If You Don’t Stretch, You’ll Never Know Where The Edges Are…

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Did you know the N95 mask that is critical PPE for healthcare workers right now was invented by a woman at 3M in the late 1950s?

The title of the post is a quote from Sara Little Turnball, she was a designer who started consulting for 3M in 1958. She was super sharp and made a name for herself prior to 3M, and then 3M came calling. They didn’t know what to do with her (it was 1958 women aren’t supposed to know more than men, right!?! ;), so they started her in the gift wrapping section, because you know she’s a woman!

She decided she needed to do something and created a famous product presentation called “Why?” where she presented one hundred ideas to 3M executives for various products that actual people would use. She told them there were so many uses for this moldable, woven textile they had created.

So, they hired her to make a molded bra cup. Of course, they did! But, she persisted and let them know she was also using the design and material to make a better type of surgical mask. Her first attempt failed, but eventually what she started turned into basically the N95 mask that 3M started producing in mass in 1961.

“If you don’t stretch, you’ll never know where the edges are.” 

You guys know I’m not a “failure porn” person. Just fail more. Fail faster. Etc. Sara Little Turnball was a designer and inventor and it her world you needed to fail. She estimated about 90% of her work was failure.

The world takes both types. Creatives will fail way more than they succeed to reach their genius. Producers can’t fail as often, and shouldn’t. We need all types in this crazy gumball factory we live in.

We need people willing to stretch themselves to find the edges. Today, as we take off for a long holiday weekend, I’m grateful for this lady who was willing to find the edges and I’m betting so are millions of healthcare workers who are fighting for our lives.

 

E15 – The HR Famous Podcast – Is Your Company Ready for RTW!?

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In episode 15 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Jessica Lee and Kris Dunn come together to discuss Tim’s extravagant Southern Utah adventure, return to work plans, Twitter’s WFH forever proclamation, and Microsoft Teams. The team discusses the different return to work plans and ideas, new office norms, and a potential boom in the workplace real estate market.

Listen below (email subscribers click through if you don’t see the player) or click here for a direct link. Be sure to and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review via iTunes, Spotify and Google Play.

Show Highlights:

1:00 – No Tim on this episode! Are we sad or happy? Stay tuned to find out 😉

2:00 – Is JLee still a kid? Sound off in the comments

3:30 – Tim Sackett is a jerk!!!! His Instagram is making the HR Famous crew jealous with his Southern Utah golfing, jeep trips, and luxurious escapades. Safe travels Timmy!

4:30 – Today’s topic: return to work! Some companies have their plans ready to go but all companies are going to have to get ready for “the new normal”. What is that going to look like? Are you ready?

7:00 – RTW = return to work

7:30 – Jlee sounds off on the differences of work returns there can be and the potential anxiety employees could bring with them. Will there be a major fear from workers?

8:45 – KD is taking the approach of surveying his employees on how they want to return to work. Who wants to stay home? Who wants to return to the office? Who is unsure and has concerns?

9:40 – One size fits all? Not for RTW plans.

11:15 – KD fills us in on how Kinetix is facing RTW: Branded face masks: check! How do you feel about the decorative/branded face masks?

13:15 – Sexy brand check! Jack Dorsey has announced that all Twitter employees can work remote forever. What really is forever? Jlee thinks it’s a cool idea but may be too early to make this call. Only a diamond is forever 😉

16:00 – Will there be an increased need for real estate for workspace? Due to physical distancing needs, there may need more space needed to ensure employee safety.

18:00 – Have you ever had an employee sit on the floor in your office during a meeting? Jlee hasn’t but she thinks that cramped small office meetings are on the way out and virtual meetings are here to stay.

20:30 – KD and Jlee are turning this into a Microsoft ad! Microsoft Teams chat is the new norm for Jlee but may be NSFW because of their raunchy gifs.

22:30 – KD thinks that Eric Schmitt’s perception of a workspace real estate boom is a little tone deaf. With more WFH employees and financial troubles, there may not be a real estate boom especially in spaces made for small to mid-sized businesses.

