Value trumps “Strategic”

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to be able to attend the HRPA (Human Resource Professional Association) annual conference in Toronto. I was able to attend many keynote and concurrent sessions as well as network with a lot of really great HR folks. Overall, by HR conference standards, it was a pretty good conference. However, much like other HR conferences I have attended, it was inundated with the theme (again) that HR Pros needs to be more “strategic” and we have to stop doing “administrative” or tactical things if we want to be taken seriously. The other theme that I felt permeated throughout (from many of the concurrent speakers) was this concept that we as HR Pros always seem focused on labelling everything we do as either strategic or tactical.

As the readers of The Armchair HR Manager know, this topic is a bit of a burning platform for me. It simply drives me nuts that as a profession we spend so much time trying to label everything we do and then arbitrarily deciding that we must focus on the “strategic” stuff. What the hell does that even mean? I need to be more “strategic.” That is like saying, “I need to do good work.” Say what? It is all about balance people!

Here is how I am trying to change the conversation. Because I have the privilege in my role of being able to talk to many HR students, graduates and new(er) HR Pros, I am trying to get them to change their mindset. The minute this whole strategic/tactical conversation comes up I squash it – immediately. I am trying to turn the thinking around so that HR Pros are focusing more on adding VALUE in their roles. Of course, the value you add in a role as a junior HR Coordinator will be different then the value you add as an HR Manager; however, we all can add VALUE in our jobs and for our companies. This is what I am trying to impart on others in our profession. Stop labelling things and promote what it is you deliver on and how it positively impacts the organization you work for.

If someone struggles to identify how they add value, then that is where the conversation needs to go in terms of evaluating what they do and how they do it. Most HR Pros tend to trivialize what they do, the impact they make and how what they do adds value. Hell, half the HR Pros I know spend a large portion of their day making sure that managers in their organizations don’t end up causing a major lawsuit. So yes, applying their labour law knowledge and guiding/directing these managers ADDS VALUE.

So HR Pros, who is with me? Can we change the conversation a bit? Can we start to talk about how we add value? Let’s focus on the hundreds of things we know and do and connect/promote that value to our customers? Let’s refuse to self-deprecate and get into this whole strategic/tactical conversation. In fact, the word “strategic” is now banned from the HR Pro’s verbal toolkit. We can longer use it. How about that? Now what are conference speakers going to talk about? As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.

 

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Find Your Passion & Fuel your Profession

The reality for far too many people in the workforce today is that they feel trapped in their jobs. They want to do something else, they feel their skillsets aren’t being fully utilized, or overall they feel a disconnect with the company they work for. If you read enough career management articles and blog posts, most of them will tell you to find something else, quit your job, make the change, you only live once, etc. The truth for a lot of folks is that they simply can’t do that. They can’t (or maybe won’t) for one or more of the following reasons:

• The job provides a nice work/life balance
• Their current commute is very manageable
• The first two points are important to them as they have parental or elder care responsibilities
• They enjoy the people they work with (not necessarily for)
• They have been with the company a long time and don’t want to give up their pension or other accrued retirement benefits
• The medical plan is great and it supports their current personal situation
• They are scared of change and “starting over”

I know that at first glance, some (or all) of these reasons may look like excuses from the outside looking in. The truth is that without fully understanding a person’s circumstance, these may all be very valid reasons to not change jobs and no, that isn’t a cop out. People reach certain major milestones in their lives (student debt paid off, 1^st child, sick kids/daycare, 1^st child to college, aging parents, etc.) that drive a lot of their career decision making.

Here is the thing, it is my opinion (and it is only that, an opinion) that in most cases, there is no such thing as a perfect job. There is no ultimate job and company were you get to use your full skillset day in and day out AND you have a great boss that gives you autonomy and independence but provides a great level of coaching and guidance AND the company has a super inclusive benefits package AND you have a phenomenal work-life balance AND you have the most awesome co-workers ever AND you are paid top of market wages. Usually one or two of these things are a bit out of alignment or have some imperfections, so we all have to figure what the most important things are to us. The great thing about going through is exercise is that the final outcome or decision might not be that your job sucks or that you have to change, it is that once you realize what is important to you, you may realize that your current situation might not be that bad!

Here is the real beauty of all of this – there are ways to make your current job better and it is something that you can fully control. I am a big believer in aligning yourself with your profession (assuming it is your chosen profession). So, if you find your overall job is not giving you everything you need, it may not be a matter of moving on, but of finding your passion and fueling your profession. What I mean, it that you need to find ways to get more involved with others in your profession. Perhaps it is via professional development lunches, dinners and other networking events. It could also be through chamber of commerce events, via a volunteer board of directors or even start out by connecting via social media. Get out of your comfort zone and your office and look beyond the four walls of current office. There is a great big world out there that you can be a part of that will enrich your overall work experience. Think of all of this as building and enhancing your professional brand.

