Lifetime Employment = Death

Posted on by
3

Did you know in Japan it’s socially unacceptable for a company to lay you off!?  I didn’t, until I read an article in NY Times. Check this out:

“Shusaku Tani is employed at the Sony plant here, but he doesn’t really work.

For more than two years, he has come to a small room, taken a seat and then passed the time reading newspapers, browsing the Web and poring over engineering textbooks from his college days. He files a report on his activities at the end of each day.

Sony, Mr. Tani’s employer of 32 years, consigned him to this room because they can’t get rid of him. Sony had eliminated his position at the Sony Sendai Technology Center, which in better times produced magnetic tapes for videos and cassettes. But Mr. Tani, 51, refused to take an early retirement offer from Sony in late 2010 — his prerogative under Japanese labor law.

So there he sits in what is called the “chasing-out room.” He spends his days there, with about 40 other holdouts.

“I won’t leave,” Mr. Tani said. “Companies aren’t supposed to act this way. It’s inhumane.”

The standoff between workers and management at the Sendai factory underscores an intensifying battle over hiring and firing practices in Japan, where lifetime employment has long been the norm and where large-scale layoffs remain a social taboo, at least at Japan’s largest corporations.”

Can you imagine?

I might be out on a limb here, but how does one come to the following conclusion:

1. Company hires you.

2. Company trains you.

3. Society, for whatever reason, stops buying companies product or service.  No money coming in.

4. Company should still employee you, forever!

Can someone explain that to me?  We have folks right here in the good ole US of A that believe the same thing.  I’ve seen the General Motors ‘Resource Centers’ where hundreds of UAW workers would go each day, sit, wait, get paid, to essentially do nothing.  It happened right in my own city.  The contract said GM would have ‘X’ number of workers, so even though they had no work, they had to show up to ‘work’.  It’s a joke.  It’s the definition of what’s wrong with unions.

Lifetime employment is the responsibility of a company or a government. Lifetime employment is the responsibility of you as an individual.  To continually educate yourself and add valuable skills to your resume.  To stay fresh on technology. To stay hungry.  If you want a company to employ you forever, you better give them a reason to want to employ you forever!

I understand the pull for some folks to want to have that one job they can just work forever. Show up each day, get paid, go home. It’s easy. It’s comfortable. The same job each day, every day, for your entire life.  On second-thought, I don’t that sounds exactly like death!

Why We Have Chronic Low Performers

Posted on by
2

Do you guys want to know a little secret?  You know how I like hanging out with smokers, because they have all the cool inside information before anyone else?  Your chronic low performers have a similar skill.  It’s kind of like information.  Chronic low performers are really good at being low performers!  They’ve figured it out!  They’ve figured out how to do the bare minimum, without getting fired, and you still pay them for showing up and continuing to give you low performance.  If that isn’t a skill, than I don’t know what skills are!

Let that marinade a little on your mind.

The only reason you have a chronic low performer, is they’ve figured out how to master low performance.

All of us have chronic low performers.  We’ve shot them a million times behind closed doors, but never pulled the trigger when the door was open.  I can distinctly remember having conversations about a certain manager when I was at Applebees at 6 straight calibration meetings over 3 years, and heard stories about him before I’d come into the organization.  He just was good/bad enough to keep hanging on.  One meeting we’d be short, so he’d make it one more session. Then next meeting we’d have some idiot do something really bad – Mr. Chronic Low Performer lives to suck another day!  The next meeting it would be some other lame reason.  Each time just squeaking by.

Think about all of people you’ve ever let go. They usually fall into 3 – 4 groups:

1. Bad Performer/bad fit from the start (you shot them early)

2. Good Performer did something really stupid (didn’t want to fire, but had to)

3. Layoffs (decision above your pay grade)

4. Chronic Low Performers (hardly ever happens, they do anything really stupid, personally you don’t hate them)

We have Chronic Low Performers because they make it easy for us to keep them.  They say the right things when we tell them they need to pick it up or else. They’re ‘company’ people, all except for actually adding value part.  They give you no major reason to let them go, all except for not really doing that good of a job.  They always seem to have a semi-legitimate reason for not performing well.

