Quiet quitting is all the rage, and I’m here for all of it! Keep quietly quitting. Quietly quit more, faster, better! I hope it works out just like you hope it will!
Have a great super relaxing weekend, you quiet quitters!
Can I be real a second?
For just a millisecond?
Let down my guard and tell the people how I feel a second?
We have a core problem in HR and Talent Acquisition that might be impossible to solve. On one side, we have hiring managers who think they know what they want, but any Recruiter can tell you that changes by the minute and by the candidate you put in front of them. Can you spell conscious bias?
On the other hand, we have candidates who truly believe they know what they want, but until they actually get into the job and work with the team and get a feel for how the culture works, they also have no clue of what they really want. Can you spell clueless?
All the while, the reality is that none of us really know what we want.
Oh, Timmy, I do! I want more money! Ugh, this new job with more money sucks!
Oh, Timmy, I do! I want passion and purpose in my work! Ugh, this new job doesn’t pay enough for me to live!
Oh, Timmy, I do! I want a job that pays me more than I should be making, makes me feel like I’m helping out the world in some major way, allows me to come and go as I please, and never asks me to produce any evidence of any work that I ever did!
Well, yes, yes, you do know what you want!
Even then, some idiot would find fault with that job. The brand isn’t cool anymore…(and here comes the throat punch!).
Humans are awful at knowing what they want and combining what’s best for them. We tend to pick things that make us feel good at the moment, but a week later, we hate ourselves for it. This makes employee selection super difficult. You have two people meeting each other for an hour, if you’re lucky and then making a life-changing decision. Turns out, that rarely works out well for either side.
We try to throw psychology and technology into the mix, and honestly, this would work better, but we still throw a human in the loop (candidate) at some point who basically can’t be honest with themselves or the A.I., and we can’t figure out why this entire thing keeps failing.
So, what should we do?
I think we should just select employees based on a lottery. “Are you interested in this job? and Do you meet the requirements?” Two yes’s, and you get a shot at the job lottery! Let the odds forever be in your favor! Good luck.
I mean, would it really be worse than what you’re doing right now?
I don’t know.
I hope you liked the picture of my puppy.
Today is Global TA Day, put on by the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP).
The other day I had someone ask me, who doesn’t really know me and definitely didn’t know what recruiting is, isn’t recruiting hard because people don’t like you?!
I wish I could tell you I’ve never heard this question before. When I first started in recruiting 25 years ago, it was a common theme in my life. “Oh, you’re a headhunter! That must suck…”
I thought it would be all different when I went into the corporate side of Talent Acquisition. Okay, now I’m in “real” recruiting. But I wasn’t. Corporate TA, which I love, wasn’t real recruiting. It was just another form of recruiting. Either way, I enjoyed that side of recruiting as well.
Why? Why do I love recruiting?
Basically, at any moment in my day, week, or month, I’m going to be a part of a life-changing event. I’ve been a part of someone getting the job they dreamed of, or getting a pay increase that will change the direction of their life, or maybe a position that will allow them to move to a location that will fulfill something they’ve been searching for.
It’s not every day. It’s not every week. Heck, sometimes it might not happen in a month. But every morning when I get up, today might be the day! There’s a chance. There’s a chance today is going to be a great day.
I love recruiting because in recruiting, we have the ability to change our company for the better every single day. Maybe today will be the day I find the designer who will design a next-gen product that is the future of our company. Today might be the day I hire a nurse who will care for my grandfather when he is sick and help them recover. Today might be the day I hire a Barista who takes to extra seconds to recognize a person who tomorrow will need to be seen to make it through another day.
Aspirational? Hell, yes. And today, I’m here for it!
For decades I think we all had a hard time imagining conferences in a new way. Most followed, and still follow, a basic format of a full group morning keynote, followed by hour-long sessions throughout the day, followed by an afternoon day-closing keynote. Most of the design was directed by the continuing education community, which is why most conferences started.
You need one credit per session, and those sessions need to be at least one hour of ‘training’ or education.
Then TEDx came around, and people had 18 minutes to produce some of the most amazing content any of us had ever seen! DisruptHR-like events sprung up, and we got to see great content happen in 5 minutes! Many people started wondering, why the heck are we sitting here for one hour listening to people drone on endlessly when they could tell us all of this in half the time!?
