You Will Never Win The Employee Engagement Battle

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There is an interesting Psychological phenomenon that happens when you do something over and over, it’s called “decline effect.”  Decline effect, simply, is when you first go out and measure something, then put some focus on bettering that one thing, as you continue to do it, you don’t get better results the more you do it, you actually start to see declining results.  I bring this up as I see so many articles recently written on declining Employee Engagement, and almost all of those articles focus on the economy and the lack of additional or more choices for the employee to change, as being the primary culprit for lower engagement scores.  That could definitely be one answer, and it fits well with the timing of our economic collapse – all though I think many companies actually saw engagement scores increase as the economy started to go south.  So, maybe this decline effect fits for some organizations.

Here’s my theory.  Over the past 5-10 years employee engagement has been a huge focus of HR shops around the world.  An entire consultancy industry has sprung up to support increasing organizations employee engagement levels.  As organizations do, meaning we usually go right ditch – left ditch, we focused on Engagement!  We began by measuring our baseline – we then implemented programs – and we saw the fruit of our labor by increased scores.  Every year we went out to increase those scores, damn the torpedoes, we need more engagement, I don’t care if you have 100% engagement – Google has 105% engagement – we need that as well!  So we double-triple-quadruple our engagement efforts, but something strange started to happen – our scores weren’t getting better, they started to creep the other way – oh no – they’re getting worse!

Has to be those lazy managers – more leadership training is needed – more focus. Still lower scores.  Oh wait, those lazy employees, we need to change some of them as well. Still lower scores. Must be that crappy engagement vendor we are using  – go find a new one! Still lower scores.

Give up?

When I bough my first house, I was very happy with it.  I had never had a house and my first small, cozy house was perfect.  3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a lawn – and I was happy.  Then I bought my next house and it had more, it had more bedrooms, more bathrooms, more lawn – and I was even more happy!  Then I bought my next house and it had all my last house had, but it more garage and it was on the water and it had more space. But, I really wasn’t happier – it seemed like the more space had some issues as well – it cost more, it took longer to clean, it was just more work.

We spend so much time and effort on making our employees happy.  New chair – you’ll be more comfortable.  Free lunch – you look hungry.  Let me wash your cat – you look overworked. Have a free massage – you look tired.  Let me fix your boss – he doesn’t seem very nice.  Then all of sudden we don’t have more of offer, anything else to make better.  It’s not that our employees weren’t engaged before all of this, they were – we just wanted more – but more comes with a price.  To keep more, you have to keep giving more and eventually you’ll run into a wall where more isn’t the answer. When more won’t give you more – it will start giving you less.

Employee Engagement is tricky – don’t fall into the “more” trap – you won’t like what you will create!

HR’s Christmas Gift

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Ok, before we get started, stop it.  I could have titled this, “HR’s Holiday Gift” or “HR’s Chanukah Gift”, etc. But, I didn’t, the majority of people celebrate Christmas, so I used Christmas. Breath in HR people. (for the record we celebrate both Hanukkah and Santa in my house – my kids are equal gift getters!).

So, what would it be? If you could have one thing in HR for Christmas, what would you ask for?

And don’t be lame. “Oh Tim, I would just ask for world peace and that Snapple brought back Compassion Berry” No you wouldn’t, not if it was real. I mean for really real!

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for a new HRIS System. I mean that’s what we do during the holidays, we want the biggest baddest fastest new electronic device that will make our lives easier and make us look 10 pounds thinner!

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for the ability to Hire more employees!  What a gift that would be.  Not only for the people getting hired, but for your overwork staff. One thing that hasn’t come back from the recession is HR and Talent Acquisition staffs. Most shops are still running very thin!

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for a new Employment Brand!  Oh to be as sexy as Google, Zappos or Sodexo! Wouldn’t that be a wonderful environment to work in HR.  Life just seems easier when you work for a sexy brand.  It isn’t actually, but that’s what great branding does.  It makes some idiot like me think it must be easy to work in a great place like that, so they should hire me!

I’m sure a bunch of HR Pros would ask for better Talent for their organizations (which is technically way more than one gift, but let’s face it, some of us HR Pros don’t follow directions well!).   This is the freaking holy grail, right!  If we only had the top talent (instead of saying we only hire top talent – then hire those who respond to our posts) our lives would be so much easier!