24:00 – Should we be celebrating companies and CEOs who pledge not to lay off employees? The crew thinks it’s unrealistic to raise the expectation that companies should not lay off some workers in this pandemic, especially in service industries.

26:10 – “Up your sunscreen game” – KD to Tim Sackett.

#CoronaDiaries – The Travesty of Hero Pay!

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I’m back in the office and I’m feisty as ever about all this “Hero” pay going on across the world! I love Heros, I mean who doesn’t love Heros, but…

Can I be real a second?
For just a millisecond?
Let down my guard and tell the people how I feel a second?

Also, beyond excited that Disney+ is releasing the Original cast of Hamilton on July 3rd! In the comments give me your over/under number of the amount of times I’ll watch Hamilton on Disney+? (I’ll tell you what my wife’s number on me was after a bit!)

Do you root for American Companies to Succeed?

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(I wrote this original post in 2010-ish – but I could have written it today! Updated for today’s COVID crisis.)

As HR Pros I think we have the slight ability to come off as anti-union and pro-management, emphasis on “slight”! It probably comes from too many interactions where we feel our hands get tied with contract language that either negatively impacts our ability to do our jobs effectively, or language that just lacks plain common sense.

The one thing I always hope for though is, in the end, the union and management still have the same goal (I said I hope!) to make the company successful. Having a successful company usually ends up working out well for both parties. A successful company has more profits, more profits allow for larger pools of dollars to negotiate over, and while both parties never get everything they want, both get more for sure. If the company isn’t successful both don’t get more. Pretty easy to figure that out.

Years ago, 60 Minutes interviewed then General Electric CEO, Jeff Immelt, and he made a very interesting comment at the end of the interview when talking about his own employees at GE, that got quite a bit of media play –

“They root for us. They want us to win. I don’t know why you don’t.”

The “you” at the end of his statement, was America!

His point is that people around the world “root” for their local companies to succeed. In Germany the German citizens root for Siemens to be the best in the world, the Japanese want Toshiba, Honda, Toyota, etc. to be wildly successful.

In America, we have too many citizens who think our big companies are “evil” if they are succeeding. Isn’t that strange?

I get why this tide has turned too many big companies have done bad things so we think it’s alright to put them all into the same bucket. But that goes against all common sense. If we want a strong economy and more jobs, we need our companies to kick butt!

I hear people, in the media, on blogs, in person, etc. rail against American corporations for being profitable, for hoarding cash, for basically being a successfully run company. My company works with General Motors. During the Great Recession when GM declared bankruptcy and the government bailed them out, as a supplier, we had to make some concessions if we wanted to continue that relationship (I think anyone of us running the company would have asked for the same thing). GM has once again become profitable, they renegotiated our contract and increased our contract.

Now, GM doesn’t determine if my company stays in business or not they are a small part of our overall business but I root for them to succeed. I hope they make a Billion dollars a day! I hope Marriott and Amazon and Apple do the same. I hope all the Banks succeed. We need all of our American companies to be successful, globally.

Here’s what I know. I have friends and neighbors who work for GM some in management, some on the line. When they go out and buy a car/truck/SUV they buy GM.  They want their company to succeed. They want their company to make money. It’s good for their family, it’s good for their cities and it’s good for America.

I root for American companies to succeed (quite frankly I root for all companies to succeed!).  Do you?

Are Low Deductible Health Insurance Plans Really the Best Plan?

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It seems like right now so many folks are paying attention to their actual health insurance for the first time! Turns out, when people are dying in a pandemic, we will finally pay attention to what kind of health insurance we have from our employer.

There are basically a few kinds of plans that most folks have in the U.S.:

– Low deductible plan – you pay more upfront, but if you get sick you pay very little in terms of bills overall.

– High deductible plan – you pay less out of your check on a weekly basis, but when you get sick you will end up paying a much larger portion of the bill.

– HSA plan – this plan is less used because it’s confusing but basically it’s a combination of you paying a portion to a savings account which helps you pay for normal healthcare expenses, but also has a high deductible safety net in case something major happens to you, you won’t go broke.