There was a small study done around this concept. A researcher went to a conference and sat in 50 sessions. Within four minutes, he made the decision was this content was boring or not. Based on that, he also looked at the time the speaker went over or under their time, and his data showed him that boring speakers were more likely to go over their allotted time!
“For every 70 seconds that a speaker droned on (over their allotted time), the odds that their talk had been boring doubled.”
So, if you ever sat in a boring session and thought, “Oh my, this is so boring, and it’s taking forever!” You’re right! The boring stuff does take longer!
As a speaker, all of these changes that conferences are making and testing are really exciting. Here’s what I’ve learned over the past 12 months with some of these new content configurations that are being tested:
– The shorter amount of time you have to speak, the more time it takes to prepare really great content! It seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? It should be harder the longer you have, but it’s not. If you have a short amount of time, your talk has to be really tight and practiced. If you have a long time as a speaker, you can wander around and come back to things.
– Shorter segments of live content that are good are much deeper and less wide. The best short-range content goes really deep on one item, not surface level on many items.
– The audience pays closer attention to shorter content. If you have an audience for an hour or more, they tend to come in and out. If you have them for 20 minutes, you are more likely to have them the full time, which means they’re more likely to call you out if you try and slide some B.S. by them!
– Most non-speaker speakers really struggle with short content. Most speakers at a conference aren’t professional speakers. They’re practitioners. They need more time, not less, because they aren’t on stage enough to practice short, tight sets of content. So, they’re more likely to fail when doing short sessions.
Get ready for some exciting conferences in 2022 and 2023! Conference producers are really working to change things up and keep modern attendees engaged with the content at conferences, most now both in-person and virtual, and I personally love the challenge and the changes! If you’re building our budget for 2023, make sure you try and hit an in-person conference. To me, it’s one of the best ways to sharpen your saw and build a great professional network!
The popular startup competition will take place during the upcoming HR Technology Conference, happening September 13 – 16, 2022, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. I’m super proud to once again be of the judges selected by LRP Media Group and the HR Technology Conference for this year’s Pitchfest. It is my favorite event of the year!!
This year, 33 companies will compete during the three preliminary rounds, each with five minutes to present and two to three minutes to answer questions from the judges. Based on a combination of votes from the audience and the judges, the total score earned by each company in the preliminary rounds will determine which six advance to the finals.
On Thursday, September 15, at 10 a.m. PT, the Pitchfest final will name one winner to receive the grand prize of $25,000 and exhibit space at the 2023 HR Technology Conference. A second-place winner will get $5,000. Prize money for the winners will be donated by Randstad Innovation Fund, Randstad’s strategic corporate venture fund.
Listed in alphabetical order, these are the companies selected to participate in the 2022 Pitchfest:
1. AtlasJobs
2. Dalia (Frontline Recruiting Tech)
3. EasyLlama (Sexual Harassment Compliance)
4. Educe Software (Talent Management Tech)
5. Extraview (Interview Tech)
6. Findem (Sourcing Tech)
7. Finwello Inc. (Financial Wellness)
8. Gift Better Co. (Employee Appreciation)
9. Illoominus Software, Inc (DEI Analytics Tech)
10. Inclusively (Workforce Inclusion)
11. ishield.ai (Diversity Communication Tech)
12. JobSync (Recruiting Automation Tech)
13. Largely (Talent Marketplace)
14. Lumina (Job Advertising Tech)
15. Manager360
16. ModernLoop (Recruiting Opersations Tech)
17. PivotCX (Recruiting Communications Tech)
18. Pointr (Position Tracking Tech)
19. Praisidio (Talent Retention)
20. Probotalent, LLC (Reference Assessment Solution)
21. Pulse – Automatic Status (Slack Status solution)
22. Ramped (Upskilling)
23. ReturnSafe (Hybrid Work Experience Tech)
24. Rise (Core HCM)
25. SmartRank (Candidate Screening)
26. Soundbite Inc. (Employee Engagement Tech)
27. SPOTLYFE (Employee Engagement Tech)
28. Sunny Day Fund (Financial Wellbeing Tech)
29. TaTiO (Applicant Attraction Solution)
30. TeamSense (Text-based Hourly Worker Comms Tech)
31. ThinkSight (People Analytics Tech)
32. Translator, Inc. (DEI Learning Platform)
33. uMap™ (Talent Management Tech)
**You’ll notice two of the 33 don’t have links – that’s because I couldn’t find them based on their name! That’s a great Startup lesson.**
So, how do you use this list? Start clicking through and see who they are and what they do! What I find is that many of these startups have amazing technology, and they are looking to get users to prove their concept, so that means you can probably get great tech at a great price!! Plus, many times, be at the forefront of an HR Technology movement.