I always wonder how much money chronic low performers have cost organizations vs. the good/great performers we had to let go because they pushed the envelop a little too far and we had to fire them.  My guess is the low performers win hands-down.  You could have a great sales person who is constantly fudging his expense reports or a chronic low performer in the same role. Who would you take?  You don’t have to answer – you do everyday.  You take the low performer.  “Well, what do you want us to keep the thief!”  No. But I’m wondering if great performance can be rehabbed?  I know Chronic Low Performance can’t.  My guess is good/great probably can.  Just a thought.

So, why do you have chronic low performers?  It’s not that you allow it. It’s because you just found out what they are really good at!

 

Do you suffer from low HR self-esteem?

Posted on by
6

I was talking to an HR Pro recently and it struck me how negative they were about their organization and their HR shop in general!  Don’t think this is going to be one of those blog posts about if you don’t like your job you should quit and follow your passion.  I don’t believe in that bullshit, that’s how people lose their homes and their families.  They get stupid. This is for my brothers and sisters who are running HR shops.  You need to fire those folks. Really, I mean it.  Get up from your desk, walk out to their desk and tell them they can go home — forever.

It’s one thing to have a bad day, it’s a completely other thing to have a bad career!  You know exactly who I’m talking about.  You see them everyday.  It’s like watching Eeyore on steroids.

I try and figure folks out.  I love asking, “Why you so mad?” Which just usually just makes them more mad, but it’s fun to ask.  I have high HR self-esteem.  I like what I do.  I like what we do in HR.  I truly believe that an HR shop in any organization can be the most valuable part of that organization if they have the right folks running it. Folks like me, with high HR self-esteem.  Folks who don’t believe the bad press HR gets.  Folks who don’t believe the haters.  Folks who at their core, understand how attracting, finding and keeping the best talent in your industry is a true game changer.

It’s alright by me that operations, finance, marketing, etc. all think the same thing. They all think they’re the most important part of the organization. That’s Ok. I know.  I know we (HR) is. Knowing this allows me to let them believe their little fairy tale because I know it’s important to keep them happy.  So, I let them believe.  Don’t tell them, please.  ‘Belief’ is important for their continued satisfaction.

I’ll take the blame for when a bad leader turns another hire.  I’ll throw myself on the sword when communicating out another policy change made by executives, but one in which they’ll gladly give me ‘credit’.  I’ll let marketing take credit for the major sales increase, when I know it was my talent find that brought on the winning strategy to our organization.  I’ll let finance take credit for millions of dollars in ‘savings’, when I know it was the changes to our work structure that allowed us to make those savings.  Having high HR self-esteem does that.

I only ask one thing from my fellow HR leaders.  The next time you make a hire in your HR shop, please make sure that person has high HR self-esteem.  I can’t take anymore HR pros who don’t like what they do.

3 Keys To Get ALong Better With Your Boss

Posted on by
3

There was a recent study conducted on how to make your marriage better.  I’m not saying you’re married to your boss, but in many cases you’re spending more awake hours with your boss, and co-workers, than you do with your spouse!  The number one key is of course Communication!  It’s always communication.  Have a crappy relationship with anyone and everyone will tell you — ‘oh, you just need to communicate more!’  Well, you know what?  More, or more effective, communication, might not be the key!  I know guys are happy to hear this!

From Time.com:

“Not surprisingly, those who reported communicating more effectively showed the highest satisfaction with their relationships. But the next two factors — which were also the only other ones with strong links to couple happiness — were knowledge of partner (which included everything from knowing their pizza-topping preferences to their hopes and dreams) and life skills (being able to hold a job, manage money, etc.).