Most people have a bias towards low deductible health plans. Low deductible plans are chosen the most because we fear that what rarely happens. So, we pay a ton of money to have great healthcare coverage, but most of us will never come close to using the coverage we have. Few chose high deductible because we are scared something might happen and we don’t have the money to pay for it. Even fewer chose HSAs, even though it might be the better overall option, but again, we really fear the cost of something bad happens.

This is the basis of almost all insurance, fear.

We almost always choose the most coverage we can get, even when it costs us more in the short-term and long-term. We love safety. We are also, for the most part, really stupid when it comes to math and more specifically statistics. If we did understand basic statistics we would always choose the high deductible plan and put the weekly difference into a conservative investment portfolio. After a decade or two or three we would have this giant mountain of cash, at least about 99.6% of us would!

Fear is a powerful drug.

We buy car insurance and are given options like $250, $500, or $1000 deductible in case we get into an accident. Most of us will choose the lower amounts even those the vast majority of drivers never get into an accident. We buy flood insurance for our houses even when we aren’t in a flood plain because the one hundred year flood plain is a mile away from our house.

So, why am I talking about healthcare deductibles?

We are moving into a high unemployment environment. People are also going to be short on cash, so there’s a good chance when your next open enrollment happens you’ll have more people who will choose a high deductible, cheaper plans. In HR, this pains us greatly, because we want everyone to have the “best” insurance possible.

Why does HR want this? Because we deal with the fallout when someone chooses the high deductible insurance and then something happens and all of sudden it becomes ‘our’ problem to help this employee. So, to not have this pressure, just push everyone to a low deductible.

I’m telling you this is bad advice. HR is giving bad advice. Safe advice, but bad advice, based on math. Real math, not HR math.

 

E14 – GenZ Covid Job Search with @CamSackett & Recruiters Recruiting Recruiters!

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In episode 14 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Jessica Lee, Tim Sackett, and Kris Dunn are joined by Tim’s son Cameron and HR professional Chris Hoyt to talk about holidays during quarantine, finding a job straight out of college during a recession, and recruitersrecruitingrecruiters.com. The team discusses the struggles of finding a job in a recession for a college grad, changes to candidate experience, and better ways to hire during a pandemic.

Listen below (email subscribers click through if you don’t see the player) or click here for a direct link. Be sure to and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review via iTunes, Spotify and Google Play.

Show Highlights:

1:30 – Mother’s Day is coming! Jessica wants some peace and quiet for her special day and Tim’s wife wants diamonds. It sounds like some good gifts to me!

3:30 – Where do you get your Mom’s Mother Day flowers? KD shouts out 1-800- Flowers and tells a story about a disastrous bouquet of Wal-Mart flowers. Moral of the story: don’t buy flowers from Wal-Mart.

6:00 – Happy (belated) Birthday KD! What we’ve learned is that KD prefers store-bought cakes to homemade cakes.

7:00 – Welcome Tim’s son to the podcast! Cameron is a recent grad from the University of Michigan and joins the conversation to discuss finding a job during a pandemic and fills us in on what his job search has been like for the past few months.

10:00 – Has the candidate experience decreased since the recession started? Cameron hasn’t seen anything shady from employers but has seen a lot of uncertainty and jobs being canceled or postponed.

12:20 – Have you been ghosted from a lot of jobs? Cameron has only heard back from a real person for 3 out of 70 jobs he applied to. Not many rejections too! Is that because of the uncertain nature of the times?

14:50 – Would Cameron go work for Fox News if they offered him a job?

16:00 – Are career services still active during the pandemic? Cameron uses Tim as his personal career coach but has seen lots of friends get early job offers from college recruiting and career fairs.

18:10 – Hot gossip alert! Cameron spills the tea on how Tim is as a personal career coach.

20:00 – Quarantine time is a good time to learn new skills! Cameron has been working on podcasting. Look out for the Disney Channel rewatchables coming to your favorite podcasting service near you! KD and Cam discuss their favorite episodes of The Ringer’s Rewatchables podcast.