There are so many things we could ask for in HR, but this is why I love HR – for all those gifts I listed above, and for so many more you and I could come up with, we work in a profession where we have the ability to deliver each and everyone of those to our organizations.  With enough time, patience, influence, strategy and luck, not one of those things I couldn’t give my organization.  Maybe that’s the best gift of all.

For the record – Visionary Leader – that’s my one gift – the one I would ask for.  Those are rare, those are hard to find.  Not many of us get the opportunity to work with a true visionary. Great managers, strong leaders, charismatic personalities – yes; But a Visionary Leader, that is something few get the opportunity to experience.

What would be your One gift you want for HR this holiday season?

T3 – Fuel50

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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 space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

This week on T3 I got the thrill to talk to the good folks over at Fuel 50. Fuel 50 is career path software that delivers a clear line of sight to your opportunities and a tool to help your employees create great career paths with you. What the solution delivers, to their enterprise level clients, is higher employee engagement and higher retention.  It’s really the first comprehensive solution I’ve seen that truly allows your employees to drive their own career path within your organization.

I’ll tell you, of all the T3 posts I’ve done to date, Fuel 50 had me taking the most notes!  There is a ton of stuff they provide and can deliver, customized career paths based on employees strengthens and desires, ability to show employees what other roles are truly like within your organization, individual competency gaps, career assessment desires, succession management, leadership enablement (basically helping make your managers better leaders with guided discussions and tips), etc. Fuel 50 is an OD departments wet dream in one easy to use software solution. (I’m sure they’re really happy I just called them that! They’re from Australia, I know they have a better sense of humor than most HR vendors!)

5 Things I really like about Fuel 50:

1. Completely employee focused. We’ve really gotten to a point in employee development where employees want and need to own their development.  Yes, your boss can help you with this, but it’s up to you to drive your development.  The next generations will own their career path, not wait for some manager to show it to them.

2. But, Let’s help you be a great leader to your employee’s path. Yes, your employees need to own this, but great leaders want to be a part and help them along the way. It’s like my friend Kris Dunn says, great leaders are career agents to their employees.  Fuel 50 was designed around this concept.

3. Fuel 50 allows your employees to share their position story. Yeah, I think I want to get into marketing at my company, because I have some crazy notion of what that might be. Fuel 50 allows your organization to share this with each other in a way that gives your employees an aspect of what is that role really like.

 4. The number one driver for employee engagement is career development. Fuel 50 is seeing upwards of 30% increases in employee engagement, in the first six months, when implementing their solution with their clients.  It’s metrics driven, with proven results. That is a given with most career pathing solutions.  As you can imagine, retention, is another driver positively impacted by Fuel 50.

5. Comprehensive succession management with excellent reporting tools. Every executive wants HR to deliver succession, and most fail miserably.  It’s because it’s more than delivering a list of those ‘next-up’. It’s a process that takes time to build, to deliver great succession.  Fuel 50s solution delivers succession the way it should be done.

Fuel 50 isn’t this simple, one step, silver bullet out of the box solution.  It is simple to use, but it’s comprehensive.  This is career pathing, career development and succession for companies that are serious about this stuff.

Check them out, well worth the demo. Plan on a solid hour, and get ready to take notes.  The demo was an education in itself, with a ton of great ideas and conversation that you could put to work right away, even without using Fuel 50. That is another thing I really liked, the folks who are running Fuel 50 love and live this stuff, and they’re willing to share!

5 Things Leaders Need To Know About Developing Employees

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I think we try and deliver a message in organizations that all employees need and want to be developed.  This is a lie.  Many of our employees do want and need development. Some don’t need it, they’re better than you.  Some don’t want it, just give me my check.  Too many of our leaders truly believe they can develop and make their employees better than they already are.  This is a lot tougher than it sounds, and something most leaders actually fail at moving the needle on.

Here are some things I like to share with my leaders in developing their employees:

1. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” -Maya Angelou.  I see too many leaders trying to change adult employees.  Adult behaviors are basically locked. If they show you they don’t want to work.  They don’t want to work.  Part of developing a strong relationship is spending time on people who are not a waste of time.

2. People only change behavior they want to change, and even then, sometimes they’re not capable of it.  See above.  When I was young in my career, I was very ‘passionate’. That’s what I liked calling it – passionate.  I think the leaders I worked with called it, “career derailer”.  It took a lot for me to understand what I thought was a strength, was really a major weakness.  Some people never will gain this insight.  They’ll continue to believe they’re just passionate, when in reality they’re just really an asshole.

