Author Archives: Ben

Talent Leadership (Book Review)

Talent Leadership book by John Mattone

“Talent leadership” seems like the most broad category you can possibly imagine. I couldn’t stop the thought from entering my mind; however, less than ten pages into this book I realized that it was not going to be what I expected. This thing is full of highly detailed, hands-on activities that you can use to identify and develop your high potential employees. This is even a succession planning handbook, among other things. The diverse topics under one “umbrella” make “talent leadership” a great title for this book.

talent leadership bookWhat I liked

  • The talent leadership book kicks off early with a great quote: accurate information drives effective strategies. Want to make the right choices in terms of overall direction/strategy? Make sure you have accurate information (not only with lagging indicators, but with leading indicators).
  • A survey by SHRM-the Society for Human Resource Management-points out the #1 problem for organizations today: building a strong pool of successors for each position/level. If you haven’t had a conversation on succession planning within your organization, you’re behind the curve. To be honest I have brought it up a few times, but without a plan for identifying and preparing those candidates, the conversation always moves to the back burner.
  • A, B, C players–if you don’t know which one someone is, how do you know if you should invest in them or pass them over for development opportunities? It’s a core talent leadership question that you need to be able to answer. For more on the A/B/C discussion, see my series on the topic (part 1 and part 2).
  • The 10 key elements of a strong performance management system: employee involvement, valid performance criteria, year-round process, proper preparation, avoiding stereotypical thinking, input from others, consistency, rating integrity, dialogue, and employee ownership. In my organization I’d say we are doing at least six of those really well. How about you? 
  • In the appendix (page 249 for those following along) there is a phenomenal diagnostic tool for evaluating the health of your succession management program. I’d say step one is to get one in place if you don’t already have one,  but step two is to continuously evaluate it to make sure it’s producing results. This tool will help you manage that part of the talent leadership puzzle well.

Wrap up

And there you have it. If you’re looking at how you can identify and develop your own high potential employees and set up a strong succession planning system based on facts instead of “Bob looks like he might be a high potential, so let’s pay him more to make him stay with us.” Click here to get your copy.

Click here for other book reviews or to learn about why you need a reading list for leadership.

401k savings plans are (not) for suckers

The other day my buddy Laurie posted about 401k plans being for “suckers.” After reading her comments and those of some of her audience, I felt led to respond. Here’s a snippet:

Some HR professionals are horrified by the way you manage your money, but I feel your pain. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip. So I have a challenge for HR: Want your employees to invest in retirement? Pay them more so they can take care of the basics and then invest. Until then, 401ks are for suckers…
Full article

Stating the obvious

This revolutionary idea is going to astound everyone.

You can’t invest and save for the future when you’re buried in debt. 

It’s not just the millenials walking out of college with massive debt. The baby boomers are pushing back retirement because they have too many obligations to stop working. And unless they are total losers, they’re probably making more money than they were as entry level peons. Yet they are still in debt. Weird, huh?

Paying people more money isn’t going to solve the problem by itself.

Personal finance is *personal*

Here’s a crazy idea: Spend less than you make.

Yeah, but [insert excuse here].

I’ve been there. It’s hard. But it’s necessary. I haven’t lived the perfect life, but I have learned a few things via my own experiences and those I’ve observed in others (friends, family, employees, etc.).

My imperfect story

I have a great job. It wasn’t always this way. The day after I got married, I sent in my offer letter to start my first “real” job. I signed up for a whopping $9/hr data entry gig. It was torture. I hated it. And I knew that there was no way we would be able to survive and pay our bills.

So I studied, worked my tail off, and made myself more valuable to my employer. Then my wife got a job. We scrimped and saved. Looking back now I have no idea how we made it. It was very tight, and we didn’t live extravagantly. We didn’t have cable. We went without internet access. We cooked almost all of our meals. We carpooled to work. We really tried to keep things as tight as possible, because at that point we were living the paycheck-to-paycheck nightmare.

And, yet, I made sure to put money into my 401k at work.

Why? Because I took five minutes to pull up a financial calculator and run the numbers. As a 21 year old if I just put in $100 per month (which is a LOT for someone making $9/hr) from age 21 to age 60, I’d have over a million dollars in my retirement retirement fund. And that’s assuming I’m such a loser that I never make any more money than the $9/hr and that my company matches 0% of the contributions (the majority match around 4%).

But then I found another job (and took a pay cut voluntarily so I could get into HR). They didn’t match anything, so I didn’t put any money in. That’s also around the time that my wife and I were saving money like crazy for an adoption. We were determined not to go into debt, because one little misstep could lead us into a financial death spiral. At least if we were cash flowing the expenses we could bail if things didn’t go as expected.

