Hiring Back An Employee Who Left You

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Did you see what happened last week on the college football carousel?  The University of Louisville hired their ex-coach, and current Western Kentucky Coach, Bobby Petrino.  For those who don’t know the Bobby Petrino story check out his detailed coaching timeline on SB Nation (it’s awesome!) – I’ll give you a five second tour:

I. Hired Head Football Coach at University of Louisville – doing great (2004)

II. Hired Head Coach NFL Atlanta Falcons (Jan. 2007) – didn’t do great

III. Leaves mid-season and takes University of Arkansas Head Coach job – did good (December 2007)

IV. Head Coach Arkansas, has a motorcycle crash with a 25 year old female assistant on the back that wasn’t his wife and that he was having an affair with, and that he hired – Power drunk. (April 2012)

V. Fired as Head Coach at Arkansas – not good (April 2012)

VI. Hired Head Football Coach Western Kentucky University- did good (December 2012)

VII. Hired Head Football Coach University of Louisville. (January 2013)

There’s a bunch of other luggage along the way that SB Nation points out which leads me to only one question – Was it a good hire by Louisville to take Bobby Petrino back?

I asked a couple of my friends and fellow #8ManRotation authors this same question – here are their responses:

Matt (akaBruno) Stollak:

How much time off does a mercurial talent deserve before being brought back?  Is Jim Tressel looking at the Petrino hiring and thinking he is up next?

Similarly, how does Louisville Football Core Values (http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/06/louisville-footballs-core-team-values-include-no-guns-no-drugs/) continue to exist when Petrino has blatantly violated #1 and #2.    Is it all about winning?  What message does it send to staff and players?

Steve (Mr. HR Tech) Boese:

Even a cynic like me is surprised by this move. I guess the argument was he hit rock bottom and now has done the football equivalent of finding Jesus or something, But it is also about positioning, Louisville does not want to be a stepping stone job between the MAC and the Big 10 or SEC, (they are delusional about this, but I think it is true). So at some level they see this hire as a the best they could do with that in mind. No successful power conference coach would leave for Louisville so with Petrino they find the closest they could to that ideal.

Petrino going to Western Kentucky after his biggest screw up at Arkansas and before coming back to Louisville also serves to give Louisville some cover on this. It is kind of like Western Kentucky took at least some of the flak for letting the guy back in to the world of coaching and at least in theory that will diminish the heat that Louisville is going to take.  Kind of like Petrino went to jail (getting canned at Arkansas), then got released to probation, (Western Kentucky), and now the ankle bracelet has been finally cut off (back to Louisville).

Here’s my take:

The best hires that most companies will never make are the ones like this.  He was great for us.  Went someplace else and had a meltdown. Now we won’t hire him back either.  For some reason, he was great with you.  Don’t discount what certain environments, certain cultures, etc. will do for someone’s performance.  Bobby Petrino is a broken man, coming home to where he had his most success.  This might turn out to a great hire for Louisville.

What do you think?

 

The Future of HR, again.

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2014 will be the year Retention returns to HR.

Retention almost died during the great recession.  For almost 10 years HR pros were able to roam the halls of their organization and almost never had to worry about the issue of retention.  There weren’t many jobs.  Most people in times of hardship, hunker down and don’t move.  It was like a perfect retention storm! There are HR Pros who graduated out of HR programs, started their careers in the past 5 years, that have never known a time when retaining your employees was the number one priority!

That is about to change.

This year Retention of Employees will once again become a major issue that HR will be looked at to solve.   Here are some important things to remember when you begin to look at ways to retain your employees:

1. “It’s really easy to do.” That is what your executives think, so you’re in trouble.

2. You will get blamed for high turnover.  Buy a helmet, life sucks that way.

3. You will blame your crappy managers that you haven’t given any management training to in at least 5-7 years.

4. You will tell at least half the people in your organization – “We don’t have a retention problem, we have a compensation problem.” You’ll be partially right, but won’t have the competitive data to back it up, so you’ll come across a a whiny victim.

5. You’ll make at least one info-graphic trying to explain ‘Retention vs. Turnover’ to your executives.  It will fail.

6. At least one executive will come up with the brilliant idea of ‘Retention Bonuses’ and think $1,000 at the end of a year will stop people from wanting to leave your organization.  Everyone who stays throughout the year will get a $1,000 bonus but won’t know why they got it.

7. To combat your inability to retain employees, you’ll blame recruiting for not being able to find talent.  This will work until your head of recruiting gets fired and the new head of recruiting comes in and says this one line – “The best recruit is the employee we don’t have to replace.” Again, retention will be on your desk.

8. Employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Instead of recruiting, you now pass off your problem to the training department.  Managers will now be forced to go through soft skills leadership classes. You buy yourself 6 more months of retention not being your problem.

9. You’ll buy a ‘new’ assessment that claims to increase retention by picking the right people to begin with.  You’ll never really find out if this worked or not, because you’ve been changing so many things no one will really know.  But the HR vendor will take credit and you’ll start in their white paper and get asked to speak at their annual conference!

10. Retention will still be an issue in 2015, but by then you’ll turn everything you’ve done, and your 7% increase into retention, into a new position with a new company in town who has a worst problem than your old company. See #1 for your plan with the new company.

Beautiful Things Don’t Ask For Attention

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Over the holidays I got a chance to see the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Sean Penn, plays freelance professional photographer Sean O’Connell.  Walter Mitty is played by Ben Stiller.  At one point Walter is searching for Sean to get an important negative and he finds Sean in some distant mountains, overseas, trying to capture a photo of a wild snow leopard.  Sean says this line when explaining to Walter why he goes to such lengths to get a photo:

“Beautiful things don’t ask for a attention.”

In context or out, it’s a hugely profound line.  Sean isn’t necessarily speaking to the snow leopards outward beauty but saying something truly beautiful, inside and out, doesn’t ask for attention, nor necessarily want attention.  Each of us defines beauty differently, so this statement takes on different meaning for all of us.

I love this, I’ll leave it that.

Employee Narcissism At All-Time High

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Do you feel that our fixation on employee feedback is perpetuating our narcissistic society?

It’s a question I thought of recently and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.  On one hand, I truly believe we have a major issue with narcissism in our society that is getting worse, not better.  I also believe giving feedback to employees, on the work they do, is very valuable and needed to have a strong workforce.

So what gives?

We are told Annual Employee Evaluations are broken and not enough.

We are told you must give feedback to your employees frequently throughout the year.

We are also told that we have multiple generations that have gotten ‘hooked’ on feedback, like a junky is ‘hooked’ on crack.  You get up and you put up a selfie waiting for your ‘followers’ to comment, to ‘like’, to give you a fix.  You get to work, one more selfie – just a quick hit.  Out to lunch, with my bestie, just one hit before I return to the office.  Okay, it’s late afternoon, I’m going to need a little more to make it until 5pm, hello bathroom selfie, you’re my savior. Look at me! I’m home, bottle of wine selfie should at least get me through the evening.

Is it a stretch to compare the desire for social feedback to our desire for work feedback?

Here’s what I know.  The more feedback you get, the more feedback you desire.  If that is the case, is your new constant feedback evaluations at work creating a monster that you’ll never be able to satisfy?  I feel like by solving one problem (lack of feedback), HR is helping to cause, or at least sustain, a bigger problem we are facing with an employee culture that is becoming overwhelmingly narcissistic.

Maybe the bigger question should be, what are we going to do with rampant narcissism that is running amok in our organizations?  Have you created Anti-Narcissism training yet in your organization?  If so, what does that entail? I’m thinking it must have some sort of aversion therapy elements (post a selfie and you get a shock from you desk chair!). Or maybe a little  public shaming, which doesn’t seem to work on Narcissist, they actually like it – ‘oh look, someone is talking about me!’

I’m not sure what I dislike more in HR – employees who spent all of their time trying not get noticed, or employees who spend all of their time trying to get noticed!

 

 

 

 

5 Top Regrets of People Leaving a Job

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Being in my line of work, I get to hear from a ton of people who have left jobs.  One of the questions I like to ask people is to give me one thing they regret about leaving a certain position or company.  You might think that most people would find this hard to answer, but I’m always surprised at how quickly people can answer this question, and the fact that no one ever answers it with “I have no regrets.”  I use this question to help me understand a candidates level of self-insight.  If a person can look back on a job, and say you know what, the company might have sucked, but I could have done ‘this’ better, that’s someone who gets it.

Here are the Top 5 Regrets people have when leaving a job:

1. “I could have done better.” I like people who can come out and say, I just didn’t do enough.  It’s usually followed with reasons why, lack or resources or tools, etc. But it shows me they have a desire to be successful at anything they do.

2. “I should have made more work friends.”  I talk to a lot of people who have been at a company for years, and after they leave they realize they weren’t really close to anyone.  They realize they miss some of the people, but never really put in the time to establish enough of a relationship to carry it beyond just a working relationship.

