.  This is a typical HR response.  If you say ‘legal’ people stop talking about an idea.  They teach that in HR school so we don’t have to change or be challenged by new ideas!

The reality is, as an HR Pro, I’m never going give someone ammunition to sue my organization.  If I didn’t hire someone for an illegal reason, let’s say because they were a woman, no person in their right mind would come out and say that.  Okay, first, I would never do that. Second, if I did, I would focus the feedback on other opportunity areas the candidate had that would help them in their next interview or career. No one would ever come out and say to an interviewee, “Yeah, you didn’t get the job because you’re a chick!”

This is not a legal or risk issue.  It’s about finally finding a way to deliver great interview feedback to candidates.  It’s about delivering a truly great candidate experience.  So many HR Pros and organizations espouse this desire to deliver a great candidate experience but still don’t do the one thing that candidates really want.  Just give me feedback!

So, do you think I’m still crazy for wanting to charge interviewees for feedback?

Would You Be Willing To Pay For Interview Feedback?

Posted on by
1

I get my ideas in the shower. I have a busy life, so it seems like my down time is that solid 5 to 10 minutes I get in the shower. I usually shower twice a day—once first thing in the morning, then before I go to bed. That’s 10 to 20 minutes daily to think and clean. I like going to bed clean. I like waking up with a shower. You’re welcome. You now know my daily cleaning habits. Thanks for stopping by today!

I’m not sure why ideas come to me. My wife says I’m not completely “right.” I get weird things that come into my head, at weird times. This morning I decided to stop fighting the candidate experience freaks (those people that think candidate experience actually matters, which it doesn’t) and finally help them solve their problem. You won, freaks. But I damn well better get a lifetime achievement award at the next Candidate Experience Awards!

Here’s your solution: Charge candidates a fee to get feedback on their interviews.

<Drops mic, walks off stage, give me my award.>

Yeah, that’s what I just said. Let me give you the details; apparently, a couple of you just spit out your coffee.

Candidates want great feedback on their interviews, desperately. When someone really wants something, that certain thing becomes very valuable. HR shops in organizations have the ability to deliver this very valuable thing, but they don’t have the resources to do it well. By well, I mean really well: making that feedback personable, meaningful, and developmental.

Are you willing to spend 15 minutes debriefing a candidate after an interview… a candidate you don’t want? Of course not. What if that candidate paid you $10 for that feedback? That’s $40 per hour you could make just debriefing candidates. Couldn’t you go out and hire a sharp HR pro for like $30 per hour to do this job?

Yeah, that’s why I deserve awards. My ideas are groundbreaking. It’s a big burden to carry around.

Think of this like an airline. Airlines figured out that certain people are willing to pay an extra $25 to get on the plane first, or to be first in line. This is all you’re doing. You’re not taking advantage of anyone; you’re just offering a first-class candidate experience for those willing to pay for it. For those unwilling to pay for first class, they’ll get your coach experience. They’ll get a form letter that says thanks, no thanks, here’s a 10% off coupon on your next use of our service, or whatever you do to make that candidate experience seem special.

A first-class candidate experience for $10. Do you think candidates would pay for that? You’re damn straight they would! Big companies would actually have to establish departments for this! Goldman Sachs, give me a call, I’ll come set this up for you! GM, Ford and Chrysler, I’m like an hour away, let’s talk, I can come down any day next week.

It’s easy to dismiss a crazy idea that some guy came up with in the shower—until your competition starts doing it, it becomes the industry norm, or Jobvite orHireVue or Chequed builds the app and starts selling this a service. My Poppi (that’s what I called my Grandfather) always use to say, “Tim, it only costs a little more to go first class.” People like first-class treatment. People want first-class treatment. People will pay for first class treatment.

Would you pay for great interview feedback, so great it could be considered personal development? How much?

4 Tips for Hiring Candidates Who Have True Grit!

Posted on by
1

In our ever constant struggle to find the secret sauce of finding the best talent, many organizations are looking to hire candidates who have grit. What the heck is grit? Candidates who have grit tend to have better resolve, tenacity, and endurance.

Ultimately, executives are looking for employees who will get after it and get stuff done. Employees who aren’t waiting around to be told what to do, but those who will find out what it is we should be doing and go make it happen. Grit.

It seems so easy until you sit down in front of a candidate and try and figure out if the person actually has grit or not! You take a look at that guy from 127 Hours, the one who cut his own arm off to save his . That’s easy, he has grit! Susy, the gal sitting across from you, who went to a great state school, and worked at a Fortune 500 company for five years, it’s hard to tell if she has grit or not!

I haven’t found a grit test on the market, so we get back to being really good at questioning and interviewing to raise our odds we’ll make the right choices of those with grit over those who tell us they have grit but really don’t!

