Tag Archives: Human Resources

E4 – The HR Famous Podcast – #Microaggressions – or things white folks don’t get!

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In Episode 4 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Jessica Lee, Kris Dunn, and I get together to dip into uncomfortable territory by talking about microaggressions – what are they, how they manifest themselves and what HR leaders can do to make awareness of microaggressions part of their broader D&I stack.

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

Microaggressions can be defined as brief and commonplace daily verbal or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, particularly culturally marginalized groups.

There’s less laughter in this one – but more real talk. Tough topic, but if you’re an HR leader or HR pro, 100% worth your time to raise your awareness and lead your organization accordingly.

Show Highlights:

3:10 – KD intros the topic of microaggression, tells the gang why it’s on his mind and gets sidetracked automatically because JLee and Tim don’t donate at least annually to Wikipedia.

6:20 – KD finally gets the definition of microaggression out using Wikipedia as his primary source. Turns out the concept has been around since 1970.

7:40 – JLee and Tim react to the concept of microaggression as individuals and HR pros. JLee talks about being from Cali, but people persisting in asking where she’s from. Tim talks about the fact that people seek connection by asking others where they are from in metro/urban environments and may be unaware of the connection to microaggression, as well as the fact they might be offending someone.

11:25 – KD leads the gang through the game, “Is it a microaggression? JLee gives great thoughts about low awareness of those providing the microaggression and why the subject of a microaggression should think about giving feedback to the provider.

Covered in this game:

–Where are you really from?

–Asking where are you from to white people with accents.

–Gender references (Sir, Ma’am) and being wrong.

–You don’t speak Spanish?

–No, you’re white!

–Hey Guys!

22:00 – The gang talks about the impact of microaggressions in the workplace, and how HR leaders should start the conversation in their companies, etc.  Linkage to bias training and starting to raise awareness as well as training to lay down a form of behavioral muscle memory across employees is discussed. Framing awareness training as civility rather than the foreboding term microaggression is also discussed.

25:20 – Tim talks about the need to train and coach people to accept feedback (someone telling them they’re using a microaggression) in a graceful way rather than feeling attacked or defensive.

28:00 – KD talks about introducing the topic of microaggressions at your next training session/meeting by conducting a simple quiz like the one performed on the podcast to get people talking.  Get ready! Tim talks about the fact that many people would say that doesn’t actually happen, and a better path might be to have people who have experienced microaggressions talk about their experiences.

29:40 – KD points out that the quiz they did didn’t include the nuclear bomb of all microaggressions – “You’re so articulate”.

30:45 – “OK, Boomer!” Tim drops the fact that when it comes to bias, ageism is an under-discussed topic, including microaggressions towards older workers. KD talks about JLee referencing the fact that he looks older while she looks the same.

31:57 – KD talks about the fact that he routinely calls JLee a Tiger Mom and asks her if she’s considered that a microaggression in the past.  JLee provides positive feedback but notes that others that hear it might consider it a microaggression even if she doesn’t.

Resources:

Jessica Lee on LinkedIn

Tim Sackett on Linkedin

Kris Dunn on LinkedIn

HRU Tech

The Tim Sackett Project

The HR Capitalist

Fistful of Talent

Kinetix

Boss Leadership Training Series

T3 – BlackbookHR – Sense, RNA and Presto

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T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.

So, I’ll start about saying I’m a proud member of Blackbook HR’s Advisory Board, along with some other great HR pros. But, even prior to that I was a fan of their products – my review of Sense. This review is highlighting two new products that Blackbook HR has launched – RNA and Presto.

First, let me say that I’m not the only one who is really liking what Blackbook is doing.  They were named one of the 2014 HR Tech Conference Awesome New Startups (don’t worry, I’ll be highlighting many of these others as well!).

RNA (Relationship Network Analysis) is one of Blackbook HR’s newest offerings.   When I saw the demo of this at HR Tech I was blown away.  It basically shows you your organization chart, but not by title, by influence!  It’s super cool, and the application of uses for retention, performance and succession are really limitless. One customer is using it to transition new leaders into the organization, so they know which players they need to connect with immediately, and how their organization is really getting work done!

Some of the other really cool things RNA can do if allow you to search your organization by skills. Not only self-reported skills, but all the employees in your organization can also rate each other on those skill levels.  So, you need someone for a new project that has project management skills?  What about the one person in your organization that their peers rate them highest in that skill!?  It does that.  Losing folks to turnover or retirement and need a pool of potential replacements (Succession), you can source that data here.