Couples counselors, however, rarely address these two areas, as the focus on strengthening relationships has been on improving communication to reduce destructive behavior and to build support and comfort for each other. “For the last 25 years,” says Tom Bradbury, a veteran couples researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, “the prevailing attitude has been that relationships need to meet our emotional needs.” To be successful, however, he’s also found that relationships need to function in more practical, and perhaps mundane ways as well.”

Ok, so you still have to communicate, but that isn’t the only thing you have to do!
Here are 3 Keys To Getting Along Better With Your Boss:
1. Be a Better Performer!  If you and your boss don’t along it’s probably because she is constantly riding your butt over your low/poor performance.  Get better and things will improve!
2. Find out what’s important to them.  In any relationship a major key to making that relationship positive is it’s a two-way street.  We all expect our bosses to know everything about us, but we rarely work to find out stuff about them.  Your boss isn’t some untouchable God like figure or celebrity. They’re just a normal person with the same normal issues you have.  Those people who make that connection have stronger relationships with their bosses.
3. Reduce Stress In Your Work Environment.  This isn’t you, but some people actually create more stress in their work place for the simple fact that they feel more important if they’re involved in a stressful situation.  Your boss knows who you are.  She doesn’t like you because of it.  If you’re constantly in the middle of crap in your work, you’re part of the problem.  Some of your coworkers are never in the middle of it — your boss likes them better!
Let’s face it, sometimes you’ll have an idiot for a boss and there will be nothing you can do to make that relationship rewarding.  But far more people claim this is the case, than is reality. For most of us, if we want a positive relationship with our boss it can be had with a little work.

The Diversity of Productivity

Posted on by
4

It’s widely held in the HR field that the most productive organizations are the most ‘diverse’.  The problem is that concept is misinterpreted by most HR Pros and executives.  Most still believe that concept pertains to the ethnic diversity of your team (the color of the faces you hire).  It might be the greatest fallacy in the HR industry today!   In actuality, Productivity has zero correlation with team ethnic diversity.  So, what kind of diversity does make us more productive?

From Fast Company:

“A growing body of research shows that diversity–in gender, thinking styles, and intro- and extroversion–is needed for teams to be their most productive.

Writing at 99u, Christian Jarrett, the psychologist-turned-writer behind the British Psychological Society’s superlative Research Digest blog“

You need 3 types of Diversity to get the most productivity out of your teams:

1. Gender

2. Thinking Style

3. Behavioral Style

None of those have anything to do with the color of your skin.

Let me breakdown the three types of diversity and why I think they have such impact to productivity:

Gender: To me this is good old nature at its best!  Boys want to impress girls, girls want to look good in front of boys — for the most part. Sometimes boys want to look good in front of other boys.  I get that, I’m that old.  The other thing with gender that I’ve learned from being married 20+ years, is that women and men sometimes think differently. Sometimes…which in itself will lead your team down a path in a number of ways, with a number options if you have a good gender mix.  Gender diversity on teams in relation to productivity might have the greatest impact to positive productivity over anything else we can do.

Thinking Style: Whereas Gender is probably underutilized by HR Pros to help productivity, Thinking Styles might be the one we most rely on when thinking about non-ethnic diversity!  “It’s Diversity of thought!” is the most over utilized statement in diversity.  Primarily because so few of us actually use real scientific tools to measure what someone’s thinking style is. “Oh, Tim’s old and a republican so he must think one way, and Mary is young and democrat so she thinks this opposite!”  Is potentially so wrong, yet how most organization determine ‘Diversity of Thought’.

Behavioral Style:  Having both introverted and extroverted individuals on a team is huge.  Too many people like me on a team and no one gets a word in edge-wise.  Too many introverted folks and either nothing happens, or the one extroverted person controls the entire process.  All can be very bad.  Getting your introverts in an environment where they are comfortable to share their knowledge is key to your organizations performance.

This is not a message that is being shared to your executives at most organizations.  They are still very ‘black and white’ in their thoughts on diversity.  While ethnic diversity can make great additions to your workplace culture, don’t mistake it for having positive impact to your productivity.  There isn’t any science that proves this, yet.

What The ‘F’ Do Recruiters Know?!

