When Should You Retire?

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We tend to believe retirement is an age thing. Well, once you turn 65, it’s time to retire! Do you know where ’65’ actually came from? Most HR pros will probably guess it, it’s when America instituted social security insurance back in 1935.

The U.S. Government, in 1935, didn’t even use any science to determine 65 years old.  At the time, the national railroad pension retirement age was 65, and about half the state pensions were the same (the other half were 70), so 65 years old was chosen. Way less red tape back in 1935! Can you imagine the government trying to make that decision today!?

So, you turn 65 and you’re supposed to retire. In 1935, that probably was fairly accurate. The actual life expectancy in 1935 was only 61! So, we built social security knowing most people would not live to receive it. Today, life expectancy is around 79 years old!  As you can imagine, 65 years old is no longer a realistic retirement age.

I’m currently 45 years old.  It’s my belief that I have about 25 years left to work and save for my retirement. I’m assuming I’ll work until I’m at least 70.  70 years old today doesn’t seem like 70 years old when I was a kid.  My parents are now in their 70’s and they don’t seem ‘old’. I mean they’re old, but not like they can’t do anything old.  Both could still easily work and produce great work if they wanted to.

All of this should change how we look at succession planning in our organizations, but we still use 65 as the ‘expiration’ date of when someone no longer seems to have value. “Oh, you know Tim, he’s going to be 65 next year, I’m amazed he can still stay awake all day!”

65 in 2015, is not the same 65 we saw in 1935!  The health and physical wellbeing of those two people are worlds apart in difference!

Succession Planning needs to catch up with this difference.  HR needs to lead this charge.  Part of this change starts with us changing the language and numbers we use when describing retirement.  Regular retirement age needs to start at 70 years old, at a minimum and move up from there.  We need to eliminate 65 years old from everything we write and speak.  It’s just no longer valid or accurate.

Once we push this date out, we can then start to plan much more accurately to what our organizational needs will truly be.  Next, we need to have frank conversations with those who we believe are reaching an age where they want to retire and have real conversations.  HR pros have been failing at this for years!  It’s actually not against the law to ask an employee what their retirement plan is! It should be against the law that you don’t ask this question!

If an employee knows that you are working with them to reach their goals, and you let that employee know that ‘hey, we need you for another five years’, most will actually happily stay on the additional time.  My Dad worked in a professional job until he was 72, and they wanted him longer! Don’t ever underestimate the power of being wanted. As we age, that desire to be wanted just increases!

So, I’ll ask you. What age do you think someone should retire?

Where Does Retention Start?

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The biggest thing in HR and TA in 2016 will be retaining your employees. Not just top talent, but that middle of the road, shows up every day, glue type talent.  Retention is a concept that most HR and TA pros haven’t had to worry about this for a long time, but it’s quickly the hottest issue facing most organizations.

My question is, where does retention start?

My friend Laurie Ruettimann and Dawn Burke talked about this on Dawn’s FOT Videocast ‘No Scrubs‘ earlier this month. Laurie’s opinion is that retention starts at the Orientation. Solid theory for sure. You want to catch them day one and start retaining them from the start.

What Laurie knows, is that most organizations don’t start retaining employees until it’s too late. You know, when you find out that the person is out interviewing with your competition! Or when you find their resume on CareerBuilder, or see that they recently updated their LI profile, or when they turn in their two weeks notice!

I tend to believe that retention, at its core, starts with selection.  Hire people who actually want to work for your company, and crazy as it sounds, they tend to stay around longer!  Most turnover happens because of poor organizational, or positional, fit. Hire people who have a strong desire to work for your company, specifically, and retention tends to take care of itself.

So, if retention starts so early, regardless if Laurie or I are correct, why do organizations still wait so long to address it?

I think organizations are still under the belief that employees leave organizations because they hate their boss.  We’ve allowed this thought to percolate for a decade and its now become fact.  This is one small aspect of turnover, but I tend to believe now that most employees expect and deal with bad bosses fairly well.

