How Much Pregnancy Leave Is Too Much?

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Tim Sackett

So, I’m up north at HRPA 2014 and I’m learning so much about our Canadian HR brother and sisters (like the US it’s still mostly sisters!). Did you know the maternity leave in Canada is 52 weeks! That’s one year if your slow at math like me! And that can be divided in any manner between the mother and father. Plus, from the peers I spoke to, many get up to 55% of their salary for the entire time they off!

Obviously, the US has FMLA for only 12 weeks. By the way, the women I spoke to, who didn’t know this about the US, were completely shocked by this. But, I was completely shocked by 52 weeks and 55% pay!

My question to you today is: How much pregnancy leave is too much?

Here are some thoughts I have between the US and Canadian policies:

1. 12 weeks is too short. 52 weeks seems too long.

2. I’m not sure how companies manage, especially those with a large female workforce, it would seem like a huge competitive disadvantage to lose your talent for so long, and still have to pay out so many resources for not having that talent.

3. I wish I would have had my 3 sons in Canada.

4. Should a government force a corporation to pay an employee for a very personal decision? The company didn’t ask you to have babies, why should they pay 55% of your salary? How is that decision different than many life decisions we make. I want to train for an Ironman Triathlon – I expect it will take me 6 months. Pay me for that!

5. Canadians game the system just like Americans! My Canadian HR peers had the same war stories as my American peers. One was of a female business owner who got pregnant. Since she owned the business she didn’t have to claim 52 weeks off. So her husband took all 52 weeks and got paid 55% of his salary. The HR person knew this was going on and couldn’t do anything about it. People are people – given a set of rules, they’ll find ways around them.

I run a company that has had many pregnancies over the years, I hire an age that falls into the perfect age for baby making! Each time we have one person out for 12 weeks, it’s a stress on the entire team. I can’t even imagine how we would manage for 52 weeks! A part of me is glad I don’t have to deal with that. Another part of me wishes we had better maternity leave in the US.

I don’t know what the perfect number is, I’m sure it’s different for each family going through it.

What do you think? What is the perfect amount of pregnancy leave? If you were given the chance to design a plan, taking into account both the employee and the company resources, what would you do?

It’s Tim Sackett Day – Celebrating Kelly Dingee!

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Tim Sackett

January 23, 2012 my friends made that day forever be known as Tim Sackett Day! By January 23, 2013 those same friends thought I couldn’t take another day of celebration and honor, and decided to honor another individual but still call it Tim Sackett Day! So, last year we honored the great Paul Hebert!

Tim Sackett Day is about honoring and giving respect to fellow HR and Talent Pros that we don’t think get enough respect. They are wicked smart. Great at their profession. Helpful towards others. Really, just good all around people, we think you should know more about. Yes, everything I’m not! Laurie’s original goal was to introduce our little HR and Talent social world to people they might not know, but really should.

That’s why I’m excited on this day, January 23, 2014 for Tim Sackett Day, we are honoring Kelly Dingee! (Pronounced Din Gee like a dirty window, not Dinghy like a small boat or silly person) You might know her as @SourcerKelly on the Twitters, or that super cool chick out of Washington D.C. who is the Recruiting Manager at Staffing Advisors. I know her as a peer and colleague from Fistful of Talent.

If I grow up to be a lady, I would want to be Kelly! Great Talent Pro. Helpful as can be. Funny. Great Mom.

Behind the scenes I tell Kelly this probably 3-4 times per year – ‘I Love Your Writing’. Kelly teaches me more in a year than anyone else in the industry. I don’t think I can ever thank her enough for that. We both are in the staffing game so she speaks my language, and she knows my problems, and she usually has really good ways to solve all of my roadblocks.

If anyone should have their own day, it’s Kelly! She would never ask for it, or feel she deserves it, but she does.

Please send Kelly a note on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn – where ever you like to hang and congratulate her on being named the 2014 Tim Sackett Day honoree!

Job Seekers Still Mostly Offline!

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Tim Sackett

I was sent some research recently from Whale Path, a business research company, that was looking at how employers really find their employees. What they found might surprise many within the Talent Acquisition space. Their research found that a majority of employees under the medium U.S. wage scale (around $50k per year) actually found their jobs offline!

Does this jive with your hiring?

Here are some of the actual stats from their research:

– Only 7% of jobs paying $25 per hour or less are filled through online sources

– Personal referrals account for 46% of hires for positions paying less than U.S. median income, up from 41% in 2008

– Craigslist was cited by more than half of businesses as a low-cost resource for finding employees.

