Category Archives: General

The corporate library-how (and why) we set one up

Offering a corporate library to employees is a great way to encourage learning and give people low-cost opportunities for growth and development. We have been kicking around the idea of establishing one for a while (especially after my article about how to develop an employee reading program), and in October the right things came together to make it happen.

National Book Month

At Pinnacle, we do a monthly social awareness campaign to give employees some food for thought. October is National Book Month, so I was trying to see if we could get a book for every employee. That was going to be tough to do on our timeline, so instead we decided to pull a few books together and start the Pinnacle Library.

How It’s Set Up

We have a very basic set up since our office is relatively small. Clara, our property whiz, agreed to give me a hand, so she catalogs new books and puts them on the shelf. She also maintains the checkout list in SharePoint, so anyone can see what is checked in or out at any given time. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s a great start!

Zappos.com’s Model

Zappos offers a large stash of books for employees to borrow or keep. They are large enough to afford the purchase of hundreds of books per year, but they tie it into their core values for people to be constantly learning and growing, so people know that it’s expected of them to grab a book and start developing their knowledge. It’s a great way to be, and I hope one day we are large enough to offer free copies as well. You can also do book reviews in newsletters and other company communications to help generate some interest.

Our Books

The books to start were all donated (and most by me) :-) so it’s a random mix, but as we add to our corporate library I have a short wishlist of books that will be more targeted toward our software engineering focus and some of the other programs we have going on. To name a few:

  1. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
  2. Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
  3. Perform Like a Rock Star by Orna Drawas
  4. Be Bodacious: Put Life in Your Leadership by Steven Wood
  5. The 1% Solution for Life and Work by Tom Connelan

Even Easier

If you don’t have the time or resources to have your own in-house corporate library, definitely take advantage of your local one instead. If you have an admin or staff member who you can send to the library once a week, they can take the library cards for your people and check out books for them. That opens up access to a larger body of resources and saves you the time and effort of administrating a corporate library on your own.

If you didn’t check out the post on why you need an employee reading program, I encourage you to do so. It has a fantastic framework for proving the necessity of such a program to your leadership.

Does anyone else use a corporate library? How has it been going for you?

Competitive pay isn’t enough

Think offering competitive pay to candidates is a winning strategy? Think again. Sure, it might get someone in the door, but it won’t keep them for long if you don’t have a work environment that appeals to them on some level (more on what motivates employees from Daniel Pink).

As compensation budgets tighten and perks get cut across the board for many employers, the only differentiator many can turn to is their culture.

Competing on pay is a losing game. Compete on culture.

I’ve heard it said that candidates take the job for the money and stay for the culture. Anyone else think that’s true?

Internal promotion-how Chipotle reduced turnover by 64%

Internal promotion is a valuable, yet underutilized, tool to engage employees and managers in the recruiting process, provide career growth, and save on costs associated with bringing in external talent.

As I alluded yesterday, the content covered at Hire Minds was astonishing. The first session was an interview/case study of Chipotle restaurants and how they use internal promotions and development bonuses as incentives to bring in great people and move them up through the organization as they grow. The examples below are pulled directly from that session content.

Reduce employee turnover by 64%

When they started promoting from within instead of looking for talent outside the organization, turnover for salaried managers dropped from 52% to 35%, and turnover for hourly managers dropped a whopping 64% (111% down to 47%).

HR pros often wonder if we should share succession plans with employees in case something doesn’t work out and it demoralizes them. However, in this case, all of the employees know that they are eligible for leadership positions if they are willing and able to put forth the effort.

Pay managers to mentor new leaders

As an incentive for managers within the organization to train the next generation of leaders, Chipotle offers people development bonuses of $10,000 for managers who bring someone up into a managerial position from within the ranks of the staff. Because they are rapidly growing and expanding into new markets, Chipotle is able to use these bonuses to lure seasoned veterans out to the “front.” Because the areas grow quickly, it offers the leaders multiple opportunities to earn the bonuses.

