Bratty Employees Need Their Toys: The Changing Face of Employee Entitlement

Geoffrey James, a writer and former salesperson has written a scathing post calling a company "stupid," "clueless" and "like the Chinese government" for blocking employee access to YouTube, the video sharing community site.

While Mr. James admits that there is "a lot of crap" on YouTube and agrees that it can become a "waste of time," he points to the free business oriented videos that are also available on the site as being reason to give employees unrestricted access.

My first reaction is to chalk this guy up as one of many business writers that don't really understand business issues and certainly not the management of corporate human resources. I don't want to say that those who can... do - and those who can't....blog - but there's certainly no dearth of business articles from those who don't have a real grasp on what they are writing about. (Remember the Why I Hate HR article in Fast Company magazine?)

Now I'm not advocating the banning of YouTube (or other social media sites) so if you are prepared to bite my head off please save it. I do recommend that organizations that are concerned about overuse, misuse or abuse of social media during the workday provide guidelines, policies and controls as necessary. The degree of control depends upon the company, industry, type of employees, corporate culture, etc.. I'll also say that those organizations who choose to restrict access altogether for those employees that don't need access have every right to do so. In some cases it may be a smart move.

My second reaction, though, is the one I'd like to explore. That is, this enormous shift that has taken place over the last few years regarding employee entitlement. James is absolutely not alone in his fervent belief that employees have the right to do whatever they want during their workday and it's none of their employer's business. The presumption is that if they are getting their work accomplished that is all that matters. Leave me alone. I can play while I work if I want to. Surprisingly this is incredibly common thinking today.

I'm not sure when or how this new form of entitlement creeped into employees' consciousness. Clearly it's not just an outcome of new technology. When televisions shrunk to desk size back in the 1980s employees didn't feel suddenly compelled or empowered to watch television programs at their desk. The first cell phones didn't encourage the abuse of personal phone calls during the workday (though I'm not sure that is still the case). Even computer games, for the most part, were played on off hours or at least sparingly throughout the day.

So what gives?

Did it start with the Foosball tables, free food and Porsche-sign-on bonuses of the late 1990s? Or maybe it's the generally addictiveness of the new collaborative-based Internet?

Regardless of the catalyst, this creates two large challenges for employers. The first is learning about social media and creating appropriate social computing policies. The one thing that James is correct about is that social media does present a number of new and useful tools for business. Among these are the networking opportunities. (Though clearly not all jobs require nor benefit from this kind of networking.) Appropriate use of programs like LinkedIn and Twitter for specific business purposes can provide excellent benefits to many employees and their organizations.

If you need to create a social computing policy for your organization, there are a number of good examples readily available. They generally address a variety of things such as productivity, confidentiality, respect, disclaimers and representation of the company. You can email me at "bncarvin at nobscot dot com" and I can point you to some samples.

You can also utilize employees attraction to social networking by creating internal networks that employees can use to network and connect with each other. This provides employees an outlet for online camaraderie while at the same time strengthening your internal culture and employee bonds.

The second challenge is a lot more difficult and involves providing some "tough love" or wake-up calls to employees about the nature of...well....work. That's something that we as leaders and managers have to join together on. We are not doing our employees any favors by allowing them to slack off excessively. That's like the parents who ignore their children's truancy or laziness or lack of motivation or drug use because they want to be nice or want to be the cool parents. Mentoring and coaching our employees on how to focus on work during the workday is a good thing. It will help them become more successful and help our companies and future companies thrive in the years to come.

What says you?

Should employees be entitled to play on social websites to their heart's content?

Feeling Predictably Irrational Today

I am not going to tell you about the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. There is too much incredibly useful information on how people make purchasing decisions that I want all to myself. (Is that predictably irrational, Dan?)

Lessons from the Recruiting Archives - Part One

I've been having great fun over the last couple years following the hottest recruiting oriented blogs and more recently connecting with recruiters in the Twitterverse. (You can follow me on Twitter: here.) It's been excited watching all the changes in methodologies since my recruiting days back in the 80s and 90s.

To payback the young superstars for allowing me to live vicariously through them (as recruiting will always be my first love), I thought I'd make a few notes on some of things that worked for us back in the (g)olden days.

First a little background. The company that I worked for was a Boston based firm called Search, Inc. It was started by Paul George, an incredible recruiter, salesperson, manager, trainer and motivator. Paul's background was in recruiting IBM 36 programmers. He used to tell us that he knew every IBM 36 programmer in the Boston area. So much so that if a prospective client said they had already selected someone for a position, Paul would ask who they were hiring and then proceed to tell them the pros and cons about that person. (That was under the lesson -- find a niche.)

Search, Inc. had some terrific processes in place and I had an amazing manager in Doris Greenberg, a veritable whirlwind of energy and enthusiasm.

Here are five things that made the recruiters at Search so so successful.

1) Daily Schedule. Because it's so easy to get distracted or spend time on non-productive work, we had a very strict schedule. It went like this:

8:30am - 9:30am Morning Meeting (more on this later)
9:30am - 11:00am Drilling. Drilling was the name for calling companies and trying to get Job Orders
11:00 - 12:00 Miscellaneous Interviewing/Matching/Presentations for Send-Outs/Follow-Ups
12:00 - 1:00 Lunch
1:00 - 2:00 Sourcing
2:00 - 4:00 Recruiting Calls - Cold calls to potential applicants to get in-person interviews
4:00 - 5:00 Miscellaneous Interviewing/Matching/Presentations for Send-Outs/Follow-Ups
5:00 - 5:30 Create Daily Plan for the next day
5:30 Go home or more likely conduct late interviews with applicants

That is what we did. Every day Monday - Friday. It was a good system and it created a huge amount of productivity. Did we goof off? Sure, that 11:00 - 2:00 period was filled with a lot of chit-chat. But we knew what we should be doing at any time of the day and that kept us focused and productive.

2) The Chip Board. The chip board was a big key to motivational success in our office. It was a magnetic white board with rectangle colored magnets located in a prominent location in the office. Each colored magnet represented a desired result.
Light Blue: Job Order
Yellow: An Interview with an Applicant
Orange: A Send-Out
Search Logo: PLACEMENT

The recruiters' names were written at the top of the board. Whenever a recruiter got a job order, conducted an interview, made a send-out or got a placement, they placed the appropriate magnet under their name. On good days, a good recruiter would have a long column of magnets under their name. On bad days just one or two. If you had no chips for too many days you weren't going to make it in the business.