We tend to believe everyone is online. We then believe since they are online, they must be looking for jobs online. Do you know why you believe this?You’ve been told to believe this, over, and over, and over, through great marketing by companies who are selling online hiring solutions. We see Monster.com and CareerBuilder ads on the Superbowl. We are bombarded with emails daily about easy, fast ,cheap hiring solutions. We see constant media reports about the growth of LinkedIn. We are told everyone will be searching for a job on their phone, you MUST have a mobile solution. Yet, we don’t actually know anyone personally who applied and got a job on their phone. We are conditioned to believe everyone must be searching for a job online. Marketing is so strong, you don’t even know it’s happening to you.

But they aren’t. At least millions and millions and millions of our potential employees aren’t searching for job online.

They’re finding jobs like your grandparents found jobs. They are networking, they’re letting their friends and family know they’re looking, they’re letting the members of their church and synagogue know they’re looking, they’re letting their bowling buddies know they’re looking. Eventually, someone refers them to a job, and they get hired. We tend to thing we’re all just trying to hire professionals for $100K jobs, but we aren’t. Most of the hiring done in the U.S. is for positions under $50K, and most of your budget is being spent on tools that don’t attract these individuals. Individuals that don’t need a resume, they just need to fill out an application, because they have people who will vouch for their skills.

Interesting research, much of it we don’t normally focus on. What are you spending your hiring budget on today?

The Bigger You Are, The Smaller You Need To Act

Posted on January 21, 2014 by Tim Sackett

Do you know why most restaurants fail? They don’t do anything really, really well. There are a number of new burger chains popping up all over the country who are doing great. These chains have decided to have only a few menu items, but do each of those items better than anywhere else. You can get a burger, fries, shake and a soda. That’s it. Small, focused, the best you’ll ever taste – each item.

I work with a lot of big companies, and the hiring managers love me! You know why?

I’m small (okay, I walked into that one!). My company is small. When you’re small you do a number of things that most big companies don’t do. Here’s a short list:

You take full responsibility (no one else around to blame)
You’re responsive to everything (or you go out of business)
You’re in the know of what needs to be done
You say ‘Yes’ to almost everything
You treat the business like it’s your own

I meet with a lot of HR executives who work for big companies and almost 100% have the same issue. They feel like their department doesn’t have the credibility and influence it should. They are concerned that their department’s reputation is that of a roadblock and not of a valued partner. They don’t know how to get the organization to view them differently.

It’s really easy.

Big HR departments have to act like they are small HR departments. While their is a business necessity to have specialist in large HR shops, everyone must act like they are generalist. Leaders have to make sure that it’s known that lack of response, lack of solutions, lack taking full responsibility to ensure someone gets the answer they need will not be tolerated, at any level, within their HR shop.

Hiring managers, executives, individual contributors, etc. only want to hear one thing when they call HR – “Yes, we’ll take care of it, right now”. Not an endless loop of we can’t do it, I’m not the person, I’ll try and find out, I don’t know, call such and such, etc. Small shops don’t have this luxury. If they would say these things, they’d be out of job, because they wouldn’t be needed.

The key to great HR in a big HR shop is to act small. Yet most big HR shops work really, really hard on trying to be big. When you act small you get very good at pinpointing what is really important and getting that accomplished. You do this because you just can’t do everything, you don’t have the resources. By doing a few things really, really well, your organization knows what they can’t count on you to deliver. Large HR shops try to do everything, and usually do it all really average, or below average. They are trying to do too much. Don’t get bigger, get smaller – smaller on your focus, smaller on your deliverables, smaller on your accomplishments, but make those things world class.

Work Clothes That Measure Your Performance

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Tim Sackett

One of the big things that came out of the CES 2014 technology show is wearable technology. We already are aware of wearable technology like Google Glass and various bracelets that do everything from working as your smartphone to measuring if your fat butt is moving enough. I think what CES did this year, though, was to stretch our imagination to what could wearable technology become.

Here’s my idea – work clothes that measure whether or not you’re on task or doing exactly what you should be doing.

Think about that for a second:

1. All employees must wear company issued ‘uniform’

2. Company issued uniform has integrated wearable fibers that not only measure movements, but also give you the exact time and location of said uniform, measure the health of the worker, measure the interactions with worker tools, etc. (Hello Big Brother!)

3. Your systems measure everything to the point you can tell which employee is the most productive, which employee takes too many bathroom breaks, which employee said they were going to deliver a load to a client but also decided to stop and have a refreshing adult beverage on the way.