Also, think about any change management. Who are the most important employees to ensure are bought into the change before rolling it out?  That’s critical for success in any change, and RNA can give you these connections.  You can now go out and work with these individuals first, and let them help drive the change, positively, forward. Merger and acquisitions would be another way I could see this data being extremely important.

I will say, this is much more of an enterprise type of solution.  Most SMB’s probably don’t have enough data to really take advantage of this type of solution. But, if you are in the 2500+ employee range, this will blow your mind.  It’s fairly inexpensive, and the analytics you get from this data are crazy, it’s well worth a demo for sure!

RNA

 

Presto, is Blackbook’s other new product, and it’s totally free to use!  Basically, Presto is a survey App you can use within your organization, department and group.  It doesn’t even have to be used for business, but that’s what it was originally designed for.  Let’s say you just came out of an executive meeting and one of your senior leaders wanted to know how an announcement of some big new project was being ‘viewed’ by your employees.  You could within seconds put out a survey question to your organization, and watch in real-time the survey results come back to you.  Not only do you see, but everyone who participates can see the results.

I even joked you could send it out to your department to see what people wanted for lunch, and the entire group could see what everyone preferred!  It’s basically a real-time way to gather feedback in your organization. Totally free.  Completely simple to use.  I can think of a hundred ways I could use this, or coach my hiring managers to use this in an organization.  While this is a mobile app, the users can also log into a dashboard that gives you tabulated, colorful graphs, that are easily manipulated to share with your organization in which communication way you would like.

Yeah, I’m a fanboy of Blackbook HR.  The thing I like is the people running the company aren’t designing things thinking, ‘what will sell’.  They’re designing things thinking, ‘how do I solve this problem?’, then going, oh crap, how do we make money on this!  That gives them some of the best technology on the market, which you can actually buy or in Presto’s case use for free.

Next Tuesday I’ll be looking at recruitment marketing solution SmashFly!

A Job Post with Your Name On It!

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I was in a conversation the other day with another Talent Pro and she was asking me for some advice on getting better applicants to apply for her postings.  I asked a number of questions but one that really got the conversation moving was:

Do you know who you want to apply for this position?

She told me “Yes” and then went on to give the specifications of the job description.  I said “No”, do you know the Name of the person you want to apply to this position?  She laughed – she thought I was joking – I wasn’t.   Well, I half-wasn’t.   It was a quirky idea, but in the right environment and small to medium community you could really make a splash by actually naming your post after the person who you really want to take the job.  Can you imagine!

Wanted “Michael Smith – Chemical Engineer” – please apply today!

The obvious issue at play here is – well – if I knew the name of the person I wanted, why wouldn’t I just call them up and ask if they wanted the job!?  GREAT question – why don’t you?  It’s actually fairly easy to find names of competitor employees you might want to hire.  So, why don’t you call them up and ask them if they want the job you have?  You know why?  Because it’s F’ing hard to do!  That’s why the search industry is a multi-Billion (with a “B”) business.

So, instead of calling them – just make a job posting with their name on it – and go float it around town – through your social channels, on your website, maybe a job board posting, etc.  Believe me – it will get back to the person you are looking, and if they are interested – they will come calling.  Seems silly, but I bet it would work far more than it wouldn’t.  People like to feel wanted.  How much more wanted can you get than a company creating a job posting with your “actual” name on it!  THIS job is for me! You would say to yourself.

In a tough talent marketplace, sometimes it’s the easy, simple things that make the difference.  Sometimes people just want to know they’re wanted.  We make this search game so difficult sometimes.   I always tell people I have the easiest job in the world.  I just have to ask people if they are interested in a job, I have open.  Pretty easy!  I’m not trying to launch the space shuttle or fix someones heart – I just need to see if they would have interest in making a job change.  The rest is just market variables, all of which, are probably pretty similar to the next guy.  Many times, it comes down to only one thing – me showing interest in them, and their current company not showing the same level of interest in keeping them.

I say give it shot – what’s the worse that can happen – you get your community talking about your company and how aggressively you’re going after people?  That’s not all bad – either way!