That starts with a demo! I promise, they are painless, and you will learn some cool stuff, give it a try! Challenge yourself to do one new demo a quarter. Keep on top of the technology that is shaping our industry into the future!
My wife always tells me it’s actions, not words, that make a difference. You can say all of this great stuff, but if you do nothing, it’s meaningless. I think we would all agree with this.
So, when we hear graduating students, candidates, and employees tell us what they really want is “Meaningful Work” in their careers, we have to understand that those are “Words”! Not actions, just words. A study from Olivet Nazarene University Meaningful Work Survey asked this question and, predictably, found this:
So, yeah, 90% of us believe that meaningful work is critical for our career and happiness. That sounds about right. Those ‘words’ tend always to come out when we talk about our dream job, etc.
Then the study asked another question. It was basically, given your current career, job, etc., what is the one thing that would make it better? An action. But, remember those words!? What you would believe would make their career/job better should be “more meaningful work”! 90% of you idiots just answered that it was super important for your career and happiness!
Here’s what they actually said:
Show. Me. The. Money!!!!
Yep, you know I love this! “We just have a job that saves puppies! That would make me so happy!” Oh, wait, saving puppies only pays $23,000 per year!?! Yeah, screw those puppies! I want to work for a private equity firm! I’m a boat, bitch!
Want to retain your employees? Stop trying to make your employees believe that the rubber vomit you’re manufacturing matters and pay them more and give them flexibility! Stop asshole managers from treating their people badly! And magically, you’ll have high retention, and your people will love working for you, even though you don’t save puppies!
I get it. Deep down, we all want to do something that changes the world for good. We want to help others and save puppies. And the concept of meaningful work does really matter, given all other things, like compensation, flexibility, great leaders and co-workers, etc., are equal.
If I can make six figures a year saving puppies, I’m saving puppies. You’re saving puppies. We are all saving puppies!
But it doesn’t, so our actions speak way louder than our words when it comes to career choices and change. Meaningful work is not the most important thing for people in their careers. It’s something to consider, but don’t get too caught up in believing it’s going to fix all of your employee experience issues!
The more we believe we’ve changed because of the pandemic, the more ridiculous we look each time we leave jobs and people we like for more money. We had a good thing, but we think more money will make it better. The truth is the vast majority of us have no idea what we really want, but we believe more money is always the best answer.
Over the past week or so, the term “Quiet Quitting” has been everywhere on mass media. LIKE, OMG, CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT THESE DAMN KIDS ARE DOING NOW!?! (Side note: Can journalists be any lazier than they are right now? Wheee, look what I created!? Um, what?)
Gag me with a spoon…
We’ve had employees basically decide to stop working but keep collecting a paycheck since the first caveman hired his cousin to help hunt and gather! We just weren’t creative enough to label it something cool. For years I would call them the “Walking Dead.” Same scenario. An employee decides they hate you and want to quit, but they don’t have another job to go to yet.
Quiet Quitting is the result of The Big Regret!
Now, if we want to get all creative and sh*t, I came up with the term “The Big Regret”! Look it up. I can point to the exact date and piece I wrote. In fact, I had a conversation with my friends at Oracle about titling a piece so we could get out in front of this concept before everyone else. Welcome to marketing, kids!
Because so many people have changed jobs over the past twelve months and hated the new job, we have a rash of “quiet quitting” going on. It’s all because they love the new money but hate the new job. They have, wait for it, “BIG REGRET”! Gawd, I love it when I’m smart and right and cute.
