3 Reasons To Hire Back An Employee You Fired

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There is an unwritten HR law that needs to be addressed.  This law states:

“If you fire an employee, at no time in the history of mankind should you hire back that employee to your organization.”

So it is said, so shall it be…

I was reading an article recently about ESPN’s new CEO, John Skipper, when he was asked about bringing back former polarizing Sports Center anchor, Keith Oolbermann.  Here’s what Skipper had to say about the possibility of bringing back Olbermann:

“I wasn’t here when Keith was here, but he is very talented. So I had dinner with Keith — it was delightful and fun. And I would not have had dinner with him if we didn’t sit around and think about whether there was a reason to bring Keith back. I haven’t met with him again, but we don’t have a policy here that you can never come back.”

So, ESPN doesn’t have a policy about bringing back terminated employees.  Do you?

I know of companies that actually have it written into the policy manual about bringing back terminated employees.  Sometimes it’s a time thing – ‘it has to be more than 5 years’ – or a position thing – ‘it has to be into a different position than they had previously’  – or a severity thing – ‘the termination could not have been for cause’, etc.  Sometimes it’s just the classic unwritten rule thing!  Regardless if it’s written or unwritten any organization that refuses to hire back terminated employees is extremely shortsighted!  Let’s be clear – I’m not saying your should bring back the jerk who embezzled money or sexually harassed every female employee.  What I’m saying is – if you analyzed every single termination you’ve had over the past 10 years in your organization, there are probably some really good hire-backs in that group!  But you wouldn’t know that – because it’s not something you’re going to do – it’s a policy…err…un-policy thing!

Here’s 3 reasons you of when you should potentially hire back a previously terminated employee:

1. They’re the best at what they do.  Yep – talent and performance trumps all.  Well, mostly!  If the person got fired for some kind of behavior that they can’t or won’t change – well, it will end bad again – but many times – having years away and proving themselves all over again in another organization – makes these folks ultra-valuable again to your organization.

2. New Leadership.  Let’s face facts – a large percentage of your terminations happen because of personalities not matching.  In almost every leadership change organizations see high turnover.  This doesn’t truly mean those leaving are bad employees – it’s a phenomenon that happens when you new leadership and ideas meet old leadership behaviors and ideas and they don’t match.

3. Former Employee and You (your organization and leadership) have had significant growth.  I’ve seen some young, less experienced people get fired, who 5 -10 years later were completely different people.  All of that blind fight and energy that had when they were younger which distracted from their talent is gone, and what you have left is this focused high performing employee.  At the same token, our leader who was less experienced and didn’t know how to handle high potential employees, now does.  Growth happens.

Unfortunately, 99% of organizations refuse to bring back an employee who was fired, ever!  It’s too bad really – you’re probably missing out on some great talent, especially if you’re in a smaller geographic area with limited talent pools to begin with.  Sometimes it’s up to get our organizations to become a little more open minded to the fact that change happens, and not every person who gets fired, is a bad employee.

Helping Your Employees Through Their Quarter-Life Crisis

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When I was a kid I would hear my parents and grandparents speak of a ‘midlife’ crisis.  It might be about someone buying a convertible Corvette or getting a divorce and dating someone half their age, etc. In my mind I always considered the term ‘midlife’ to be at the age of 50!  Like I said, I was young!  As I got older I realized I didn’t want to live to be 100! So, midlife took on a different definition from high 30’s to low 40’s.  Not to be outdone – millennials have coined a new term – ‘Quarter-Life’ Crisis.  This is that extremely difficult and challenging time you have around the age of 25 years of age…

Knowing how challenging it was for me to be 25 years old and having no responsibilities, mortgage, kids, tons of free time – I wanted to give HR Pros some tips on helping your own employees through this most difficult part of their life.  Here’s goes:

– If you’ve been having this overwhelming feeling of – ‘Hey, I’m 25 and haven’t really accomplished anything in my life!”  Don’t be afraid – you are not a freak – in fact 22% of people your age haven’t accomplished anything either, and the other 78% of your friends who have accomplished ‘something’ are lying about it on their Tumbler.