There was no resting on your laurels with the chip board; the chips were removed each day after the morning meeting and you had to do it all over again.

3) Morning Meetings. Morning Meetings were also critical to our success. Every morning we got together and reviewed the chip board from the previous day. Placements were congratulated and any recruiter who made a placement shared how it all came together from the job order to the acceptance of the offer. The rest of the meeting was devoted to a particular topic either sales training, recruiter training or motivational training. By the end of the meeting, we were pumped up and ready to jump on the phone and work our daily planner.

4) Everyone Sits Together. All the recruiters sat together one desk behind another. Although we lacked privacy, we gained in being able to hear what was going on with our colleagues. Did the person in front of you just get the perfect job order for an applicant you interviewed last night? It was also great for ongoing training.You were constantly hearing the sales presentations of those around you.

5) Ask for the Offer. I'll never forget hearing the phone conversation from my colleague Carol. It went something like this:

Carol: Hi ____, How did the interview go?
Client: It went OK. I think she could do the job. I should probably interview other people. I'm not sure what I want to do. I did like her. Maybe you could send over other people? I'm not sure what to do.
Carol: (ignoring the wishy washy feedback and putting on her best enthusiastic voice) Would you like to go ahead and make ___ an offer?
Client: Ok.

We were all astonished. But we always asked for the offer after that. As the old sales books used to say, "close early and often."

I'll also add one bonus item to this list that REALLY worked to motivate us:

6) Contests That Everyone Can Win. We had the best contests at Search, Inc.. Every recruiter that reached a certain billing goal over a two month period won. All the winners went together along with their spouse/guest for a 4 day all expense paid trip. We went to Aruba, Bermuda, St. Maarten, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe. Since we all wanted all our friends to join us on the trip, we worked extra hard as a team to make sure that everyone in our office reached the billing goal. They were the most team oriented contests I've ever seen.

In future Lessons from the Recruiting Archives I'll provide some specifics in terms of sales presentations for job orders, presenting candidates, sourcing and closing offers.

Onboarding the President of the United States

Isn't it great the way we onboard the President of the United States? After the President was "hired" on November 4, 2008 we provided a transition period for him to prepare for the new job. He was able to spend time with his predecessor and plan his strategy. On his start date, today, January 20th, 2009, we celebrated his hire, introduced him to ... err ... everyone, heard his shared vision of the future and acknowledged the work that he and his "colleagues" (us) must do to achieve it.

Imagine if President Obama was onboarded the way most employees are onboarded.

The job offer is extended and accepted on November 4th, 2008. The start date is set for January 20 2009. Relocation information is provided and the new hire and his family begin their move into corporate housing. On January 20th, he reports to the oval office for his first day of work.

New Hire President Obama sits down at his large desk. He wipes away some pretzel crumbs from the previous occupant. His secretary pokes her head in the door and says she is sorry that she didn't have a chance to clean out the files. "No problem, " he smiles, "I'll take care of it." He spends the morning emptying out his new desk thinking about the problems he will tackle and planning how he will meet his new staff and wondering where the bathroom is and if there is anyone with whom he can go to lunch. A few people murmur hello when he walks through the halls of the Whitehouse. Most chit-chat among themselves and wonder who this new guy is and what he is going to be like. By the end of the day, he realizes he is on his own.

Maybe we should start welcoming our new hires in inaugural style. How about a little fanfare and celebration and introduction and vision sharing with all of our employees as if they were as important to us as the President of the United States?

Penelope Trunk's Misguided Career Advice For Women

Another interesting, controversial and not exactly correct bit of advice from the self described brazen careerist "Penelope Trunk." While I love "Penelope's" writing style and her generally acerbic wit, I get concerned that people might actually take her seriously.

In a recent post, she lambastes five career tips often given to women in the workplace. Along with ignoring the Best Companies for Women lists, she also suggests that women should avoid women-only networking groups. She states two reasons: women don't have as many connections as men and women are not supportive of other women.

When I was young and naive I probably would have agreed with her. I was one of those cocky youngsters who scoffed at seminars for "women managers" and would never demean myself by joining a women's only group. I assumed that only weak and stupid women ran into obstacles. "We are all the same" and "work hard and you will succeed" were my mantras. But that was faulty thinking on my part just as it is on Penelope Trunk's.

The truth is that women face multiple obstacles that have nothing to do with their own weakness. A new apt metaphor (which replaces the Glass Ceiling that implies everything moves along smoothly until the woman reaches the top of the career ladder) is The Labyrinth. A labyrinth is a maze or intricate combination of paths and passages. This is a great description for what women in corporate America face throughout their career. For those interested in this topic I highly recommend Through The Labyrinth by Alice Eagly and Linda Carli, the originators of this concept.

"Penelope Trunk's" advice, though fun to read, is misguided when it comes to women's networking groups. Women's networking groups provide a tremendous opportunity to connect with others who have travelled through the labyrinth and succeeded.

For example, at Xerox Corporation there is an outstanding women's networking group called The Women's Alliance. The hundreds of women that are members of this organization are very supportive of each others' career and social development. One great resource that The Women's Alliance offers its members is their mentoring program where senior level women mentor their junior colleagues. You can read more about their mentoring program in The Great Mentor Match an article I wrote that was published in T&D magazine.

If you still doubt the value of women's networking groups, read this quote from a mentee in a women's mentoring program:

nIt has been a life-changing experience. I gained perspective that I simply didn't have on my own. One mentoring session gave me enough material for a lifetime of work! My mentor is brilliant! :)"

Would that woman have been better off had she taken "Penelope Trunk's" advice?

How HR Should Respond to Glassdoor

Glassdoor, like the earlier Vault.com, allows employees to anonymously rank and rant on their employers publicly.

Even in today's world of transparency and social media, this is one area that companies would be wise to take an immediate stance against and prohibit the use of posting on this site. The employers being targeted, particularly Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, should create a firm policy with infractions leading up to and including termination.