When asked by the audience how often the bonuses were paid out, he replied that Chipotle paid out over $1 million in people development bonuses in 2010. That’s significant! The bonuses are structured where the referring leader receives half up front, and half after 6 months of solid performance from the new manager candidate.

How to keep recruiters busy if you start promoting internally

Everyone in the audience laughed when a recruiter stood up and asked where his job was going if the company achieves its goal of 100% internal promotions into leadership positions. The speaker told us that since the recruiters are no longer spending their time sourcing candidates for management/leadership roles, they are working directly with store owners to develop better hiring practices for their hourly workers.

I’ve said it before–I’m a fan of internal recruiting (video) if it’s possible. Anyone else?

Hire Minds-Snagajob Hourly Hiring Summit

Wow. I was only able to stay for half of the Hire Minds event presented by Snagajob, but it was a fantastic experience. I took notes throughout the day and shared sound bytes on Twitter when I could, but the Live Tweeting Paradox was in effect (okay, I just made that up, but it really does make sense). Usually when I attend an event I will share ideas that I’m learning on Twitter; however, when an event is particularly engaging or learning intensive, I have to stop tweeting and focus on the session. Ironically, some of the best sessions I’ve ever seen are the ones where I’ve shared the least on social media!

Anyway, in the next week or so I’m going to post on some big ideas I learned at the event. I met a great lady, Buzz, who also has her own comments on the event to share.

Later this week look for posts covering…

  • How to reduce employee turnover by 64%
  • How to pay managers to mentor new leaders
  • How to keep recruiters busy if you start promoting internally
  • What gardening has to do with management
  • Why competing for candidates on pay is a losing game

In short, the Hire Minds event was phenomenal. If you work for an hourly employer, you should 1) look at Snagajob’s offerings for employers as a way to find and screen qualified candidates and 2) talk with the good folks at Snagajob about how you can get into the event if you’re interested. It’s a small affair (~75-100 companies represented there), but there is amazing content focused specifically on the hourly employer segment.

Company corporate culture-14 ways to research as a job candidate

My friend and I were talking recently about how to determine company corporate culture before you start working there. In the past we’ve both been burned by companies that looked good on the surface but eventually turned out to have a terrible culture of one sort or another.

company corporate culture

Take a peek at the culture

Honestly, if it was foolproof, people wouldn’t be suckered into it as often as they do. And since my friend and I (and others) actually work in HR/recruiting, we should know better than anyone how to unearth this stuff, right?

Mindset change required

All too often when we’re looking for a new job we become blinded to the negative and would move over even if the hiring manager promised to kick us in the kidneys four times a day. I understand when you have no job that it’s important to take what you can get, but never settle for working at an organization with a poor company corporate culture (or if the culture really isn’t “wrong,” but you just don’t fit in anyway). You’re giving them skills and experience that they can’t get from other candidates, and they’re trading that for money. Don’t forget that employment is a two way street!

Think about it. For many of the questions below, there are no “right” answers. Everyone appreciates different things about specific working environments, and what may appeal to you actually repulses others. Consider what the ideal company corporate culture would be for you, and filter the responses through that. Oh, and several of these methods will require you to ask unorthodox questions of the hiring manager or recruiter, but it’s the price you pay if you’re going to be serious about finding the right company corporate culture fit for you.

