Author Archives: Ben

Tell your employees to take a hike

Today we have a guest post from one of the members of the NASHRM Programs committee. Take it away, Jane!

Tell your employees to take a hike. It’s good for them (and your company, too!). Be careful how you tell your employees to take a hike, though. This article is not about employee termination but rather wellness and good health.

One of the obvious ways to achieve good health and therefore better job performance is through staying active and physically fit. We all know that. But how much activity does the average person need? According to the Centers for Disease Control, all healthy adults aged 18-65 need moderate-intensity physical activity of 30 minutes 5 times/week, OR vigorous physical activity for 20 minutes 3 times/week. Additionally, we should all do strength-training of some sort 2-3 times per week, exercising our major muscle groups.

The key fact here for the HR professional is that the moderate 30 minutes can be accumulated throughout the day in three 10-minute sessions. It just might be in your organization\’s interests to suggest your employees take a 10-minute break for a healthy brisk walk and fresh-air break. It\’s a good way to clear one\’s mind so your employees will come back physically refreshed and mentally recharged.

The more active your employees are, the more alert, energetic and productive they will be. Another important aspect of good health and wellness is a peaceful environment. We provide that to working professionals at our facility. We are a community of all one-story buildings so our property is quieter than most, which is a great environment for working professionals.

Here\’s to good health for you and your co-workers!

Jane Pavis is a member of the Wellness Committee with Asbury United Methodist Church and Corporate Suites Manager for Abby Glenn~A Quiet Cove Corporate Suites and Apartments in Huntsville, AL.

Employee to HR Ratio

What is the ideal employee to HR ratio? How many employees do you need before it’s time to hire an HR person? Both of those are great questions, and they are fairly common, too. I was looking through the TribeHR blog the other day and saw this really cool infographic that explains that information and more. As an HR department of one, I can completely relate to some of this stuff! I’d be curious to hear what some of you might think about the correct staff to HR ratio or how that ratio might impact an organization (for better or worse). what is the ratio of hr people to employees?Here’s more info on how the focus on an HR to employee ratio has gotten out of control.

Finding the Right Cultural Fit

Tough fitEver play Tetris before? The goal is to line up geometric figures in complete lines to earn points. Making things fit is the name of the game.

The image on the left is a joke, because it’s simply not possible to complete a line with the rounded bottom.

In other words, success is impossible.

As recruiters and HR pros, we do our best to get people into our organizations that fit our culture. Sometimes it’s extremely frustrating when you find someone who looks like an all star but isn’t the right cultural fit for your business.

Trying to force a fit in this situation isn’t going to make things work. And that isn’t necessarily your fault.

Sometimes people just won’t fit.

But it’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s what separates Zappos from Wal-Mart. Keep that in mind.

Image credit: XKCD

Originally written as a guest post for Chris Ferdinandi over at RenegadeHR.net.

Feeling small

In the past few years, I have been a wrestling referee for high school and junior varsity matches. This past week I made the decision to go back and officiate this season, so I went to the introductory meeting. While I was sitting there, I felt like I was from two different worlds, and I learned some valuable lessons from the experience. These are random, stream of consciousness type ideas, but they are useful!

  • Give good directions. I wasn’t given directions and had a few minutes of panicked phone calls before I found the location. Imagine a job candidate feeling that way.
  • Make people feel comfortable. I stood there next to a handful of guys I am barely acquainted with, but half the crowd was made up of strangers. I’d have liked to have the chance to introduce myself and meet the others officially.
  • Have a very basic description of what to expect in the job. If I hadn’t already done the job for a few years, I’d have felt very unsure about what to expect for the coming weeks and months.
  • Going from the HR/manager view at my day job down to the hands-on, line staff level as a referee is an interesting leap. We have random, pointless rules to abide by, and there’s absolutely no visibility of senior leadership as a guiding force. Sound like your company, perhaps?
  • If you’re going to referee, then you have to go through the screwy annual performance review process like I describe in this video. That in itself is just nuts.
  • We went over new rules. One of them? You have to buy a special jacket if you plan to wear one. Um, guys, the season runs December to January. We are going to wear jackets. And we shouldn’t have to pay out of pocket to get a specific jacket you are forcing us to wear.
  • (Minor rant:) One year I got some black shoes, because you are supposed to wear them as part of your uniform. The problem was the only size and brand I could find in black was a size too small. Needless to say it didn’t work. After seven hours of running and jumping in tiny shoes, I put on my old ones which were not the regulation color. I received several comments about them, but nobody seemed to care when I explained why I couldn’t wear the black shoes. Sigh. Be aware that when people break the rules at work, they might sometimes have a really, really good reason for it. Don’t assume the worst!