– Feeling completely paralyzed by indecision?  Again, completely normal.  You feel this way because you have no real life experience on which to draw upon to make actual real meaningful decisions.  This feeling will go away in about 10-15 years, after you made many failed decisions to learn from.

– Getting bored with your friends?  That’s alright – they’re bored with you as well.  It’s because you have nothing to talk about, yet.  Get married, have some kids, buy a house – now you can be boring with each other on all those topics!  Nothing makes your friends less boring than to hear about baby bowels movements and having to replace your water heater!

– Starting to feel differently about dating?  You should!  Statically speaking, by 27 years old every good potential married mate is already taken and you start to get into the idiots that got married at 21 and 22 years old, who are now getting divorced. Yuck!  Who wants a used partner! Not you.  Here’s a Pro Tip:  Lower your standards – your 25 and no one has popped the question yet – you’ve got some issues.

– Do you have sudden, intense fear of failure?  You should know this will never go away.  Well, it might go away if one of two things happen: 1. You win a large lottery ($5M+ – smaller ones will just be a tax headache and potentially still have to make you work at your young age); 2. You marry extremely rich (Which is called the Spouse Lottery – and they think it’s really for love and don’t make you sign a prenup).  And don’t believe all those crappy motivational saying about ‘The only Failure is to not Try’ – there are much bigger failures than not trying! Trying and being completely inept is a much bigger problem!  The reality is – if you do absolutely nothing 99% of decisions will make themselves and you don’t have to take the blame! (Pro Tip #2)

Quarter-Life Crisis…

 

 

 

3 Myths of the ‘Cool’ Office

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I think the one thing that ‘normal’ HR Pros are sick of hearing about it the crap in HR that gets the most headlines in the media – The Cool Office Perks! Let’s face it the majority of HR Pros don’t have the budget to do anything close to what you hear about in magazines articles about the cool new start-ups or big IT firms like Google and Yahoo.  We can’t give our employees free lunches, and brand new open environment office spaces that look like a cross between a MTV Real World house and a abandoned slaughter house and unlimited time off!

The Atlantic had a great article on this recently that will for sure put ‘normal’ HR pros at ease on these escalation of perks:

“Don’t be fooled by the perks at all those Silicon Valley (and Alley) offices — it’s all just part of a subtle plot to control employee behavior. The founders of Fab.com, which just got itself a $1 billion valuation, admitted as much to Bloomberg’s Sarah Freier. The shopping site wields its beer on tap, free lunch, and ice-cream machine as a means to force Fab employees to send emails in a “certain font,” use high-quality paper, and always “be Fab” — whatever terrible thing that means. Those types of office perks abound at startups, of course, not only as a way to attract the best talent, but also to get that “talent” working on message, official office font included. Each and every kegerator serves as a reminder of what you owe the company…

It sounds like the best perk ever: You could, officially, and under official policy, get paid for a three-month summer vacation. But of course the increasingly popular you-work-so-hard-that-we-won’t-count strategy doesn’t work that way. First, most companies wouldn’t allow it. The marketing company Xiik, for example, boasts the limitless vacation offer, but in its fine print discourages long hiatuses. “There are no hidden agendas; xiik employees can take as much paid time off as needed,” claims a Xiik project manager on the company website, before clarifying what that really means: “As nice as it would be to regularly leave for months at a time, common sense prevails: In most cases, it simply doesn’t make sense to be away from work for extended periods.”

I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with HR Pros across so many industries that involve this idea of how do you compete against all these perks?!  I’ve always come back to  – you don’t!  The perks are just perks  – they might help you hold onto some folks a bit longer – but they don’t make your employees better and they don’t raise the performance of your company.  In HR we need to figure out those things, first.   Here are the 3 Myths (Thank you Sally!) of the ‘Cool’ Office concept:

1. Offering Free food and drinks will keep our employees working longer and more productive. Workers apparently “waste” 2 billion minutes a day of “productivity” getting snacks, lunch, and coffee, according to Staples.

2. Having an ‘open’ office environment foster collaboration and productivity. A recent Quartz article outlines all the terrible things that come out of the open quarters, such as decreased productivity and more airborne illnesses.