Other ways to give back to your profession, that you can own and drive, include doing things like speaking and presenting at the aforementioned events as well as at conferences. Do you have something to share? Then speak about it! Give back to your profession. Align with your profession. Fuel your profession by finding your passion! Take all those great ideas you have and things you want to try and speak about them. Position yourself as a person of knowledge and ultimately influence in your profession. Develop your brand and accelerate your exposure through LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Start a blog and write about some of these things. There are many great ways to move beyond the mundane if you are feeling trapped. Take control of your career. Remember, you own your career and your profession – fuel them! As always, I welcome your feedback and comments.

Photo courtesy of arztsamui/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Pity Party is Over

Well, I have given myself a week to get over it.  It is now time for the pity party to be over.  Time for the big boy pants to go on and for me to move forward.  Why was there even a pity party you ask?  Well it is because someone on my team quit.  They are moving on.  As HR Pros, I think we are wired to be the ones advising others on how to prevent this stuff from happening and that turnover is something that operational managers experience and not HR Managers!  I have been fortunate during my career to have experienced only a nominal amount of turnover within the groups I have managed.  I have worked with some pretty great folks and it has been some time since I lost a member of my team.  In fact, the last time that occurred was almost 7 years ago at another organization! At that time, over the course of about 18 months,  I lost two great managers who moved on to bigger roles in broader HR capacities.  As much as I hated to lose them, it was a good move for both of them.  They both left on great terms and to this day I remain in contact with them and consider them to be among the best HR Professionals I know.

So, back to why I was throwing a pity party.  Oh yeah, right..I was losing a valued member of my team.  I had hired “Shane” right out of school.  He came to me via an internship program whereby he spent 5 weeks with us as part of his criteria for graduating.  The internship parlayed itself into a series of contracts with Shane eventually being hired by us on a permanent basis.  This journey all started five years ago.  During that time, Shane developed personally and professionally with us.  He grew from an entry level HR Pro who was strong on knowledge but light on application, to one who had become involved with multiple HR and organizational projects.  Shane was my go to guy in terms of our HRIS. He knew that thing inside and out like nobody’s business!  Shane was also involved with spearheading many of our projects in other geographies, and over the past year, had been leading the HR function for one of our subsidiary companies.

I knew deep down that eventually I wouldn’t be able to offer Shane enough from a growth and development perspective to keep him.  Barring a rapid, major expansion of our company, I knew eventually he would want to run his own show, gain greater organizational exposure to high level projects and operate at a more strategic level – all opportunities I simply couldn’t provide in the quality and quantity that Shane needed.  It was simply one of those situations where you hire, develop and grow someone to the point in time where they need to move on to bigger and better things.  In retrospect, if Shane stayed with us he probably would have stagnated and he would have been doing himself and us a disservice by staying.  Reality is that I would have been disappointed in Shane if he chose the (comfortable) path of least resistance when it came to his career.  Upon reflection, I guess this was an inevitability after all.

So, I will set aside the fact that I hate losing good people.  I have accepted the fact that there was probably nothing more I could have done to prevent him from leaving, although there will always be that element of self-doubt.  I will move on from the fact that good people are hard to find and Shane was a good, no great, HR Pro.  I have stopped feeling sorry for myself and have (and will continue) to wish Shane all the best in new his role, knowing that his new employer is getting a great employee.  Shane will be one of those HR Pros that I remain in touch with and will consider part of my go to group.  I have thanked Shane for all that he has done for our organization and  I am now beginning to wrap my head around setting my sights on finding my next Shane….wherever he or she may be.

What about you?  Have you ever had a Shane before?  Did you throw a pity party for yourself?  How long did it last?  When you have lost a great member of your team how did you handle it? As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

How to avoid the post Talent Connect conference hangover

Well another year has come and gone for LinkedIn Talent Connect – Las Vegas style. Like most attendees, I had a jammed packed three days as I was there for the very beginning on Tuesday and stayed to the (not so) bitter end on Thursday. Thus, I feel I maximized my conference experience completely. The problem now is how I deal with the post Talent Connect hangover (no, not that kind of hangover!) For three days I was immersed in amazing workshops and keynotes and was completely absorbed in the talent acquisition world. I got to network with great people that I met last year while also meeting many more new folks this year – both in person and virtually! It was an exciting and overwhelming time, but one that really stirred the creative juices! So now, after having flown home across four time zones and acclimating myself to the “real world” again, I find that all the energy, focus and excitement from the conference has petered off a bit as the demands of the job once again take over day to day life.

The conference itself was of critical importance to me and my team and there was SO much great content shared, so I don’t want to lose the momentum gained from the conference. It would be far too easy to place all the materials and conference notes aside and convince myself that I will “get to that later.” The reality of the situation is that I know I won’t. So, here is my (mostly) foolproof plan to make sure I leverage the momentum I gained attending Talent Connect, stay connected with those I met and apply what I learned on the job as soon as possible:

1. Go to the Talent Connect Slideshare site and download the slide decks. Linkedin provided most of the decks on Slideshare so I would be crazy to not take advantage of this and make sure that I have as much of this information as possible. This way, I can cross reference the slides with the notes that I took to make sure I captured everything as accurately as possible.

2. Reach out on Linkedin to those new folks that I met at the conference. I got the opportunity to meet some really switched on folks at the conference and I don’t want to lose touch with them. My plan is to carve out time over the next two days to reach out with Linkedin invites to make sure we stay connected.