Anyway, it took a lot of words but in the end I just felt small. I felt like I didn’t matter.

After being in a leadership position within my organization on a daily basis, I sometimes forget what it is like to not have the insider info, to depend on others to communicate changes and direction, and to be treated like just one more widget on an assembly line. Take a minute today to refocus your view on your people, and try to look at things from their perspective as often as possible. Remind them that you have their best interests at heart.

And please, please, PLEASE make them feel like a valuable asset to the organization (building an effective recognition program will help). They will appreciate it.

Work naked for all I care

Yesterday morning started off on the wrong foot. I had some big, heavy duty projects to work on. When that’s the case, I usually dress more comfortably (not quite as comfortably as the guy on the left, but it’s definitely more fun than wearing a tie). I say it helps me focus better; it might be the placebo effect, but hey, the results speak for themselves.

Anyway, I walk in and within five minutes a few people have given me that horrified look. You know the one. I can just hear them thinking…

He’s wearing jeans!?! Who died and made him El Presidente? He must do shoddy work, sleep in a tent, and eat roadkill when he’s not here looking like a slob. That redneck hillbilly goofball gives us all a bad name. I’d call HR, but, well, he’s it!

I had to speak up, and I fell back on one of my favorite principles when it comes to work: ROWE. The Results Only Work Environment basically says that you can work whenever, wherever, and wearing whatever, as long as the work gets done.

Funny side note-when I was looking for a good picture to go with this (yeah, not my smartest Google search ever) I found a hilarious list of reasons to go to work naked. My top 3 favorites:

  • Inventive way to meet that special person in HR
  • Your boss is always yelling, “I want to see your butt in here at 8:00 am!”
  • “I’d love to chip in, but I left my wallet in my pants.”

On days when it’s necessary, I will happily throw on a tie and be all presentable. When I’m dressed in that manner I feel a different kind of focus, and I feel like it’s appropriate for some interactions (though not for the same reason as the famed red sweater Robin Schooling talks about here). However, even if I choose to wear jeans and a t-shirt doesn’t mean that my work product all the sudden turns to crap.

Am I the only one? Does anyone else feel more relaxed and better focused when dressing down? 

Fitting the job to the person

I’ve been talking a lot about Pinnacle lately, but there are so many neat things we can do as a smaller company that I’ve never even considered in the past. A great example of that is the tendency to fit the job to the person on our Operations Team. Instead of rigidly defining what the position requires and recruiting for an exact fit, we define the minimum education/experience level, find a great culture fit, and find out how to customize the job to fit them.

It takes a great manager

The Operations Manager at Pinnacle holds a philosophy similar to Marcus Buckingham, which basically means giving people work they are really good at and letting others do the other tasks that they are uniquely suited for. The Ops Manager works hard to define what each team member likes and does well and strives to give them more of that kind of work. They’ll do it better than someone else, and it makes them happy. Tough to beat that kind of attitude when it comes to teamwork!

Our accounting team is a great example. We have two part time accountants working a job-share situation. They both do different pieces of the work, but they are a great fit for each other and for the type of work they do. Some companies would have turned them away because they wanted to work fluid, ever-changing part time schedules, but we found a synergy there that vastly outpaces what a single accountant could accomplish.

But you’re small!

I know, I know. We are a small company so we can bend the rules. However, if you have noticed, I used the example of one team/department, not the whole organization. And it’s certainly possible for one subset of employees to follow this model if their manager is willing to spend the time on it. I keep hammering culture fit and attitude. If you have two similarly qualified individuals, but one has enthusiasm and passion for the position, then harness that to make your team, department, and company better.

Have you ever managed a team and tried to fit the jobs to the people? Does your manager do it for you? 

Working with “monsters”

Happy Halloween!

Sometimes in the HR profession we run across people that others just can’t deal with. Whether it’s the guy with the body odor problem, the gossiping employee, or the disengaged segments of the workforce, we are the ones people turn to when things get sticky. Compared to the rest of the employees, they almost seem like monsters!

Click here to read Monsters at Work