When questioning candidates about their grit, focus on these four things:

  1. Passion. People with grit are passionate about something. I always feel that if someone has passion it’s way easier to get them to be passionate about my business and my industry. If they don’t have true passion about anything, it’s hard to get them passionate about my organization.
  1. Doer. When they tell you what they’re passionate about, are they backing it up by actually doing something with it? I can’t tell you how many times I’ll ask someone what their passion is and then ask them how they’re pursuing their passion and they’ve done nothing!
  1. What matters to them. Different from passion in that you need to find out what matters to these people in a work setting. Candidates with grit will answer this precisely and quickly. Others will search for an answer and feel you out for what you’re looking for. I want a workplace that allows me to… the rest doesn’t matter, they know, many have no idea.
  1. Hope. To have grit, to be able to keep going when the going gets tough, you must have hope that things will work out. The glass might be half full or half empty, it doesn’t matter, because if I have a glass, I’ll find something to put in it!

I’ve said this often, but I believe individuals can acquire grit by going through bad work situations. We tend to want to hire perfect unscarred candidates from the best brands who haven’t had to show if they have grit or not.

I love those candidates with battle wounds and scars from companies that were falling apart, but didn’t. I know those people had to have grit to make it out alive!  I want those employees by my side when we go to battle.

Check out Angela Duckworth’s book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance for more on this subject!

 

 

Gender Neutral Bathrooms Coming to a Workplace Near You!

Posted on by
3

Almost everyone at this point has heard of or seen President Obama’s recent letter to every school district in America basically saying that all transgender students should be allowed to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.

While this isn’t an actual law the President did add wording to make school districts feel that if they didn’t follow this guidance, they could possibly lose federal funding. That is big because schools rely heavily on this funding to operate.

As you can imagine, this caused major outrage across America. The Washington Times released a poll that showed the majority of American’s actually are not in agreement with the President on this issue. Also, social media blew up with both sides defending their positions on this issue.

All of this leads to what’s the next step – the workplace!

We all know that if the President is going to take a stand on public schools and gender neutral bathrooms, it’s only a matter of time until government workplaces also are mandated, and then that rolls down to private employers as well.

As HR pros, it doesn’t matter what we believe regarding this position. Like many laws and mandates that happen, what we think about it ultimately is meaningless. What we are going to do about it becomes the true issue we face in getting our organizations prepared and compliant.

Here are a number of things you should be thinking about and starting to have conversation with leadership regarding gender neutral bathrooms:

  • This isn’t a moral or political issue. This is a compliance issue. Regardless, this will be a hot issue to deal with in your workplaces. At one point in our society, the majority of Americans thought it was completely normal that Black Americans should have separate bathrooms. This issue is very similar. You need to think about how you will educate your employees on gender identity.
  • Physical organization design can really alleviate this issue in organizations that can afford a design of private bathroom stalls for all. This becomes a funding and logistical issue. After a hundred years of having male/female bathrooms, moving to a design where you only have one bathroom for all with many private stalls (think much more private than current partial wall stalls) becomes cost prohibitive for most organizations, but ultimately might be the best overall design.
  • For the most part, you will have no issues in this transition. Your employees are adults and this is about having a good understanding of what gender identity truly is. More than likely the issues you will face are bullying from a very few employees who refuse to try and understand this issue. Be swift and strong with how you deal with these outliers. This will curtail future issues.

As leaders and HR pros we need to understand that we will have people who are uncomfortable with this issue for a number of reasons, mostly from lack of understanding and change. You can’t gloss over and ignore this issue, it’s a real issue.

Get on the front side of this. Your employees are already forming opinions and talking about this because of Obama’s letter and their children dealing with this issue in their own learning environments. This is a great time for us as HR pros to be proactive and begin addressing this on our own, in our own way, before it gets mandated and we look like we’re running around with no plan.

 

7 Benefits Communication Mistakes to Avoid Like the Plague

Posted on by
Reply

It’s conference season in the HR world and as I’m traveling around the country and meeting HR pros face-to-face I can’t help but feel the pain we all feel when it comes to employee communications.

I love seeing real HR pros speak about the transformations they are making in their organizations, and one thing, for sure, is a common theme in almost every story I hear – communication is tough! HR leaders have gotten to the point that we all know this is super important, and still it’s hard for us to get it right.

In the spirit of making this stuff a little less tough, I’m going to give you 7 Benefits Communication Mistakes to Avoid Like the Plague, to help you through your own organization transformations. Here we go!

#1. Don’t assume your news is bad!

We know a few people will take pretty much any news we share negatively, so we build an entire communication to address those few. My advice: Stop doing that! A lot of people might love the news. What about them?

