In the HR Daily Advisor, Steve Bruce recently reported on the keynote Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh gave at the SHRM Annual Conference.  Hsieh shared that the Internet shoe business places so much emphasis on hiring for cultural fit that it interviews the receptionists and shuttle drivers with whom candidates interact to see if they should get the job, and it also mandates that trainees hit the call center phones during their first few weeks.

But here’s the really interesting thing.  Once new employees are finished with training, they are offered a $3,000 bonus to quit right then and there.  According to Hsieh, this is Zappos’ way of saying, “we only want people who really want to work here.”  Two or three percent of trainees take the bonus and leave, and the employees who remain are more committed to the company’s mission.

Obviously, only a certain type of employee is going to survive and thrive throughout the interview and training process at a company like Zappos, but that’s exactly the point.  Even in a poor job market like this, I still hear of organizations succumbing to desperation hiring so that they’ll have warm bodies to fill gaping holes.

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Have you seen that terrific Daniel Pink (@DanielPink) video Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us?

If you haven’t, take a few minutes and watch it now. It’s really thought provoking.

RSA Animate — Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

The research Pink references shows that, once basic financial needs are met, autonomy, mastery and purpose – not money – are better motivators of performance.

Pink points out that engagement and motivation come from a sense of self-direction – of trust, and of ownership. The message for managers here is that it’s time to get out of the way.

Fostering Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

Let your employees take on projects that interest them, that will develop their skills and challenge them to be their best. By providing employees this freedom, you give them a sense of purpose, and ultimately the outcome can be extremely beneficial to your organization.

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Is your recruitment process based on what you know about job seekers…or what you think you know about job seekers?

If there’s one thing over 15 years of in-depth research on job seeker behavior and perceptions have taught us, it’s that now, more than ever, experience matters when it comes to the ability to drive quality candidates to apply for your open positions.

A recent CareerBuilder and Inavero study revealed that top talent wants to engage with prospective employers and experience what it’s like to work for their company before they decide to apply to a position – and they’re increasingly utilizing emerging technology to do it.

How do job seekers really see you? Three questions to ask
If you’ve never taken a step back to consider the experience you offer candidates – from their perspectives – it’s time to do so now.  Below are three forms of emerging media candidates utilize today to find opportunities and research potential employers. In effect, they also provide employers the opportunity to interact with and engage with job seekers on their terms. The following exercises will help you see the experience you’re providing candidates – from their point of view.

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Earlier today, while you might’ve been busy vowing never to eat again, voting for your favorite Muppet (Swedish Chef, anyone?), or shopping for that very special Jaleel White fan in your life… Nationally recognized small business expert, speaker and author Jay Goltz was discussing small business hiring trends and best practices for a free webinar titled Hire With Purpose.

In case you were busy with any of the aforementioned activities – or simply want to hear it again – lucky for you, we’ve got two ways to make sure you don’t miss out on the webinar’s great content: Simply download a recording of Hire With Purpose here or keep reading to check out some of Jay’s best sound bytes on the following topics:

On why hiring the right people is crucial…

• “If you want to have a great company, you can’t do so without great people.” Seventy-five percent of management is hiring the right people in the first place, Goltz says. Unfortunately, most small businesses don’t have a hiring protocol, which can be dangerous, when, according to Goltz’s estimates, only 1 out of 10 applicants will be a great hire.
• “People might forgive bad service, but not bad attitude.” Case in point for why you need to have great employees – they are the face of your business. You can’t always account for things going smoothly in the world, but when you have great people in place to deal gracefully with occasional mishaps, your business will be all the better for it.

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Before the age of 28, Aaron McDaniel had been appointed regional vice president at a Fortune 10 company.  He has managed over 100 people and has been responsible for a variety of job functions from business development to network operations.  I asked Aaron, who now writes the Young Professional’s Edge blog, for his top tips for how to succeed as a manager who is younger than or the same age as most of your direct reports.  Here are some of his key recommendations:

Don’t Readily Reveal Your Age

Don’t make references to college or other things that show your team you are younger than (or the same age as) they are. Instead of describing your experience by highlighting the amount of time you have worked, emphasize the concrete results you have achieved.  You will be more likely to be taken seriously.

Set and Maintain Expectations

Especially with a younger manager, people like to see how much they can get away with, so sit down with your team and outline your expectations at the very beginning.  It is also important to understand what your team’s expectations are of you.

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We’re hearing a lot in the news these days about the need to hire veterans, especially now that so many will return from combat in the immediate future. While hiring veterans and Wounded Warriors is certainly a patriotic thing to do, it also makes sense from an operational standpoint.