How our employees do it

Recently I was putting together some data for a benchmarking tool, and it all related to our 401k plan, how employees utilize it, etc. I quickly noticed something. We basically match 6% if an employee puts in 7%, so there’s a big incentive to use it.

However, some of our staff have never even touched the 401k, despite the offer. For a hypothetical person making $100k (enough to cover the “basics,” I would say), that is an additional $6k that we’re ready to give them if only they would commit their own dollars to the account.

People get performance-based pay increases on a fairly regular cycle. 99% of the staff don’t touch their 401k contribution percentage at that time, even though they could put half of the increase into the account and never even notice it was gone.

This isn’t a scientific study, but I’d be willing to bet that it’s a fair approximation of the overall workforce. Some people make 401k contributions a priority, and others don’t. It’s a personal choice we all have to make for ourselves.

The only time to touch your 401k

With regard to the article that Laurie mentioned, there are times that families need to dip into the 401k for extreme emergencies. But the only time that is a truly “extreme” emergency is when you’re going to face foreclosure/bankruptcy and lose everything. That’s a personal choice, and the only comment I have here is to caution you to discern what is a true emergency (a child needs a medical procedure) from what is merely an urgent non-emergency (your car breaks down and needs $2,000 in repairs).

The thing to remember is that when you take money from your 401k, you’re losing up to 40% of it (depending on your tax bracket). The IRS charges you your tax rate plus a 10% penalty to get your hands on that money.

Ever since my children were born we’ve had a small emergency fund to help us in case a true emergency arises. When I had a car accident in 2011 and totaled my vehicle, we were able to shop around and find a suitable replacement without having to rush out and pick up a car payment. Again, I’m not the expert and don’t have all of the answers, but this is how we live and it has been a relief for us. The more of a buffer you build between you and “life,” the less chance of an emergency derailing your financial future.

Still learning

I’m not a 401k or financial expert. I can’t speak to every person’s unique situation. But I have learned a good bit about behaviors and personal finance in my lifetime. People make their choices about priorities and then need to live with them. Decide to put 0% into your 401k so you can get a new car with a $450/month payment (the US average)? That’s your call, but don’t look at me when you decide it’s time to retire.

In case you’re wondering, for a 40 year old, that 450/month payment would be worth about $450k by age 60. Hope you enjoy the car!

The workplace application

When I’m throwing out these examples or telling my own story, you need to see these not as disconnected, random events. These are very real examples, and many of your employees are living out financial train wrecks. 40% of the employees in your organization (statistically) are living paycheck to paycheck. They can’t afford to take time off, relax, de-stress, etc.

Stop and think for a second. If you were getting calls from creditors, facing financial issues, etc. at home, how productive do you think you’d be at work?

I’d love to hear some thoughts in the comments below. Am I the only one who thinks that employees need to get their personal finance affairs in order? Any comment that doesn’t contribute to the discussion in some way will not be published. Attacks and foul language are not allowed here. 

 

Just a Quick Note Today

I’ve had a wild ride this weekend. A few weeks ago my sister-in-law passed me the Hunger Games series. I’m a big fiction and science fiction nut, but other things (see below) have kept me busy ever since she passed them over. I started the first book on Saturday and just finished it last night. I was trying to avoid being caught up in the public hype, but I truly enjoyed the book. About to start the second book, and I’m wondering if it can live up to the high standards set by the first…

The real news

On a more important note, after several months of research, development, testing, shooting videos, and working with my superstar beta tester group, the Entry Level HR course is finally open to the public.

The video below will answer most of your questions (click through if you’re an email subscriber), and for those it does not, you can check out this page for more info.

I’m taking a breather today, so this will be a historically short post. Check back tomorrow for more HR/talent management goodness!

HR Job Qualifications-Are There Any?

I’m pretty sure that passion isn’t one of the HR job qualifications that people look for, otherwise we wouldn’t have need for the other posts in this series. If you missed them, we talked about:

HR job qualificationsSo what are HR job qualifications and how can you get them?

I think there are three big “must haves” to set someone up for success, whether in HR or not.

The three key HR job qualifications

  • Developing solid work habits around your strengths
  • Establishing credibility through solid, dependable performance
  • Taking control of your own personal and professional development

Think about the best leaders, managers, and employees you’ve ever met. Chances are they fulfilled at least one, if not all three, of these items. Again, they aren’t solely HR job qualifications, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t important.

Let’s look at each and how they can feed into your career success.

Developing work habits

Thousands of articles are created every single day focusing on topics like leadership and how to lead others. Yet so many of us are lacking the critical skills and knowledge to lead ourselves. Taking the time to learn your own strengths and weaknesses and how to leverage them into career success should be the very first step in a long, but very rewarding, journey.