I'm sure a lot of social media gurus are squirming at what I am saying and itching to fire off a nasty-gram about how I don't understand the new workplace. I know the argument. You must show you are an open company and rather than squelch the anonymous backstabbing you should use the information to improve your organization. Or maybe you should encourage happy employees to drown out the unhappy.

That sounds great but it's not realistic. Here's my counter argument.

Employee satisfaction levels (and salaries which are also posted) are confidential, internal-only information. When one person posts on a forum or in their blog it might be irrelevant but when aggregates of employees post it creates a dataset that is company confidential information. There is absolutely no benefit to the company of having this information made public.

Here's the problem:

- It's anonymous - people do not have to be honest.
- It's likely to be by the disgruntled minority rather than the happy employees.
- It's more fun to complain.
- There are two sides to each story. As any HR person will confirm, the employee's side of the story is often exaggerated, incorrect or based on faulty information.
- Inevitably specific confidential information will be exposed.
- ANYONE, including people (and competitors) who never worked for your company can pretend to be from your company and post ratings and reviews.

I'm not sure why Glassdoor is getting so much hype when we saw the exact same thing with Vault.com. Here is what I wrote about Vault in November 2004.

Airing Your Dirty Laundry
Did you know that there is a website where employee satisfaction surveys are made public?

I can only imagine what would happen to me if Nobscot's clients' exit interviews were made public. (I'm thinking something like public flogging or maybe root canal without anesthesia.)

You can read the rest of Airing Your Dirty Laundry here.

Companies should be smart and react quickly before this one gets out of hand. There is $6.5 million dollars of second round venture capital money being used to fund this rumor and gossip spreading site. Don't let your company become a victim.

A Holiday Inspiration

One delightful and unexpected outcome of Nobscot's Charity Holiday gift is how it inspired one of our employees and her family to change the way they celebrate the holidays this year.

I am very enthused to share this guest post from Ashley DiFlorio.

My name is Ashley DiFlorio. My mother, Laura works for Nobscot Corporation. We sat around the dinner table one night and my Mom was explaining how Nobscot was not going to send out the usual Christmas baskets to their clients. They decided to donate the money to charity with the help of their clients. Every client would vote on which charity they wanted the money to go to.

This conversation sparked my family into a discussion about Christmas and how fortunate we are. We also started to think about how there were many other families who were not so fortunate. It was an amazing revelation. We basically decided at that moment that we wanted to do something. We decided to forgo our own gifts and use the money to give a Christmas to someone else. My brother suggested that we keep it local.

About a week later, after doing some investigation, we decided to give the local Women and Children’s Shelter a Christmas. My Mom called the shelter to get all the information required. It was determined that they have 27 beds and we were going to purchase presents for the Mom’s and the kids. The coordinator suggested that we give the gifts to them early enough so that the Mom’s could pick out a gift for their child, and the children could pick out a gift for their Mom’s. We also provided all the wrapping paper and tags and tape and bows so that they all would have a gift to open on Christmas morning.

This experience has changed the way I feel about Christmas. It truly is the season of giving! I am very proud of my whole family for contributing to this fantastic cause!

Thank you for sharing your story, Ashley. I am very proud of the DiFlorios as well!

It's really a wonderful reminder about how one act begets another and so on and so forth. Every charitable act, kind word spoken or smile on your face has the opportunity to ripple forward and spread happiness to people and places that you never imagined. That is something that we should remember at all times of the year.

Ten HR Ideas to Beat the Year End Blahs

For many people, the end of the year brings on a nasty case of the blues. According to Monique Rissen Harrisberg of The Stress Clinic, "Most nervous break-downs, burn – outs, illness and depression occur just before Christmas."

This can spill over into the workplace and create a slowed down, negative environment just when you are looking for a fresh, bright start for the new year.

The good news is that motivational strategies can be implemented easily and cost effectively by almost any organization. Things like communication, thank-yous and recognition cost virtually nothing but provide more reward and motivation than expensive company gifts.

Here is my list of low-cost, high value motivation strategies for year end 2008.

1) Involve the CEO and other high profile executives. Employees in the lower ranks rarely get to interact with the CEO so when they do it's exciting and meaningful.

• Have the CEO send a heartfelt thank-you email to all employees.
  
• Have a CEO/Executives holiday visit to each department (without criticizing the cleanliness, organization, etc) to say "Hi" and shake hands with all EEs.
• How about a CEO/Executives New Year Breakfast, barbecue or cookie break where the leaders cook/bbq/bake for the staff?
• Provide an invitation to each employee to visit with the CEO sometime in 2009.
  
• Create a funny but inspirational video starring the CEO and other senior leaders that show them as human (and fallible.)

2) Create a special 2008 wrap-up letter or website. Highlight the successes for the year, recognize individual's contributions, include photos (events, people, customers).

3) Organize a "bright future" meeting. Have a charismatic company leader discuss how the future is bright and/or what the company needs to do to create a bright future. Include goals and plans. Don't be afraid to ask for the employees' help (which is surprisingly motivational) and describe the vision of what things will be like when they reach the future goals. If times are difficult now, focus on the light at the end of the tunnel and make sure everyone sees that it is real and attainable.

4) Thank employees for their efforts. Have supervisors write up and submit a "Thanks to _____ for ______" about each one of their direct reports (so there is one for every employee in the company) and them publish 1 or more per day on the company internet or intranet website.

5) Have a contest! Create small or large goals or activities. Everyone can win. Winners get raffle tickets. The more wins, the more tickets. Have three prizes with the grand prize being something really special or valuable.

6) Setup group community service activities that employees can participate in together. Allow employees to participate during work hours or after-hours.

7) Have the CEO blog about the accomplishments of various employees. Start with low level employees.

8) Start a mentoring program for 2009 to assist with career development, guidance, problem-solving, networking and support.

9) Start a corporate social networking program to allow employee's to easily connect with each other, share information, collaborate, thank each other, offer kudos, etc.
Resource: Mentor Scout - Talent Networking Edition

10) Ask employees to provide innovative ideas for 2009. Use an online suggestion type program so employees can share and expand on ideas.