3. Don’t invest more in a person than they are willing to invest in themselves.  I want you to be great. I want you to be the best employee we have ever had work here.  You need to be a part of that.  I’m willing to invest an immense amount of time and resources to help you reach your goals, but you have to meet me halfway, at least.

4. It’s usually never the situation that’s pissing you off, it’s the mindset behind the situation that’s pissing you off.  Rarely do I get upset over a certain situation. Frequently, I get upset over how someone has decided to handle that situation.  Getting your employees to understand your level of importance on a situation is key to getting you both on the same page towards a solution. Failure to do this, goes down a really disastrous path.

5, Endeavor to look at disappointment with broader strokes. It’s all going to work out in the end.  It’s hard for leaders to act disappointed.  We are supposed to be strong and not show our disappointment.  This often makes our employees feel like we aren’t human.  The best leaders I’ve ever had showed disappoint, but with this great level of resolve that I admired. This sucks. We are all going to make it through this and be better. Disappointment might be the strongest developmental opportunity you’ll ever get as a leader, with your people.

 

HR’s Greeting Cards

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Around the holidays I go out and get greeting cards to send out to various friends and family.  We also receive a ton of holiday cards at home and work. I’m always amazed at how specific the greeting card companies have gotten.  Just this past week my own Mom send a card to my wife and I and it was to “My Loving Son and Daughter-In-Law”.  It made me laugh out loud at how specific the title was, and immediately I began to think of even more specific greeting cards I wish I had in my life as an HR Pro:

– “Dear High Performing Employee with Overcompensation Issues”

– “To The Leader Who Wants Everyone to Love them”

– “TEAM – We All Rock, but Some rock more”

– “dear introverted person in accounting, I see you”

– “Hey! Top Performing Sales Pro, we get it, you’re making a ton of cash”

– “Low Performer! Please perform better, I hate conflict”

– “Dear Recent Divorcee, Your eHarmony hookup stories are disturbing”

– “Employee who is also a Parent, Yay! you decided to do this”

– “Dear Gay Employee, we know, you’re Gay!”

– “Dear Bro Employees, Hey Bro” 

– “Dear Hiring Manager, Congratulations! There are no more candidates!” 

– “Dear Sports Guy, yeah, we know, there was a game last night” 

– “Dear Sr. Executive, Your infidelity is showing” 

– “Dear Employee Who Never Seems To Get Recognition, here it is.” 

There seems to be an endless need for specificity in the greeting card business.  No longer can you just give out a “Thanks” or a “Congrats”.   I can only imagine what’s being cooked up right now in the creative spaces at Hallmark and such.  “To My Stepson and his Second-cousin Wife on your son’s Bar Mitzvah, Congrats!”

What greeting cards would you love to see?

Sometimes You Paint Fish in Vaginas

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Pablo Picasso is one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. He has some of the greatest works ever made.  He also made this. It’s called The Mackerel.

The Mackerel
Yep. One of the greatest artist ever made this. You see, to make great works, you have to make a lot of works. Great artist don’t just make great works. Sometimes they make fish in vaginas.  Sometimes what they think is a good idea fails. That’s how they perfect their craft. Every once in a while, greatness is the result.

I write a lot. At least every business day I have a post going up. Many times I have posts going up on other sites, as well.  Ideas come to me, such as my frustration with sourcing and talent acquisition, and I write about them.
I feel, far too often, talent acquisition blindly follows the pack without determining what is right for their environment, their culture, and their needs. Does this mean every day I’m frustrated with HR, recruiting and sourcing?  No. I’m going to write some stuff that I’ll look back on and wonder, “Why did I write that!?”

That’s part of the process.

We are at a place in our society where you can’t have one idea one day, and have another idea the next, if it contradicts one idea you’ve ever had in your whole entire life. What I believe in now, 20 years into my career, isn’t even close to what I believed in starting out in my career. And we lose our minds and judge people in this industry if someone has a different opinion than ours.

At this point in my career, I don’t read a lot of stuff in the HR and Talent space, primarily because I agree with a lot of it.  It’s like the pastor preaching to the choir. It’s not needed because they’ve already bought in!  Now I like reading stuff that I totally disagree with because it challenges my assertions and makes me rethink my positions.