3. “I didn’t let the executives know what I was really thinking.”   This happens to so many people. Even when leaving they somehow justify to themselves that it won’t matter, so they never share what they really thought of so many things.  While some of it might not matter, there might have been a great idea or change in there that could have a positive impact to the organization.  Yet, they walk away with it unsaid.

4. “I wish I would have celebrated my accomplishments more.”  You know what happens when you celebrate your accomplishments?  People begin to notice them as accomplishments.  Those things turn into positives for the organizations.  People are drawn to you and want to be a part of what you’re doing.  Celebrations, real celebrations, make a closer bond between you and your coworkers.

5. “I wish I never would have left.”  (or “I left for the wrong reasons.”)I hear so many people say these words – “I loved that job!”  My next question is – “Why did you leave?”  It’s always followed by a reason, promotion, more money, different location, etc.  After they left, they found out how much the job they had, was a really, really good job that they loved.  I always caution people from leaving a job, especially when they tell me they love the job.  Don’t discount loving your job.  It’s hard, really hard, to find jobs you love.

The beginning of the year is always a good time to reflect on your regrets from the prior year.  I know many people who took on new positions in the past year.  I always love to find out how the new gig is going, but I also love to ask about what they regret about leaving, and I’ve never disappointed by the response!

7 Sure Fire Ways to Fail as an HR Leader

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It’s tough being an HR Leader these days!  You have all these boomers retiring and taking their typewriters and knowledge with them, you have all theses X’ers who think they are now the second coming, the GenY’s and the Millennial’s who have been told they are the second coming, and now we have these Generation @’s who think they can work from where ever since they grew up with a smartphone and a iPad in their crib.  On top of all this, somehow in the last 10 years executives decided HR is no longer HR, but now we are these business partners, so on top of having to take care of all these people issues, we now have to be concerned with business issues, teach our leaders how to be leaders, continue to train our workforce to stay current, fight off talent sharks from our competition, make sure the corporate picnic still runs smoothly and oh by the way can you put a nice internal blog post together for the CEO and make it real “peopleish”.

I get it – it’s hard being a leader in HR, that’s why I’m going to help you out and give you some tips of things to stay away from:

1. Think of yourself or your company as “the” industry leader. As soon as you do, someone will knock you off.

2. Identify so strongly with the company that you no longer have a clear boundary between your personal interests  and the corporation’s interests. Yes you should be committed, but don’t be “committed” – to often leaders doing this fail to differentiate their personal agenda and the corporate agenda and start empire building.

3. Have all the answers.  This is tough because it’s common leadership training that we all know – use your people, surround yourself with people better than you, make group decisions, etc.  But until you put your butt in that seat you never realize how many things will come your way, where people want a decision and they are unwilling to make it – so they look to you for the answer. Don’t get sucked into this trap – push back – make them bring you solutions.

4. Hunt down and Kill those who don’t support you. Don’t think this happens! Look at turnover numbers of  departments when a new leader takes over – they are almost always higher than those of the organization as a whole.

5. Become obsessed with the company image.  Your company image is hugely important, but it is not the most important thing you have going on. Make sure your operations match the image you want to create, not the either way around.

6. Underestimate or take obstacles for granted.  As a leader you want to be confident during hard and challenging times, but don’t let yourself get fooled into believing your own confidence will get you through.  Having a clear understanding of the reality you are facing, and being able to communicate that without fear to your team, with a plan of action, is key.

7. Stubbornly rely on what you’ve always done.  “Well, when I was the leader at GE we did it this way…” Look, this isn’t the 80’s and this isn’t GE. Might it work? Sure. But be open to new ways of doing things, while being confident of what you know will work. Don’t put yourself or your organization in jeopardy, but be willing to try new things when time and circumstance allow.

Adapted from The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives in Forbes by Mike Myatt

Photo credit to Hugh at Gapingvoid.com

To Be Truly Powerless

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I was part of the Great Ice Storm of 2013 over the past week in Michigan.  I went without power for about 43 hours, and another 3 days, after that, without TV or Internet. That doesn’t sound like much, especially when there are people still without power six days after the storm.  I consider myself lucky.

Here’s what I learned about being powerless:

1. It would suck being Amish.

2. It is exhausting to not have power.

3. People talk a lot more when you don’t have power.

4. You appreciate day light hours when you don’t have power – they become critical in getting things done. Once it gets dark, your day is pretty much done.

