In 2050, all education will be online. If so, how will we create adults?

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I read an article the other day where a guy (a futurist, if you will) decided to give his best explanation of what the world would like in 2050 based on technological, environmental, societal, financial, etc. advances or regressions.

I’ve talked about this before, but being asked about the future is a fun thought experiment because you can be wildly wrong and no one really cares. It’s all a guess. I get asked all the time to talk about the future of TA and HR Technology. I love it! I can say anything I want you can’t tell me I’m wrong. Well, you could, but by the time one of us is right, it’s in the future and we don’t care.

So, this dude, Erik Hoel, says that in 2050 all higher education will be done solely online. No big campuses with gothic buildings and manicured lawns. No student unions and big libraries. No dorms and cafeteria food. No fraternities or sororities. Just you and a laptop sitting in your parent’s spaceship doing Econ 101.

Sounds dreadfully awful!

I don’t have a problem with education being online. In fact, it could be the most equitable thing the future will bring us. Everyone could now have the best professors from all over the world! Harvard could have 1 million graduates a year, instead of a few thousand of the most privileged students on the planet. We could bring world-class education to everyone.

But, only one type of education…

Part of the college experience is the socialization, both good and bad, of becoming an adult in sort of a lab-like environment. You get to go out and experiment in a community of mostly like-minded folks, of similar ages and test your ideas, your looks, see what you like and what others like about you. You get to begin to build a network of friends and peers that you can carry into your professional world.

University just doesn’t give you book smarts, it helps prepare you to deal with real-world stuff, but not all at once. You get to live on your own away from your parents, but someone is still making your food and paying the heating bill. It’s a period, for those who get a chance to experience it, to gradually move into the world of adulthood.

I get it, going from high school to the military, or working on a factory floor is also another type of becoming an adult, and in a much quicker way! We all have our paths, I’m not judging any of those as being more or less valuable. All I’m saying is full online college for everyone, if the future brings us this, I think is a mistake.

How did college make me an adult?

I can look back at my undergrad college experience at the University of Wyoming and think most of what I learned had very little to do with the classes I took. It might have helped if I showed up to most of my classes, but that’s another story.

After I blew through all of my college savings in my first semester, I quickly had to learn how to survive, to pay bills, to use the system to help me, to ask for help, to help others, to build a network of support, and sometimes to just call home and cry and tell my parent’s life sucks being an adult!

Gawd, how stupid was I to think my “little” problems as a college student were adult problems! What most of us wouldn’t give to go back to those problems.

College taught me how to barter. I really only had one skill, I mean besides my charm and dashing looks, I could work hard, or at the very least I was reliable to show up and work as hard as I could. My hard work got me many meals, many free drinks, tickets to entertainment to take my eventual wife. College towns are mostly run by college kids. To barter was life! I will do this for you and you will do this for me, no money has to change hands! I worked many bar shifts for free, for food and drinks. I traded out many movies passes at the theater I worked for dinner.

College taught me that people will take you in when you have no place to go and treat you like family. Every holiday when going home was too far and too expensive I always had multiple offers to stay and feast. When I had my own kids, they knew our house is always open to anyone who needs a place to stay and feel like they are home.

College taught me that you can live on almost next to nothing and still be completely happy and thriving. Great friends, conversations, challenging things to learn. No one really cares what you are wearing, or what car you drive or don’t drive because you don’t even have a car. They only care that you add to that conversation in a positive way and accept others may think differently, but that’s the fun of learning and interacting.

I’m not sure what 2050 will bring. I’m sure it will be different. I hope we can find ways to give more people the gift of a higher education, but also the gift of slowly learning how to become adults before they really have to be adults.

The New Normal in Hiring Isn’t New!

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In January 2020 the US unemployment rate was under 4%. Historically low and trending downward. The pandemic hit and it immediately went up, but most of that was in a few targeted industries. The current unemployment rate is 4.8% and trending downward.