4. Not only measuring performance and output, but also relaying exact ways that an employee can get better at their job. “Tim continues to drop his arm down to his side after every motion “X”, if Tim would keep his arm at a 45 degree angle he would get 14% more output” – now that is some serious specific feedback!

5. Wearable uniforms could also reduce workplace accidents. If the clothes new the operator was getting too clothes to a dangerous situation, or forgot to put down a safety gate, the clothes could shut down the system before an accident could happen. That’s really cool!

6. Wearable technology could measure the health of your workers, and deliver warning signs to HR. Have you ever had someone die of a heart attack at your place of business? I have. It sucks really, really bad to see a coworker die.

Some of this seems Star Wars, super techy, fantasy kinds of things, but it’s not. Technology is getting very close to begin doing some these things in the next years. While some will think of these things as intrusive to their privacy, I’m guessing companies and worker’s compensation insurance companies will not. You want this great job, with great pay and benefits, at our great company, please put on this company issues uniform.

It’s not about control. It’s about becoming better, faster. For all the training we do, nothing could get folks up to speed, with 100% compliance, faster than your shirt not allowing to continue to do a work around that is dangerous and delivers a less than quality product.

What do you think? Would you wear clothes that measured everything you do in your job?

Philosophy for a Happy Life

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Tim Sackett

This is Sam Bern’s Philosophy for a Happy Life. Sam was a 17 year old kid who battled a very rare aging disease called Progeria. The kid was pretty amazing for his outlook on life. Here is his Philosophy for a Happy Life:

1. Be okay with what you ultimately can’t do, because there is so much you CAN do.

2. Surround yourself with people you want to be around.

3. Keep moving forward.

4. Never miss a party if you can help it.

Sam got to share this philosophy at the Mid-Atlantic TEDx event –

I love the simplicity of it. I love the ‘teenager’ in it.

Focus on what you can do. Stay positive. Hang out with people who appreciate you, and you them. Don’t look back, you can’t change the past. Party. This ride won’t last forever, might as well have some fun while we are here.

I wish every person could be this smart!

How To Pay A Headhunting Fee in 15 Easy Steps

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Tim Sackett

I hear statements like this all the time: ‘Ugh, I don’t want to pay a headhunting fee!’ I know this is because corporate HR folks think that it’s really hard to do, but I’m hear to show you that it isn’t hard! In fact, in 15 easy steps, I’ll show you how you can do this all the time!

Here are the 15 Easy Steps in Paying a Headhunting Fee:

1. Post all of your jobs and wait for applications/resumes to come into your email and/or ATS.

2. Weed out as many candidates as possible for stuff that doesn’t really matter, like: too many jobs, not enough time at a job, going to the ‘wrong’ school or not high enough GPA, working for a company that was too big or too small, making a grammatical error on the resume, not living in the ‘right’ area, etc.

3. Email the few candidates you have left with a message about their interest level and make them fill out stuff like applications and questionnaires to be considered for the next step.

4. Wait for email replies.

5. Send the 2 that reply as your ‘best candidates’ onto the hiring manager. 7 others reply after, ignore these, they weren’t quick enough to be the ‘best’ candidates.

6. Don’t follow up with the hiring manager on the two candidates you sent. If she is interested, she’ll get back to you.

7. Don’t respond to candidates following up looking for feedback on next steps, you want to keep the power position in this arrangement.

8. Send another email to hiring manager after two weeks looking for feedback on original candidates you sent. Hiring manager won’t like the two, wants more candidates. You go out and see who else has posted for the position in the past week (forget about those other 7 who first applied, they are old by now). Send 5 additional emails to the new candidates. 1 replies. Send to hiring manager.

9. Let Hiring Managers return calls go to voice mail, you know they just want to complain about the quality and lack of candidates. Call her back end of business tomorrow. She’s already gone for the day.

10. Hiring manager comes to your office. Crap. They caught you. You tell the manager you’ve been working non-stop on their opening, the three candidates are the best you can come up with.

11. Hiring manager goes back to their office. I call your hiring manager. She tells me she can’t get any good candidates.

12. Hiring Manager sets up their own interviews. Three days later, if not sooner, I send your hiring manager 5 candidates all capable of doing the job. I call your hiring manager to highlight two of the candidates who I feel would be the best fit for your organization.

13. Hiring manager picks a favorite from the great interviews they just had. I’ve pre-closed both on an offer, so I’m what they call in the business, a ‘sure-thing’.