14 Ways to determine the culture

  1. Ask to interview an employee or two on what they enjoy about working there
  2. Ask for a walkthrough of the office-listen for laughs and look for smiles; that says a lot about the work environment
  3. Ask about previous people who held the position if you are replacing someone-find out what they did right and what they could’ve done better
  4. Look at sites like Glassdoor.com for reviews by current or former employees
  5. Keep in mind that there are “pockets” of culture within individual departments, so the overall company culture could differ from your specific work area-that’s why it’s important to try to do things like #1 and #2 above
  6. Ask what sorts of behavior are rewarded and which are punished
  7. Ask how (or if) news that affects the company is shared-does everyone learn of it at once or is it distributed to managers to trickle down to employees? Are they transparent?
  8. Find out what sort of events the company holds for employees-is it a once a year Christmas party or are there monthly opportunities to celebrate with coworkers?
  9. Ask if there are known slackers in the office and try to find out why they are still around (good luck with this one, but if you get a straight answer, you will have a leg up)
  10. Ask about how difficult it is to get attention or funding for new ideas and initiatives-are they a “we’ve always done it that way” type of company?
  11. Ask what the company’s overall mission/vision is. If a random employee can tell you (at least in general terms) it could signify a strong, unified workforce.
  12. Ask about the dress code and other abrasive policies/details that, while palatable at first, can end up chafing you down the line
  13. Find out if the company offers any sort of reimbursement or support for training, seminars, or college tuition. If they value smart employees who work to better themselves, they probably will.
  14. Ask how previous employees who committed ethics violations were held accountable (general terms are fine to protect any guilty parties, but do they even care about ethics in the first place?)

So, what other ways do you know of that a candidate can use to discern a company’s corporate culture before deciding to take a job?

It is what it is? Not on my watch

It is what it is.

I’ve come to hate that phrase with a passion. One of our managers, whenever faced with a particularly significant challenge, will respond with that saying. I’ve decided that the next time this manager says, “It is what it is,” I’m  going to respond with, “Because we let it be.”

It’s time to stop letting things get by because they require a modicum of effort to solve. It’s time to start thinking in terms of what you can do about the problem.

One of the interview questions I’ve taken to asking is “How lucky do you think you are on a scale of one to ten?” There has been research done on this topic, and when people believe they are lucky, they end up finding more opportunities and generally seeming to be more lucky because of their openness to challenges. People that believe they are unlucky are like this manager, and they feel like things happen to them without any control over it.

Do you know someone who uses one of those “catch all” phrases as an excuse?  Will you challenge them in a similar way to look within for an answer instead of throwing up their hands in defeat? 

What you may have missed (WordPress hacked)

Hey, everyone! In the past two weeks, I’ve had a heck of a time fixing my first hacked blog. Ugh.

For those of you who blog, here’s how I fixed it. For those of you who don’t, just know that it wasn’t a quick fix to get back up and running. :-) And if you’ve run into something similar, this great article was very helpful in getting me up and running again.

The first week I was unable to log into the back end of my WordPress install (wp-admin). I would get a blank screen, which I found out is commonly called the White Screen of Death. It was incredibly frustrating, although the blog posts and pages displayed fine (some spammy looking content was inserted, but otherwise nothing was changed that I could tell).

Finally I was able to leap that hurdle. I re-uploaded the WP-Includes and WP-Admin folders from a clean WordPress installation file to my directory via FTP. That overwrote the issue and allowed me to log into the back end of my site. However, the posts and pages no longer worked. It was incredibly frustrating!

So, I resigned myself to creating a new database, exporting my WordPress file, and importing it into the new, fresh database. However, when I went to import the file into the new database, all of my posts were gone! I freaked out, honestly, because I had over 700 posts in published, private, or draft format. Scary stuff. So I went to my phpAdmin panel and logged in. There I could see within the mySQL database that the posts still existed, so that was a relief, but I couldn’t figure out how to get them out of there, and I’m no database expert.

So I talked with my best geeky friend about it and we started looking at options. We talked through the problems, and it didn’t seem to make any sense as to what the issue really was. While we were talking, he published a post as a test, and that somehow fixed the issues I’d been having!

Bottom line

I’m now back up and running and looking forward to talking about some of the great things that happened in the past few weeks, including a trip to Virginia for the Snagajob Hire Minds Summit (awesome!), a trip to Vegas for HRevolution (if you weren’t there, you missed out big time), and a day at the HR Technology Conference and Expo (Just… Wow.) to name a few.