Category Archives: General

Free PHR-SPHR Webinar

Because I talk fairly often about the PHR and SPHR exams, my friends over at Dovetail Software decided to ask if I would work with them on a series of webinars to help people get their feet wet when it comes to the HR certification arena. Naturally I jumped at the chance!

What to expect

There will be three 30-minute webinars, spaced out from this week until August. Here’s what you can expect:

  • Thursday, June 21st, 12:30-1:00pm Central-Session 1: Preparing for the SPHR/PHR Exam 101 – For this session we’ll establish a foundation and help you determine if, and how, you can take on the exam.
  • Thursday, July 19th, 12:30-1:00pm Central-Session 2: PHR/SPHR Study Guide Cliff Notes – In this webinar we’ll look at some of the content areas and I’ll give you some tips on what areas to focus on with a little more fervor.
  • Thursday, August 23rd, 12:30-1:00pm Central-Session 3: 25 Recertification Ideas – This session is going to help those who are already certified, because it will provide 25+ ideas for getting your PHR/SPHR recertification.

For now, let’s focus on getting started, shall we? The first piece is going to help get you up to speed on the latest changes from the HR Certification Institute. This 30-minute session will cover the difference between each certification, FAQs, and tips and techniques for preparing for and passing the certification exam. It\’s everything you could spend hours reading but don\’t want to… and it\’s FREE.

I am excited to be working with the fine folks at Dovetail Software, and I hope you guys can join the webinar this week and get some tips and tricks for passing the exams!

Excitement Should Come With a Warning Label

My excitement is greater than my mental capacity. -Will Brannon

Have you had one of these experiences lately? You know what I’m talking about–you make a sudden connection or realization, and for a brief moment your passion overwhelms your mind with potential possibilities.

In that instant, anything is possible. Anything can happen. “What if’s” and a hundred different scenarios play through your mind faster than you can possibly process them.

Sure, you’ll later rule out some of those ideas because they aren’t “feasible,” “traditional,” or “cost effective,” but for a few seconds that level of excitement made you invincible.

Haven’t had one of those moments in recent weeks? Anything I can do to facilitate one?

A Tale of Two Workplaces

One of my earliest posts talked about how a previous employer seemed to have a disproportionate ratio of reprimands to commendations. Here’s a snippet:

In my time working here, I\’ve seen hundreds (thousands?) of reprimands. I\’ve seen a single commendation. That leads me to two possibilities. One, there really aren\’t any other staff members who deserve being commended for performing well (not likely). Or two, there aren\’t any supervisors willing to commend someone for doing well (quite likely).

Or maybe it\’s more benign, and the supervisors really don\’t know the power of a short note letting someone know that he/she knocked it out of the park.

Whatever the cause, it\’s a problem that needs to be addressed. Check out your own ratio. I don\’t think you should be praising your employees daily for every little action, but when someone really takes up the slack and goes above and beyond, then it really wouldn\’t hurt to show some appreciation.

A world apart

Fast forward to today, and things couldn’t be more different. The problem I’m running into lately is the paradox of choice–too many reward options means that fewer rewards are made overall. I’m working hard on not adding more layers of tools for commending employees in case too much choice ends up slowing down the process.

We’ve had one person that I can think of in recent months that received a reprimand. In that same period, we’ve given dozens of awards for exemplary performance to people who absolutely deserved every bit of the reward (both monetary and verbal/written).

Affecting the bottom line

When I look at overall company performance for the long-term, I see a trend there as well.

  • The company that focused on telling people how they were doing things wrong? They went belly up. Bankrupt. Out of business.
  • The company that focused on telling people how they were doing things right? Morale is high. This year is slated to be the best yet.

Some people will tell you the “little” things like that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I would counter that those “little” things are what great companies are made of.

Which of the two workplace examples do you identify with? Why?

Psst-Your Greatness is Showing

I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on another company that we are competing with. Within five minutes of Google searching, it quickly became obvious that their website is woefully inadequate. Their site is 2-3 static pages of fluff (the majority of which is focused on their CEO’s history and accomplishments). They don’t mention what jobs they have, what their culture is like, or what kind of benefits they offer.

In short, it’s pretty darn crappy for anyone showing up there looking for information, including job searchers.

Let’s compare that with another company I ran across in my research. They aren’t a competitor, but I’m glad, because they look like an amazing company who people would be tripping over themselves to work for. In the screenshot below (click to make the image larger), you can learn some of their cultural norms, their mission, and there’s even a compelling call to action for job seekers at the end.

competitive culture

Here’s the text if you can’t read it:

Our Mission Statement

We play to win; Love to live; Create leaders; Give back; Become legendary

Want to make it your mission? Contact us.