14. Hiring manager calls you and tells you they found a candidate through an outside source.

15. You process my invoice.

See, it’s really not that hard to pay a headhunting fee, in fact, you practically don’t have to do much of anything! Just keep doing what you’re doing.

Burning Down Your HR Department

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Tim Sackett

This post originally ran in January of 2012. I liked it, and still like it today. Many of us are looking to kick off 2014 with a fresh approach. Read this, it might save you some time in the upcoming year! Enjoy.

A couple of years ago my parents house burned down. They were away on vacation and lighting struck the roof. Before the fire department could get there and put it out, most of the house was destroyed. 60+ years of memories and possessions, gone. In hindsight, it was a bit of a blessing, there house was at the age where everything was starting to need replacing, and my father was at the age, where he wanted to retire. Those two things don’t go well together! Major home improvements equals major expense, and a fixed income. So, long-story-short, mother nature, and the insurance company, gave my folks a new house for a retirement gift! All is well that ends well, I guess.

This situation, though, led to some deep emotional conversations about what the wish they could have pulled out, if they new this was going to happen. As you can imagine it was all the stuff you and I would want – our photos, our mementos, some favorite things that remind us of loved ones, or things that we were proud of. I thought about his recently when having a conversation with a friend who just started a new position as the head of a large HR shop. His comment to me was:

“What I really need to do is burn this place down and start over!”

To which I replied, “well, isn’t there anything you would keep?” Bam! That is what he needed – he did need to burn it down, but there were definitely some things he needed to take out before lighting the match.

It’s a common practice that Leaders tend to do when taking on a new position – we tend to burn down our departments. Oh, we say we won’t, as we go around throwing gasoline on everything, and we say we aren’t rebuilding as strap our tool belt on and start hammering away, but the truth is, most leaders want to remake their new departments into what they want, not what it was.

So, I’ll ask you to take a few moments today and think about the concept of burning down your HR department. What would you pull out and save? What would you happily allow to burn up? What would you miss?

Everyday we owe it to our organizations to get better. You don’t have to burn down the department to get better – but you do need to get rid of those things you know you would easily allow to burn up!

Your Open Office is Killing Your Productivity

Posted on January 14, 2014 by Tim Sackett

You know what’s funny – everyone, who is anyone, wants to work in a new, cool, ultra modern open office concept! Organizations are spending billions creating these environments, and now studies are coming out and showing that productivity suffers in open concepts, especially with younger workers and those that love to multitask. From the New Yorker:

The open office was originally conceived by a team from Hamburg, Germany, in the nineteen-fifties, to facilitate communication and idea flow. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the open office undermines the very things that it was designed to achieve…In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than a hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction. Compared with standard offices, employees experienced more uncontrolled interactions, higher levels of stress, and lower levels of concentration and motivation. When David Craig surveyed some thirty-eight thousand workers, he found that interruptions by colleagues were detrimental to productivity, and that the more senior the employee, the worse she fared.

So, why do we continue to design our workplaces around this open office concept? Here’s what I think:

1. Recruiting. Young talent likes to walk into the ‘cool’ office. Executives feel that this is a recruiting advantage and a marketing advantage when customers see a new, ultra-modern office environment.

2. We think we want our office, like we want our homes. Over the past 2 decades home builders have been ask to build open home plan designs. We then go to our office which is all cut up into small rooms and think ‘Hey, wouldn’t this be ‘nicer’ if this was all opened up?’

3. Collaboration. Open office design was billed as the next best thing for creativity and collaboration. It was a theory. It was never really tested out. Someone had an idea, ‘you know what, if we break down these walls and have everyone in one big room, we’ll be more collaborative, we’ll be more creative”. Sounds good. Research is showing us that theory was just that, a theory.

I think for certain aspects the open concept still has merit. Sales offices for years have been using the open concept with success, in a bullpen environment. Hear your peers next to you on the phone, and your competitive nature takes over, you get on the phone. You can feel and hear a buzz in the air in a well run sales bullpen. I tend to think I’m creative, but having others around me, talking, doesn’t help my creative process. I hear this from IT and Design professionals as well. Have you been in a big IT shop or Design house? Most of the pros where headphones, dim the lights, try and create an environment that the open concept isn’t giving them.

Be careful my friends. I love the look of many of the new offices, but if it’s hurting productivity and making my workers worse – I’ll gladly give them back their offices!

The Tim Sackett Project

TA & HR Expert, Dad, Backup Point Guard on my over 40 men's team