Posted on by
1

FYI – Gang!  I’ve been asked to be a part of a panel discussion at SXSW 2014!  I’m super excited because I’ve never been to SXSW, but everyone tells me it’s something you have to do, if your anybody.  And if I’m anything, I’m somebody.  Being somebody, I’m asking you to vote for our session.  The voting seems a little American Idolish, reality TV show, but, Hey, give the people what they want and they’ll return the next year.  SHRM should take note…

Here’s the details on the Session:

What the F*ck Do Recruiters Know?

What the F*ck do recruiters know? They know most of you have no freaking shot at ever being in a management position, but all of you think you want to be and can be. They know your too fat and too ugly to have a great career – but you have zero self-insight and think ‘that stuff really shouldn’t matter’ – when it does to those making the decisions. Recruiters know that they don’t have to know your job, to find someone better to replace you. Recruiters know nothing about what you do – and they’re completely fine with that – but you’re not. Recruiters know how to get shit done in your organization and what buttons to push to get stuff over the finish line.

The gang from America’s Snarkiest HR and Recruitment Blog – Fistful of Talent – takes the filters off and shows you that the shit that recruiters know.

Session synopsis: Recruiters don’t know shit, except some shit you want to know, come and get to know their shit and you’ll be the shit.

– See more at: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/20816#sthash.fZL1hSBn.aIWAdapn.dpuf

I’m guessing it will be fun.  Probably won’t change my life, but a cool experience talking with like-minded people, and beer.

Go vote, please.  Takes like 2 minutes to register and vote.  Look at it this way – each day I provide free content.  2 minutes to vote for this session is payment for sucking all of my ideas into your work places’ for free for the past 2 years.  BTW – I have tracking program that shows me who reads each blog and exactly where they go after leaving my blog – so I know.  I know if you truly care about me or not.  And much like Santa, I’m making a list.

It’s your move.

– See more at: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/20816#sthash.fZL1hSBn.aIWAdapn.dpuf

To Succeed You Must First…

Posted on by
4

FAIL!

87% of people polled could finish this statement.  Are you surprised?  It’s jammed down our throat constantly, but I’m not sure why.  I have friends who make their entire living going around the country speaking to people about how great it is to fail!  They know that people love to hear this because so many of us fail often.

Why is it people think you must first fail, in order to succeed?

The actual Proverb is this:

“In order to Succeed, you must first being willing to Fail.”

Can I call Bullshit on this?

Oh, I just did.

Why do you have to fail first?  Can’t you just go out and freaking succeed!?  I mean hit one out of the park on the first pitch. I don’t need to strike out. Sure it might happen, but why should I tell myself that first I need to strike out before I hit a home run?  Do you think MLB players go up to bat with that mentality? “Ok, let’s get his strike out, out of the way so I can go hit a home run later.” No, they don’t!

This one statement gets jammed down our throats in business more than any single other piece of garbage advice I’ve ever heard.  I think people like this statement on posters in their office, or on their coffee mug, because it gives them an excuse for failing. “Well, you’ve got to fail first, before you can succeed…” (tips up coffee cup to mouth as coffee drips onto the front of his white shirt)

Then it gets dragged into all kinds of other crappy advice statements:

– “All my failures equal success!”

-“I haven’t failed enough to succeed!”

– “Success is just a failure away!”

– “Success always starts with failure!”

– “The secret to Success is failure!”

You want to know the real secret!?  Statistically speaking, the more you fail, the more likely you are to fail again!  Let that one run through your failed brain pattern for a second.

It’s like those parents who have four girls and the Dad goes “well #5 will surely be a boy!”  No it won’t, you and your wife are predisposition through genetics to have girls, moron — but please enjoy your fifth girl!

If you fail often, you will probably keep failing.  That’s why you shouldn’t hire people who show a pattern of failing.  They aren’t learning how to be successful, they are learning how to fail!  Stop reading your Stuart Smalley Daily Affirmations and wake up!  Those who tend to fail, tend to continue to fail.  But those who fail will tend to buy into the lame malarkey about how failing will lead them to success. Why? Because they are failures.

