HR’s September Call Up

Posted on by
Reply

For those who aren’t big Major League Baseball (MLB) fans you probably don’t know what the “September Call-Up” or “Expanded Rosters” mean.  Each year on September 1st, as the MLB season goes into its final month, the league allows teams to invite players from their minor league teams and the roster number expands from 25 to 40.  For teams who are out of the playoff race, this allows them to give some younger guys an opportunity to perform on a larger stage.  For those in playoff races, or teams that have already solidified a playoff berth, the extra players allow them to rest some regulars.  For playoff teams these extra 15 players can’t play in actual playoff games, only in the final regular season games.

Ok, Tim – why the hell should we care about Major League Baseball’s September Call-ups?

In any HR shop I’ve ever worked in, or with any HR Pro I’ve ever had a conversation with – Succession Planning is always an issue HR Pros struggle with in their organizations.  Many times sports shows us there is a way that it can be done, you just need to find a way to tailor it to your environment, and I think the MLB gives us a window to how a competitive organization attempts to get this done.

Succession is difficult and costly, there is no way around it.  If your organization is truly trying to do succession and not spend money – it won’t be pretty and it probably won’t be effective.  To really know a person has the ability to step into someones shoes when they leave, you have to see them actually do the job.  In most organizations this just isn’t an option – how many of us have the ability to pull out a high performer from their current position, and put them into a new position, while the other person is still in that position?  Not many of us!  It’s just not a reality most of live in.

Baseball’s September call-ups is one strategy that you might be able to use within your organization.  While pulling someone full-time into a new position, might not be something you could do – could you do it for 30 days?  Before telling me you can’t – what would you do it that same person had a medical issue and had to be hospitalized or home-bound for a month?  You’d make it, you’d get by – that’s what we do in organizations.  The team would rally and make it work. So, giving someone a 1 month succession stint into a new potential role – full immersion – would actually give  you some decent insight to whether or not the person could actually handle that role in the future, or at least show you some great development needs that have to ensure success.

Is it perfect? No – but that’s why it works.  We don’t get perfect in HR – we get good enough and move onto the next fire.  We don’t get million dollar budgets to formalize succession and have a bench full of high performing talent to just step in when someone leaves our organization.  It’s our job to figure out succession, while we figure out how to keep the lights on at the same time.  I love the September Call-Up – gives me insight to the future of my team, shows me how someone performs in an environment that doesn’t pigeonhole them forever, and let’s me know if they show some potential for The Show!

HR – We Still Got Some Problems

Posted on by
1

I found it interesting this week that when Apple CEO Steve Jobs resigned, and Tim Cook was named the new CEO – most news organizations didn’t leave with what this would mean to Apple and the industry in general. Instead they led with “Apple’s New CEO is Gay!” Here is a guy who has an outstanding career, more accomplishments than you could ever list – a documented “company” guy who works harder than anyone, and Jobs himself personally picked him as his replacement – and we focus on his sexual orientation.

There is something majorly wrong with this from a societal context.

If Cook was married with children what do you think the headline would have read?

“Cook”ing up a New Apple”

or

“Apple Adds another Cook to the Kitchen”

or

“Will Cook Cut Up the Apple?”

You get the point…if sure as hell wouldn’t have been any of these:

“Cook Adding Some Spice To the CEO suite at Apple”

or

“Will Apple Go back to the Rainbow Logo with Cook in Charge”

or

“What Changes Will Cook Make to his New Office”

HR Pros around the country should be cringing at the reaction that news media has taken in how they’ve reported the change at the top.  He’s gay, he’s not prancing around flamboyantly with light blue half t-shirt with a rainbow logo across the front, in daisy duke cut off jean shorts and bedazzled flip flops.  He came through IBM’s leadership program, ascended to the highest ranks within corporate America – and we lead with he’s “Gay”.

I know there are probably some individuals out there that are actually proud that a CEO at such a high profile company is Gay, similar to how black people are proud of Obama becoming president, or woman being proud of Indra Nooyi becoming the CEO at Pepsi Co., etc.   I’m not saying we shouldn’t be proud of those in minority groups reaching the highest levels of society, we should.  What I’m saying is we need to start not acting so damn surprised when it does happen!

Cook looks to be an outstanding choice to run Apple. Will he do as well at Jobs?  Probably not, it’s hard to follow a legend in any business.  In the end my only hope is that he’ll be measured on how her performs based on his results and now who he chooses to sleep with.

 

 

Profersonal!