By the end of the third quarter of 2019, most organizations were desperate for talent. I would take calls from CEOs who would say that if I found a hundred workers for them tomorrow they would hire all 100. The Pandemic made us forget how bad hiring was prior to the pandemic!

The New Normal in Hiring is just like the Old Normal in Hiring!

In 2017-early 2020 organizations were already talking about what they would need to do to attract talent. It was about competitive wages, perks, even some conversations about remote work and variable schedules. Since we had centuries of in-office work, most organizations focused on making the office a more fun place to hang out. Free food, drinks, ping pong tables, cool spaces to work in, etc.

In Q3 of 2021, organizations are talking about how to attract and retain talent in almost the exact same way, except now more organizations are trying to add in remote and flexible work options. Don’t think work has changed or morphed into something “new”, it hasn’t, it’s still “work” and organizations will still find ways to get the talent they need to complete the work.

The pandemic was an organizational behavior black swan event.

We panicked. We had to find ways to keep people working and organizations going, even though we couldn’t be by each other. So, we did what we had to do. A few organizations actually found super high success, because of the pandemic and the dynamics it created. Most survived. Some didn’t.

Organizationally, we mostly just imitated what others were doing. Oh, you sent your folks home?! Okay, we need to do that. Oh, you have your folks come in on different shits to maintain a safe distance, we need to do that too. Oh, you make your folks wear masks when they are customer-facing, ditto…

We build processes and organizations around averages and what we could be given optimal circumstances. Things like hurricanes, pandemics, political unrest, throw historic averages all over the board, and organizationally this is extremely hard to plan for and deal with.

The Old-New Normal of Hiring.

We lost over a million moms out of the workforce. We lost close to 3 million close to retirement workers out of the workforce. We were already trending demographically in a negative worker replacement (meaning, we don’t make enough babies to replace the older people dying). These aren’t short-term issues, these are long-term issues that we saw coming in 2018 and 2019, and then we forgot!

We forgot we were already in a talent crisis, and the pandemic made this crisis much worse.

History has put us here before. After World War II it was super hard to find workers. Organizations pulled out all the stops to find talent. Things like:

  • Apprenticeship programs (Build your own talent)
  • Moving to markets with more talent
  • Paying higher wages
  • Creating immigration programs to get workers from other countries
  • Developing more automation to supplement worker shortage
  • Creating better working conditions and environments
  • Poach talent from our competitors
  • Create attractive perks
  • Charging higher prices to afford all of the above

What are organizations going to do today? More of the same but the 2021 version.

Technology has taken us a long way, so we have new ideas and ways of working we didn’t have in prior generations, but the concepts are exactly the same. Exactly.

There is no magic bucket of employees. Well, wait there is, but no one seems super excited about bringing in workers from other countries who want to find their American dream by working in an Amazon warehouse or making coffee at a Starbucks. It’s really the only untapped resource we have left when it comes to talent. I’m sure there are millions of Mexican, Haitian, Venezuelan, etc. immigrants who would love to work in the jobs our own American citizens have no desire to work in. My guess is they would happily pay taxes as well to have the resources we have as Americans.

Another option also could be some version of Peace Corp but for American kids graduating high school, that they have to work two years in industry before going onto college. American Worker Corp could be like a peace-time-style draft to the military, but not to the military. Little Timmy is going to work the customer service counter at Walmart and get paid, then he hopes to go on to State U and get his degree in management! I for one think every kid should have a real job before going to college.

We do not have a new problem! We have an old problem that we ignored and it became our most recent problem. We could easily blame our politicians for this short-term focus and thinking, but every one of us who works in business also owns this. Every one of us that works in education also owns this. We all saw it coming, but we were waiting for someone else to fix it. Now, we all have to fix it.

How many hours a week should you work?

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What if it’s not 40?

On episode 88 of The HR Famous Podcast, longtime HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to discuss the differences between Big 10 and SEC football games, how many hours a week we work, and whether America is ready for a four-day workweek.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/20921912/height/90/theme/custom/thumbnail/yes/direction/backward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/87A93A/

Show Highlights

2:00 – Tim recently visited KD in Alabama and went to an Auburn football game. He said it was very different from the Big 10 football games he’s accustomed to.