Some of the differences in between these companies are obvious, and others are not, but job seekers are going to have a much better candidate experience at the second company than they would at the first! Step back, think like a job seeker, and take a look at what your website looks like. Is your greatness showing? 

ZipRecruiter-My Test Run

I like recruiting. For those that know me well, it’s funny, because I really am not that outgoing or verbose in person.

So why do I love recruiting? Maybe it’s because I get to talk about the place I work. Maybe it’s something else. But one of my biggest frustrations with recruiting is the time it takes. As a generalist I have a thousand other things to take care of at any given moment. I usually get off pretty easy, because I can get enough interest from a simple post that I don’t have to actively source candidates, but sometimes due to the position or location I have a harder time than usual.

That leads to more time spent searching and less time to devote to the other day-to-day activities I have to manage. If I could just get more applicants from a single post, that would save enormous chunks of time for me.

A potential solution?

The other day I received an email pointing me to ZipRecruiter. I’d never used or heard of the service, so I checked it out since I had a new position to post that day. I have to say that I really liked the interface and the ability to post to multiple job sites (including Craigslist). If you are looking for a tool that lets you post your jobs instantly to multiple sites, I recommend checking out ZipRecruiter to see if it might help you save some time and effort. I set it to automatically send people to our job posting in SmartRecruiters so I didn’t have two places to monitor applications.

My experience (your mileage may vary)

After more than a week of having our job posted through their service, I have not noticed an increased number of candidates from our usual flow. That could be due to the position type/location, but those are the facts as far as our job posting goes. Anyone else used ZipRecruiter before and have an experience to share?

Got a Minute? 9 Lessons for HR Professionals (Book Review)

9 lessons for hr professionals book coverWhen I received a review copy for Got a Minute: The 9 Lessons Every HR Professional Must Learn to be Successful, I had no idea I would enjoy it as much as I did. With dozens of real, personal stories embedded throughout the book that will make you laugh with delight and shake your head in disgust, this great book is definitely written specifically for HR pros.

The nine lessons

The nine chapters in the book focus on these major lessons:

  1. Accept that People will Say (and Do) the Dumbest Things
  2. Norms are Important for Leading and Managing Change
  3. Some Rules are Made to be Broken Continue reading →

Process Outsourcing 101

outsourcing is all about freedom

Outsourcing frees you up for other activities

When I sometimes used to read articles talking about outsourcing HR functions, and I was quite puzzled. I can’t imagine the majority of the work I do on a daily basis being handled outside our organization. However, as we continue to grow, we are looking for opportunities to hand off non-critical tasks to outside vendors, brokers, and consultants. So how do you decide what to give away?

The point is to look for areas that can be streamlined, automated, or handled externally without impacting your core competencies. 

If you’re known for great customer service, you wouldn’t outsource your customer service function. If your amazing inventory and shipping team was a differentiator for your business, you wouldn’t suddenly cut that out and have a 3rd party handle it without a good reason.

But how does that apply on the business operations side of things?

A good example in the finance/accounting realm is accounts receivable factoring exchange. Firms offering these types of services will work with companies to buy their invoices for a discount, and then they work with the customer to complete the transaction. For participating as the middleman in the transaction, the invoice factoring firm receives a percentage of the paid invoice value as commission.

Would anyone ever use a service like this? Certainly! For smaller companies with few staff available to chase down payments from customers, this frees up staff and resources to invoice more often and get more money rolling in. The same basic principle is also true within HR/recruiting.

A few examples

  • Benefits: Would you be best served by finding a broker to handle your benefit needs?
  • Recruiting: Maybe finding a contract recruiter would give you the breather you need to catch up on some of the critical HR tasks on your plate.
  • Compliance: It could be that you’re so slammed with the day-to-day activities that you need to bring in a consultant to help you get current on some overdue compliance issues.

And these are just a few of the examples of ways that companies use outsourcing on a daily basis. Another valuable reason to use some of these resources is if the focus area isn’t one your organization focuses on. For instance, if we were suddenly tasked with recruiting blue collar employees, we’d probably have to get an external recruiter to help. We just don’t have the systems, relationships, and infrastructure in place to handle those types of employees at this point. And trying to establish that on the front end would be costly and time consuming.

So, while I originally thought that outsourcing in HR seemed like a strange idea, I’ve now come around and actually look forward to developing vendor partnerships that allow us to save time and resources while still utilizing experts in our field.

Do you use some sort of outsourcing in your department? In what capacity? Has it been worth the investment?