3. Unlimited time off allows your employees the ultimate work-life balance – which will increase productivity and retention.  The reality is your work culture makes people feel bad about taking time off and discourages people from utilizing ‘unlimited’ time off policies.  The reason companies can offer ‘unlimited’ time off policies is because studies continue to show those organizations with these policies actually use less time off than those with set limit policies.  It’s a benefit to organizations to use this – not employees!

HR Announces – ‘We’re Out of Ideas’

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Recently the crew at FOT has been having some conversations about what’s new in HR.  It use to be all you had to do was show up at a HR conference and listen to someone from Zappos, Google, Sodexo, etc. to find out what were the latest and greatest happenings going on in HR!  But no more – it seems like HR is in a dead period of new ideas!  I blame the recession – why wouldn’t I – the ‘Great Recession’ gets blamed for everything – might as well take some HR heat!   Nobody at FOT could really come up with any ideas that were new.  But thankfully the good HR folks at Google came through one more idea, but I don’t how new it is…

From Quartz – Google admits those infamous brainteasers were completely useless for hiring:

“Google has admitted that the headscratching questions it once used to quiz job applicants (How many piano tuners are there in the entire world? Why are manhole covers round?) were utterly useless as a predictor of who will be a good employee.

“We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time,” Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, told the New York Times. “They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart…

Bock says Google now relies on more quotidian means of interviewing prospective employees, such as standardizing interviews so that candidates can be assessed consistently, and “behavioral interviewing,” such as asking people to describe a time they solved a difficult problem. It’s also giving much less weight to college grade point averages and SAT scores.”

Yes, you are reading that correctly – Google’s ‘new’ HR idea is to go retro!  Back to behavioral interviewing and standardized interview decks – hello 90’s!  Isn’t that wonderful – I can’t believe Google didn’t have someone at SHRM 13 leading a session like “Google’s Strategic HR Innovations – Just Interview Them Stupid!”  HR ladies would have packed the house to find out how they to could jump into the 90’s.  Also, let’s just come right out corporately and validate to all those kids in college – you’re just wasting your time and spending your parents retirement.  I’ve really never been so excited for our industry!

So, I would like to take it upon myself and the entire HR community to let the world know – HR is out of ideas!

Here’s were we/HR stand:

– Still need to hire people

– Still need to train our employees

– Still need to provide benefits and pay administration

– Still planning the company picnic, and/or ‘holiday party

Long live HR.

Coming out of the Unemployment Closet

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I have an acquaintance who was out of work for an entire year.  Not surprising with all the stories we’ve heard throughout the recession.  The surprising thing was that over that entire year, and him knowing exactly what I did, he never once reached out for help.  In fact, I didn’t even know he was out of work and looking for a job.  Not only did I not know, but our friend group did not know as well.  He hid it from us.  He hid the fact he had lost his job for an entire year!  I found out when he got his new position and finally came clean what he had been going through for an entire year!

It hit me that he is not alone.  What he did and felt is very common.  He was embarrassed about losing his job, and not having a job, so he kept it a secret.  Got up everyday like he was going to work and went somewhere to do his job search.  It pains me to know so many people in our culture are embarrassed about not having a job.   That so many of us judge people based on whether they have a job or can get a job.  This concept of ‘being embarrassed for not having a job’ actually hurts the job seeker tremendously!

When a job seeker is hiding the fact they are out of work to friends, peers, acquaintances, etc.  They are limiting themselves to all kinds of opportunities that might be out there for their network to recommend them for.  I think back on the past year and think to myself  – how many positions did I hear about over the past 12 months that this person would have been perfect for!  I cringe at how many.  At the stress he put himself and his family through because he was too embarrassed to say “Tim, I lost my job, just wanted to let you know in case you hear of anything.”  It seems so simple – yet so many people don’t have the courage to even say it because of how culturally we treat the unemployed!

I don’t know if this will help – but I want every job seeker to know – I’ve got your back.  You can tell me.  Don’t be embarrassed.  There is a better way to handle this.

What is that way?

Tell everyone!  Put a freaking sign in your front yard! On your car!  When you go jogging in the morning put it on your t-shirt! We’re going to own this! We’re going to make you come out of the Unemployment closet! We need to let everyone know you’re on the market, you’re ready to work and you’ve got passion to do great things for organizations.  You don’t have time to be embarrassed. To care about what others might think of you because you lost your job.  Your career is waiting!  We need to show the world you are not someone who is going to back down! I don’t want one more person that I know to go through this, ever.