Posted on by
2

I spent the last few days down at Illinois SHRM State Conference – and what a great event and lineup it was – the best state SHRM conference I’ve been to, their lineup of speakers was incredible.  One speaker, though, hit home with especially – Jason Seiden.  It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard Jason speak, but for whatever reason, maybe I was just actually listening this time, what he had to say really hit home.  Jason has trademarked a new term called “Profersonal” – basically as a new word for us HR Pros to use versus “Work-Life Balance”.

Jason believes we are sending our employees the wrong message using “Work-Life Balance”.  When we use that term, we are telling our employees that Life (your personal life) is good and you must have more of it, meaning “Work” must be the opposite. What is the opposite of “Life”? Death!  So, we are saying Work = Death, and Personal Time = Life.  In those terms – you’ll never find “Balance”, who the hell wants “Death” over “Life” when given the choice.  When we as HR Pros start pushing Work-Life Balance – what are we really pushing onto our employees? Death or Life? And, do you want to be pushing that message?

Why I love this concept of “Profersonal” is that it is has the conjunction implies – “professional” and “personal” combined.  In everything you do, you are one person. I’m not one person at work, then go home and I’m somebody else – how satisfying is that?! living two lives.   It’s something I try and get across to my team, but it seems like the millennial really struggle with this concept of “Profersonal”.  They still want their personal life and their professional life to be separate.    They want to put up photos of their weekend excursion on Facebook, and not have to worry about what clients and co-workers might think (maybe checkout Google + circles!).  They believe that to be truly successful, you can’t show someone how you are in your professional life, how you are in your personal life.  I think that kind of life would suck!  “I yam what I am yam” as Popeye would say.

I know that not everyone is going to like the “Profersonal” me – I get that – that’s the risk I take.  But I’ll tell you a little secret – I’ve worked at jobs where I tried to be someone I wasn’t – and it wasn’t a better me.  The times I’m happiest, the times I’m most productive, I’m most enthusiastic – is when I’m me.  I like the professional me, and I like the personal me, and I willing to share both freely with anyone.  That my friends is “Balance” – when you are comfortable enough to live full time in your own skin – you don’t need work-life balance – and you can just live.

Thanks Jason for putting a word to what I feel every day – “Profersonal”!

Check Jason out, buy his book, invite him to come speak at your company or event – you won’t be sorry!

What’s Your “Mission” At Work?

Posted on by
Reply

One of our clients at HRU is the U.S. Army and I recently had an opportunity to go onto one of the bases and listen to the commanding officer speak about their “mission”.  The facility I was at wasn’t one who was training soldiers to go off and fight, they weren’t readying troops for battle, this facility was a manufacturing facility – owned and ran by the U.S. Army making various things that are used by our men and women who are out in combat.  But make no mistake – each individual working at this base had a “mission”.

I’ve worked at a number of companies in my career and we always had vision and mission statements, but to be honest it was very difficult to live those visions and/or missions. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a company guy – I’ll get the company logo tattoo on my butt, the whole thing – but most mission/vision statements are just lame and/or boring.  Almost all of these statements have certain words in common: Quality – Stakeholders – Integrity – Excellence – Service – Innovation – Team Work – Responsibility.  Really!?  Do you think someone has a company out there where they started thinking – “You know what the country needs? A company that has crappy quality, lies to their customers, treats each other like garbage and is satisfied with average last generation products”?!

That is what blew me away with the “mission” of our partners at the U.S. Army.  Every individual who came into that facility from the guy who was sweeping up the floors to the person writing the checks for material knew where their products were going, and what it meant if one of their products “failed”.  Their mission was to protect the lives of a soldier they had never met, who was fighting in a place they will probably never see.  That soldier is someones son or daughter, someones Dad or Mom – they are brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles.  The employees “mission” every single day they come to work is to ensure the products they manufacture – save the life of someone who is charged with protecting our freedom.  Now that’s a “mission”!

I was in HR at Applebee’s and I loved it!  Loved IT! Great HR team, high energy, very fun place to work.  Our “Mission” was to ensure customers got “hot-fries-hot” and didn’t have to ask for refills.  Not quite the same mission as saving someones life. Important for the success of the business – you bet.  But sometimes hard to truly believe you were making a difference in the world.

Read your mission/vision statement at your office – today.  Does it resonate with you?  You have to believe in the mission you are charged with, in what you do, or eventually you won’t like you do anymore.  Having a “mission” is important.  It might not be protecting or saving lives, and that’s fine – that’s not for everyone.  I run a staffing company – my “mission”?  My 8 year old asks me this from time to time? “Dad, what do you do?”  I find people jobs. Which during a recession is pretty important, makes you feel very good when you find someone a job!  When times are good – I find people “better” jobs, or I help companies find “better” talent.  Either way that’s my mission – and I like it!