It’s not my goal to write about stuff that is controversial. I’m not that guy. I get far more traffic on my positive posts than on my controversial posts. And it’s easier to write about hugs and babies and show videos that make you cry and appreciate your life.

But I will write about stuff that matters. Some of it will be great. Some of it won’t stick. I hope that people in our industry will see the art for what it is and avoid personal attacks. I know some of the most vocal people in our space. I admire them for their skills. I want to give everybody the space to develop new and deeper ideas, even if those ideas contradict earlier blog posts. And I don’t want to start calling them out when they write their fish-in-vaginas sourcing and talent manifestos.

***Shoutout to my friend Laurie Ruettimann for some editing help with this post***

 

 

Dreams Are Adjustable

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I once wanted to be a teacher.  In fact, until I was about 23 years old, I thought that was going to be my future.  Then I taught, and found it wasn’t for me.  Not the teaching part, the public education administration part.  It only took one example to show me public education was fundamentally broken.

The local museum in town had this great exhibit in for only two weeks, by chance my class was studying the same thing, what luck, I thought to myself, the kids will love this! I went to my principal and told her I wanted to take the kids to museum instead our annual trip to the zoo.  “Can’t do that”, she said, “had to be approved a year in advance, but you can do it next year”. “It won’t be here next year, it’s a traveling exhibit, it’s only here this year.”, I explained.  “Sorry, won’t happen”, she replied. “What if I got parents to do this after school, or on a weekend, and it wouldn’t cost anything?”, I pleaded. “Nope, can’t let you do it, don’t waste your energy on this”, she could see my rising frustration on something that made no sense.

So, we went to the zoo. The same zoo the kids went to every year, for the same tour, same learning, same cage animals, not even trying to get out.

The writing was on the wall for me, right then and there.  These people didn’t really care about educating kids. They cared about following process and procedure. Even if it didn’t make sense.  My dream of being an educator needed an adjustment.

My dream didn’t die, I just found a new way to scratch that itch.  So many people believe if they didn’t reach their dream, that it dies.  I think that’s just an easy way to getting out of doing the hard work.  The hard work isn’t all that you put into reaching your dream. That is actually work you enjoy, you’re chasing your dream.  The hard work starts when you can’t reach your dream, or you decide the dream you had is no longer the dream you want.  The hard work starts the moment you adjust your dream to something else.

I truly believe people should chase their dreams for as long as they’re appropriate. Awesome, you want to play football in the NFL, that’s great! You’re now 38 years old and never made a roster, time to make an adjustment!  How about working in some capacity in the NFL? Coaching? Marketing?

We give people a false sense that it’s alright to chase your dreams forever.  We even give them examples of some 90 year old lady who ran her first marathon, or something like that. We encourage it. Never do we feel it’s appropriate to tell someone, “Hey, maybe it’s time to think about something else”.  Maybe it’s time to adjust your dream.  It’s okay. You won’t shrivel up and die.  It’s just a dream, they’re adjustable.

T3 – Workable

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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 space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

This week I took a look at the recruiting software Workable.  It’s sold as the “simple recruiting software for fast growing businesses”. It’s part ATS, part social sourcing tool, part talent acquisition process enabler, but it’s 100% simple to use. That is by far what I walked away from after my demo, I actually bolded in my notes in capital letters:”SIMPLE!”

I’ve used a lot of recruiting solutions in my career, but this one might have been the most intuitive and easy to use right out of the box.  It even let’s those proces crazy folks drop and drag the process and design it the way you want, and even change that process based on the position, hiring manager, etc.  Workable gets recruiting and keeps it to what is is.  Source candidates. Get them to apply. Phone screen them. Interview them. Make the offer. Hire them. Straightforward. Easy.

Just because it’s easy, though, it doesn’t take out all of today’s cool tools and technology.  The solution automatically pulls in LinkedIn profiles of candidates who apply, under the same email address and puts their picture on their Workable profile. The systems tracks every single touch and creates a timeline that is transparent so everyone knows what is going on, who the hold ups are, and what the next step is.

If I had an older ATS that just wasn’t working, or wasn’t using an ATS at all and on the outlook for a ‘beginner’ recruiting solution, I would definitely take a look at Workable.  Yeah, I said ‘beginner’, but that really isn’t fair, it probably fits more in the SMB space, where you just don’t’ have the resources for a full enterprise ATS solution, but you still want the tech the big boys have.  Workable is designed specifically for a SMB recruiting solution!