#2. Don’t build a one-size-fits-all communication.

Each of your employees is a unique and beautiful pink unicorn, and, damn it, they want to be treated as such! Okay, so you don’t have to make each communication unique to each employee, but think about your two or three biggest groups of employees (could be segmented by age, location, tenure…) and at least make an effort to make comms that speaks to their unique needs.

Check out #3-#7 over at JellyVision – MeetAlex where this post was originally posted by me!

T3 – Brilent @GetBrilent

Posted on by
2

This week on T3 I take a look at the candidate recommendation engine, Saas recruiting software, called Brilent. Brilent is tackling one of the most challenging obstacles to innovation by helping recruiters place great talent. Brilent’s core technology instantly matches a pool of candidates to a company’s open positions.

Here’s the problem you have with your ATS – Candidate applies for a job you have open. A candidate doesn’t get that job, or isn’t qualified, and is almost immediately forgotten. With Brilent, when a candidate applies in your ATS Brilent matches their qualifications to every job you have listed and gives you a ranking on how well they match. They might have applied to Job 1, but they actually might be a better fit for Job 2.

Also, Brilent matches all the candidates in your database to instantly find hidden talent in your ATS you didn’t even know was there, or you just forgot about.  Then gives you a ranking of which candidates in your database are the best match based on their search algorithm which is much more advanced than simple keyword search.

5 Things I Really Like About Brilent: 

1. The team is led by former Facebook Data Science pros, so they know how to play with data really well! They understand this is a core issue for 99% of ATS users, and they’re finding a way to solve it!

2. The platform automatically matches candidates with all jobs, not just the one they’re applying for, and alerts them to jobs they are a strong match for. This ensures you that the candidate isn’t missing something, plus provides a higher candidate experience with no effort.

3. The system is built on machine learning so the more you use it to search your database to find great talent, the smarter it becomes to bring back possible matches, and less likely to bring back false-positive matches.

4. Brilent integrates directly with your ATS, and basically helps to cover up the single biggest weakness most ATS systems have in not allowing you to effectively leverage your database of candidates to find that hidden gold. The candidate who applied three years ago, but never went anywhere because your hiring manager found someone on his own. Bam! There she is again – ready to be contacted!

5. The ranking of candidates gives you a great visual of who has applied and who is in your database and who you should be contacting for the position based on how they ranked.  Also, anytime a candidate applies and gets a highly ranked match of one of your jobs, the recruiter gets alerted immediately.

Sometimes the best technology is the one that makes the most sense.  Brilent knows you normally don’t want to blow up your ATS and start over, but they also know your ATS isn’t working for you like you need it to work. So, they solve that. The best tech does that, it solves a problem and doesn’t blow up everything you have.

Well worth a look and a demo. It’s quick and easy to use. Check them out!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – 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 T3 – send me a note.

Sackett Stats #36 – Boss Block

Posted on by
2

I was with some HR blogging friends at a conference recently and we were talking shop. Someone had a great idea for a blog post, but said they couldn’t find any stats to back it up, so they weren’t going to write about it. My exact quote back was, “I just make stats up!”

To be fair, when I do make stats up, I tell you! It’s something like, “9 out of 10 employees who are fired (by me) want to kill their boss!”

My stats aren’t just made up! Sackett Stats are based on nothing more than twenty years of my experience working in the trenches HR and TA, across multiple industries. To be honest, though, some idiot will one day read this and think it’s a real number, stick it in their Forbes article, and they a few weeks later you’ll see it at your local SHRM meeting in a presentation deck!

Sackett Stats! Like Pew Research, but far less likely based on actual research.

Sackett Stat #36 is called Boss Block.  The concept of this statistic comes from the number of years that are between you and your boss in age. The lower the number, the less likely you’ll ever be promoted, and the more likely you are to turnover.

The average over/under Boss Block number that pushes a person to leave an organization is 5.3 years.

If your boss is more than 5.3 years older than you, you are less likely to leave the organization, believing you will eventually get a chance to be promoted. Obviously, the farther apart in age, to your boss, the less likely you are to leave on your own. If your boss is 5.3 years or less to your age, you are highly likely to leave, believing there is no chance in hell you’ll ever get promoted because you’re being Boss Blocked for promotion.

Sackett Stats – like most stats, but more believable.

The Greatest Retirement Benefits You Can Give Your Employees

Posted on by
Reply

My Dad retired this past year. I’m already ‘leveraging’ him for some time. He has so much of it now! It’s like he won the time lotto and he’s throwing it around because he’s got so much of it. “Hey Dad, can I borrow a couple of hours!? It’s a busy week! I need you to pick up the kids!”