The problem with focusing retention efforts so late in the process is that it’s, well, too little, too late!

Another piece to this retention dilemma is that HR doesn’t really believe they own it, and I tend to agree with this theory. The reality is the direct supervisor should have a better handle on retention. It should be a measure that all first-line leaders are held accountable to. Therein lies the real problem. We all take some responsibility for retention, but no ownership!

It’s the classic house on fire analogy. One person sees a house on fire and they do all they can to help. Ten people see a house on fire, and they all watch, believing someone else will do something about it. Your organizational retention is a house fire. To stop it, one person, one group needs to own it, measure it, make it public, ensure everyone sees the fire burning.

I’m not sure, exactly, when retention starts, but I always know how it will end.  With you posting a job and refilling a position, you already had filled…

T3 – UltiPro – @UltimateHCM

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This week on T3 I take a look at one of the big boys in human capital management (HCM) software Ultimate Software. If you’re like me you probably have some confusion of what or who Ultimate Software really is. Are they Ultimate Software, UltiPro, UltimateHCM, I truly had no idea if these were all the same or different!

Ultimately (pun intended!), I found out that the main product of Ultimate Software is called UltiPro and its an enterprise level human capital management system, or in HR terms, it’s your system of record, plus some.  To give you some more perspective UltiPro runs in the same space as HR technology companies, Oracle, SAP, Workday, Ceridian and ADP.

At its core UltiPro provides you with HR, Payroll and Benefits software. All clients that use UltiPro have this core, plus they give you the ability to buy into the full enterprise for talent management, applicant tracking, compensation, time and labor, Business Intelligence/predictive analytics, payment and tax, etc.

5 things that I really liked about UltiPro:

1. Definite advantage for Canadian customers as UltiPro payroll runs both Canadian employees and U.S. employees on the same system. This is rare in the payroll world, and about 75% of Canadian companies have U.S. employees.  All of your employees in UltiPro, US and Canadian, will be housed in the same database.

2. UltiPro doesn’t seem like a cobbled together mess of technology. It was designed as one holistic system and reacts that way when you are using it. UltiPros manager and employee Self-service is one of the better ones I’ve seen in the industry.

3. The business intelligence and analytics within UltiPro is awesome. It’s built so that individuals can pull exactly what they want, in the way they want, not just pre-built reports where you get what they want you to have. I was especially impressed with their retention dashboard with retention prediction and succession management.

4. UltiPro makes HR and organizational compliance extremely easy. You can tell this was built with input from real HR pros. Need your EEOC annual report? Pull it instantly by clicking one button! UltiPro delivers over 150 different business processes, designed to be best practice right out of the box, but with your ability to change and adapt to your specific processes.

5. This might seem small but it’s a big differentiator in the HCM space, in that UltiPro does the tax side of payroll beyond most payroll systems. Each UltiPro client is indemnified, and they ensure you have the right tax forms, rates, and they’ll actually file for you as well! This is huge for SMB clients!

So, why should you use them over the other big guys in the HCM space?  Ultimate Software sells from a philosophy of ‘we’re the small, big guys’, they’re the nice guys of HCM.  If you’ve dealt with some of the big HCM players recently, you’ll understand this!

So, what size do you need to be to really be an organization that would use UltiPro? They’re primarily an enterprise level software, but do play in the SMB space more than most. So, roughly 300-1500 on the SMB side, they’re enterprise clients average around 5,000, but rise to well over 10,000.

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.

The Advanced Class – Recruiting Edition

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As my friend Laurie Ruettimann pointed out last week, recruiting is easy and can be done by basically anyone, so just go hire some soldier to do it.   Laurie might not be that all far from the truth.  Recruiting isn’t brain surgery, it’s a process.  A process that is hated by the majority of human resource professionals around the world, which is why it is a $9 Billion dollar industry.  Not a hard skill, but many times, a really hard job to be successful at.  Old school recruiters like to believe recruiting is an Art form.  It’s not.  New school recruiters like to believe you can just source everyone you need off the internets. You can’t.