11) Setup "Lunch and Learns" on work and non-work topics. Ask employees to sign up to teach a session on their area of expertise or something for which they have a special talent or interest.

The above are some ideas to kickstart your own brainstorming. I recommend that you put together a team of creative employees both inside and outside of HR to come up with your own customized ideas. Wouldn't it be nice to go into 2009 with big smiles on your employees' faces?

Why Best Buy CEO Should Be Losing Sleep

I admire Best Buy for many of its innovative practices, its growth and success over its competitors and the general quality of its business.

That's why I was surprised to see the enormous Human Resources risk that they just announced that has the potential to cost them greatly for many years to come.

(See my blog post Top 5 Worst Human Resources Practices for Surviving the Bad Economy.)

Workforce Management is reporting that Best Buy is offering "voluntary buy out" packages to almost all of their corporate employees. According to Workforce, the average corporate employee would receive 7 1/2 month's pay. Best Buy is also sweetening the pot by offering healthcare coverage for a full year for those who accept the offer.

While I appreciate the humaneness of the approach, if I were Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, I would be losing sleep at night right now worrying about who is going to accept the buyout. What happens if the best employees in the most critical positions take the money and run?

Some of the questions that Mr. Anderson is likely (or should be) asking himself and his executive team right now are:

- Will the company be able to successfully redeploy the remaining employees to fill the positions of those who leave?

- What is the projected number of positions that the company will need to re-hire due to lack of internal bench strength and what is the projected cost to do so?

- To what degree will the quality of service, productivity and the corporate culture drop if a large number of key employees leave all at once?

These are not trivial matters.

If all the stars align properly for Mr. Anderson, the employees who keep the company running efficiently (at all levels) will not accept the buyout offer. If he is not so lucky, he might be in for a long and painful recovery period to rebuild his workforce.

Feeding America Holds Top Position at the Halfway Mark

It's been very gratifying to receive so much positive feedback from clients regarding Nobscot's Charity Holiday Gift. It appears that HR professionals are both incredibly generous and happy for a good excuse to avoid high caloric treats.

After one full week and approximately 100 votes, Feeding America is holding strong in the top position. Habitat for Humanity made a big leap from eighth place into second place. Big Brothers and Big Sisters remains in the top three in third position.

Feeding America is the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity. Each year, the Feeding America network provides food assistance to more than 25 million low-income people facing hunger in the United States, including more than 9 million children and nearly 3 million seniors.

Feeding America’s network of more than 200 food banks serves all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.The Feeding America network secures and distributes more than 2 billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually.

For every $1 donated, Feeding America helps provide 20 pounds of food and grocery products to men, women and children facing hunger in our country.

Habitat for Humanity is a global home-building movement comprising more than 2,000 local affiliates, state support organizations and national organizations in more than 90 countries.

HFHI seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world, and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action. Habitat invites people of all backgrounds, races and religions to build houses together in partnership with families in need. Habitat has built more than 250,000 houses around the world, providing more than one million people in more than 3,000 communities with safe, decent, affordable shelter. Habitat is founded on the conviction that every man, woman and child should have a simple, decent, affordable place to live in dignity and safety.

Founded in 1904, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is the oldest and largest youth mentoring organization in the United States. Big Brothers Big Sisters mentors children, ages 6-18, in communities across the country. Our mission is to help children reach their potential through professionally supported, one-to-one relationships with mentors that have a measurable impact on youth. National research has shown that positive relationships between youth and their Big Brothers and Big Sisters mentors have a direct and measurable impact on children’s lives. Big Brothers Big Sisters currently operates in all 50 states, and in 12 countries around the world!

We'll continue the voting for another week and then will announce the winning charities on the 23rd.

One Client's Charity Gift Votes

I woke up to this great email from a Mentor Scout client this morning:

My votes are in:
1. Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, because my niece was a beneficiary of a program like this and I believe it saved her life. (she is currently a thriving Freshman at Smith College on a full scholarship package)

2. Boys and Girls Clubs; supporting this program is an investment in our future - our children

3. Feeding America; the current economic conditions means so many families are going hungry.

Thank you Beth & Nobscot associates for stepping up and modeling the true spirit of our holiday celebrations.

L.S.
Portland General Electric

It's not surprising that L.S. is a such a great advocate for corporate mentoring over at PGE, is it? Thanks, L!

Note: Email republished with permission.

Holiday Gift Update - Day 4

We are four days into the voting and Big Brothers Big Sisters and Feeding America remain in the top three for the Nobscot Charity Holiday Gift poll. There is now a tie for third place between Boys and Girls Clubs, Global Fund for Women and YMCA.


All ten of the charities, which were selected by Nobscot employees, are outstanding organizations. We'll be happy to send the donation gift money to whichever three come out on top when the voting is closed.

Emails about the charity gift went out to clients tonight so I suspect we'll see some big changes in the voting tomorrow.

The Holiday Gift Voting Has Begun

The voting has started for the Nobscot Charity Holiday Gift. So far Nobscot and Mentor Scout clients have chosen Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and YMCA as their top two choices. Feeding America and the Global Fund for Women are tied for third place. Which three will be the final winners?

A Unique Holiday Gift for Nobscot's Corporate Clients

For the holidays, we decided to do something a little different at Nobscot this year. As of today, when Nobscot clients login to their WebExit, Mentor Scout or FirstDays account, they see this:


When they click on that link, it takes them to a holiday message explaining that rather than sending cookie baskets, we're going to spend our holiday gift budget on helping the communities and the world around us. Our gift to our clients this year is the opportunity to select three charities to receive a charitable donation on their behalf.


Our team selected 10 amazing charities from which each client can choose up to three. We provided short descriptions of each charity on the voting page


And detailed descriptions of each charity on a separate page


Before or after they vote, they can review the current voting results.


When the voting is completed, Nobscot will send a donation of $1000 each to the top three charities.

Our team is very excited about this and we hope our clients will be too. I will keep you posted on the winning charities.

Are you LDD? Why We Are All Becoming Listening Deficient

How well do you listen these days? I mean really listen. Like the kind of listening that the old management books used to tell us to do when meeting with our employees. The door closed, good eye contact, mind focused 100% on the communicator kind of listening.