5 Things I really like about Workable: 

1. Simplicity in software is so hard to do. After about 30 minutes into the demo, I was pretty confident I could use the system all on my own, and be really good at it!  It’s just one of those systems that is easy to use.  That is exactly what is needed for companies growing quickly, who are usually understaffed and many areas in the business are utilizing the solution to help in hiring.

2. HR ladies will hate this, but I loved that it pulled in the candidates profile pic from LinkedIn.  Hiring managers will love this as well. It’s a simple example of how Workable understands the user of this type of solution. (BTW – you can turn this function off, HR Ladies!)

3. Automatically posts jobs on a bunch of free sites, and easy integration to your paid sites. Plus, they can get you a big discount on the big boards, through leveraging their current clients buying power as one.  Workable does all the regular stuff you expect as well, resume parsing, resume keyword searching, EEOC/OFCCP reports, source reports, candidate flow, etc.

4. Interview scheduling, email and calendar integration is very good.  Plus, you don’t get charged by user, you get charged by job, so you can every single employee in your company use the system.  This makes it easy to get adoption, when you’re not just trying to pick a small number of users to keep the cost down.

5. The ability to change and add to your process whenever you feel like it was really cool. Especially, if you’re just starting out on a big hiring project and you’re not quite sure, and you want to make some changes as you’re going.  That’s reality! Fast growing companies need to be able to change quickly and move, Workable allows you to do that, simply.

I mentioned, briefly, but Workable doesn’t charge you by user, but by job posting by month.  Need to hire 15 people one month, but none the next, Workable allows you to go up and down on pricing based on your use, and not lock you into one rate.  You can even shut it down for a period, and come back when hiring picks up and all your data will still be there. Very inexpensive for what you get!

One last thing, this would #6, but I only do five. Workable will set up a mobile friendly careers page as part of your monthly fee.  It’s a must have, they make it happen. You have no worries.

Check them out if you’re in need of a recruiting solution.  I was really impressed!

5 Reasons I’m Not Telling Where I’m Going

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There is a phenomenon that I find completely hysterical.  It’s this little game we play in our culture.  You go and accept a new position, with a new company.  You come back to your current employer and you put in your notice.  Your boss instantly says, “where are you going?” You replay with, “I’d rather not say.”

Happens, Right? Almost 100% of the time.

So, you wait the two weeks, or whatever notice it was, and the very next Monday the person updates their LinkedIn profile and posts on Facebook where they actually went.

I find this ‘dance’ we do very, very funny.

Look, I get it.  Your employees believe one of five things will happen to them if they tell you where they are going:

1. You’ll magically find some way to screw me over, because you’re upset I’m leaving you. Jealous girlfriend style.  This one is almost never happens, but it’s the first one that comes to mind for most employees!  Look, if I had that much power to screw over everyone who worked here, I wouldn’t be working here!

2. I’m not telling you because for once in this relationship, I finally have the power!  This is the real reason, for most people! You just sound like a complete freak if you actually verbalize it out loud!  I actually understand this one from a psychology position.  If you don’t feel you have control, then you get control, you’re not going to give that up easily!

3. You’ll judge me for the company I’m going to. Either way, you’re going to judged, so this is completely true!  Most organizations are like family. If you decide to leave the family, for that crackhead family down the block, I’m going to judge you!  Plan on it.

4. You’ll judge me for the position I’m going to take. See #3.  This one probably has less merit.  I was one of these people. I had in my mind a certain ‘title’ I needed to get to, so I moved around a bit in my early career, chasing titles. Then one day you wake up and realize it’s baloney. Just pay me.

5. It’s always been done that way in our culture, so let’s keep it going!  This is also a large part of what’s going on in these situations.  I took a new job. The people before me didn’t say where they were going, so I’m shouldn’t either!

My take is that you have to do you.  You don’t want to tell anyone, that’s fine, they’ll all know in about 14 days anyway. If that makes you feel all big and powerful for a few weeks, great! We should feel that way from time to time.

For myself, I have friends at every company I every worked for. Also, I wanted to maintain a professional relationship with the leaders of the organizations I’ve been with.  I told people where I was going.  We talked about it, and I tried to help them understand if it was just me, or if it was them.  Ultimately, how can we leave this point in our lives better than we found it.

My way isn’t the correct way, it’s just my way.  Everyone has to make this decision for themselves, but I’m still going to laugh at it when I hear “I’d rather not say”.