Learn what you do well and make it your goal to do as much of that as possible.

Establishing credibility

Once you have a foundation of skills that you can use, it’s time to “get credible.” I personally measure credibility in a few ways, but the key one for me is how often people come to me for advice or information on a topic. Everyone can be a credible expert in their topic given enough time, but most of us need a measure of credibility today, not in weeks/months/years.

I believe it’s possible to develop credibility rapidly and with relatively little effort if you harness the strengths you have and find high-value opportunities to apply them regularly.

Professional development

You can stop learning when you’re dead. Until then, every day is an opportunity to learn, grow, and do new things. If you’re fighting for a new job or a promotion, and you have very similar qualifications to the other candidate, then a strong slate of professional development activities can help to set you apart from the crowd.

Every day is a learning opportunity, and if you don’t seek out ways to continuously improve yourself, you’ll be left behind.

So, what do you think of these HR job qualifications? Would these characteristics make someone more appealing for an HR role? As someone who works with a lot of young (and new) HR pros, I think so.

Digging deeper

HR job qualificationsI have developed a video course to help entry level HR pros find and get their first job and then knock it out of the park. If you are an entry level HR pro or someone looking to get their first HR job, I highly encourage you to check it out!

The course is made up of over an hour of video content, several bonus eBooks, and weekly articles and assignments to help the training “stick” for the long term. These skills will carry you through your entire career; you just need to take the time to learn them!

Getting Entry Level HR Positions (Video)

The only people who seem to know about getting entry level HR positions are those who already have an entry level HR job.

It’s a crappy system, and it needs to change.

As I said yesterday, we have to stop setting people up to fail. We need to help the next generation understand what it will take to break into HR and getting entry level HR positions. College isn’t preparing them. For the most part, parents aren’t preparing them.

Who will take up the call and join me?

Today I’m going to teach the newbies in the audience about entry level HR positions. Everything I know is based on my own experience over the past few years, both my own and helping others with getting entry level HR positions. In the short video below I share some basic ideas that have helped me immensely any time I had to look for a job change within my HR career. The three keys?

  • Networking
  • Professional Development
  • “Doing HR” wherever you are

Video: Entry Level HR Positions

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Digging deeper

getting entry level HR positionsI have developed a video course to help entry level HR pros find and get their first entry level HR positions and then knock them out of the park. If you are an entry level HR pro or someone looking to get their first HR job, I highly encourage you to check it out!

The course is made up of over an hour of video content, several bonus eBooks, and weekly articles and assignments to help the training “stick” for the long term. These skills will carry you through your entire career; you just need to take the time to learn them!

It’s easy to learn how to get a job in HR, but it isn’t necessarily easy to do it!

Set Up to Fail-Stop Sabotaging the Next Generation

Tomorrow night I’m going to talk with some local HR students about what “real” HR is like outside of the classroom and the textbook. We’re going to discuss what the actual workload is like for an entry level HR professional. Even though it is routine for me, it’s like a secret formula to these students.

And it has to stop. 

It’s been going on forever

I went to college purposely to get my degree in HR. I knew that’s what I wanted to do, and I worked my tail off to learn everything I could. And yet, when I got into my first HR job, I found out that 80% of what I needed to know about HR had never even been explained.

One of my earliest blog posts in my career (I’m not linking here because the writing style back then embarrasses me a bit) was on this topic, and I’m amazed that in the years since I graduated, not a single thing has changed for many students.

I receive emails on a weekly basis from a variety of people, and all of them are reading from the same script. “I got my degree and now I’m trying to get into HR, but all the entry level jobs require HR experience. How am I supposed to get in?”

You know it’s true. I know it’s true. And yet, here we sit. Some of you already have your job and have forgotten about those who walk the same path you once did. They still need you (and me) to offer advice and inspiration.

Let’s set them up for success, not failure.

What we can do about it

This year one of my personal goals at work is to evaluate and test an intern program. I recently learned of another local company with a wildly successful HR internship program, and I wanted to get some pointers from them but their HR person just left. If you’ve done this before and have ideas to share, please feel free to email me.

The interns coming out of the program rave about the experience, and this thing was set up as an unpaid internship, so you know the experience had to be powerful and valuable to receive that kind of feedback.

Look for opportunities to do exactly what I’m doing tomorrow. Contact your local university or community college and see if you can stop by and talk with a class or some students after school about what we do and why it is a great career.