5. It’s stressful not having power, after you’ve had power.

6.  When you don’t have power, it seems like those with power are mocking you with all of their power. (I had neighbors who had power one street over and I swear they actually turned on every single one of their lights just to show my how much power they had, and possibly put up even more lights!)

7. People in like circumstances, those of us without power, tend to work together better to help each other.

8. I never considered ‘electrical power’ to be a convenience, I do now.

9.  I’m assuming there will be a Great Ice Storm baby boom in Michigan in about 10 months.  Staying warm is critical in a power outage, in Michigan, in December.

10.  You can’t plan for ’10 year events’.  People in Michigan are HOT over the reaction and timing to electrical worker crews responding to outages. They feel the power companies should have been better prepared for this.  The reality is, companies don’t plan for once-every-ten-year-events, they plan for monthly and annual events.  You wouldn’t want to pay the extra cost on your monthly utility bill to ensure they were prepared for once a decade events.

Organizationally, you have many people without power, metaphorically speaking, and it is not much different than not actually having electrical power in your home.  It sucks.  Having an understanding of what they feels like, is critical to how successful your organization can be.  It’s stressful and tiring not to have power.  It grinds on your over time.  People get frustrated.  People get short-tempered.  People feel not in control.  None of that is good.

Having compassion for the powerless is not enough.  Having empathy and understanding, is not enough.  You need to be able to share the power within your organization, to make sure everyone has a little.  It might not be equal, but it sure helps if everyone has some.  Being the one with none, is completely ostracizing.

To be truly power-less, sucks.

 

 

 

Sackett Holiday Letter 2013

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Each year I write our family holiday letter, this is the one being sent out this year. Enjoy.

I didn’t write a letter last year, I posted it on my blog.  No one read it.  Welcome to the life of an HR blogger.  So, now I’m spending a small portion of my kids’ college savings to tell you what we did this past year, because apparently you don’t have Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.  #WinkyFace 🙂 (If you’re over 40 you’ll have to look up “#WinkyFace” on a thing called The Google)

Keaton (16) – Had ACL surgery on December 12, 2012 – which consumed most of his 2013 with rehab.  Ended up starting on varsity baseball after only 5 months of rehab as a sophomore, hit over .400, selected to participate in the USA baseball 16U National Team trials in Cary, NC.  So, apparently you only have to have one good leg to hit!  He’s driving. It scares us.  He’s working. We like that.  He has a girlfriend. She’s in college. He’s playing varsity basketball and he likes to say “you know how Texas A&M has the 12th man, well DeWitt now has the 13th man!” Since there are 13 players on the team, and he feels he’s #13. 

Cameron (15) –  Cam had his first varsity swim season and got honorable mention all-conference as a freshman.  As a sophomore, this year, he tried out and made the top choir in DeWitt High – The Chamber Choir. He also got a major part in the school musical Avenue Q, and continues to swim way too many hours each week.  We aren’t sure what keeps him going! He’s the tallest in the family, which in our family is like being the tallest of the seven dwarfs.  He’s competing in Business Professionals of America. And he has decided to make me work until death, as he wants to attend Duke University.

Cooper (10) – Somewhere along the way Coop has found my sense of humor, which I know scares his Mom to death!  He still is a gamer.  Early riser.  Loves his Mom.  Hates to fail at anything.  Ultra-competitive.  Found out he loves Volleyball, like Mom and Dad.  Still plays baseball, because Dad makes him. Would rather be climbing trees and running around outside with the neighborhood tribe. 

Coop Quotes:

·         “Now I’m Ready!” Taking off his shirt, and throwing it to the side mid-match playing tennis against Dad. Then Dad did the same, it wasn’t as cute!

·         “It would be much easier if the candy came to me.” Oct. 30th when asked if he was ready to go Trick or Treating

·         “Shouldn’t you know this as my guardian?” to Dad when he didn’t know how many vitamins to give him in the morning and Mom had to leave early to work

·         “Let me know if you need help.” To Kim as she parented Cameron, after she told Cooper she can handle it.

·         “If you touch these lottery tickets, I will cut you!” Coop to the entire family at the Martin family Christmas party white elephant gift exchange. He’s fascinated with scratch and win tickets.  He’s good at math, but hasn’t figured out what odds are yet!

 Scout (7 in dog years) –  Yep, we got another dog.  He’s a Mini-Australian Labradoodle, and we got him in August at 9 months old. Long-story-short, a family with 5 young kids couldn’t handle a new puppy.  We got him.  He’s my dog, but Kim is slowly trying to win him over, it won’t work.  He’s dumb, but he’s really cute, so it’s okay. Besides Scout he also goes by Sugar Bear Bear, Chub Chubs, Scouterbout, and Stink.