I read this article, The Huge Retirement Benefit You Probably Aren’t Expecting recently:

America is reaching a tipping point. Adults in the busiest phase of life, juggling kids and careers, number about 40 million, which is roughly equal to those near and in retirement, who typically have time on their hands. But the number of adults pressed for time is projected to grow slowly, reaching 49 million by 2050. By contrast, the number of retirees with plenty of free time will explode to 88 million, as more and more boomers retire.

When you add it all up, retirees will have 2.5 trillion hours of leisure time to fill over the next 20 years. This free time will redefine their habits and priorities—even their identities. And yet almost no one is planning for this sweeping change, according to a report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Age Wave.

Time is going to be the new currency of future generations. It’s like lake front property, there’s only so much. Unless you live in Dubai and have billions, then I guess you can make new lake front property!

The crazy thing is, organizations aren’t really putting that much effort into figuring this whole thing out. We’re treating it like we’ve treated retirement for decades. “Well, Bill’s retiring, let’s throw him a party, buy him a walker with a horn, and give his work to the new kid.” We aren’t thinking in a new context of what do these ‘new’ folks who are retiring really want?

What I’ve learned from Dad is we in HR are missing some things. Here are some ideas of Retirement Benefits you could offer, but you haven’t even begun to think in this new way of time:

1. Part-time, flexible Mentorships – Some people can’t wait to stop working for your organization. Many feel they’re being ‘nicely’ pushed out, or society makes them feel like ‘it’s time’ to leave. The reality, so many of your retiring employees would love to keep in touch. Help out the new kids. Lead mentor groups on how to deal with customer issues, leadership dilemmas, customer/client feedback, etc. And most would do it for free! They would volunteer their time!

2. Corporate Community Volunteer Programs – Remember, these super valuable, experienced, loyal former employees who love your brand, have a couple trillion (with a T) hours on their hands! Can you imagine how much good will you could leverage in the community if you activated your retirees as volunteers with some direction and leadership!?  It could transform your corporate presence within the markets you serve. BTW – hospitals do a great job at this! There is no reason you shouldn’t be able to do this in your organization as well.

3. C-Suite Bullship Detectors – Your executives don’t always know what’s really going on because they have a bunch of VPs kissing their ass telling them what they think they want to hear. Retirees are a great mechanism to tell your executives what is actually going on, versus what they’re being told. They’re like highly paid consultants, without the highly paid part!  We all need someone without a vested interest to tell us like it is, even when it stings a little. Your retirees would love to do this. Works really well for newer retirees who are still close to the business. Not so well once they get a ways out. You will be shocked at the bond your executives will build with these folks!

Something to think about. How are your new retirement benefits helping your former employees spend and invest their most precious commodity? Time.

 

Michael J Fox’s Perspective on Co-Workers #WorkHuman

Posted on by
7

Michael J. Fox was one of the closing day keynotes at the WorkHuman conference this year, and he killed it like you expect. One of the key takeaways I took from his talk was in regards to all those people you work with on a day to day basis.

Mike Fox laid out two things you should think about when you think about how you interact with your co-workers:

1. Enjoy the people you work with for what they can positively contribute to you and your organization.  This is all about focusing on the strengths of those around you. If you constantly focus on what someone can’t do, you make them miserable and you stress yourself out as well.  People perform better when you allow them to do what they’re good at. When you recognize them for what they bring to the organization, not what they don’t bring.

2. If you can’t enjoy the person you work with, be thankful you’re not them. We are all going to have people in our life that we have to work with that we frankly just don’t like. Could be personality, or skills, or attitude, etc. Mike Fox said you can still find a positive out of this by focusing on the fact you’re grateful that you don’t have their challenges, and by helping those people be the best version of themselves.

I love this philosophy!

Mike Fox was very big on this concept that judging others will get you nowhere. It’s such a big part of culture. I know I do some this myself, and it’s not something I’m ever proud of. The reality is judging others says more about your inadequacies than it does about the persons you are judging. It was a great reminder.

It was a great reminder. In HR and TA we tend to believe ‘judging’ is part of our job description, but it’s not. The best HR and TA Pros I know don’t judge candidates or employees but find what is most useful of those individuals and try and put those people in positions to be successful.

Finally, Mike spoke about fear. Fear others have when they look at him. They look at him expecting to find fear in him and instead see their own fear in his eyes. That statement made me pause. He’s not fearful of his situation. He’s happy life gave him this enormous platform to change lives.

Perspective. We shouldn’t assume we know others based on our own beliefs and fears. Here’s a guy who is facing an uncertain future, but he’s embraced the joy of living one day at a time. The real secret, he didn’t share, is we all are facing life one day at time, he’s just figured it out way before us!