I have noticed that in the past year or so we have all become a little bit listening deficient. I'm sure you have noticed it too. The most egregious example of "Listening Deficit Disorder" (LDD) I can relate happened while I was conducting a demo a few weeks ago. I was on a phone conference call walking some people through an online demo of Mentor Scout. I was showing them the mentoring profile and talking about some of the different kinds of fields and how we customize the profile for each organization. I was really harping on the ability to customize - too much in fact so I told myself to stop talking and I asked if there were any questions thus far. The first question (and I'm not making this up), "Is there a way that we can customize the items on the profile?" I choked a little bit on my cocoa. That wouldn't have been so bad (I realize that people on demos are looking around at the software and not always following along with me) except that the same woman asked 2 more questions during the demo both of which were items I had just covered. The woman's colleagues were noticeably embarrassed.

Where has all this LDD come from? I think it stems from the following:

- The Internet has taught us all to be excellent skimmers. There is so much information out there on news sites, blogs and forums that we have to skim in order to survive each day. We also skim online because for many of us it is uncomfortable on the eyes/brain to read long, complex articles on a computer screen. (Note: some brain researchers suggest that we use different parts of our brain when we read word images on a screen than when we read words on paper.) Thus we skim. Maybe our visual skimming has taught us some kind of auditory skimming as well. Do you ever half-listen and only tune in if something interesting catches your fancy?

- Our minds are thinking about many things as once. Today, we don't just multi-task tasks. We also multi-task our thinking. I know that some of you can type a post about dogs while thinking about what's for lunch while sitting in a phone conference call and listen to a colleague that has just barged into your cubicle to ask you about something important like what happened on 24 last night.

I notice signs of LDD in more and more interactions and I am guilty of it as well. If I am working on a project or thinking about something and someone interrupts me with a question, a part of my mind stays tuned to my original task (so as not to lose the train of thought?) while I attend to the new issue. While at the time I feel like I'm listening carefully, in hindsight I'm probably not. How many balls can your brain juggle at one time? It takes some time to transition completely from focusing thoughtfully on one topic to another.

Some might say that Listening Deficit Disorder is a helpful tool for working effectively in the new 21st century workplace? I don't think so. A bad case of LDD sets us up for:

• misunderstandings
• incorrect conclusions
• less meaningful discussions
• a loss of good ideas that come from careful listening and participating
• time wasting due to the need for repetition
• frustration both from and toward the person with whom you are half-communicating
• sending subtle (or not so subtle) messages that you don't care about what the other person is saying

How does one overcome LDD? I suggest making the extra effort to go back to old-school form of listening. Do not multi-task when communicating with others. Drop everything fully, even things floating in your mind, when someone is speaking to you. Give 100% to your listening. Be aware of your mind wandering (starting to skim) and pull yourself back to listening. Make virtual eye-contact with those on the other end of the phone or IM. Show the listener you care and respect them by focusing completely on them. I think that you will find this strategy pays off in both better relationships and greater business success.

Solving Organizational Challenges with Enterprise 2.0

Interesting post from Enterprise 2.0 thought leader and academic Andrew McAfee on his prescription for restoring the operational and financial health of the big 3 US automakers. Mcafee imagines himself a newly appointed auto industry IT Director and discusses what he would do to heal his ailing company.

His solution is to implement a corporate wide talent networking type program which he calls an "emergent social software platform" or ESSP. He call for a comprehensive suite to include:

• blogs
• wikis
• discussion boards
• social networking service
• microblogging
• prediction markets
• praise and recognition

Why does he recommend this approach? Mcafee suggests that the answers to the company's challenges reside in the minds of the employees dispersed across the organization. Individuals themselves may not have the best answers but technology can be used to pull together the bits and pieces of employees' knowledge to find the right solutions.

Complicated buzzwords aside, I think it's a great approach. We are already beginning to see this kind of organizational social collaboration at non-troubled companies using talent networking. There is no reason to believe that it wouldn't work equally well with companies that have greater challenges to solve.

There are a few caveats though that Professor Mcafee turned imaginary IT Director should heed:

1) The initiative will not succeed if it's driven by the IT department. Although on the surface it seems like a technology solution, in reality it's a people solution that uses IT. As such, a good strong HR and/or Talent Development department needs to be the one spearheading and nurturing the implementation of the program. I have nothing against IT people but they do not have the appropriate skills and knowledge for this.

2) Because it's a people program, it needs to be nurtured - a lot. Really cool technology with all the requisite components is still just a platform - the "P" in McAfee's ESSP. The more challenging aspect is directing and focusing and shaping the use of the platform to create the end result that the company is seeking, that is actionable solutions. In this case, success is not in the journey, it's in the destination.

3) Beware of information overload. Companies that utilize suggestion and feedback systems often become overwhelmed with the amount of information that they capture. Be prepared to deal with an abundance of both good and bad information.

4) Remember that the Wisdom of Crowds only works when each individual in the group is more likely to be right than wrong. As Cass Sunstein pointed out in When Crowds Aren't Wise, crowd think fails if each individual is more likely to be wrong than right. Therefore, it's important to address the right questions to the right people who have the information to be correct, individually, more often than not. Making decisions based on faulty group think will not help the company succeed.

5) A company like any of the big automakers comes with a lot of baggage. There is a history, a corporate culture, there are long standing policies, long service employees and union contracts. The roll-out of the program will need to be integrated in such a way that does not conflict. The employees need to be enthusiastic about participating. If it's not handled well, they will end up with lots of employee eye-rolling and complaints.

Therefore, I suggest the following:
The organization should prepare in advance the objectives and specific challenges they wish to solve with the system. They should identify a team from HR that will work with divisional managers on tailoring the program to meet the objectives. A senior executive should be found to help champion the program. A methodology should be in place for reviewing the information and separating the wheat from the chaff. An ongoing plan should be made for keeping the program energized. Tools should be available for reporting and analyzing on usage and results.

The Election is Over: Reconnecting Red and Blue Employees in the Workplace

The Presidential election may be over but the negative affects of a long and divisive campaign season on workplaces have only just begun. Tensions are running high. Things have been said in anger that can’t be easily forgotten. Respect between colleagues has been diminished. Like the nation itself, it’s time now for companies to begin the healing process to reconnect their red employees with their blue employees.