6:00 – Tim is upset with KD because he didn’t prepare Tim with the right gear for an Auburn football game. Everyone wears polos and Tim didn’t have one to fit in with the other men.

9:00 – The only person that Tim found that matched him was an elderly woman at a pizza restaurant.

12:00 – Tim found that the consumption of alcohol at an SEC game is about 50% less than a Big 10 game. He also found that the fans get to the games a lot earlier than at Big 10 schools.

16:45 – Atlassian put out an article titled “This is how many hours you should really be working.” The World Health Organization found out that around the world, working 55 hours or more a week can put serious risk on your life.

18:30 – JLee says she works about 55 hours a week. Tim doesn’t think she does and thinks she only works 40.

23:00 – KD asks Tim how many hours a week he works. He says that he doesn’t really know. At first, he thought he would say 40 hours but he now thinks it might be a little bit more.

26:00 – KD says on the flip side of “hustle porn,” there is “work-life balance porn.”

27:45 – Tim asks the ultimate trigger question: “Do you work more or less hours at home than when you worked in the office?” JLee says she works more at home for sure, since there are less distractions. KD says the opposite, but he’s been in a hybrid model for 10 years.

6 Signs You Shouldn’t Make That Offer!

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If I have learned anything at all in my HR/Recruiting career it’s that everyone has an opinion on what makes a good hire. If you ask 100 people to give you one thing they focus on when deciding between candidates, you’ll get 100 different answers! Especially with today’s difficult hiring event where we are pushed to hire any warm body, don’t!

I’ve got some of my own. They might be slightly different than yours, but I know mine work!  So, if you want to make some better selections, take note my young Padawans:

1. They only have bad things to say about former employers. Notice I didn’t say “employer” singular, because we all can have a bad, toxic work choice we’ve made. Once it gets to multiple, you now own that, turns out you’re bad at knowing what’s good for you! Plus, there is a high correlation between hiring a candidate that bad mouth their former employer and that eventually they’ll be bad-mouthing you as well!

2. Crinkled up money. Male or female if you pull money out of your pocket or purse and it’s crinkled up, you’ll be a bad hire!  There is something fundamentally wrong with people who can’t keep their cash straight. The challenge you have is how do you get a candidate to show you this? Ask to copy their driver’s license or something like that!

3. Slow walkers.  If you don’t have some pep in your step, at least for the interview, you’re going to be dud as an employee. Of course, if the person has a disability, ignore this point!

4. My Last Employer was so Awesome! Yeah, that’s great, we aren’t them. Let’s put a little focus back to what we got going on right here, sparky. Putting too much emphasis on a job you love during the interview is annoying. We get it. It was a good gig. You f’d it up and can’t let go. Now we’ll have to listen about it for the next nine months until we fire you.

5. Complaining or being Rude to front-desk and/or waitstaff. I like taking candidates to lunch or dinner, just to see how they treat other people. I want servant leaders, not assholes, working for me. The meal interview is a great selection tool to weed out bad people. Basically, if you feel comfortable in an interview treating anyone bad, you’re a bad person.

6. Any communication issue where they aren’t apologetic. “Yeah, I know you contacted me five times about the interview, but like, the new game came out and I was like busy and stuff.” Hard no! I don’t need you to respond immediately, but at least have some awareness of the moment! Before you lose your shit, this is for both candidates and recruiters! If a recruiter is bad at communicating with a candidate they should be apologetic as well. Common civility is a bare minimum for an offer!

What are your signs not to make an offer?  Share in the comments!

Supply and Demand are Undefeated!

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Why can’t you find talent?! Why are your workers resigning at all-time highs? Why can’t I buy the car I want? Why does my local supermarket keep running out of diet Mt. Dew in the 16 oz bottles!?

The law of supply and demand is undefeated in the history of the world! That’s why!