 

Compensation 701 – The Masters Course

Posted on by
Reply

In terms of one part of your corporate Compensation Philosophy you can be a Pay Follower, a Pay Leader or Market Rate.

You never hear Pay Leaders complain about Turnover…

You always her Pay Followers complain about how Pay Leaders can actually pay that much…

Those who Pay at the Market always talk about how money isn’t that important…

HR and Compensation Pros will always talk about how it’s not about how much someone makes, it’s about the total compensation package.  Ironically, those Best Companies To Work for – tend to have the highest total compensation packages and be Pay Leaders.  It’s a vicious cycle to get the best talent.  If your a pay follower you will never have the best talent.  If you pay at market, you will never have the best talent for long.  If you’re a Pay Leader you’ll have the ability to attract the best talent and the resources to hook them – but you still have to have the culture and leadership to keep the long term.

This is everything I know about compensation after 20 years of working in HR.

What have I learned?

I always try and work for Pay Leaders – otherwise you end up chasing your tail a lot within the HR world.

Consider yourself graduated.

The Best Paying Jobs Without A College Degree

Posted on by
Reply

Fun article on Xfinity listing the Top 10 Highest Paying jobs you can get with a High School degree. Check them out:

10.  Boat/Water Vessel Captain (I guess there assuming you might captain a submarine) – $64,000 – $117,000

9. Gaming Manager (think Pit Boss Vegas) – $66,000 – $116,000

8. Detective/Criminal Investigator – $68,000 – $119,000

7. Elevator Installer – $70,900 – $101,000 (Milk-a-what!? Who knew)

6. Web Developers – $75,000 – $119,000

5. Nuclear Power Plant Operator – $75,600 – $119,000 (yep, that’s right Homer Simpson was banking)

4. Police Chief – $78,000 – $123,000

3. Construction Manager – $83,000 – $150,000

2. Software Developers – $87,000 – $133,000

1. Commercial Airline Pilot – $101,000 – $139,000

For my money I can think of 3 that they completely missed from their list:

1. Drug Dealer – easily 6 figures, maybe 7 if you got some street game

2. Professional Athlete – sure there aren’t many jobs, but it can pay well.

3. Recruiter! (Holla) – Say what you want, but a good headhunter can make some scratch!

Have a great week.

Employees: FYI Health Insurance Is Broken

Posted on by
5

Oh, boy, please don’t get me started on this…

This is the time of year when HR benefits folks get a smile on their face.  If you have your stuff together, from a benefits standpoint, it’s around August, early September that you begin meeting with your insurance companies and brokers about 2012 benefit rates – we should just start calling these “Increase” meetings because in 20 years of HR I’ve never been with a company where we met with our insurance partners and the rates went down! (and that is actually factual!)  I somewhat envy true Benefit Administrator and Managers because I could never do what they do, or want to.  It’s a true life calling.  It’s not really HR and it’s not really Finance – it’s somewhere in the middle of hell.

Benefit folks love Open Enrollment time of year – they’ll tell they don’t and they can’t wait until it’s over – but let’s face it, it’s the only time of the year anyone in the organization listens to them – so you know they like it!   They get to have the big planning meetings with the finance folks and senior leadership to determine how they’ll pass on the costs to the employees, yet still make it seem like we are giving them more.  Many will get to travel to cheap hotels and meet with groups of employees in hour segments – probably the only time they leave the office all year.  To be sure – it’s a special time in the Benefits world.

So, this week I got to sit with our insurance broker to see how bad our insurance carrier was going to jack up the rates (picture me sitting with fingers crossed saying over-and-over “please don’t be double digits, please don’t be double digits, please don’t be double digits…”).  I like brokers they were the first ones to teach me “under promise and over deliver”, which has worked well in my career.  Our broker didn’t disappoint.  The day before the meeting he called and said the sky was about to fall and you might have to close your doors, the rate increases were probably going to be around 3 to 4 THOUSAND percent!  Then he showed up walked in the conference room and before he even sat down – said “9%” – and I was happy!  Who the hell is happy with 9%?!  I was – because he did a great job at preparing me for the worse.

Here’s the problem – the current system and health care reforms new system coming – just isn’t sustainable for employers.  Insurance is too expensive and too complicated, and unless you’re a Fortune 500 shop – you don’t have the chops in-house to really make sense of it all – so insurance starts to feel less like a benefit, and more like something that is about to happen to you – but not in a good way.  Not like the feeling you get as a child when Christmas is about to happen! More like the feeling you get as a child when your newly divorces mom brings home “Uncle” Kevin to spend the night – it just doesn’t seem right.