Happy Monday!  And remember “To Succeed, you must first Succeed!”

Opportunity, Looks A Lot Like Work

Posted on by
2

In a world where everyone is completely insane over our celebrity culture – I can buy into this message from Chris Kutcher at the Teen Choice Awards:

Great message for the pre-teens who were probably watching this live – but also for the millions who now watching on YouTube.  As a father, I find it hard every day to find great message and role models for my sons.  I’m not saying I want my kids to look up to Ashton Kutcher, but hearing him say that it’s cool to be smart, that its cool to work, well, I can buy into that.

Last week I wrote a post on the only 3 career paths that are available for new graduates are: College, Military or Prison.  I forgot two:

1. The Lotto (Which is really the last great American Dream! And yes, I do consider ‘Lotto’ a career path! Just look at how many people play it hoping to make it their career!)

2. Work

What I mean by ‘Work’ is actually working one of those ‘crappy’ jobs that politicians and the media keep putting down as not ‘real’ jobs.  Those ‘crappy’ jobs (sales, service, etc.) are actually real jobs — if you make them real jobs.  Yeah, you won’t make much, but like Kanye said “He got ambition baby look in his eyes. This week he mopping floors, next week it’s the fries.”  Those crappy jobs, worked by someone with passion and dedication, can turn into something really good.  Maybe not in 1 year or even two years, but eventually they do.   I’ve worked and had a W2 job since the day I turned 16.  I’m not the smartest, I’m not the sexiest, but I go to work — everyday.

Top HR Lies

Posted on by
12

In the never ending quest to beat a blog series to death, let’s hope this is my last installment of “Top Lies” (Top Candidate Lies, Top Recruiter Lies).

At this point I’ve completely pissed off ‘candidates’, made some fun of Recruiters, so now it’s time to really have some fun with the easiest target of all  — HR!  For the most part my peers in HR have fairly thick skin.  HR is actually use to being made the joke in the professional world.  The only profession that gets made fun of worse is probably lawyers!  I could do an entire post on why HR lacks respect, but that has been done a thousand times and in reality having respect in HR isn’t a professional dilemma, it’s a personal one!  If you’re in HR and don’t have respect in your organization, don’t blame the HR profession, you need to look in the mirror!

All that being said, HR might be the king of the liars in your organization!  Let’s break down a few of Top HR Lies:

– “In HR we are here for ‘our’ Employees!”  — HR is not an employee advocate.  HR supports the organization’s leadership and mission.  BTW – many HR Pros don’t even get this concept! When push comes to shove, HR will always support that way leadership wants to go, not the way employees want to go.

– “You can tell HR, we are always confidential!” — No we’re not! HR has an obligation to look out for the best interest of the organization, not you.  If you tell HR something ‘confidentially’, there is a very good chance that information will be shared with others in the organization.  The reality.  HR has to mitigate the risk of the organization.  Your craziness has risk to it.

– “We had no idea layoffs were coming…” —  Sorry, but we did.  But we just can’t tell you that and create panic throughout the organization.  So, we lie. It sucks, but there isn’t any other way.

– “No, you can’t change your health benefits until next Open Enrollment, it’s the law!”  — Yeah, that’s kind of a lie as well!  There are laws governing when we ‘have’ to allow you to change your benefits (marriage, child being born, divorce, etc.), but HR can decide to change the plan rules and allow you to change if we wanted. But, that becomes a logistical nightmare!  Even with keeping our plan rules intact, we can still get around it.  Let’s say you are a young employee and chose the crappy low-cost catastrophic major medical plan that basically covers nothing, but you’re young and nothing will ever happen to you. Then, something does happen to you.  You come to HR. HR says, “We told you so! Sorry, you have to wait until next Open Enrollment, have fun with that cancer!”  HR could actually fire you on a Friday, hire you back on Monday and have you sign up for the ‘new’ insurance.  Based on your plan there could be some audit risk based on IRS code, section 125 – so check it out before you go do this. But, it’s not like you’re doing this all the time – this is maybe once a year for a desperate situation – I’ll take that risk (and have) to help my employee in this situation!