What can you do about “Quiet Quitting”?
Fire their ass immediately!
If you have someone who’s not performing and really just collecting a check and waiting for a better job to come along. I’m going all NSYNC on them – Bye, Bye, Bye!
Yes, finding and keeping talent is very hard. No, we don’t put up with quiet quitting because of that. The people you have working for you love their job. Love your company. They will hate you for keeping the quiet quitters.
Look, I don’t care if you want to quit. In fact, I’ll help you if you want. But while we are paying you, there will be performance expectations. That’s how the real world works. You get paid. You perform. If you decide not to perform, you better get ready to be terminated.
Happy Monday, HR Gang!
President Biden this week announced some college loan forgiveness for certain individuals holding federal student loans. There are a bunch of details, but I’m not going to get into those here. You can read about them on a thousand different sites in detail. I want to talk about whether forgiving student loans is something we agree with or don’t agree with.
There seem to be two camps. On one side, most holding current student loan debt, but not all, think this is a great thing. Those who have this burden now have less and can move on with their careers and build their lives with a little less burden.
On the other side, you have folks who went to college, incurred debt, went to work, and paid that debt off. The government didn’t help them, but that was what they signed up for, and they made it work. They might have had this debt decades ago when attending college was much less expensive, or maybe they went got only a few years ago but worked like crazy to ensure they paid it off.
The fact is, student loan debt for all those who have it can be crushing. The reason most people decide to take on that burden is that they believe getting that college education will lead them down a path to a better life. The ROI on a university education is still pretty good in the U.S.
I’m in both camps.
I went to university and had parents who couldn’t help me. I left with student loan debt, and my wife and I worked very hard to pay off that debt. We laugh about how we would come home to our first apartment and go sit in the bedroom because we had no furniture but a bed. We couldn’t afford furniture because my monthly loan payment took up our extra money.
Yeah, yeah, and I forgot to tell you I walked uphill, both ways, to work…cry me a river, right?
When I started in HR, we never spoke about the burden of student debt for those we hired. It wasn’t as big a portion of the monthly expenses of new grads, so while they had the debt, they could still handle it. Now, it’s a major topic of conversation when HR talks about talent attraction and retention. It’s a major topic of conversation when we talk about benefits and incentives. The amount of student debt has become outrageous.
This question of forgiving student debt is very difficult.
There’s a piece of this that is about individual accountability. I took as few loans as I could while I was in college because I knew I had to pay them back. I worked multiple jobs all year while going to school. I chose a school that was inexpensive because I knew I had to pay for it. I didn’t go on Spring Breaks. I had a beater of a car. I bartered meals for services I could do. I was accountable for the debt I took on.
As a person who hires people now, I frequently will ask new college grads how they paid for their education. What part did you pay for through work? What part did you have to borrow? What part did your family cover? What about scholarships? The effort you put into paying for your burden speaks a lot about how you will be as an employee. I’m not saying that if you are fortunate to have parents who were able to help you pay for school, you can’t be great. You can. I rarely meet someone who worked their way through school on their own and doesn’t have a great work ethic.
What does this have to do with student loan forgiveness?
There’s no difference in having someone pay your debt if it’s not you paying for your debt. It’s not teaching you to value the commitment you made. You committed to a loan that had to be paid back. Mom paid it off. Your company paid it off. The government paid it off. You got from under your debt through no work of your own. You will be more likely, moving forward, to take on debt believing somehow, in the future, someone else will bail you out.
The problem with the thinking above is it’s still really f*cking hard to start life out in a hole, and too many people in our society are starting out in a hole. Some were hard-working enough to make it out of one hole and get into college, only to find themselves in the next hole. And often, that hole is just too deep to escape from.
I believe every single kid in our country who puts in the work in school should have access to a great college education, and that education should not bankrupt their future. At the same time, I’m not sure just giving them a get-out-of-college debt Monopoly card is the answer. Our country has a crisis when it comes to federal, state, and local government hiring. What if students could do some kind of government job corps that gave them a fair salary and experience, and for that, each year, they had a portion of their student debt forgiven? Or come up with some other sort of plan that taught with any debt you purposely decide to take on, there is accountability to pay it back.