I don’t have a solution for you kids.  It’s broke, it’s broke way bad – and health care reform isn’t going to come close to fixing it.  So, HR Benefit Pros – skip the Courtyard, they no longer give you a free breakfast, check out Holiday Inn Express or Embassy Suites – or any place with free drinks at the nightly “manager’s reception”.

 

The #1 Reason You Shouldn’t Drink At Work Events

Posted on by
2

An old Tibetan monk once said  :

“A drunken mouth speaks a sober mind.”

I don’t know if that is actually said by an old monk or just something someone’s grandfather said, but in terms drinking at an office function, it rings as true today as it did when whoever said it, said it.   The ironic part of the statement is, people will go to great lengths to say the opposite.  “Oh, Tim, please understand I didn’t mean that you are completely incapable of everything – it was the whiskey talking – I don’t really believe that.”  Yes you do!  That’s why you said it when you were drunk – you didn’t have any filters to stop you from saying it!

As an HR Pro I love going to work functions that involved alcohol!  Sure there is some legal/safety risks, but the information you get on your organization is priceless!  The only thing that might be better is to secretly wire-tape my body like they do with the guys that always get caught in the movies – so people will stop asking me why I’m taking notes at the 5th Friday of the month cocktail parties.   If you ever want to find me at a party, I go to the group who is drinking the most, and I carry a tray of drinks over with me, to ensure everyone gets another round without having to leave the conversation.

The only thing better than employees with too much alcohol in them, is the employees that smoke with too much alcohol in them!   These are a unique group of people who tend to talk too much anyway.  I mean they are already going outside for 5-10 times per day for 5-10 minute little breaks to get their smoke on – so they are use to coming up with conversation to pass that time away with the coworker, smoker friends.  The smoker network gets even better with drinks!  People always ask me if I smoke because I go outside with the smokers, and I don’t, but they have the best conversations!  Plus the smokers are the only “group” in your organization that is truly diverse – you’ll get all shapes and sizes, male and female, black, white, blue, secretaries and Vice Presidents – you’ll hear it all!  (newbie HR Pro tip #23 – Hang with the smokers in your organization – you’ll find out everything before it happens!)  When I recruit new Employee Relations people I put a pack of cigs and an ash tray on my desk just to see who bites – I want my ER’s to be smokers!

Ok, let me get back on track – drinkers.  Here’s my suggestion, if you have some issues with your organization, or feel some ill will towards anyone you’ll be around, skip the alcohol and tell everyone you are on some kind of medication that will make you violently ill if you have a drop of alcohol when everyone asks why you aren’t drinking (which will happen because everyone is use to you making an ass of yourself and they like the entertainment). Next, leave early, faking your same illness, because everyone that is drinking will be talking about you – so it will be uncomfortable.  Lastly, head straight to the bar with your best work friend to find out all the gossip!

 

 

Work 2.0 – Hyperspecialization

Posted on by
1

Great article over The Harvard Business Review – The Big Idea: The Age of Hyperspecialization which looks at the phenomenon of organizations breaking down knowledge based tasks into increasingly smaller pieces.  This is very similar to Adam Smith’s classic Wealth of Nations that looked at breaking down the steps of manufacturing operations (i.e., pin making) into many steps – taking away the need for a specialized workforce, and turning the entire operation into basically manual labor.  From the article:

Just as people in the early days of industrialization saw single jobs (such as a pin maker’s) transformed into many jobs (Adam Smith observed 18 separate steps in a pin factory), we will now see knowledge-worker jobs—salesperson, secretary, engineer—atomize into complex networks of people all over the world performing highly specialized tasks. Even job titles of recent vintage will soon strike us as quaint. “Software developer,” for example, already obscures the reality that often in a software project, different specialists are responsible for design, coding, and testing. And that is the simplest scenario. When TopCoder, a start-up software firm based in Connecticut, gets involved, the same software may be touched by dozens of contributors…TopCoder chops its clients’ IT projects into bite-size chunks and offers them up to its worldwide community of freelance developers as competitive challenges (opening the possibility of becoming a “top coder”)….

The term “hyperspecialization” is not synonymous with outsourcing work to other companies or distributing it to other places (as in offshoring), although it is facilitated by the same technologies. Rather, it means breaking work previously done by one person into more-specialized pieces done by several people. Whether or not those pieces are outsourced or distributed, their separation often leads to improvements in quality, speed, and cost…

Hyperspecialization reduces costs most dramatically when a company can turn to an expert instead of having to reinvent the wheel. For example, consider how much (expensive) time junior law associates spend researching the same legal precedents again and again in firms across the United States. Contrast that with the value a firm could realize by tapping into a network of experts who each specialize in some tiny aspect of the law. A firm might suddenly require knowledge of, say, the detailed rules and precedents associated with filing deadlines for U.S. antitrust cases, or the rules of evidence for murder trials in Texas. It could pay a hyperspecialist five times the hourly rate of a junior associate and still come out well ahead on costs.