23:00 – Tim gives us a branding lesson. Buy your kid’s URLs and reserve their email addresses and social media handles early!

25:15 – Time for the second guest! Tim welcomes long time friend Chris Hoyt to the podcast.

26:00 – Chris discusses his work Career Crossroads and what they do for talent acquisition and recruiting. Tim loves it!

28:20 – Storytime! Tim tells us how his wife, Kim, met Chris in Park City, Utah, and really liked him.

29:30 – Recruitersrecruitingrecruiters.com! Say that five times in a row! Chris talks about his newest project inspired by the cooperation between CVS and the hospitality industry during the coronavirus pandemic.

32:20 – Looking for a recruiting job? There are about 150 jobs available on the platform with over 250 employers.

35:00 – #firstworldproblems. Are you experiencing Zoom fatigue?

35:30 – How can you guarantee candidate experience with such high unemployment? Chris discusses how it’s uncertain whether the same levels of candidate experience can be kept up and Tim talks about mistakes he made in the last recession.

If You Are Efficient You’re Doing it the Wrong Way!

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I read this interview with Jerry Seinfeld recently and I wanted to share a piece from it below:

A few thoughts on this…

  1. You know I’m all about efficiency when the process calls for being efficient, like in recruiting. When you start talking about being creative, like Jerry is above, that’s when you have to throw efficiency out the window. Genius doesn’t have a timeline. Sometimes working smarter not harder isn’t the right answer.
  2. “Who’s McKinsey? Are they funny? Then, no I don’t need them.” Too often we ask for help from folks who don’t know what we do or how to do it, but they have an MBA from an Ivy League school so they must be smarter than us, right? Right!? Well, they might be smarter at somethings, but you know your business and you probably know what needs to be done. The question is do you have the courage to do it or are you using a consulting firm because you want someone to share the blame?
  3. “The show was successful because I micromanaged it.” When I speak to really successful entrepreneurs almost all are successful because they micromanage the crap out of every aspect of their company. We like to act like this is a bad trait because it can be destructive, but most of the great leaders find ways to micromanage and still treat people really great. It’s not one or the either, it’s both.

 

I love reading and listening to really successful people talk about why they are successful when they aren’t trying to be impressive. When you get the real stuff. I think this was some real stuff from Jerry.

 

#CoronaDiaries – This is why we can’t return to work!

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I’m out in Utah and I’ve discovered the exact reason we can’t return to work! Basically, we’re all stupid, but it’s a longer story than that! Also, I introduce RecruitersRecruitingRecruiters.com and give some career advice to recruiters (well, basically anyone!) who find themselves currently out of a job!

If you are in recruiting and/or HR share your best resources for career development in the comments!

Are you more productive working at home? #WFH

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If you want and like working from home, your answer is “Yes!”

If you hate working at home and can’t wait to return to work, your answer is “No!”

The truth?

Some people can be productive anywhere. You could put them on the moon and they would find a way to get done what needs to get done. Many of us, need a great deal of structure and guidance, and proper motivation.

We have this giant Work from Home experiment going on right now and a lot of HR folks are pointing to this and going, “See! I told you it would work!” But, is it really working?

The problem is what most of us are doing right now isn’t truly working at home. If you are trying to do childcare to co-habitat with multiple people in a house all trying to do work, it’s not really what a normal work at home situation would be.

Pre-Covid most studies on Work at Home were done by folks who had a mission to get more people to work at home, so quite frankly, I think most of those studies are crap. They didn’t really set out to see what situation would be better, only that working from home is better.

One of the main issues we see with working from home is that your real workers, those ten percenters who put in the most work, put in even more when working from home which could lead to burnout of your best talent. So, you might see productivity gains, but it’s not equal across the board. Like most work, the vast amount of gains is coming from folks who already probably gave you the most!

I’m not a work from home hater by any means. I think it’s a great way to add some flexibility for those employees who need it and can actually make it work. To be very clear, that is not all of your employees. The vast majority will not be more productive at home. And those who love working at home the most might actually be your least productive.