These are your tax dollars.
Let’s face it our government is historically bad at spending our tax dollars. If you were to go out and ask the US population, do you want your “personal” tax dollars spent on paying off someone else’s student loan, you would be lucky to get a 50/50 split. Going to college and incurring college debt is still a privilege in our world.
What about paying off the car loan a single mom has that she had to take on so she could go to work to pay her rent and put food on the table for her kid? Should we pay that off as well? It’s a slippery slope when we start paying off individual obligations people make. Great, you want to be an Artic Beetle History major, and now you can’t find a job. That’s okay. Let us pay off that awful decision you made with my hard-earned tax dollars.
The real solution isn’t paying off student debt. It’s a political stunt!
The real solution is taxing colleges and universities that have become empire builders under their tax-exempt status. We, the U.S. population, allow higher ed to continue to build world-class structures and increase prices to the point that is ridiculous. Dorm rooms have become five-star hotels, okay, 3-star, but definitely Courtyard by Marriott level accommodations! My dorm room was more akin to a prison cell.
Why has this happened?
Universities are in the business of keeping kids in college as long as possible. The longer you stay, the more tuition and fees they will get. No longer can a normal kid make it out in four years. God forbid you to change majors and move schools. You will definitely be on the five to six-year plan. Higher education in the U.S. has become the biggest racket outside of health insurance in the entire country!
The crazy part about this is it seems like no one in politics is talking about this fact. We care that it costs too much, but we never do anything to make higher ed run like a real business.
Student loan forgiveness isn’t about helping students. It’s about votes. If we really wanted to help students, the government would go after our “non-profit” colleges and universities and create a system where all students could go and afford a proper education for a respectable cost. Like Taylor Swift wrote, paying $10K in student loan forgiveness is like putting a bandaid on a bullet hole. We aren’t solving the problem, and we are partially addressing a symptom and then acting like we cured cancer. In the long run, my fear is this behavior just will make the problem worse.
On episode 104 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Madeline Laurano, Jessica Lee, and Tim Sackett come together to discuss catalogs, the follow-up to The Great Recession, and Tesla’s latest drama.
Listen below and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!
2:15 – Does anyone still get catalogs? Tim and Madeline still get tons sent to their houses.
4:30 – Tim thinks that a mailer would work well as a recruitment tactic, even better than email or texting.
5:15 – Tim shares a story that he’s going to put in his book! You heard it here first, folks.
8:30 – Tim’s story revolves around a marketing study where they asked a community what the top realtor in their area was. They created a fake realtor, did some marketing, and then re-asked the community who the top realtor was.
10:00 – Studies are showing that a large number of people who left their jobs during The Great Resignation are regretting their decision to leave their previous position. Madeline thinks that these shifts were pay-driven, and people didn’t take into account other factors.
13:40 – Tim said he had regrets when he left Applebee’s. Although it seemed like the right decision, he felt the repercussion of the decision almost instantly.
20:30 – Tim was at SHRM a few weeks ago, and a lot of the discussions had “The Great Recession” in their title.
21:30 – Tesla and Elon Musk are tracking office attendance by following the “office ID swipe-ins.” If you can’t come in, employees are supposed to email in a message that they won’t be in the office today. Tim thinks this is draconian and feels very similar to calling in sick for your kids at school.
24:45 – Tim says that he’s embarrassed by the number of people he’s had to fire by “pulling swipes”.
30:00 – JLee hired someone recently that was affected by the Tesla layoffs, and the new hire said that the reports of the layoffs are pretty accurate.
33:00 – JLee mentions how often, when layoffs are happening, HR professionals are given scripts for legal reasons, but there are ways to make it seem more human and empathetic.
36:30 – Madeline was a part of an analyst firm where there were secret talks about layoffs, and she felt like they handled it poorly in comparison to JLee’s Marriot example.
The HR Technology Conference is right around the corner, September 13-16, in Las Vegas, and today, they announced the winners of this year’s Top HR Products! I will be attending this year’s conference, and I will be a judge at HR Technology Conference’s startup competition, The Pitchfest, which runs throughout the event.
