Another oldie but goodie! This Re-Run Friday originally ran in August 2018.

Is employee experience really all about your manager? #Maslow #Drink!

So, I’m sharing a post I wrote over at EXJournal.org (EX = Employee Experience). It’s site started by some brilliant people from all over the world and they invited me to write to bring down the overall quality of the site! I wrote this post and immediately thought, “Hey, I just leveled-up from my normal poorly written stuff!”.

I thought this because it’s an idea I’m passionate about and truly believe. I think we get lied to a bunch by HR vendors who are just trying to sell their shit. We’ve been lied to for a long time on the concept – “People leave managers, not companies” – that’s actually not true…enjoy the post and check out the new EXJournal site!

“Employees don’t leave companies. Employees leave managers.” 

How often have you heard this over the past decade? A hundred times? A thousand times?

We love saying this in the HR, management consulting, leadership training world. We use it for employee engagement and employee experience, to almost anything where we want to blame bad managers and take the focus off all the other crap we get wrong in our companies.

The fact is, the quote above is mostly bullshit.

Employees actually care about other things more

The truth is, employees actually leave organizations more often over money than anything else. We don’t want to believe it because that means as leaders we have to dig into our budgets, make less profit, and pay our employees true market value if we want them to stay.

Managers might be the issue if you’re getting everything else right. So, if you pay your employees at the market rate. Ifyou offer market-level benefits. If you give them a normal work environment, then yes, maybe employees don’t leave your company, they leave their managers.

But you forgot all that other stuff? Maybe the ‘real’ reason an employee left your company wasn’t the fact their manager wasn’t a rock star. Maybe it was the fact you paid them below market, gave them a crappy benefits package, and made them work in the basement?!

The dirty little truth about Employee Experience is that managers are just one component of the overall experience, and we give them way too much weight when looking at EX in totality. We do this because we feel we don’t have control over all of the other stuff, but it’s easy to push managers around and ‘train’ them up to be better than they actually are.

Rethinking Maslow for EX

There is a new Maslow‘s Hierarchy of Employee Needs when it comes to Employee Experience and it goes like this:

Level I – Money – cash!

Level II – Benefits – health, fringes, etc.

Level III – Flexibility of Schedule – work/life balance

Level IV – Work Environment – short commute, great design, supportive co-workers

Level V – The Actual Job/Position – am I doing something that utilizes my best skills?

Level VI – Your Manager – do I have a manager who supports my career & life goals?

We all immediately jump to Level VI when it comes to EX because that’s what we’ve been told is the real reason people leave organizations. Which actually might be the case if all of the other five levels above are being met. What I find is that rarely are the first five levels met, and then it becomes really easy to blame managers for why their people leave.

Managers aren’t the difference maker

When I take a look at organizations with super low turnover, what I find are that they do a great job at the first five levels, and they do what everyone else does at level six. The managers at low turnover organizations are virtually the same as all other organizations. There is no ‘real’ difference in skill sets and attitudes; those managers are just managing employees who are pretty satisfied because most of their basic needs are met pretty well.

I think the new quote should be this:

“Good employees leave companies that give them average pay, benefits, and work environment, that don’t utilize the employee’s skill set, and that make them work for a crappy boss.” 

(Tim note – Why the #Drink? It’s a game that my fellow HR/TA speakers and I play. We hate when someone uses the Maslow pyramid in a slide, so we make fun of it by claiming every time a speaker mentions “Maslow” or shows the pyramid the entire audience should have to take a drink – like a drinking game for bad speakers! The more you know…) 

Re-run Friday time! This post originally ran in July 2013.

Why ‘Recruiter’ is the best job in HR.

I grew up and lived most of my life in Michigan.  There are so many things I love about living in Michigan and most of those things have to deal with water and the 3 months that temperatures allow you to enjoy said water (Jun – Aug).  There is one major thing that completely drives me insane about Michigan.  Michigan is at its core an automotive manufacturing state which conjures up visions of massive assembly plants and union workers.  To say that the majority of Michigan workers feel entitled would be the largest understatement ever made.  We have grown up with our parents and grandparents telling us stories of how their overtime and bonus checks bought the family cottage, up north, and how they spent more time on their ‘pension’ than they actually spent in the plant (think about that! if you started in a union job at 18, put in your 30 years, retired at 48, on your 79 birthday you actually have had a company pay for you longer than you worked for them – at the core of the Michigan economy this is happening right now – and it’s disastrous!  Pensions weren’t created to sustain that many years, and quite frankly they aren’t sustainable under those circumstances).  Seniority, entitlement, I’ve been here longer than you, so wait your turn – are all the things I hate about my great state!

There is a saying in professional sports – “If you can play, you can play”.  Simply, this means that it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, how much your contract is worth – if you’re the best player, you will be playing.  We see examples of this in every sport, every year.  The kid was bagging groceries last month, now he’s start quarterback in the NFL!  You came from a rich family, poor family, no family – doesn’t matter – if you can play, you can play.  Short, tall, skinny, fat, pretty, ugly, smart, no-so smart – if you can play, you can play.  Performance on your specific field of play – is all that matters.  BTW – NHL released this video last year supporting the LGBT community (if you can play…) –

This is why I love being a recruiter!  I can play.

