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

Monsters at work

Halloween costumes I made for Bella and Bree

Human resources professionals run into monsters at work more often than others. We see the dark side of people, and it’s easy to make comparisons to these famous monsters based on those observations…

  • The famed “B.O.” problem that everyone seems to visit HR about. A manager has an employee who smells like he hasn’t showered in weeks and wouldn’t know deodorant if it slapped him in the face. His hair is greasy, and the lack of personal hygiene is really just starting to creep people out. Sounds like a werewolf to me!
  • These people flutter around and suck the life out of your organization on a daily basis. They use gossip and other subversive activities behind the scenes to undermine the culture and leadership, often without anyone seeing the danger until it’s too late. Maybe vampires?
  • This person showed up out of nowhere. Nobody knows why he’s there or what he does, but he continues to collect a paycheck every week because nobody can get the nerve to talk to the guy because, honestly, he’s kind of creepy. Creature from the Black Lagoon, anyone?
  • These actively disengaged employees are hazardous to your organization’s health. Not only are they not working to better the company, they are actively working against it! They may not be the smartest people around, but brute force can get a lot accomplished if everyone is working toward the same goal. Of course, zombies don’t always have to be a bad thing. (Click here for 10 reasons to hire zombies)

And while he’s not exactly a monster, people still dress up as Batman for Halloween! I did a fun post a while back on what it would be like if Batman ran your HR department. Funny stuff!

Working for Women vs. Working for Men

working for women and men

Working for women or working for men? Seriously? Do people in this day and age really have a preference?

Apparently so. In the October 2011 issue of OfficePro magazine (hat tip to Lesa, our superstar admin at Pinnacle, for sharing with me!) there’s a short blurb about peoples’ preferences in working for a woman or man. The 2011 statistics are compared side-by-side with those of a similar 1953 survey. The results:

  • 1953-male 66, female 5%, none 29%
  • 2011-male 32, female 22%, none 46%

Interesting change over time. I’m intrigued that nearly half of the respondents really don’t care! Is it wrong to say you do have a preference?

I’ve worked for three female managers in my past three jobs. All were very, very different. The first one took a chance on me as a college student and was former military, but we got along very well (my first “real” job). The second one had a lot of industry experience, but I never really got much in the way of coaching or challenges, so I didn’t enjoy it very much. The third one was the youngest and taught me more in a week than the others did in several years. I’ve had male managers in some other positions, but I don’t know if I have ever had one that I really liked that much.

As a fun test, I checked Google’s keyword research tool to find out how many times people searched for “working for a woman” and “working for a man” in a one month span.

The results surprised me. 

  • 40,500 people wanted to know more about what it was like working for a man
  • 74000 people (~82% more!) wanted to find out about working with women

Let’s discuss!

This bring up two big questions I’d love to discuss. And no, this isn’t a science forum, it’s for your opinions, so bring it. :-)

  • Why do more people research working for a woman?
  • Do you have a preference?

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Snacks at work-benefits and costs

Free snacks at work? Yes, that was my thought as well. When I started at Pinnacle, I was amazed. We had free snacks at work–food and drinks for our employees to enjoy anytime they wished. At previous companies it was unheard of, and at first I was hesitant to use any of it. Then my thirst got the better of me and I\’ve been best friends with the refrigerator ever since.

Recently I was talking to someone about the costs of our office goodies. Not only do we have the snacks and drinks, but we also have Free Breakfast Thursdays, where our superstar admin brings in breakfast for everyone. Sometimes it\’s Donut Palace (a local treat!), sometimes it\’s Atlanta Bread, and other times it\’s Chick-Fil-A; however, it\’s always welcome!

Over the course of a year (or longer), that cost can add up. In larger companies, someone would probably come along, see what we were spending, and put a stop to it in the interest of cutting expenses. But that\’s where things get hairy.

A genius once told me, “If you are going to provide a benefit to your employees, plan to do it forever.” She was right as far as I can tell. If you ever decided to cut off something that was a crowd favorite, you risk upsetting your workforce. Sure, it seems like a small factor, but we can be irrational creatures when it comes to benefits and perks we feel entitled to.

I think it\’s a great idea if the question ever does come up about whether we should cut those special benefits for us to poll our affected employees. I’d love to ask them this question:

Would you rather have $500 more per year in salary or would you rather have free snacks and drinks at work?

I\’m willing to bet that the majority of our people would choose free snacks and drinks, just because it frees us up to work a little later without having to leave for food. We can push through lunch on some fruit or crackers without having to stop working on that urgent proposal to go grab something to eat. And I\’d like to personally vouch for how much I can get done when I\’m pumped up on the caffeine provided by our superstar admin. :-)

Have you ever worked at a place that offered snacks at work? What do you think about the costs of offering or taking away these kinds of perks?