If there is political animosity in your organization, set a goal to have all rifts healed by inauguration date January 20, 2009.

Here are some tips:

1. Make sure that all campaign paraphernalia has been removed from each employee’s workspace and all common areas.
2. Ask employees not to debate their political differences any further and be prepared to deal with disciplinary issues on a case-by-case basis.
3. Keep employees busy and focused on both individual and departmental goals and the work effort required to reach those goals.
4. Discuss the importance of coming together as a team and conduct team building exercises if necessary.
5. Have an executive communication (via corporate-wide meeting, teleconference or email from the CEO) describing a shared vision of the future with employees working and winning together.
6. Reinforce the common bonds between employees with activities that both blue and red employees can participate in together such as charitable events, sports, etc.
7. Provide mentoring and peer networking opportunities to help build bridges between employees of diverse backgrounds.
8. If not already in place, create new policies that limit political debate and political signs, buttons and t-shirts on the work premises.

To borrow from the President Elect, the road ahead may be long and the climb may be steep but if everyone works together we will get there. Yes we can.

It Hurts to Think - So We Don't

When we were kids, I used to tease my sister for saying that she didn't like to think. She used to say that it "hurt her brain." It turns out that she was right. New brain research shows that some of the brain waves produced when the prefrontal cortex is "thinking" are the same ones that are produced when you plunge your hand into a bucket of ice cold water!

Then how do we think all day without being in constant pain? Evidently we don't.

According to training and now persuasion expert Russell H. Granger in his very interesting book The 7 Triggers to Yes, we leave most of the daily decisions to the more primitive brain structure, our old friend the amygdala. The amygdala is one of the simpler brain structures, fully developed at birth and long considered the emotional area of the brain. The amygdala does not do any heavy lifting in terms of weighing facts and applying logic but it does surprisingly make many decisions for us. Says Granger, "People use the emotional parts of the brain to make what they believe to be rational decisions."

Why? Because it hurts! The brain has to work hard to think logically. Scientists claim that the brain consumes 300 percent more caloric energy when engaged in cognitive thinking then when in the automatic mode. (hmmm.....)

Granger's book teaches us that if information comes into the brain with certain conditions that he calls "triggers," the amygdala will make and act upon decisions without ever involving the complex thinking area of the brain. That way, we avoid the pain and energy drain of complex thinking.

Here's my analogy. The amygdala (Amy) is like our own personal receptionist who has been with our company (Brain Corp.) for years. Amy, played by a Jennifer Tilly like character, can handle most requests that come in herself. She doesn't like to bother the prefrontal cortex, The Executive, because he, played by...errr...Bill Gates... will create all kinds of pain for everyone while solving the problem. Sometimes Amy oversteps her boundaries and makes decisions on things that would have been better decided upon by The Executive but Amy wants to spare the company the pain.

For those seeking to persuade, there are certain conditions under which Amy feels comfortable making the decision herself. If the information is presented by a respected authority and/or by a trusted friend, she will generally not bother The Executive. If the information is presented in the form of a comparison with one answer appearing much better than another, Amy is free to act on her own. If the information appeals to her hopes and dreams or helps her avoid something that she fears, that is (literally) a "no-brainer." If the request is for something that is consistent with things she has done in the past, she will be comfortable to act without asking for evaluation and logic from The Executive.

This kind of thinking, or non-thinking as the case may be, takes place in every one of us. It is not gender-based; I only used the term she/her to match the name Amy for amygdala. We all have an amygdala making decisions for us all day every day without consulting the complex thinking portion of our brains. We respond quickly and automatically most of the time. Says Granger, "All people most of the time, and most people all of the time, are in the automatic mode."

People use the emotional parts of their brains to make what they consider rational decisions. Emotional context helps you make the best choice, often in a split second --long before the rational centers of the brain are activated. Therefore we must learn to primarily address our requests to the emotional parts of the brain rather than to the brain's rational centers.

The book is very interesting and informative. It explains both how and why the brain functions under certain conditions plus describes in detail how you can apply various triggers to easily persuade people to agree to your point of view or sale pitch. It is also a good reminder for all of us to be aware of our own decision making process. If we seek to make wise decisions on important issues, we should take the extra time and accompanying brain-pain to use the thinking part of the brain. Not only will we have smarter outcomes, we may burn up some extra calories in the process!

What Happens When a Luddite Becomes a Tech Entrepreneur? Great Software.

I was wondering last night, as I began to "tweet" for the first time, how a semi-luddite like myself could successfully lead a technology company like Nobscot Corporation.

I don't use a cell phone. I don't like to talk to people on the phone when I'm not in work mode and when I am in work mode I like to be at my desk concentrating not at the grocery store.

I have an old T-Mobile Sidekick that I bring with me when I travel but as my colleague Raquel likes to tease me I barely know how to use it. (Though I must say that the user interface is incredibly intuitive and the os seems rock solid.)

I set up a Facebook page for the Mentor-me-Meg campaign but I don't post anything on it and I stopped accepting new friend requests after 15. I don't want my life to be that open, I don't have time to fuss with keeping it up-to-date, I don't want any vampire bites.

MySpace makes me dizzy.

LinkedIn initially did not impress me because I kept asking - "Now what?" Today, though, I think they did a nice job of turning it into something useful. (Here is a link to my profile.)

Reddit, Digg and other news aggregators would eat up all my time if I were to read all the interesting links that are posted. I like to focus on my work and when I'm not working I like to think about or brainstorm ideas for work. When I'm not working or thinking about working I like to read fiction and watch dvds and walk on the beach. Who has time for all this technology??

So you have to wonder - How do I run a tech company?

It dawned on me that maybe it's my luddite tendencies which make me shun technology that is unnecessary, ill-conceived, cool but time sucking (or potentially dangerous in the case of cell phones) that allow me to develop technology that is simple, useful and does the job that needs doing.

One of the things I like best about Nobscot and Mentor Scout is that the software helps solve specific Human Resources problems (how do you figure out why high performers are leaving? How do you match mentors and mentees in a large mentoring program?) and does so with no more/no less than what you need, want and expect it to do. Maybe we need more semi-luddites in the Industry.