Doesn’t matter how long I’ve been doing it.  Doesn’t matter what education/school I came from.  Doesn’t matter what company I work for.  If you can recruit – you can recruit.  You can recruit in any industry, at any level, anywhere in the world.  Recruiting at its core is a perfect storm of showing us how accountability and performance in our profession works.  You have an opening – and either you find the person you need (success), or you don’t find the person (failure).  It’s the only position within the HR industry that is that clear cut.

I have a team of recruiters who work with me. Some have 20 years of experience, some have a few months – the thing that they all know – if you can recruit, you can recruit.  No one can take it away from you, no one can stop you from being a great recruiter.  There’s no entitlement or seniority – ‘Well, I’ve been here longer, I should be the best recruiter!’ If you want to be the best, if you have to go out and prove you’re the best.  The scorecard is your placements.  Your finds.  Can you find talent and deliver, or can’t you.  Black and white.

I love recruiting because all of us (recruiters) have the exact same opportunity.  Sure some will have more tools than others – but the reality is – if you’re a good recruiter – you need a phone and an ability to connect with people.  Tools will make you faster – not better.  A great recruiter can play.  Every day, every industry.  This is why I love recruiting.

This Re-Run Friday is from July 2017 – Email Heroes – Are you one?

For most of their careers, my parents could never check their work email at home.  It did mean that they probably stopped working when they got home, unlike most professional employees today.  My parents also rarely made it home at 5 pm and worked in the office many Saturdays and Sundays when the work needed to get done. The world changed, we can now get work done almost anywhere.

When did we start defining work as sitting in the bathroom at home and replying to emails in five minutes as work?

Let’s face it, most people aren’t really working when they are home if they don’t normally work at home.  They like to believe that what they’re doing is real work, but if can also wait to be done the next morning when you arrive at the office, you’re not doing real work, you’re just narcissistic.  Oh, I better immediately get back to John and tell him I can definitely do that interview at 8 am, next week Friday…

We act like checking work email at home is the same as donating a kidney or something.

Studies show that 59% of males and 42% of females respond to emails when out of the office.  Those numbers actually sound low to me. The survey also shows that younger workers are more likely to think about work when going to bed and when waking. Just wait! Pretty soon thinking about work will be the same as work!

Are we losing our f’ing minds!?

Seriously! I want to know.  Having the ability to check and respond to emails outside of the office increase your work-life flexibility, but we talk about it like it’s an anchor.  That iPhone is only an anchor if you make it an anchor!  I have a son who plays baseball and I watch as many of his games as I can.  In between innings I always check my email and respond to work if necessary. I do not consider that work. I consider that watching my son play baseball!

Making the decision to take a half a day to watch my son play baseball is easy, because I know I can balance both jobs I have, running a company and being a Dad.  Does my son care that I’m checking email while he’s warming up in between innings?  No. He doesn’t even notice.  It’s not like I’m behind the backstop giving a performance review over the phone while he’s up to bat! I’m just checking and following up on some emails.

If you decide you want to stay connected to your job and organization while you are out of the office, that is a personal decision. Don’t act like you’re a hero going above and beyond by keeping up on your emails. You’re not, everyone does that.

If keeping up with your emails is the real work you’re doing, you’re highly overpaid and easily replaceable. If telling your coworkers you checked emails while out of the office on some personal time to show how dedicated and better you are than them, you need to get a life, email hero.

This Re-Run Friday was originally posted in July 2015!

Your Company’s History, is History

Is it important to KFC that Colonel Sanders wasn’t really a real Colonel?

Is it important to suburban teen clothing company, Hollister Co. that none of it’s history is real?

Is it important to your company about how it was started, who started it, etc. You know, the backstory.  Is your company’s backstory important to your business?

We like to believe it is, and I think for some organizations it’s important to their guiding mission. But, let’s face it, for most of us, it’s just a story. Culver’s has tells us some of their story about burgers and frozen custard in their commercials, but let’s face it, I’m not eating their because of their history.  I eating their because their cheeseburgers and ice cream are delicious!  I don’t care if their beginnings were in a prison kitchen, I’m buying!

Most people think like this.

Walmart has one of the best American made beginning of all time, and people hate them! They are arguably America’s biggest success of a company, but since they are no longer a small retailer from Arkansas, and began world domination, we hate them. We hate they became successful, and now sell stuff to us really cheap from China.

I believe it’s great to know your company’s history. Where you came from and how you got started. The problem many organizations run into is that they try to live in that past.  “Well, we started out selling washers, and we need to keep selling washers.” Even though our clients can now buy them overseas for 90% less than what you sell them for. This is why companies go under. This is why so many companies who were once great, are no more.

Your company’s history is valuable if people believe it’s actually a differentiator of your brand and success.  Once it no longer holds this designation, it’s just another old story.

Most organizations put way more value on their beginning, on their history, than is needed.  They do this because usually the person, or people, who were are apart of this history is still around.  This is ‘really’ important to them.  This is their legacy.  It might not be the ultimate legacy of the organization, but it is their legacy, now.

One of the hardest things you’ll ever come against as a leader is moving past your organization’s history, if it becomes a roadblock to moving your organization forward.  For many employees this becomes that one thing they can hold onto as true.  It’s what they know, and it doesn’t change. Creating new history is scary and unknown.  So, employees tend to fight back and hold on to the organizational history hard!

Getting employees to buy into the fact they can create and be apart of your new history moving forward is key to getting past your old history.  Your organizational history is just that, history.  Don’t make your history more than it has to be, especially if it isn’t adding value to your future.  If your history equals your brand, you better make sure that is what people want to buy!