I think within HR many get this concept.  We see recruiting functions being broken into so many subsets, it’s hard to find an actual “recruiter” anymore.  Gone are the days that someone works a “full” desk.  Where you work directly with a hiring manager, develop the job description, determine a compensation strategy, design a sourcing plan, source, screen, assess, interview, reference check, make an offer, on-board, etc.   I’m not saying the “good-old-days” are preferred by me – I love the new way to work.  The speed at which we can recruit candidates now continues to blow my mind, as I think of our time to fill numbers when I started recruiting in the 90’s!

As we move into this post economic recovery phase over the next 5 years, watch as you see organizations redesign many of their functions with this concept in mind.  As an HR Pro it will make it even more important that you really get involved in the operations of your organizations, so you can help direct your leaders into this hyperspecialization of our workforces.  This is a change some, especially the old guard, will want to fight – “we’ve always had a Process Engineer, just give me another”, versus looking at alternative ways to do the same work – faster, cheaper, more effective.  Internally, to our organizations, we need to be the experts in how to design and get the most out of the headcount we have – Hyperspecialization will be one more tool in your arsenal.

How Do You Tell Someone They Suck?

Posted on by
5

Every Monday morning we have a recruiter meeting at HRU.  The purpose of the meeting is for our recruiting department to share with each other what they are working on, what they’ve accomplished the prior week, and give in updates that the full group might need to know.  Something came up this morning that I wanted to share.  Like most recruiting departments/companies/etc. we have our “Repeat Offenders”  – these are the people who just won’t give up.  At one point, a recruiter probably called them, and maybe even interviewed them, possibly even hired them – but now, they won’t leave you alone – they call, they email, they LinkedIn, send Facebook Friend requests, etc. Basically, they become a stalker!

This morning, one of the recruiters says “Mr. Jones (I’ve changed the name to protect the guilty) won’t stop bugging me, he emails his resume to me ‘every’ day!”  We all know Mr. Jones, because Mr. Jones use to work for us at a client, and it didn’t turn out so well.  Now, Mr. Jones wants us to find him his next assignment.  The problem with Mr. Jones isn’t skill related, it’s personality related – he’s annoying.  He was annoying to the client and to his work group peers, he is annoying to us, and I’m pretty sure he was annoying to his ex-wife – thus the “ex”!

So, the BIG question. How do you get Mr. Jones to stop bugging you?  This happens to every single recruiter I know eventually.

Here are the steps I use:

1. Tell Them!

That’s it – no more steps.  Here’s our problem as recruiters – we never want to burn a bridge.  “Well, Tim, you don’t know where he might go, who might hire him, I don’t want to ruin my reputation”  Bullshit.  You’re being conflict avoidant, and if you look at your last performance review, I bet under “opportunities” is probably says something about avoiding conflict or not confronting issues head on.  I had a very good HR mentor once tell me – “it’s best to deliver them that gift, then to allow them to walk around not knowing”.  Once you start being straightforward you’ll be amazed at how many people will say, “No one has ever told me that!”  That’s the problem – no one ever tells them the truth, thus they keep doing the wrong thing, instead of trying to fix what is wrong.

How do you get an annoying candidate to stop bugging you?  You tell them exactly, very specifically, very calmly, with no ill intent – “I want to give you a gift.  You might not see it as a gift right now, but I hope in time you’ll understand it to be a very valuable gift.  I (don’t use “we” or “us” or “the company – you’re avoiding again by using those) – I think you have a very bad personality flaw that comes across annoying to me, and from the feedback I have received, to those you work with.  If this does not change, I won’t be finding you any job in the future, and you’ll probably struggle to find one on your own as well.”  OUCH! That hurt right?  But, read it again, was there anything mean or untrue in the statement? If this person actually listens to the statement and acts on it, will they be better for it?  You can change the reason for whatever issue the person might have – maybe it’s hygiene, maybe it’s a crazy laugh, who knows – but the basic message stays the same.  You need to change, or I never want to speak to you again.

It’s hard for recruiters to understand this, because 99% have been taught to be nice, thoughtful people – not to be rude.  This sounds a bit rude.  In reality, I think it’s rude to string a person along and not care enough about them to actually tell them what is wrong and to help them.  Stop telling candidates your blow off lines and start telling candidates the truth.  At the very least, you’ll have more time on your hands to talk to the candidates you really want to speak to!