Top 5 Worst Human Resources Practices for Surviving the Bad Economy

Right now we are seeing companies take drastic moves to survive the bad economy. I am probably going to shock a few people by suggesting that some best practices may turn out to be your worst nightmares.

1) Early Retirement. Early retirement is often touted as the panacea for reducing payroll. You allow those nearing retirement to leave with a generous package and reduce your payroll by a significant amount. Unfortunately, in practice things rarely work out as you envision. What happens if your best employees accept the package, take jobs at your competitor and your mediocre seniors say, "No thanks?" I have seen that situation play out and it takes a number of years for a company to recover from this mistake. Luckily for me, I've been at the competitor company who picked up the top talent that "retired" from across the street.

2) Voluntary Severance. This has the same consequences as early retirement only the mistake is more pervasive. With voluntary retirement you can rationalize that the employees will be retiring soon anyways. The performance loss will be limited. With voluntary severance you risk losing large numbers of your best employees (and you pay them for that pleasure!) In an economic downturn, you need your best employees to help you survive. After your voluntary severance when you survey the damage and begin to rebuild you may find that you don't have the necessary troops. You've lost the battle and the war.

3) Hiring Freeze. A hiring freeze is just plain dumb. What are you going to do when key people leave key positions? Similar to retirement and voluntary severance, a hiring freeze takes away your control on the quality of your staff. In bad economic times, it's even more critical that you have great employees doing great jobs.

There is nothing more de-motivational than a hiring freeze. Think about the panic that will be evoked every time someone leaves. In most cases, the 40 hours of work that a departing employee leaves behind doesn't just evaporate. There will also be "exceptions" (read by employees as special treatment) for managers with high influence or critical positions to fill. This destroys any bit of camaraderie that might exist between managers, between departments and between staff. Instead, implement a "hiring scrutiny." Review each position to see if there is a better way to streamline the workflow. Restructure where you can, hire where you must. Which is what you should be doing anyways, isn't it?

4) Not Terminating Dead Wood FIRST. Companies often use "layoffs" in order to terminate the proverbial dead wood - problem employees that have been allowed to stay due to wimpy management. It need not take a RIF for managers to do their job. You do not need to provide outplacement and severance to poor performers. During a previous economic downturn when I was Staffing Manager at a company of about 2000 employees, before we undertook a RIF we conducted a comprehensive review of employee performance. Did we discover many employees who had been on probation and performance improvement plans that had failed to improve? If I may borrow this phrase, "You betcha."

5) Not Being Creative. Get your HR team together for a brainstorming session. What kind of program(s) can you create that will reduce payroll while still maintaining productivity? How about offering 30 hour work weeks? Some form of job sharing? I don't know what the answers will be but I do know that you will be able to come up with some winners.

The bottom line is this: Manage out poor performers, consider creative ideas in scheduling or other areas, and then RIF if you must. Conduct a controlled RIF where you determine which positions stay and which are cut and then select the best employees to fill the remaining positions. Be careful your selections are non-discriminatory, provide appropriate severance and outplacement assistance (which can often be done in-house by your recruiters) and then focus on your survivors.

Would You Pay Applicants to Interview? Not I.

When I hire new employees I look for people who are excited about the opportunity and not just in it for the money. This has served me pretty well throughout my years as a business professional, entrepreneur, recruiter, and HR Staffing Manager.

Which makes me really scratch my head in wonder about the new employment website that requires companies to pay applicants simply for the benefit of interviewing them. Applicants set a price for how much the company must pay them which appears to range from a couple hundred dollars to close to $1000.

The pitch is that passive job seekers will come out of the woodwork if you show them the money. Not just show them the money but deposit it in their bank accounts after the interviews as well - regardless of whether or not you hire them. The idea is that once this "outstanding" applicant interviews, of course, they will be so excited about your opportunity....well, you know how the rest is supposed to play out.

The financial justification that they are hoping to persuade hiring managers of is that since companies pay more in recruiting fees, then why not pay the applicants instead?

This whole concept is just wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin.

• After the initial burst of PR wears off, this job board will have the same candidates that are applying through every other job site.
• Do you really want to hire someone who is interviewing so they can make a few extra dollars?
• A company using this service is potentially putting out the message that we are such a bad place to work that we have to pay people just to interview. Not exactly an "employer of choice" message.
• This sets the applicant up as being in control in any/all negotiations. The company in effect is saying that they need the applicant more than the applicant needs the company. Not a good position for negotiations.
• The comparison between paying recruiter fees (which are paid to experts and on a contingent basis) and paying applicants to interview is comparing apples to oranges. The only thing similar between the two is the end goal. Therefore it's unlikely that HR departments would ever see this as a valid replacement to justify the expense.

When I think about all the applicants that I have interviewed throughout my career, the idea of me paying them is...well... just plain silly. Now the other way around...

So, at the risk of pulling a Ken Olsen, the then CEO of Digital Equipment who in 1977 predicted that no one would ever want a computer on their desk, I really can't imagine this becoming a successful new HR paradigm. Email me at bncarvin-at-nobscot-dot-com if you agree or disagree.

Rules of Thumb for Hiring in Start-Up Companies

Bob Warfield over at the Smoothspan blog ponders how Start-Up companies, which should be running lean and mean, are able to cut 10% or more of their staff as they are being asked to do by their Venture Capital investors. He suggests that in a start-up environment, you should never have a single employee that is not indispensable to your success. I agree.

Warfield also provides some good rules-of-thumb for hiring in a start-up environment. Nothing earth shattering but all good reminders. For example:

Hire doers not managers. Look for people comfortable with wearing more than one hat. Don't hire in anticipation of demand.

I think in general we are seeing start-ups being a little bit more responsible in this regard. I can remember during the dot-com heyday that the mantra (from the VCs ironically) was to hire 100 employees at "web speed." 100 people! I always wondered what those employees could possibly be doing.

I still run into start-up companies that have 25 people when they could do with 12 (or 5!) or 35 people when they could do with 20 but admittedly it's not nearly as egregious as in those crazy early days of Web 1.0.

Let's hope that the slowing economy is put to use as a good opportunity for companies to, once again, work a little smarter.