– “We fire people!”  — HR has never fired anyone, ever.  Managers of of employees fire people.  HR just supports that decision, and frequently influences a manager to make that decision, but we don’t pull the trigger.  Managers blame HR — “HR is telling me I have to do this”, but that’s a lie as well.  HR advises of the consequences if certain actions aren’t taken. Ultimately, leaders make the final decision on what is actually going to happen.

– “Top performers get rewarded!” — Actually, in most organizations even average performers get rewarded….and low performers.  We have a compensation plan and don’t want to leave anyone out. So, you can be great and get a 3% raise. Your cube mate could be a slug and get a 1% raise.  How does that feel?

–  “We treat everyone equally!” — The reality is we treat certain employees better and give them more leeway to screw up, because they are more valuable to the organization.  Not all employees are create equal.  That was just something that sounded good on the poster for the break room.   Some employees are actually substantially more valuable to the organization than you are.  We treat them differently.

– “We value diversity and inclusion!” — We actually really don’t give a crap about this.  It gets shoved down our throats, legally, organizationally, etc. What we really care about is filling positions with solid talent.  But leadership makes me provide a report that counts the color of faces, so now we have to care.  So we care about the number of faces, not the true sense of diversity.  Don’t hate the players, hate the game.

Alright HR Pros – What Lies Did I Forget?

 

 

Employees, Smoking = Less Money

Posted on by
2

Smokers will hate to hear this, but if you smoke, you’re more likely to make less money.

Really?

Really.

From CNBC —

“In a new paper, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta economists Julie Hotchkiss and Melinda Pitts found that smokers only earn about 80 percent of what nonsmokers earn. People who used to smoke and quit more than a year earlier, though, earn 7 percent more than people who never lit up in the first place.

The PSA advice that “one cigarette is one too many” apparently is true at work. Hotchkiss and Pitts found that the earnings of both a weekend social smoker and a pack-a-day puffer suffer a similar wage gap.

“It is simply the fact that someone smokes that matters in the labor market, not the level of intensity,” they wrote. “Even one cigarette per day is enough to trigger the smoking wage gap.”

That truly sucks, because those of you who know me, know I love hanging out with smokers!  Smokers are the backbone of your informal office communication network.  Smokers come in all shapes and sizes, from all levels of your organization.  It’s nothing on any given day to see a senior executive and some rank and file employee, standing outside enjoying a smoke and some small talk.  Many times strong relationships are formed outside in the ‘smokers area’, and it is very common for information to be shared that normally wouldn’t be amongst employees of different ranks.  I don’t smoke – but I love going out and hanging with smokers!

So, as you can imagine, this news from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (and why does Atlanta have their own Federal Reserve?!) was extremely disheartening to me.  I wonder what else Julie and Melinda have been digging into down there in Atlanta?  Do employees who drink Gin make more than all other employees? (please let this be true!) What about the office slut? Does he/she make more money, at work?  If so, did they name that ‘the slut wage gap’?  Do our tax dollars support this ‘research’?

Here is what I know, compensation pro wannabes, if slice and dice the data enough, you can make up any conclusion you want to.  The reality is, smoking equates mostly to lower education, thus lower wages.  That’s a broad stroke, but fairly accurate.  Educated people, for the most part, understand that smoking is bad for you.  Having that knowledge, and being educated, tends then to lead to a non-smoking life.  Having lower education, and knowing smoking is bad for you, tends to lead to a life of ‘what the hell, I’m going to die anyway’.  Some educated folks fall into this same trap.

So, I’ll ask you my smoking friends – if you knew you could make more money, would you stop smoking?  Also, if you never smoked, are you willing to pick it up for a 7% bump in pay?!

Smoke’em if you’ve gotten them in the comments…