When there is a feeling of equilibrium in the talent market, meaning we seem to have enough workers and enough jobs, but not crazy on either side, our world works fairly well. For sure, there are outliers, but all of those have a real business answer to why you’re an outlier. Right now, it seems like no one has a real business answer to why everyone is an outlier!

That’s because there isn’t one answer. Well, I take that back, there is, and it’s fairly simple, but your executives don’t want to hear it, we have more demand than supply of talent.

I find it super ironic that really smart executives won’t hear this when it comes to talent, but will go into every single board meeting and using different words tell their boards the reason they can’t sell enough products or services is because of supply and demand. But, when asked about talent, they truly believe TA/HR has a magic machine they can keep filling up with more candidates and employees that is never-ending!

There. Is. No. Magic. Employee. Machine!

By the way, everyone is to blame for this supply and demand issue. It’s not people who work. It’s the entire system failure that causes supply chain issues. What are these failures:

  • We are crappy at educating kids for future jobs. We take way to long to react to what our world needs for skills, from a public and private education standpoint.
  • Those that have the money are unwilling to properly incentize people for their labor and efforts.
  • Those who buy products and services are unwilling to pay more for all the crap we want.
  • Employers are unwilling to invest what is needed to grow their own talent and then do all they need to do to ensure they retain that talent.
  • We have a government that is basically incapable of doing anything besides work to get voted in again. Rinse. Repeat. Do nothing of consequence.

Gawd! That seems pessimistic, right!?

But, I don’t think so, because every single one of those bullet points we can control as a society, which is why we are all complicit in this problem!

This is not a complex problem. This is simply a supply and demand problem. Create more supply and bring back some equilibrium and everything will be back to normal. I have no fear that this won’t happen because supply and demand are undefeated!

What’s Your Code?

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Everyone lives by a certain set of rules. Morales, ethics, values, experience, call it what you will, but when you put it all together it kind of creates this code you live by. Like any code, it’s all about trying. We aren’t Yoda – do or do not. Life isn’t usually that simple.

The code evolves and changes over time. You are probably born with a base set of codes that nature has given you like it’s nice to survive. Your environment and upbringing teach you another set of codes, and your life experiences along the way give us a bunch more code to add to it all.

As we grow, we might learn that certain pieces of code are outdated and just flat-out wrong and hurtful. As a child, I know I recited racist playground songs about catching a “tiger” by its toe, but we didn’t use “tiger”, and honestly, I was a pre-teen with a best friend who was black before I knew it wasn’t “tiger”! That’s bad coding. That had to go!

I was listening to something recently and the person speaking was talking about the code they lived by and it made me think, “what is my code?” I mean I have to have one, but I’ve never really sat down and thought about it. What are the pieces of code I’ve picked up along the way that I’ve decided at this point in my life to hard-code, or can I even say I’ve got hard-code?

What is my code?

As I mentioned above, some of the code you live by is many times aspirational. I know this code is right, but day-to-day, man, this is hard to live by. The goal, I think, is you know that certain code is better if you can use it more than you do. So, you strive to use it more each day. Also, none of our code is unique. Remember, all of this we’ve picked up from someone or somewhere along the way.

– I try to help people whenever I can. Sometimes to my own detriment, and I know I’m not alone in this feeling. Because there are people out there with code that says “take” and if you are a giver and a helper the takers can really work you over some time. My dad taught me this. It’s both good and bad, at times, because helping people means sometimes your own family takes a backseat to others.

– I love to love, I don’t love to be loved in return. This is a tough one because we all want to be loved in return, it’s a basic human need. But I truly try to love others because I just love them regardless if they love me. It brings joy to my life.

– I believe the glass is half full. I’m not a negative personality. I love pessimistic humor, but I live my life believing a lot of stuff is possible with the right work, the right network, the right support, and some good timing. So, I guess I’m really a believer in people because I rely on a lot of people in my life to continue my belief that the glass is half full.