Employee Retention Needs Similar Across the Globe

Employee Retention is not just a North American challenge. In some global markets, the rate of employee turnover is reaching close to unsustainable levels. According to an article in MIT Sloan Management Review Fall 2008, some companies in India are experiencing turnover rates of young professionals of up to 50% per year. Can you imagine 100% turnover every 24 months?

India's initial approach to solving the turnover crisis appears to be similar to the United States tactic during the dot-com era. That is, increase salaries. Indian employees working for multi-national corporations are projected to receive average salary increases of 14% per year, following on last year's average increase of 12.6%. This is the largest expected increase world-wide as reported by ECA International's Salary Survey for 2007-2008.

Unfortunately, as most of us in Human Resources have learned (the hard way), higher salaries don't effectively plug the turnover drain. In fact, I will theorize that increasing salaries not only doesn't solve the problem, it also serves to exacerbate the situation as companies compete with one another to offer the best pay. Creating a talent pool of "money-hoppers" causes instability for the entire market as employees bounce from company to company.

Which brings us back to India and the MIT Review article. This short piece titled, "How to Retain Talent in India" discusses the findings of research conducted by the Villanova School of Business on the non-monetary rewards that retain employees within the high turnover job market of India. The research consisted of conducting and analyzing approximately 4800 surveys of employees in 28 different companies regarding their attitude about their employers and their intentions to stay or leave the company.

The results are not shocking but they are organized and presented nicely. The researchers found four areas that contribute to employee retention:

• performance management practices
• professional development practices
• quality of supervision
• level of social responsibility of the company

These four areas were shown to drive employee satisfaction and pride in the organization which was further correlated with the likeliness of the employee to stay (or leave).

Interestingly, the researchers found that in a fast paced market like India (and one can extrapolate this to other markets) employers need to focus on the above four areas from the very first days of each employee's career with the company.

The best companies drive employee satisfaction and pride by providing management support, training and professional opportunities early on, says (Jonathan P.) Doh, who is director of the Center for Global Leadership at Villanova. Just how early? In the high velocity Indian marketplace, the new employee honeymoon is so short that employers should start an employee's professional development plan on his or her first day, the author's advise. 'Our findings suggest that even six months from the start date is probably too late,' Doh says. [At that point] the employee is already making decisions about whether to stay around or not."

Professor Doh suggests that if employees do not receive support early on, they will seek it out elsewhere. This is consistent with what we are seeing in the US market with the Generation Y population. For many employees, the job is viewed strictly in terms of the development opportunities it provides with little thought or care about the employee's responsibility in helping the company succeed. (However the tide may be changing on this - more in another post on this topic.)

Two recommendations from the researchers include:

1. Target high potential employees early on and create accelerated development plans for them.
2. Train supervisors on how to best provide support and development for employees

To which I will add a third suggestion that addresses all of these areas:

• Develop mentoring programs, particularly niche mentoring programs for high performers, new supervisors, new employees and other difficult to retain populations like women and diverse employees.

The research addressed in this article was conducted by Professor Doh along with Stephen A. Stumpf and Walter Tymon also from Villanova and Michael Haid of Right Management.

The Best Human Resources Recruiter Movie Ever

I love when I come across HR in fiction books and movies. Last night, I saw the greatest movie for recruiters. It's called The Method and is a Spanish film by director Marcelo Piñeyro. The title refers to an assessment method used by the corporate "Personnel Officer" called the Grönholm Method. Here's an excerpt from a New York Times review:

In this Spanish comedy, based on a play by Jordi Galcerán, candidates for an executive job gather at their potential employer’s headquarters for the better part of a day and participate in exercises intended to test their ingenuity and expose the group’s weakest members....Much of “The Method” takes place in and around a conference room fitted with computers that let candidates see one another’s résumés, and that ominously switch off when one of them is booted out. We’re told that one of the candidates is a mole for the employer, but that tidbit might not be true.

If you are in Human Resources or Recruiting put this on your must-see movie list.

What Is The Best Pricing Model - Dynamic or Static?

An article in the summer MIT Sloan Management Review on dynamic pricing reminded me how much I dislike the concept of variable and negotiable pricing. Dynamic pricing is described by author Arvind Sahay as "where prices respond to supply and demand in real or near-real time." Sahay suggests that dynamic pricing provides a way to "reap higher profits" in every individual sale. That sounds well and good however my concern with dynamic pricing is that it also offers a way to frustrate, antagonize and anger customers in every sale as well.

The airline industry provides an excellent example of how dynamic pricing works against the airlines best interests. The pricing has become so variable for airline tickets that the flier or prospective flier never feels comfortable that he or she is receiving a fair and reasonable price. The stressed out customer then begins to scurry around seeking out a better price or confirmation that this is the best possible price they can get. Will this customer end up making the sale with the original airline that they looked at? Or will the dynamic pricing model result in lost sales to the airline?

How about the ultimate in variable pricing, car shopping. How many people shudder at the mere thought of purchasing a car through a dealership and why is the experience so distressing? Looking at new cars is not painful, nor is the actual purchasing of the car which most people find exciting. The cringe factor is from the negotiating game - "Wait while I talk to my manager". How many people browsing in car dealerships decide to walk out the door because they don't have the fortitude on that particular day to go through the variable pricing negotiation process?

At my company, Nobscot Corporation, we have a sliding price scale with smaller companies paying less for their WebExit subscription and larger companies paying more. This coincides with the amount of resources a large company will use relative to a smaller company. The subscription rate for each company size is fixed at the most reasonable rate that Nobscot can offer so that all subscribers know that they are paying the same prices as every other comparable organization.

Often during the sales process, a future client will ask if we will lower the price. Our first reaction is always the same, "would that be fair to our good clients who have been paying us our standard rates?" Of course not. Our second reaction is "if you don't feel our exit interview system is worth the subscription fees, then you probably shouldn't be choosing to work with us."

Static reasonable pricing as opposed to dynamic pricing may not maximize the profits on the individual sale but by giving prospective customers the peace of mind that they are getting the best deal possible, static pricing increases both the number of sales and the satisfaction level on those sales. Just because a company can over-charge customers doesn't mean it's a good idea.