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?

The Little Things and Unemployed HR Pros-Guest Post Blitz #10

What do focusing on the “little” details and social media for unemployed HR pros have in common? They’re two of the guest posts that I’ve written lately!

Please check them out and leave a comment. I know that Charlie and Robin would definitely appreciate it.

  • Nothing bigger than the little things-I look at how the “little” things are what makes a company successful (or not) in the long term. Here’s a sample: 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. Click here to read the rest of this post
  • Unemployed HR people: take note-In this post I discuss a reader question and offer some advice to those HR/recruiting pros who are unemployed and looking for work. Here’s a taste: I don\’t think social media is the answer to all problems. I think the majority of people using social media could not get a job offer directly through that method. Click here to read the rest of this post

These guest posts went live (fairly recently) elsewhere that you may have missed. Some of them might be a bit different flavor than the usual upstartHR offerings, so be sure to check them out! If you\’re interested in seeing some of my previous escapades, click here for the Guest Post Blitz archive to see other mildly entertaining posts like these. :-)

Job Fair Rules for Employers

Job fairs aren’t for everyone, and they’re not for every company/industry. But if your company happens to participate in them, I wanted to give you a few quick tips to help avoid disaster.

  1. Give a darn about the people who took the time out of their day to come and talk with you about your employer.
  2. And, um… That’s it.

I found out today that I might be participating in a special kind of job fair activity in the coming weeks. We are not in the typical industry for that sort of thing, so I might be a little rusty. I am used to a different flavor of the candidate experience.

However, in my experiences on both sides of the table, if you can handle #1 above, you can stand out among the other employers in the room. I’ve talked before about a major fail in job fair recruiting, but I think companies can still do it well.

A little perspective doesn’t hurt

Job seekers today are (in the best of circumstances) worried about finding a job. At worst they have been out of work for a while and are starting to get noticeably desperate. Have a little compassion. Try treating your candidates like customers.

I used to work with a wonderful, kind lady who did our recruiting at a previous employer. Every single person who walked up to our table ended up walking away feeling better and happier, even if we didn’t have a single job available in their area of expertise. Keep that in mind next time you’re going through the motions at a job fair.

Okay. Even as a minimalist I have to admit that one rule is kind of slim. Anyone else have a suggestion to add to the list? :-)