Recruiting is all about activity.  It’s a sales cycle.  The more contacts (phone calls, emails, handshakes, etc.) you make, the more candidates you will find.  The more candidates you find and get interested in your jobs.  The more jobs you will fill.  Not hard, right?  The problem is, ‘most’ recruiters look to do things that allow them not to make contacts!  They will buy every kind of technology imaginable to get people to call them.  They’ll do just about anything, besides picking up the phone and making that one call.

Want to be successful at Recruiting? Find people who are willing to make 100 calls per day and who love your company.  Go ahead, go find those people!  It might be a soldier, it might be your neighbor, it might a former crackhead, who knows!  The fact is, most people do not want to do this, even when you hire them and pay them to do just this!

So being a successful recruiter is basically easy.  You must find the sweet spot in the amount of activity you need to do each week that will get you the amount of contacts you need to get enough people for the jobs you want to fill.  Once you find that level, you need to maintain that level forever. Easy. I’m not kidding.  You don’t need fancy branding, and big ATS Systems and a bunch of processes.  You need people who will bang your internal resume database and job boards constantly, and faster than your competition.  That really isn’t that hard to do, because most shops don’t even do the basics well!

Now for the Advance Class participants:

Want to be Ridiculously Successful at Recruiting?

Do that which is written above and add just one thing.  Maintain a relationship with your companies Alumni.  There is this funny thing about human nature.  When we leave some place, we always want to know what’s going on back there!  If we move to a new city, we love updates from our old city.  When we run into past coworkers at the mall, we love updates on who is still there and who is running different departments, who got fired, who got promoted.  If we know this about human nature, why aren’t we giving it to our Alumni?

It doesn’t have to be constant but is has to be consistent.

Do a quarterly Alumni update via email to everyone who has every worked for you. Even the crappy ones who you are glad they are gone !  Give them some juicy details about promotions. Let them know some new things you’re working on.  Let them know what jobs you’re trying to fill, and how they can refer people.  Do this every quarter for 2 years.  Want to be class valedictorian?  On a monthly basis call a handful of alumni and just have a chat, build some relationships, check on where are they now.  As them if you mind if you share their story in the next Alumni News going out next quarter.  If you commit to do this for 24 months, you will start to see positions fill themselves.

This is advanced course stuff because 99% of companies aren’t doing this with their recruiting!

3 Things HR Pros Don’t Want for the Holidays!

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It’s that time of year when you start receiving holiday gifts from HR Vendors.  My own company even does it.  For the most part, we send out a holiday card to the vast majority out our contacts, but those ‘paying’ clients or ‘Friends of the Company’ (former or future paying clients) we do something special.  Most companies go through the same kind of decision-making process when determining what should you do for your clients.

Some companies really get creative when determining what to send their clients. My friends Kris Dunn and Shannon Russo, who run the RPO firm Kinetix, decided a few years back to give out books to their clients and friends of the company.  Not just any books, they really dug in and got creative around a book that thought would challenge how people were thinking.  They would put together a thank you note and send out the books.  It’s different, it’s eye-catching, it’s memorable.  I’ll say, though, Kinetix is not the norm.

My friend, Eric Winegardner, at Monster.com, personally makes peanut brittle each holiday, packs it up for hundreds of clients and friends, and sends it out all over the country.  It isn’t easy. It’s very time-consuming. He could easily shop it out and buy store bought stuff.  It shows that he cares.  It shows that he is thinking about you.  Whether you like peanut brittle or not, it becomes a personal gift from him to you.