Kim and I are about the same, maybe a few more gray hairs.  She still works part time as a Physical Therapist and full time as a Mom. I still work full time as a President of a company, and part time as Dad. We spend way too much time taking boys to events, and we are starting to realize that soon this will be over.  College scares us, more than high school, primarily because it cost way too much!   

From our family to yours we wish you all the success and happiness in 2014! Go Green!

Celebrating Winning More Than Success

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I’m writing today because I didn’t win Mega Millions last week.  Radio Sports Talk Show host Colin Cowherd mentioned this concept on his show the day after the big drawing – We celebrate winning, more than we celebrate success.

We cheer on those who won the Lotto.  We feel successful athlete, coach, entertainer, doesn’t deserve the millions they get.

The problem is the person who won the lottery just got very, very lucky.  They didn’t work hard.  They went down the mini-mart and laid down a dollar bill and had some balls drop out that matched the numbers on their ticket.

The athlete, coach, entertainer, etc. has put in thousands of hours of hard work to perfect their craft.  They’ve taken the G*d given talent they were given, worked extremely hard and are now paid millions of dollars.  It’s really, what Colin said, is the ‘real’ American Dream.  Not winning the lottery (which I constantly argue is the last real American dream).

I think we should celebrate success over celebrating winning.  Anyone can win.  Only those who have talent and hard work gain true success over the long term.

When you think about how you celebrate in your own organization, do you celebrate winning or success?  Do you even know the difference within your own environment? I like to think I know the difference, in my environment.  I know who is successful, I know who is just winning.  Winning can happen to almost anyone, it’s dumb luck.  Success happens to those who consistently put in the work.  They might not always win, but they are always in a position to win.

I want to celebrate that.

Hire More Pretty People

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This post originally ran in January of 2012, and in one of the most read posts I’ve done.  It as so popular, Kris Dunn, stole the idea, tweaked it, and made it his most downloaded whitepaper in Kinetix history!  You’re Welcome, KD.  After 2 years, I still find this concept has merit! It’s also very close to how Hitler’s Germany started! Enjoy.

What do you think of, in regards to smarts, when I say: “Sexy Blond model type”?

What about: “Strong Athletic Jock?”

What about: “Scrawny nerdy band geek?”

My guess is most people would answer: Dumb, Dumb, Smart – or something to that context.

In HR we call this profiling – and make no mistake – profiling – is done by almost all of our hiring managers.  The problem is everything we might have thought is probably wrong in regards to our expectations of looks and brains.  So, why are ugly people more smart?

They’re Not!

Slate recently published an article that contradicts all of our ugly people are more smart myths and actually shows evidence to the contrary. From the article:

 Now there were two findings: First, scientists knew that it was possible to gauge someone’s intelligence just by sizing him up; second, they knew that people tend to assume that beauty and brains go together. So they asked the next question: Could it be that good-looking people really are more intelligent?

Here the data were less clear, but several reviews of the literature have concluded that there is indeed a small, positive relationship between beauty and brains. Most recently, the evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa pulled huge datasets from two sources—the National Child Development Study in the United Kingdom (including 17,000 people born in 1958), and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in the United States (including 21,000 people born around 1980)—both of which included ratings of physical attractiveness and scores on standard intelligence tests.

When Kanazawa analyzed the numbers, he found the two were related: In the U.K., for example, attractive children have an additional 12.4 points of IQ, on average. The relationship held even when he controlled for family background, race, and body size.

That’s right HR Pros – Pretty people are smarter.  I can hear hiring managers and creepy executives that only want “cute” secretaries laughing all over the world!

The premise is solid though!  If you go back in our history and culture you see how this type of things evolves:

1. Very smart guy – gets great job or starts great company – makes a ton of money

2. Because of success, Smart guy now has many choices of very pretty females to pursue as a bride.

3. Smart guy and Pretty bride start a family – which results in “Pretty” Smart Children

4. Pretty Smart Children grow up with all the opportunities that come to smart beautiful families.

5. The cycle repeats.

Now – first – this is a historical thing – thus my example of using a male as our “Smart guy” and not “Smart girl” – I’m sure in today’s world this premise has evolved yet again. But we are talking about how we got to this point, not where are we now.  Additionally, we are looking at how your organization can hire better.  So, how do you hire better?  Hire more pretty people.

Seems simple enough. Heck, that is even a hiring process that your hiring managers would support!