Please come out of the closet for me.  It’s alright – I’ll support you!

 

 

#1 Thing Job Seekers Do Wrong

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I was asked recently by a job seeker: “How do I zero in positions that I’m qualified for and, those that I will be challenged by?” (shout out to Michael Kubica, MBA for the question)  After going back and forth with Mike I think the question is really: “How do I get a job that will use my skills and that I will actually find interesting?”   Most people don’t really want to be ‘challenged’ – they use the word ‘challenged’ or ‘challenging’, but when push comes to shove what most people want is a job where they feel like their contributions are valuable to the organization and their using the skills they are best at.  People want to feel successful – not challenged.  Many times when you’re challenged, you fail – most people don’t like to fail – and will quit.  But job seekers know that hiring managers and HR folks to hear the “challenge” word!

It boils down to what are failed job seekers doing wrong?

The #1 thing that job seekers are doing wrong is only looking for jobs, of jobs that are posted!

I hear it constantly. “I’ve been applying to jobs constantly”, “I’m on the job boards, Indeed, directly to company pages, etc. There isn’t a job posted that I haven’t applied to – there’s nothing left I can do…”  The reality is, HR and Talent Pros know this, most jobs that you want never really get posted.  Here’s how a vast majority of jobs get filled today:

Step 1: Need for a position is Identified in an organization. This might be for a new position being created, a person who resigned, termination, etc. – but now we know we need a body.

Step 2:  The hiring manager, or person who knows of the need first, has one thought – “who do I know, right now, that would fit this position?”

Step 3: If there is an answer to the question in Step 2 – that person is contacted.

(Realize – never in the first 3 steps was there any mention of “Oh, we better post that position quickly!” This all happens before any of that talk)

Step 4:  If there is a viable candidate to fill the need of the organization – that position is filled with that need – the position is never posted.

I say ‘it’s never posted’, but we all know that’s not true – it gets ‘posted’ but it really doesn’t get posted.  It only gets posted to close the loop on the recruiting process – but the resource to fill the need has already been identified – so you applying to that posting is an exercise futility. So many of the positions that get filled in our organizations, are filled like this. Who do you know?  I know someone. Bam! Filled. Job seeker – you’ve got know shot at these ‘prime’ positions.  That’s something behind the curtain that HR/Talent Pros don’t want you to know.

So, what can Job Seekers do to combat this?

Simple.  Network.  Connect with people in your expertise in the companies you want to work. With the people at companies in the area you want to work.  As a job seeker you want to put yourself into the minds of those individuals who when they find out they’re going to have a need – your name comes up in that conversation.  Keep posting – but spend at least double the time you do posting – networking and meeting those who will be in those conversations.  You’ll open yourself up to an entire other bucket of potential openings!

 

Ridiculous Terminations

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Once in a while in HR we have to make ridiculous decisions to terminate an employee.   Maybe it’s a well liked, popular employee, an employee with long tenure close to retirement, an employee who did something supporting their beliefs but still wrong, etc.  Those kinds of decisions come in all shapes and sizes.

What about firing an employee who was abused by a spouse, and because the company feared the spouse might come to the placement of employment, HR terminated the employee to protect all the rest of the employees?

What do you think about that call HR friends?

I have had to fire some employees for reasons I did not support in the least, but I was directed by a senior executive to do it.  Period.  I had two choices – 1. Fire the employee, or 2. Lose my own job and someone else would fire the employee.  While those few and far times don’t sit well with any HR Pro, most of us are put in that type of situation at least a few times in our career.  Do I become a martyr and quit to show my support for this employee, or save myself?  I’ve always decided to save myself.  Family to feed, mortgage to pay – does it really matter the reasons – either way I’ve had to compromise my true beliefs and do something I didn’t believe in.

As Paul Smith says – “Welcome to the Occupation!” (Great HR blogger, BTW, Check him out)

So, what about our example above with your employee who is being abused and you fire her because you don’t want her crazy husband showing up at your office with a gun?! What did you decide?  Let this poor woman fend for herself, or are you going to help her and put all of your employees at risk?  I bet a fair amount of you are not going to fire her!! What if I told you she was an elementary school teacher and her place of employment was surrounding 400 children. Now what do you do?!?!