The norm is boring, safe and sometimes laughable.  Let me give you examples of the worse corporate/client holiday gifts:

1. Pinup Calendar!  Okay, I have to bust on a company that I actually like a lot, Dice.com!  But, they send out a Pinup Calendar each year, and I’m not sure if it’s meant to be a joke, or if one of their executive’s spouses runs a calendar printing company and they are forced to send these out, but it doesn’t fit their brand at all!  “Hey, we’re a tech company, take this 1970 pinup calendar and put in the wall next to your 26 inch LCD screen with your Outlook running on it.”  My grandpa had a pinup calendar in his garage he would get from the gas station!  I’m not sure who makes the Dice.com calendar decision, but I would love to hear about it!

2. Pre-printed Holiday Cards!  You know the ones that say something like “Happy Holidays from the Gang at HRU!”.  You shove it in a pre-printed envelope with a pre-printed address label of your client that your admin ran off an excel mail merge.  It says ‘Classy’!  “We care so much about you as a client that we won’t even sign our name to the card!”  Really!? I don’t care if you’re sending out 1500 cards, sign your freaking name on the cards. It might take a couple of hours and your wrist will hurt, but you’ll live.  Your clients deserve your very least!

3. Company Logo Coffee Mug!  No one really wants your crappy logo coffee mug, unless you’re going to spend some real money and get something that is really nice.  No, I take that back, we still don’t want your expensive logo crappy coffee mug!  Again, what this says to your client is: 1. You must drink coffee and 2. You must drink coffee in our crappy mug and think about us!  I don’t drink coffee. Send me Diet Mt. Dew with your logo on it and I’ll drink every last drop and sign your praises in a caffeinated baritone that would make angels blush!

So, what should you do to show your clients you really care about them and want to thank them for another year of doing business?  It doesn’t matter, big or small, but make it something personal to them, not to you.  If your first thought is: “what is something that is cheap that we can throw out logo on and send it out” — you’re doing it wrong! If your thinking what does this client (the individual I have a relationship with) really into, and what’s something I can send them to show them I was thinking of ‘them’ specifically when they open it — you’re doing it right!

BTW – for any HR Vendor reading this – I’m totally into Gin, Michigan State University and Sprinkles Cupcakes!  Have a great holiday season!

Millennials Are Buying Your B.S. Employment Branding

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I’m a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell and he recently said some things to say at a data analytics conference in Seattle. He had a number of points but one that interested me most was him discussing the trust levels between younger people today, versus older people in the baby boomer range. Here are his comments:

“Data can tell us about the immediate environment of people’s attitudes, but not much about the environment in which they were formed,” he said. “So which is right? Do people not trust others, as the polls say … or are they lying to the surveys?”

The context helps, Gladwell said.

That context is a massive shift in American society over the past few decades: a huge reduction in violent crime. For example, New York City had over 2,000 murders in 1990. Last year it was 300. In the same time frame, the overall violent crime index has gone down from 2,500 per 100,000 people to 500.

“That means that there is an entire generation of people growing up today not just with Internet and mobile phones … but also growing up who have never known on a personal, visceral level what crime is,” Gladwell said.

Baby boomers, who had very personal experiences of crime, were given powerful evidence that they should not trust. The following generations are reverting to what psychologists call “default truth.” In other words, they assume that when someone says something, it’s true … until they see evidence to the contrary.

“I think millennials are very trusting,” Gladwell said. “And when they say they’re not … they’re bullshitting.”

Why should you care about this?

Employment branding is marketing.  In HR we get so concerned about making sure what we say is the honest to G*d truth and nothing but the truth. We can’t tell a candidate we ‘rock’ when we really don’t ‘rock’. Guess what?  You can. Guess what else?  They’ll believe it.

Why?  Because the younger people today are a trusting lot.  They’re already a bit naive based on their age and lack of experiences. Add this to what Malcolm says above and they are ripe to be picked off.  Is that fair? No, probably not.  But, hey, as my good friend Kris Dunn loves to quote from Jerry Maguire, “this is show friends, this is show business”.

Tell the story you want. People will listen.  And skip the comments, I know this strategy is fraught with issues.  The truth is, it doesn’t matter. The difference between great employers and average employers just isn’t that great in candidates eyes.