– I believe in hard work. Sometimes that’s actual back-breaking hard work that makes you sweat and hurt. Sometimes that mentally draining hard work that leaves your brain tired and exhausted. I’ve rarely ever met a very hard-working person who isn’t doing pretty well. They might not be the most successful, or the richest, but I’m not worried they won’t make it. Hard work has always been the one thing I could control on my own.

– I like to laugh often. I’m coded to laugh and smile. It’s both my best natural state and a defense mechanism. When I’m stressed, I like to make others laugh because I think it reduces the stress, but that’s not always true. Still, I prefer laughing to most other emotions. I love children for this reason. They laugh all the time because the world hasn’t beaten it out of them yet. Hanging out with little kids is so much fun! And if you throw puppies into the mix with little kids, watch out!

– I like to win. I mean I like to win at everything! Not just games, but debates, and life, and money, and love. Winning is so awesome, it’s way better than losing! By like a trillion million! The thing is, you have to have some big losses in life to really enjoy the big wins. And you have to be playing.

If I look at my codes I would say, “yeah, that’s me” but it’s also just a portion of me. It seems so incomplete. It’s probably why I’ve never really put a ton of thought into “my code”. When someone says, “Oh, I live by this code…” I find that as a challenge to discover when that isn’t their code, which is probably another piece of my code!

I married a Jewish girl. Because I was not Jewish when we got married, a Rabbi wouldn’t marry us. So, we used a Cantor (a singer in the Jewish faith, that can still marry people). This Cantor made national news by bringing in a former disabled Nazi into his house to live with him.

This Nazi was coded to hate Jews. But when the world turned its back on him and no one would take him in, this Jewish man did and cared for him. Fed him, took him places, etc. This man hated Jews because he was coded to hate Jews without really knowing any Jews. This friendship obviously changed his code. He realized that part of his coding didn’t fit reality.

We all have a code we live by, and I think the greatest part of that is we all get to choose and change that code as we see fit.

What is one of your favorite pieces of code?

As a Boss, should you send an email out at 9 pm?

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On episode 84 of The HR Famous Podcast, longtime HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to discuss business travel during the pandemic, sending late-night emails, and whether you should opt-out of a group message.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/20865626/height/90/theme/custom/thumbnail/yes/direction/backward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/87A93A/

Show Highlights

3:00 – KD asks Tim what his favorite OG from old-school rap is. He loves LL Cool J, and JLee likes Dr. Dre because of his purple satin suit.

5:15 – KD has been hitting business travel hard over the last few weeks. He has been in four different locations after not having much at all for the last year and a half. He has really started to notice the different mentalities to Covid precautions/mask-wearing in different parts of the country.

8:00 – KD was surprised by the strict mask mandates that were in place in Las Vegas when he and Tim were there for a conference.

11:00 – JLee is happy that the housekeeper at the hotel that KD stayed at felt empowered enough to enforce a mask-mandate policy.

14:30 – On a Southwest flight recently, KD heard the initial reactions of Southwest employees to a vaccine mandate.

17:00 – Tim mentions how some airlines offered early retirement to pilots during the pandemic and are now begging pilots to come back to work.

20:00 – KD wrote a post recently titled, “Are you a jerk for sending an email at 9 pm?” KD references a study where they looked at this and they found that receivers of late emails overestimated the quickness of response needed.

23:00 – JLee thinks that people in their mid-career won’t care when emails are sent and more senior employees may be more careful with their messaging.

25:30 – If the future of remote work offers more flexibility, Tim thinks that email send time doesn’t matter as much anymore (with caveats).

28:45 – There are folks out there that are very anti-after-hours emails.

32:00 – Tim doesn’t understand the people that want to have their cake and eat it too. How are we going to be working flexibly and then also defining after-hours?

37:30 – JLee thinks it’s a power move to opt-out of group messages, like group texts or chain emails. KD thinks it’s better to opt-out instead of not participating at all.

Are Employer Vaccine Mandates Going to Kill Diversity Hiring & Retention?