From Gawker and a real-life example from San Diego, CA:

Earlier this year, Carie Charlesworth and her four children were removed from Holy Trinity School after she gathered up the courage to disclosed her struggles with domestic violence to the school’s principal.  After what the second-grade teacher’s called “a very bad weekend with [her ex-husband],” the unidentified man arrived outside the school, prompting a lockdown.

She was subsequently put on “an indefinite leave,” and then formally terminated three months later.”

Of course the employer wouldn’t comment on publicly about personnel issues. (I love that HR statement!)

Want to know why women don’t come forward about domestic violence issues? It only takes a few examples like this.  This is one HR firing I don’t think I could have done – losing my job or not – I’m positive my wife and kids would have understood. I understand you need to protect all of those children – but you need to try some other things before throwing out an employee and 4 of those kids onto the street to fend for themselves.

The Myth of Being a Highly Selective Employer

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We all think it, don’t we?  We all want to believe in this notion that we only hire the best and brightest – we only hire quality.  We are ‘highly’ selective.

We’ll show our executives really cool data that shows how ‘highly’ selective we are.  Number of applicants per hire – 25,000 people applied for this position and we only took the best 1!

I read something interesting recently from Time magazine and college admissions at highly selective colleges – think Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc.  Schools that are super hard to get into because of how selective they are – much like your hiring process of your organization. From the Time’s article:

“What many parents and students don’t realize is that increasing numbers of applications isn’t necessarily a sign that it’s harder to get into a selective school; rather, it’s a sign of changes in behavior among high school seniors. More and more people who aren’t necessarily qualified are applying to top schools, inflating the application numbers while not seriously impacting admissions. In fact, it has arguably become easier to get into a selective school, though it may be harder to get into a particular selective school…

The most recent study available from the National Association for College Admission Counseling shows that between 2010 and 2011 (the most recent years available), the percentage of students applying to at least three colleges rose from 77% to 79% and the percentage of students applying to at least seven colleges rose from 25% to 29%. In 2000, only 67% of students applied to three or more colleges, while 12% applied to seven or more.

The net effect of this behavior is to create an illusion of increased selectivity. Especially at the most selective schools, an increase in applications generally leads to the acceptance of a smaller percentage of the students who apply. However, students who meet the academic and extracurricular thresholds to qualify for competitive schools will still get into a selective college; it’s just less likely that they’ll get into a specific competitive college. These schools work hard to not admit students who won’t attend;  the acceptance rate and the matriculation rate (the percentage of accepted students who attend) are key measures in many college ranking methodologies, so both admitting too many students and admitting students who don’t attend can hurt a college’s ranking.”

An illusion of increased selectivity…You see, just because you turn down a high number of candidates doesn’t make you more selective – it makes you popular.  Too many organizations, and HR departments, are marketing that they are highly selective based on some simple numbers that give an illusion of being highly selective, when in reality, they’re just good at processing a high number of applicants – but not really being ‘more’ selective.  Just because you turn down 24,999 candidates doesn’t make you selective – it just means you have a high number of applicants.

So what does make you selective?  Quality of hire – which I can argue is another very subjective metric in most organizations – but at least it’s a start.  Can you demonstrate with real measurable items that the applicants you’re hiring are better or getting better than those previously?  This creates a real evidence that you’re becoming ‘more’ selective and on your way to becoming ‘highly’ selective.

3 Giant Misnomers of HR Technology

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One of the big things that hits you right across the face when attending SHRM’s national conference is all the technology that is being peddled at the conference. Hundreds of companies are all there competing for your HR dollar on how they are going to make your HR life easier.  The problem is  – I don’t really get what of these companies really do!  There’s no real differentiation amongst any of them – and I actually follow the industry!   It seems like the current popular ones like Ultimate Software,  Silkroad  and Halogen can do everything!  I mean everything but actually ‘do’ HR! That’s the trick right?!  You get sold on the fact that ‘this’ software is going to change how you ‘do’ HR forever – but you still have to ‘do’ HR.  It will definitely change how you do HR – no doubt.