Here are five key points for sourcing, recruiting, hiring and retaining this valuable segment of available talent.

1. Military service members are field tested. Regardless of length of service or whether they “saw action” or not, service members have been trained to do what they do under the most extreme conditions imaginable. They have learned to keep their heads in a crisis and to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. Operating as a team towards a shared goal with limited resources is not theoretical to them: it is standard operating procedure. Would these qualities be valued in your organization? Read the rest of this entry »

Forward-thinking leaders understand that collaboration is crucial for any organization that wants to be productive, adaptable and creative. Collaboration allows employees to connect with colleagues, share information and ideas, discover who else in the organization is working on the same issues and increase productivity. People solve problems they wouldn’t otherwise have solved, get work done quicker than ever before and feel connected because they are working together toward a common goal. Why, then, is it sometimes so difficult to make the leap from knowing that a higher level of collaboration would be good for your organization to actually implementing it? What tools does your organization need to help facilitate collaboration, and how do you ensure that your personnel will use those tools?

The key in the corporate environment is to put collaboration literally at the fingertips of employees and to generate mass involvement – which is the only way that collaboration works. You need to eliminate any barriers to entry by integrating the collaboration tools directly into the programs and tools that employees are already using every day. The best way to accomplish this is to look at collaborative capabilities as a series of enterprise services. Read the rest of this entry »

Luke Sanna, Talent Management & Leadership Development Principle at Exelon was a speaker at the Strategic Talent Management & Leadership Development Canada, which was held in Toronto, ON in July 2011. This is a recap of the presentation and challenges/solutions presented within.

Mr. Sanna opened his presentation by comparing and contrasting people and technology. Basically, while you can upgrade technology, it’s harder to upgrade people. Exelon has a very risk averse culture with no latitude for mistakes. According to Mr. Sanna, they follow procedures, which should make everybody happy as they are dealing with nuclear energy.

Mr. Sanna noted that Exelon has been re-evaluating where they make money and what drives their business.

They have also been measuring key areas of the organization to better understand talent needs. In an employee demographics study, they found: Read the rest of this entry »

Lisa Wilkins, Director of Organizational Development and Workforce Planning at Mount Sinai Hospital was a speaker at the Strategic Talent Management & Leadership Development Canada, which was held in Toronto, ON in July 2011. This is a recap of the presentation and challenges/solutions presented within

Ms. Wilkins has been at Mount Sinai for six months. She is new to healthcare as well.

Mount Sinai is committed to providing the best medicine and research, and Ms. Wilkins is piggy-backing that focus with a strategy of putting the right people working on the right things at the right time. She brought organizational development (OD) and workforce planning together to grow and develop the right kind of people.

Why workforce planning?

To reduce turnover costs and address the increased vacancies/open positions.

She noted that first you need to understand environmental factors, like:

• getting funding
• figuring out where the best candidates come from without sacrificing diversity Read the rest of this entry »

When I was growing up there was a popular advert for chips that featured a young girl who was asked by her older sister whether she preferred Daddy or chips. It’s probably indicative of the power of advertising that I now think of that advert whenever such comparisons are made. The comparison in question here, however, is one of slightly more importance. You see, a new study from Cornell University is asking whether people would prefer a highly paid job that demanded very long hours, or better work/life balance but with less pay.

This topic is not a new one. Indeed Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman suggested only last year that all we really need is $75,000 a year, over which any extra money adds nothing to our perception of happiness.

When The New York Times spoke with Kahneman about the study, he said “it’s not so much that money buys you happiness, but that lack of money buys you misery.”

So the Cornell paper goes against a pretty powerful opponent, with others such as Dan Pink also proposing that money comes quite a way down the list of things that motivate us. PricewaterhouseCooper added to the mix last year by suggesting that people would forgo their bonuses in return for more flexible working. Read the rest of this entry »

Stephanie Hardman, Director of Organizational Development at Tim Hortons was a speaker at the Strategic Talent Management & Leadership Development Canada, which was held in Toronto, ON in July 2011. This is a recap of the presentation and challenges/solutions presented within

Ms. Hardman kicked off her session with an activity. The concept is that you are in HR and you are receiving a letter that is to be discussed in a small group. To break down the situation, Ms. Hardman provided several key questions:

• What are the issues?
  • An erosion of trust.
  • System implementation is impacting people’s ability to get the job done.
  • Rumors – communication from senior leaders doesn’t match reality.
  • Performance management has been delivered as an HR thing.
  • How did we get here?
    • Were stakeholders brought together?
    • Was there a pilot?
    • There is a focus on technology as the answer.
    • There doesn’t seem to be a good feedback loop to make iterations.
    • What can we do now? Read the rest of this entry »

Elisa Bannon-Jones, Vice President of Talent Development at Wireless Vision was a speaker at the Strategic Talent Management & Leadership Development Canada, which was held in Toronto, ON in July 2011. This is a recap of the presentation and challenges/solutions presented within.