Unreasonable Expectations Killed Talent Acquisition

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The worst thing that ever happened in the history of Talent Acquisition was the phrase, “We only hire the best talent”.

In the 1980s, I suspect, or somewhere in the past, some lame CEO said this phrase.  Talent Acquisition has forever since been cursed to live up to this expectation.  You never will, for a number of reasons.

First, what the hell is “best talent”, really? You don’t truly know. No one does.  Do we mean the actual number one rated best talent? Or, do we mean just the best talent at the time we hire? Or, do we mean the best talent that will actually accept a job at our crappy company?!  I think the CEO believes it’s the actual number rated best talent, which means she is an idiot that has no concept of what she is talking about.

Second, do you even know who your own ‘best talent’ is in your organization?  Because to hire ‘best talent’ it will mean you need to hire people better than what you already have, which means you better know who the best is in your own barn!  Most of us struggle with this one as well, because we measure ‘best’ on a number of factors, which usually don’t align to what our executives feel is best.

Third, are you sure you even want ‘best talent’ in the first place?  Best talent can be a major pain in the ass! I’m willing to put up some of that best talent ass pain, but I don’t want an organization full of it.  I want to build a fantasy team at my organization. Folks who are great at certain roles, surrounded by other who are great at other roles, all knowing how their skills support each other, to make the whole better!  The last thing I need is a team with five Michael Jordans. There aren’t enough shots to keep that team happy!

We only hire the best talent is the single biggest line of B.S. that is said by executives of organizations and by TA leaders.  What they usually mean to say is:

“We only hire the best available talent at the time we have an opening, of those who actually applied to the job, and who are willing to accept the at market pay and benefits we offer!”

But, that message doesn’t look good on a career site!

If you’re in Talent Acquisition and you feel like you never measure up to your executive teams expectations, I would bet your executives probably think you only hire the best talent!  Don’t get down, the tide is turning.  Sharp TA leaders are already changing this narrative to bring some reality back to the conversation.

 

 

T3 – @Anthology;

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This week on T3 I’m reviewing the career/job site Anthology; (formerly Poachable). Anthology; (the Semicolon is part of the logo/name, for those who aren’t wondering what weird grammatical quirk I now have going on!) is a confidential career matchmaking tool for people who aren’t “looking” but open to learning about new, screened opportunities.

Anthology basically works as a partial replacement for traditional job postings and headhunter found candidates. I say partial, only because they are newer and their member network is limited, but growing. Primarily, about 80% of their members reside in the IT and/or Sales space, and in the geographic areas of San Fransico, NYC, Seattle, Chicago and Boston. They do have members in all fifty states, and will use recent investor funding to begin quickly building out across the country.

So, what does Anthology really do?

The idea behind Anthology is true passive candidates want complete anonymity when searching for a new position.  Companies want more passive candidates. Anthology is giving these two groups a platform to get together.

Anthology allows their members (mostly passive candidates) to answer a number of questions regarding what it would take to get them to move from their current position/company. Anthology’s system then matches this candidate against it’s the employer member positions they have open on the site (currently 500 companies, 1500+ registered recruiters).

Once this match is done, it will comes back to the candidate with a weighted score of how close they might match the opportunities available. The candidate then gets the first stab at letting the employer know they are interested. All of this is confidential to this point, neither sides knows of the other.  Once the candidate expresses interest, both sides are revealed to each other, and the traditional process moves forward from there.

Another great aspect about Anthology is, unlike traditional job sites, both parties can search for each other. It’s based on matching criteria. If the candidate matches what you have open, they’ll be presented your opening. If the candidate does not match, they’ll never see your opening, thus saving you from wasting time on candidates who are just blasting out to everything even close.

From the company side, Anthology does show you potential matches of candidates in their system and allows you to send out introductions to the candidates. It is still up to the candidate to decide if they have interest and want to know more. If the candidate doesn’t want to accept the introduction the company gets direct feedback on why! This is awesome because companies are getting instant feedback on why their organization or positions are not connecting with candidates.