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If you follow most mass media outlets you would think the question posed is ridiculous! How the heck would vaccine mandates hurt diversity hiring, Tim? We all know the unvaccinated are mostly uneducated, Trump-loving, white folks! Right?! Right? Right…

Turns out, the “Unvaccinated might not be who you think!” The link is to a recent NY Times article and the current administration and the mostly left-leaning mass media don’t want all of us to know something:

“Almost 95 percent of those over 65 in the United States have received at least one dose. This is a remarkable number, given that polling has shown that this age group is prone to online misinformation…

In New York, for example, only 42 percent of African Americans of all ages (and 49 percent among adults) are fully vaccinated — the lowest rate among all demographic groups tracked by the city.

This is another area in which the dominant image of the white, QAnon-spouting, Tucker Carlson-watching conspiracist anti-vaxxer dying to own the libs is so damaging. It can lead us to ignore the problem of racialized health inequities with deep historic roots but also ongoing repercussions and prevent us from understanding that there are different kinds of vaccine hesitancy, which require different approaches.

If you check the data in every major urban center, you see basically the same data. African Americans are more likely to be unvaccinated than white Americans.

Why does this matter?

I’m not judging African Americans about not getting vaccinated. I’m pro your body, your choice! I know this community has a deep mistrust of government and health care in our society based on history!

Here’s the problem! Every decision we make in organizations has short-term and long-term impacts. Many times we know and understand the short-term impacts. Often we have no idea of the long-term impact.

If Biden and his administration mandate all employers require employees to be vaccinated (I won’t get into the specifics of over 100 employees, etc.), and many enterprise employers, like major airlines, etc., require employees to be vaccinated or get fired, we are disproportionately impacting Black employees over every other race of employee!

Thank you, Democratic administration and President Biden! Thank you for getting more black workers fired than any other race by mandating vaccines. This is super helpful to our diversity hiring initiatives! What the what!?!

Stop it, Tim! This is about Workplace Safety!

Yes, it is. It’s always about something when we are firing black workers, isn’t it?

Ironically, I say this with a smile at how stupid we all are, the amount of workers who are getting fired, who are refusing to get a vaccine, who by a higher percentage are black workers, happens to almost identical the same percentage of Americans who actually die from Covid.

That’s to say, this number by percentage is extremely small!

“Yeah, but every life matters! If everyone was vaccinated we could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives!” Yes, you are correct, and I agree with you. Every. Life. Matters.

Inclusion.

Those vaccinated, matter. Those unvaccinated, matter.

Even all those black employees you have, who are fearful of taking a rushed vaccine that hasn’t had years of testing. Who have a history of bad stuff happening to them when it comes to government, healthcare, and mandates.

We love to think employer and government vaccine mandates are fine because it only impacts “the stupid”. Natural selection! If you’re too stupid to get the vaccine well then who cares if you get fired and die. Which is kind of the opposite of inclusion, right?

Mandates are easy when you are led to believe that it’s all about firing poor, dumb, white folks. But, when you look at the data and realize that once again we are targeting black folks more, are vaccine mandates still the correct answer?

(Okay, that’s like 3 vaccine posts in the last week. I’m done, you know my stance. I’m pro-vaccine, I encourage it for everyone, but I’m also pro-choice about decisions that impact your body.)

Do Candidates Really Love to Get Text Messages from Recruiters?

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In the past ten years, there hasn’t been a bigger advocate, publicly, for text messaging candidates than myself. When recruitment text messaging software first hit the market I was all-in from day one.

At this point, the data speaks for itself. As compared to other forms of messaging (email, LinkedIn Inmail, snail mail, smoke signals, etc.) text messaging gets at least 5-10x more open and replies than any other form of messaging. So, the answer to the title question has to be, yes, right?!

Not so fast, my friends!

At the beginning of 2021, I was struggling with a lot of the data around candidate experience (CX). While we’ve been focusing on CX for the better part of a decade, we haven’t really seen the numbers consistently in a productive way, and recently we’ve even seen candidate experience numbers drop. My thought was, maybe we are focused on the wrong thing. Maybe it’s not about their “experience” but simply about the “communication,” we deliver.