Ms. Bannon-Jones kicked off her presentation with the assertion that Wireless Vision’s largest talent management challenge is employee engagement. With 70% of its workforce engaged in sales across 122 locations, the company needs to ensure that employees are motivated to accomplish their goals.

Wireless Vision is a private, family owned company. Ms. Bannon-Jones began working for Wireless Visions in 2010 after 20 years in corporate America. Her goal when joining the organization was to create order, not to control the situation.

In order to do that, she first set out to determine the lay of the land through a culture survey – which produced a 75% response rate. The survey uncovered that the CEO’s perception of the organization was very different from the responses of employees. For further insights, the organizations also used skip level meetings to get qualitative data with sales people and store managers. This tactic gave another level of detail that was surprising and set them on a course to work at creating a more inclusive environment. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I wrote about culture, specifically discussing if it is created or does it just happen by chance. Most responses I received via comments and twitter stated that culture is created.

So my question to you last week was:

What is the formula for creating a culture that is a competitive advantage for your company?

I wanted to share with you the responses I received and then add my two cents:

1) The values of an organization must be articulated to employees (how business owners want to conduct business)

2) Those values must be cascaded into everyday processes, policies, procedures, relationships, etc.

3) Human performance has to be aligned with the values as a way of doing business.

(thanks to Debbie King of Evolution Management for 1-3)

4) Hire people that are aligned with the organizational values

5) Review values regularly with all employees by CEO (even review at the beginning of team meetings)

6) Employees should be empowered in the decision making process to determine how decisions align with organizational values.

7) Communication and leadership are key in the process. Leadership must demonstrate behaviors that are expected in the organization.

(Thanks to Melany Gallant with Halogen Software for 4-7)

Values that truly connect with people’s higher aspirations (to improve, to serve, to create a better tomorrow) are easier to build culture on as employees can get behind these. Companies that have a more profit mind set might find it more difficult to build culture around.

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Leadership. Sometimes it’s so quiet that if you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d miss it.

My daughter started middle school and has had so many opportunities in just the first 4 weeks. One of those was election for student council. So, with 9 students in her homeroom interested in the coveted leadership spot, each set out to create a poster . . .

. . . and prepare a speech to solicit votes from their peers.

“Hi, I’m Tarah and I’m running for Student Council. I am reliable and responsible and would like to represent you. I am also able to to do something kind of unusual. I can do this <insert freaky finger trick here.> I’m sorry, I just had to make sure you were awake. Like I said, I would like to represent you on the student council. I appreciate your vote and respect your decision. I also brought in some treats for your enjoyment.” <parent note: this line was overridden by the teacher and the Fudge Stripes were not mentioned or shared until after the vote!>

When my husband and I saw Tarah later that day – she was psyched. She LOVED giving the speech and friends told her she was funny, she did not talk too fast and she seemed so comfortable. Giggling and unable to contain her excitement, she wanted to do it again – even though she did not get elected.

“We’re so proud of you for going for it” we said, ”look at the wonderful experience you had.” Playing with the kid we said, “At least you know you got one vote – your own.”

“No,” she said. “I had 2 votes and I did not vote for myself.”

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The one constant theme that Human Resource professionals emphasize when it come to international assignments (expatriate employees) is that the experience costs a great deal of money. Most of you reading this will simply nod your head at such a cautionary warning, yet not fully understand the why of it. Perhaps the topic doesn’t concern you, for now, but as managers who may become involved in such adventures down the road, you need to know the cause if you ever hope to manage this expensive proposition.

While companies continue to try new strategies for employing talent overseas (shorter assignments, use of third country nationals, extended business trips, shared responsibilities, etc.) two central premises remain; 1) companies will continue sending employees on overseas assignments, and 2) the cost of those assignments continues to be a big pill to swallow.

Fueling Persistent Cost

If you accept the premise that an employee sent overseas should be kept “whole” (expense-wise) with their home country situation (maintaining their income and expense exposure as if they had never left the U.S.), then certain incurred liabilities naturally fall to the company. Read the rest of this entry »