So, what does Anthology cost? 

Anthology has two different pricing models. The first model is a thirty day $500 job posting.  It what you basically think of in regards to job site, job posting. You post and if candidates are ‘matched’ within the thirty days, you’ll get those folks.  The other option is designed for longer term success, and will cost you 12% of the first year salary of the candidate. This option posts your opening until it is filled, no matter how many candidates you plow through! You pay nothing if you never hire a candidate.

Anthologies own data shows that most of their filled job postings are filled by the fifth introduction of a candidate to the company. About 10% of the job posted on Anthology are filled by candidate members, and 80% of the final candidate selection have an Anthology candidate in the mix. Those are actually pretty decent numbers when you think about the passive candidate market!

Anthology has an interesting model and its one of a number of technologies that have been released in the past 24 months attempting to disrupt the traditional recruiting industry. Ultimately, they’re going to need to reach mass to be effective for most organizations, and it looks like they have strong funding to make that jump!

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.

When Did Attitude Become a Skill?

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I know for sure that this hasn’t always been the case.  My parents and grandparents did not see Positive Attitude as a skill.  It was something you had, or faked, while at work.  You didn’t question it, it was a given.  You either showed up with it, or you got sent home to find it!

I’m now, seriously, hearing from hiring managers who only skill they desire from a candidate is someone with a positive attitude!

No, Tim, I don’t need someone who can do the job. We can show them that part. I just need someone who actually shows up to work and seems to like being here, working, making money, helping the company, our customers and their fellow employees.

By the way, these aren’t $12 an hour jobs.  These are professional, you can make a good living, with benefits and retirement and manage people, level jobs!  Career level jobs!

Here is all anyone really has to do today to get hired by, keep and have a long successful career at most companies:

1. Show up to work, almost every day.

2. Come across to others that you actually like your job and the company you work for.

3. Don’t be an asshole to your boss, coworkers and customers.

4. Be slightly positive about what the future holds for yourself and others.

5. Don’t be creepy.

1 + 2 +3 + 4 + 5 = a great career and multiple employee awards!

Yet, most people in the world can’t even come close to meeting the expectations I’ve listed out above.  Not. Even. Close.

Positive attitude is not a skill. It’s a basic human trait that all of your employees should have.  If they don’t, please give them the gift of finding this ‘skill’ working for another employer.

Also, don’t give me some crap about having a bad day.  Everyone has bad days, weeks, months and years.  It doesn’t change the fact that you need to show up to work and put on a positive front. Look, I don’t care if its real or fake, and no one else does either! Just do it. Here’s a little secret, none of know that your faking being positive, and even if we did, we really don’t care! We like hanging around positive people, more than negative people.

Attitude is not a skill. I refuse to allow it to be!

GE’s “Owen” Employment Branding is Brilliant!

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If you haven’t seen these TV commercials for GE (they also have a ton of radio ads in the same genre) you’re missing out on one of the best employment branding campaigns that have come out in years! “What’s the matter with Owen?” is the series and they’re very funny!

The ads show that GE knows who they are and what the perception is about them in the technology industry.  They also know, like many other giant established primarily manufacturing companies (see Big 3 Autos, Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics, etc.), that they need engineering and IT talent, just as bad as those companies in Silicon Valley.

Here are a couple of the ads:

We talk constantly about how important employment branding is to organizations to attract talent. We also say that small companies have an advantage in employment branding because they can be more creative.  I think GE just gave big orgs a roadmap to how they can flip the script when it comes to be creative and having fun with their employment branding!

Want to have a better understanding at how bad the labor market, truly, is for STEM talent?  GE, one of the most established brands in the world for decades and one of the most conservative with their branding, is making fun of itself and it’s perceived culture!  I can’t even explain at what a huge shift this is within the industry!