We reached out to every single candidate we interviewed in 2020, thousands, and got over 1500 responses from these candidates. One of the basic, foundational questions we asked was “What form of communication do you prefer to receive from a recruiter about a potential job, as the first outreach?”…  

The form of communication candidates prefer is…

Read the rest of this post over on Emissary.ai’s site by clicking through here!

The Tim Sackett Covid Vaccine Employer Policy!

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Let me start this by saying I’m 100% pro-vaccine. I’m vaccinated and my entire immediate family is vaccinated. I encourage everyone to get vaccinated where it’s healthy for them to do so.

Organizations are really struggling right now to figure out what they should do about Covid vaccinations and employees. We see some giant employers mandating vaccinations and I’ll also publicly say I think that mandating vaccines for 100% of your employees is basically stupid.

Wait, what?!?! (TRIGGERED!)

I get that we all want everyone to be safe. I do as well. I also pay attention to the science and after you had Covid, there is no reason to get vaccinated. There is a growing mountain of global research and evidence, from real doctors and scientists that care about ending this pandemic, that show those who have had Covid already carry the same amount of antibodies as those who have been vaccinated. So, forcing someone who has had Covid to get vaccinated, is frankly, stupid!

Too many good employees are losing their jobs over this and many of these folks have valid reasons to not get the vaccine, and some honestly have already had Covid and don’t need the vaccine, but we are forcing it upon them for really no reason whatsoever.

The Tim Sackett Covid Vaccine Employer Policy

1. If you want to work here you have to get a Covid vaccination. We care about each other. We care about our customers and clients. We all want to live our best lives, alive.

The caveats:

  • If you have had a verified case of Covid. That means you have to be able to show a positive PCR test, and or a blood anti-body test that shows you previously had a positive case of Covid, you do not need to get the vaccine as a condition of employment.
  • If you have a religious objection to getting the Coivd vaccine, you do not need to get the Covid vaccine. But you do have to document your objection (see form A). This form gives you the ability to explain your religious objection and it also has you sign off that our company is not responsibile for your medical care if you become Covid positive. Upon completion and signature of this form A, we will not require you to get the Covid vaccine as a condition of employment.
  • If you have a medical disability where a doctor documents that it is not in your best medical interest to get the Covid vaccine, we will not require you to get the Covid vaccine as a condition of employment.
  • If you receieve a religious or medical accomodation, and you have not recieved a Covid vaccination and you have not had a verifiable case of Covid, you will be required to wear a medical approved mask while at work over your nose and mouth. We will provide you with a mask if you choose not to have an approved mask of your own.

Policy Instructions for HR Leaders and Executives:

  • If someone fills out Form A and signs it. Accept it and walk away.
  • If someone brings you a signed doctors note saying they shouldn’t get the vaccine for medical reasons. Accept it and walk away.
  • Ensure no one, either vaccinated or unvaccinated, is discriminating or harrassing the other because of their status.

That’s it. That’s the policy. Short and simple. The best policies are.

I know some folks will lose their minds about this. I get that. I’ve heard stories about HR departments forcing people to “prove” their closely held religious beliefs. I mean, really?! This is time well spent? Forcing someone to prove their religion. Come on, we are better than this. We are smarter than this. There are better ways we can torture employees, right!?

I think there are only two real arguments when it comes to mandated vaccinations:

  1. Hey, let’s try and not kill people! But, it’s basically them killing themselves, not the folks who already got vaccinated. As both vaxed and unvaxed are passing the virus around to each other. But those who are vaxed are much more likely to have a less severe case.
  2. Hey, you getting a bad case of Covid cost our insurance plan a ton of money, which means we all now have to pay for your stupid decision. This is a super valid argument, and if I’m running a big HR shop I would really be thinking hard about a “Unvaxed” health insurance premium. Great! You don’t want a vaccine, your insurance now costs an additional $2000 per month.

FYI – for those looking for a link to “Form A” there isn’t one. It’s just an example of what we do and what we make in HR. If you want a Form A go make one, you don’t need my help!