The problem is, of the thousands of HR Pros who are attending SHRM this week – 99.9% couldn’t tell you what one of these company does from the next.  They all claim to be able to solve an HR issue that ails you.  That’s one of the biggest issues I see with most of the all-in-one suites – if you have one problem – let’s say it’s succession – you really have to convert everything over to their entire platform – because they have workflow that integrated.  That isn’t a bad thing – but put on your work boots – because you’re about to take on a gigantic project and change your entire way of doing HR – to solve that one problem you were facing!

The 3 Giant Misnomers of HR Technology:

1. HR Technology Makes HR Easier. HR Technology doesn’t make HR ‘easier’.  It makes HR faster.  The technology allows you to do things at a higher rate, gives you more capacity – but not easier.

2. HR Technology Will Make You Better at HR.  Again – it’s a piece of software.  If you’re a crappy HR Pro – You’ll now be a crappy HR Pro with an expensive piece of technology!  Way too many company executives fall into this trap.  We’re bad at HR – let’s go spend a boat load of money on technology and then we’ll be good at HR! No you won’t.

3. HR Technology Will Save You Money. The one thing you’ll find when looking into purchasing HR technology is that tech sales pros are exceptional at delivering to you a ROI model so it seems like HR all of a sudden went from cost-center to profit-center over night!  It won’t.  Good HR Tech costs money. Implementation, upkeep, training, etc.  The savings are ‘soft’ dollars and hard to sell to a finance person who gets reality.

Sounds like a I hate HR Tech, doesn’t it?!  I don’t – I love it!

I just see the blank stares and confusion on the face of my fellow HR pros when the walk the expo floor.  Do you need HR Technology to be good at HR?  Yes.  Competency in HR Technology is probably one key ingredient to being a ‘great’ HR Pro – that so very few of us actually have!  How do you get it?  Free Demos baby!  All of these companies give free demos – use them!  Teach yourself.  Make a friend in IT and ask questions when you don’t get it.  If you went through one demo per month on a piece of HR Technology, you would be amazed at how much you would actually learn about HR, your own HR shop and things you can do to improve yourself and your organization!

Live at SHRM 2013 – Don’t Rob My House

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Hey, I’m live today at the national SHRM 2013 conference in Chicago – please don’t rob my house while I’m gone!

This hit me this morning as I woke up in Chicago and thinking about the 15,000 plus participants here at SHRM with me, who’s watching their stuff while they’re out!?  Do you think there is a business opportunity here? House sitting for SHRM could be big business – for watchers or robbers! 😉

Here’s what I’m doing today –

– Meeting with Glassdoor and ADP – two companies that I think most people don’t really understand what they actually do now, compared to what we think they do.  (Check out Fistful for live interviews!)

– Live at The Hive at 2:30pm with the entire Fistful of Talent crew.

– Pimping the Expo floor to see what is new and innovative for HR and Recruiting.

– Hugs.

– DJ Jazzy Jeff cocktail party at the house of blues.

Initial perception – most companies are trying to be everything for everyone in HR.  We do talent management, we do payroll, we do succession, we do all HR all the time.  The problem is – they don’t.  Sure the software systems are probably much better than what you have currently – but it’s still a piece of software.  HR is ‘done’ by technology it’s done by people having conversations with other people, and solving problems.  The tech helps you do all of that faster – but you still have to do the heavy lifting and difficult conversations.

Don’t think you have to have the next big fancy thing to do great HR – you don’t.  If you have money and work in an environment that needs to move fast – there is some great systems available.  If you don’t have money – don’t use a tech excuse of they you can’t do great HR! The SHRM Expo has so many great things for HR and Talent Pros to buy, but all of them are nice to haves, not must haves.

One last thing – apparently at SHRM I’m a blogger – I’m not press. I’m cool with that, I don’t want to be considered press – to me ‘press’ is real writing – my writing is more graffiti than real writing.  But (there’s always a but!) – if you want me to ‘interview’ and meet with your vendors get the ‘press room Nazi’ off my back when I want to do that in quiet in the press room!  I was actually told today “You’re not press! You have to do that in the bloggers lounge!”, in front of the executive I was bringing in to interview!  Nothing like traditional SHRM making you feel like a second class citizen!