Recruiting is Worthless

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Paul DeBettignies recently had an article over at ERE – Where Have All the Recruiters Gone – which gave me the idea for this post.  In Paul’s post he wonders why recruiters are networking face-to-face anymore. I think many of us in the recruiting field who have been in the field pre-internet, probably wonder this and many more things as we look at how the industry has totally transformed over the past 20 years.  A person today can get into recruiting, sit at a desk, have great internet skills, marginal phone skills and make a decent living.  They probably won’t be a great recruiter – they probably won’t make great money – but they’ll survive – they’ll be average or slightly above.  It’s why the recruiting function in most organizations gets a bad rap!  In corporate circles I’ve heard it called “worthless” many times – and for some this is their reality.

Recruiting is Worthless, if…

…you’re a hiring manager and you never have face-to-face conversations with your recruiter when you have an opening, and when you don’t have an opening.

…you’re recruiters believe it isn’t there job to find talent, talent will find them.

…your organization believes it’s the recruiting departments job to find talent.  It’s not, it’s the hiring managers job to ensure they have the talent they need for their department, recruiting is the tool that will help them.  This “ownership responsibility” is very important for organizational success in ensuring you have the talent you need.

…your recruiting department acts like they are HR – they aren’t – they are sales and marketing.  Too many Recruiters, in corporate settings, don’t want to recruit, they want to be HR – which makes them worthless as recruiters.

…if your recruiters have more incoming calls then outgoing calls.

…if your recruiters believe their job begins Monday thru Friday at 8am and ends at 5pm. The best talent is working during those times and most likely won’t talk to you while they are at work.  That’s not a slam on you or your company – they are great employees, it’s what we expect from a great employee.

…your senior leadership team feels they have to use an “executive search” company to fill their higher level openings, because our recruiting department “can’t handle it”.

…if they are victims – “it’s not my job”, “we can’t do that because…”, “marketing won’t allow us to do…”, “our policy won’t allow us…” etc.

…if they just send hiring managers resumes of candidates that have come to them, without first determining if the person is a fit for the organization and a fit for the hiring managers position – before sending them on.

…they haven’t developed the organizational influence enough to change a hiring managers, hiring decision.

Recruiting is worthless if in the end they have failed to show the value of their service back to the organization.

Recruiting is the one department in the organization, besides sales, that truly has the ability to show ROI back to the organization, yet so few of us take advantage of the opportunity we have!  There is nothing more important, and have a bigger competitive advantage, than our organizations talent – and oh by the way – THAT IS US! We control that.  Recruiting isn’t worthless, unless you make it worthless.

 

 

Are You Drowning In Your Position

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You know the crazy thing about drowning?  It doesn’t look like you’re drowning! Read this from Mario Vittone:

  1. Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.
  2. Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.
  3. Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.
  4. Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
  5. From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.

Take away the eventually water death – and this seems eerily familiar to some of our employees…

As HR Pros/Hiring Managers/Supervisors we have people who are drowning in their positions right now – but we can’t “see” them drowning.  Employees have natural things they do in terms of self-preservation, much like some one who is truly drowning.  They begin to do: put in extra time at the office, they seem a little to stressed for normal work, they make things bigger than what they are (this gives them an excuse in case of failure), etc. – it gives you an impression “they’re on top of it” – but they aren’t.  They tend not to ask for help – they don’t want anyone to know they’re in trouble – they can handle it on their own.

How do you spot an employee who is going under?

1. Look for employees who are disengaging with key relationships they need to have to get their job done.  Why?  Employees who are drowning – will disconnect from those who will be the first ones to spot them drowning – key hiring managers or peers from other departments – which buys them time from their own supervisors finding out they aren’t staying afloat.

2. They become defensive or blame shift – when this isn’t usually part of their normal behavior.  Another mechanism they use as a life preserver –  “it’s not me – it’s them!”

3. Drowning employees tend to cling to each other.  Rarely will you see a drowning employee hanging with a top performer (that’s one more person who will see they aren’t making it).

How do you save an employee who is drowning?

That’s even tougher than spotting them!  Because it takes you confronting them, and not allowing them to cop-out, most HR Pros/Hiring Managers/Supervisors find this very uncomfortable (hello Performance Management!) It basically takes you jumping into their role – deep – and pulling them out.  Most of us don’t like getting our clothes wet and ruining our iPhone – so we try and throw them things to help instead – additional training, words of encouragement, EAP, discipline…sound familiar?  When what they need is some full life saving – to push them up for air and take them to shore (you’re sick of metaphors at this point! – actually do the job with them for a while, so them how it should be done).  You still might decide when it’s all done to let the person go – they just can’t handle the position – but some will actually learn from the experience and turn out to be really good.