HR-we need some PR

Look at the stereotypical “bring your dad to work” elementary school program. You have the “cool” ones–firefighters, police officers, etc. Then you have the “blah” ones in suits. If you can’t explain what you do to a third grade child maybe you need to stop and figure out what the heck it is you do! By the way, I’ve had to talk with my wife’s third grade class dozens of times, and I’ve tweaked my response to “I help recruit great people to come and do work that they love. We make games that teach helicopter pilots how to fly.” That’s pretty darn cool for the kids to hear, and it opens the door for me to explain at a high level what I get to do on a daily basis.

I know we’re talking about college students, not elementary school kids, but the idea is the same.

I once heard an HR “professional” tell a group of college students that “HR was a terrible career choice” and that they should “start over and pick accounting, finance, or anything but HR.” Yeah, that guy needs to quit his job, go home, and shut up. This is an amazing profession; I just think we need better marketing/PR.

This week/month/year, look for opportunities to influence the next generation. Even if 99% of the kids you talk to end up going into another profession (and statistically, that’s probably a good estimate), they still have a positive connection with HR lodged in their brains. It can’t hurt, right?

Digging deeper

Entry level HR CourseI have developed a video course to help entry level HR pros find and get their first job and then knock it out of the park. If you are an entry level HR pro or someone looking to get their first HR job, I highly encourage you to check it out!

The course is made up of over an hour of video content, several bonus eBooks, and weekly articles and assignments to help the training “stick” for the long term. These skills will carry you through your entire career; you just need to take the time to learn them!

Global HR Issues (Book Review)

Global HR Competencies by Dave Ulrich, Wayne Brockbank, Jon Younger, and Mike Ulrich

global hr issues competencies

Global HR issues? I’m like most HR pros, and I’ll freely admit it. When I hear the word “global” I tend to ignore the rest of what’s being said. Honestly, who has time to think about this whole “global” thing when I have an HR department to run right here and now?

But, like many instinctive thoughts, it’s short-sighted and a poor plan for the future. When the team representing the Global HR Competencies book reached out to me, I knew it was time for my attitude about the global HR issues, and marketplace, to change.

What I liked

  • The entire book is full of examples that will make you sit in awe of the amazing organizations across the world that are leveraging HR to accomplish revolutionary things. The global HR issues are being addressed every day by smart people in smart organizations.
  • One company (Tata) from India has line managers and HR executives work together to identify industry trends and opportunities for competitive advantage; they then turn those opportunities into cultural attributes and behaviors to hire against. That’s powerful on so many levels (tying management and HR together, developing a plan and actually implementing it, etc.).
  • At Tata, HR is seen as the custodian of organizational values. Kind of like the keeper of touchstones mentioned here. Goes along with my premise that while HR is there to keep a finger on the “pulse” and communicate culture as needed, they should not be the ones creating the values.
  • If you read nothing else, the six purposes of HR mentioned in the book are worth the time to check them out.
    • HR pros should be the best thinkers in the organization on people issues.
    • HR pros must be equal partners with executives to accomplish the org’s purposes.
    • HR needs to be responsible for the talent and organizational agendas.
    • HR should contribute substantially to revenue growth.
    • HR needs to create and sustain economic intangibles that are valued and rewarded by capital markets.
    • HR should see itself as a source of competitive advantage–and create practices that support that view.
  • Look for opportunities to outsource items that aren’t key functions, whether it’s finding a payroll services provider, looking at a benefits consultant, or hiring an accountancy recruitment agency.
  • There are dozens of great examples and topics in this book–more than I can cover here. But I want to close with this high-impact quote from this book that should make us all stop and think for a moment: What is my company’s plan for an integrated set of HR products and services that meet the needs of our key stakeholders? How do stakeholders really rate the quality of what we are providing? Do I listen to and act upon their feedback?  

The empasis there is mine, but it’s something that we all need to be called out on once in a while. Yeah, you’re doing that “HR thing,” but what do your people really think of it? Is it getting the job done, or are there some serious changes that need to be made?

One of my responsibilities is being involved in our Process Improvement Group at work. It has opened my eyes to the fact that we are each in control of our own area. Accounting isn’t going to come in and change the HR policies. Contracts isn’t going to swoop in and clean up that terrible onboarding process.

It’s up to you (and me) to make that happen. If your people can’t see the value of what you provide as an HR professional, then why the heck are they keeping you around?

Wrap up-Global HR issues matter!

Obviously if your organization has any intentions of working on a global scale, this book will help you get some insights into other regions of the world and how their HR processes differ from those in the US. Don’t lose sight of the fact that some of these companies are wildly successful in their piece of the world despite heavy competition–that challenge isn’t limited to the North American continent, these are global HR issues. I’m definitely going to be doubling back to read more about the HR competencies and how to fine tune those within my organization. Whatever the case, feel free to click here to get your copy of the book.

Click here for other book reviews.