Here are the winners of the 2022 Top HR Products:
ADP Intelligent Self-Service
ADP Intelligent Self-Service anticipates, solves and reduces employee issues before becoming a problem. Combining artificial intelligence, deep HCM knowledge and intuitive experiences, ADP Intelligent Self-Service proactively nudges employees to resolve potential issues.
Compa
Compa is offer-management software to help talent teams make smarter offers and gain real-time market data. When recruiters use Compa, they can skip spreadsheets and automate workflows to find pay guidelines, navigate pay conversations and build custom offers that get approved quickly.
Eightfold Job Intelligence Engine
The Eightfold Job Intelligence Engine provides an AI-powered foundation for role definitions that dynamically learns from internal and external talent insights. By replacing archaic and ineffective job descriptions with centrally defined roles, the tool combines AI, automation and human expertise for better decision-making.
Gloat Workforce Intelligence
For many organizations, workforce strategy is often encumbered by fragmented systems and manual processes that make it difficult to meet the demands of increasingly agile talent and business needs. With this in mind, Gloat built the Workforce Intelligence suite to solve the challenges of accessing scalable skills, jobs and talent insight, empowering organizations to understand and adapt to market needs.
iCIMS Marketing Automation
Amplify sourcing and engagement efforts with sophisticated lead scoring and conditional, behavior-based campaign personalization to address the toughest talent and recruiting challenges. iCIMS Marketing Automation redefines recruitment marketing by helping recruiting teams adapt to the age of the candidate.
Joyous
Joyous is an app that unlocks the expertise in large workforces to solve strategic challenges. It works in four steps: it breaks a big challenge down into small conversation starters; reaches out to a cohort of the workforce who will have the knowledge needed; routes their responses to subject matter experts and leaders who turn it into conversations, asking for clarification or offering support; and finally, AI analyzes all those conversations to identify the actionable themes that will make the biggest impact.
Oracle ME
Oracle ME is a complete employee experience platform designed to elevate employees’ growth, connections and ability to thrive in the new ways of work and workplaces today. Part of Oracle Cloud HCM, Oracle ME enables organizations to deliver personalized experiences to every worker based on their unique characteristics and situations. .
Paradox Animated Assessments
Paradox has built the fastest, mobile-first assessment on the market, requiring just 90 seconds to complete and boasting a 95% completion rate. By using animated images rather than words, candidates provide accurate information in a fraction of the time, reducing candidate drop-off and increasing satisfaction.
Plum Leadership Potential
Plum Leadership Potential enables organizations to identify high-potential talent using proven science combined with scalable technology. By leveraging the results of Plum’s single assessment, organizations can instantly measure leadership potential in every employee, ensuring each member of the workforce is equitably considered for their aptitude.
PTO Genius
PTO Genius helps organizations transform the employee experience and boost profitability by unleashing the power of PTO. The AI-powered software helps optimize and automate time off to uncover hidden opportunities to decrease burnout, improve employee wellness and reduce churn.
ServiceNow Manager Hub
Manager Hub delivers a purpose-built destination for people leaders to stay informed and engaged with their teams by leveraging personalized resources to guide their leadership journey. Managers can view a summary of team insights and action items for employee journeys, daily team stats, important dates, tasks and requests.
Talview Interview Insights
Talview Interview Insights maximizes the effectiveness of the Interview. The AI-powered solution works by analyzing conversations and behaviors to assess the candidate and the interviewer, helping organizations continuously improve the quality of interviewing.
Workday Scheduling and Labor Optimization
Workday Scheduling and Labor Optimization is an intelligent, worker-first scheduling solution that leverages artificial intelligence to match labor demand with worker qualifications, availability and preferences to optimize schedules for both workers and the business automatically. By analyzing data across the organization, Workday Scheduling and Labor Optimization helps managers and operations leaders optimize schedules to meet both the labor demands of the business and numerous business parameters—such as labor regulations—and worker scheduling preferences.
There will be over 600 HR Technology vendors at this year’s conference! These products definitely stood out as a few of the must-see technology advances across the HR tech stack. For me, The HR Technology Conference is one of the conferences I will not miss on an annual basis in our industry. Having a great understanding of HR Technology and the impact it has on running a successful business is a must-have skill every HR leader must have in our current environment.