So, should you allow your employees who can continue to work from home? I think during a pandemic the answer is yes! I think once this is all behind us, we have to look at productivity in a normal work from home environment and make those determinations on our own.

In the small sample size, I have with my own company I know there are folks who would kill it no matter where they were working, and I have some folks who better get ready to return to the office!

The key to working from home isn’t your ability to actually be able to work at home. It’s your ability to be as good or better working at home as you were working from the office, in a normal business environment. We are not in a normal business environment. So, you working at 40% compacity at home doesn’t mean you’ve proven anything.

So, during this great Work from Home experiment, do you think you are more productive, less productive, or about the same? Hit me in the comments and let me know what you think!

E13 of The HR Famous Podcast – Fat-Fingered Americans & Paying New Grads to Not Go to Work!

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In episode 13 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Jessica Lee, Tim Sackett, and Kris Dunn try to defeat boredom and come together to talk about quarantine listening habits, Airbnb’s hiring practices, unpaid internships, and Netflix doc American Factory. The team discusses their feelings and thoughts on Airbnb’s postponed hiring, unpaid internships and other working experiences, and the documentary American Factory.

Listen below and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights:

2:30 – The team starts out sharing with us their favorite quarantine comfort music playlists full of music. Turns out the group has some different tastes: Tim likes basic Spotify playlists, Jlee likes Nick Jonas, and KD likes grunge. This also features a brief discussion of Post Malone’s tattoos.

8:00 – Onto the rundown for the episode. Airbnb has postponed post-grad hires to 2021 and the crew talks about the investment they have made for their own PR. Tim weighs in on the workforce needs for Airbnb and other tech companies and how they will continue going forward.

11:45 – KD sees through Airbnb’s “publicity stunt” and calls them out for being unfair for postponing post-grad hires until August 2021. Tim discusses some potential writing on the wall that may have led to this decision. Maybe they’re being forward-thinking? KD seems skeptical.

15:00 – Bro trip! KD talks about the last Airbnb he stayed in with Tim in Orlando. The pictures sure weren’t telling the whole truth….

16:20 – Marriott plug from Jlee! #notsponsored

17:00 – Topic change: internships! Lots of internships have been canceled for summer 2020 leaving soon to be grads and recent grads in a bind. Also, Hipster Sackett is the best Tim Sackett

20:30 – Tim discusses the evolution of unpaid internships. He believes young adults need to use unpaid internships to build relationships, have experiences, and find mentors to advocate for them. Do you believe in unpaid internships? Should all interns be paid?

23:15 – Who can afford unpaid internships (especially in this economy)? Jlee discusses the need to look at capabilities and skills rather than experiences for new grads in order to level the playing field.

25:30 – KD discusses the addiction to doing internships with huge brands. He advocates for looking locally to gain experiences instead of going for the big guys.

26:45 – “Interns have zero value” – Tim Sackett. What is the real point of internships? Recruiting. (Just saying an intern is writing this right now so no value???)

28:00 – Should companies be allowed to advertise unpaid internships? KD says no but thinks that unpaid experiences should be allowed in order to benefit the person looking for a resume booster.

29:45 – Jlee predicts Tim’s Glassdoor ratings will be plummeting.

30:30 – American Factory time! KD challenged Jlee and Tim to watch the 2020 Academy Award-winning documentary about a Chinese company that took over a GM plant in Toledo, Ohio. The team discusses their likes and dislikes.

35:05 – Jlee weighs in on the depiction of Chinese culture in the documentary. Although she came in skeptical, she was pleasantly surprised by the reception of the workers in the movie.

36:10 – Motor City native Tim discusses fat-fingered Americans and the camaraderie and commitment of the Chinese company.

40:00 – The crew ends on their favorite scene. Tim likes the chairman’s frankness about unions and Jlee agrees. She especially likes the interpretation from Chinese to English. KD likes the cut between the Chinese company energy to the Toledo break room.

43:30 – Watch American Factory!

Subscribe to The HR Famous Podcast on iTunes!