3. Search Twitter for the hash tag #intalent to make sure there weren’t any great tweets that I missed out on. There were a lot of tweets going out from the various sessions, so much so that at one point #intalent was trending on Twitter. There may be some nuggets that I missed so I will do some “mining” of the stream to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

4. Share relevant content with my team. In short order, once I have had a chance to digest all the information, I need to bring my team up to speed on what I learned. There are a lot of things that they can use and apply right away in their day to day jobs. Based on our current needs, I will especially impart Stacy Donovan Zapar’s credo re. great content – that is, it needs to make readers “share, care or swear.” I don’t think I can ever forget that line!

5. Most importantly, I need to provide my boss with a brief report and show him why the conference was of value to me and our organization. He made an investment in me to attend, I need to show him why it was worth his organizational dollars to send me (this won’t be hard, but it is a must do!)

6. Focus in on implementing/kick-starting ONE thing that I learned/took away from Talent Connect within the next 30 days. Then, I plan on implementing/kick-starting an additional item within the next 60-90 days. Overall, if I can take what I learned and apply 2-3 new things/changes within my team and organization in the next quarter, than I would classify my attendance at the conference as being totally valuable.

7. Last but not least, I need to start working on the business case for Talent Connect 2014 in San Francisco……

What about you? Any other advice (if you attended TC 2013) on what I should be doing? What about from other conferences you have attended? Do you have any insights into how you keep the momentum going post-conference? As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.

Photo credit: Sheila Scarborough

Image courtesy of Linkedin.com

The Turnover Recipe – (Hint -it isn’t always about compensation)

Alert – totally unscientific post ahead! I was recently asked by a Sr. Operations Leader from another company, “Do you think employees really leave organizations just because of money?” “If not, why do they leave then?” The long answer to this is that depending on what survey you read, who conducts it, and where/when it is completed, the #1 reason people leave organizations is, in fact, based on compensation. But then again, I also read that the #1 reason employees leave companies is due to their manager. I also read that the #1 reason they leave is a lack of engagement. On and on it goes….survey after survey. So what are the “real” reasons why employees leave? Well, I firmly believe that it depends on the specifics of your own company. You can’t look at a survey of 1000 employees in Nebraska and because compensation is the #1 reason they leave determine that that is the problem at your company.

So how do you determine what is going on with your company? Well, hopefully you conduct proper exit interviews on all staff that voluntarily leave your company. Preferably this is done by HR or someone in a confidential capacity that has the trust of the staff. This, along with retention questions asked at performance review time coupled with “stay” interviews should give you a pretty good indication of what is going inside your organization from a broad based perspective. Then, there is the real truth. I have worked for several companies where the organizational heads have believed that almost everything starts and ends with compensation. They believed that people only left because of more money. Depending on who the departing employee was, we may or may not have been able to provide them with more compensation and if we couldn’t, it was often rationalized with a comment like, “well if we pay them any more we will be out of business.” Huh!? Of course, the exit surveys all showed compensation as the number 1 reason so the Operations Directors were pleased with themselves that it all came down to a numbers game and depending on client contracts, there was nothing they could do about it.

But let’s think about that for a second. Set aside the surveys and stats, do we REALLY think that the majority of staff leave solely because of compensation? Are they really going to move on to something else for $2K more gross salary or even $5K more? I ask these questions of operations leaders and they typically respond with, “well that is what the survey’s show.” To which I indicate, “That is because it is the easiest box to check off that they feel won’t burn any bridges.” Seriously, by indicating it is compensation it is something tangible for everyone to sink their teeth into and all parties can rationalize why they have parted ways. You know, ABC Company offered them $5K more and we simply can’t match that in these economic times. Easy peasy right?

I have a totally unscientific theory as to why someone leaves – it is called the Armchair HR Manager Recipe for Turnover (patent pending):

Start with: Compensation – from an equity perspective. An employee has been with their company for several years and is a good performer. Someone new, with less experience, is brought in at a higher rate, performs relatively the same as the other person, but continues to make far more. This gap is maintained throughout the employment life cycle as the only way the 1st employee ever gets increases is through the paltry annual increase process.

Add: Lack of Respect – this employee has discussions with their manager and manager’s manager about how they feel their pay is out of line internally and externally. They show the work they have been doing, how their performance has helped the company and what the market is paying. This is all met with a “leave this with us to look at” followed by a 2% annual increase which doesn’t even keep pace with inflation.

Subtract: Professional development and training opportunities – that have been reduced as part of cost cutting measures and/or because of the employee’s current workload.

Add: Work life/balance issues – that are causing undue personal hardship for the employee to which an unsympathetic manager (or incapable manager) is not wanting/willing to address.

Layer: With organizational communication issues. This is a lack of feedback from organizational leaders about the direction of the company, financial status, how the employees contribute to the company success, etc. It is most often prevalent with the attitude from the top that the smart people will make the decisions and the little people will just do the work.

Pair with: A side of lack of recognition. This is a common short-coming in many organizations. The failure to recognize the little wins, the incremental gains, the above and beyond. People just want to know that what they are doing matters and a lack of recognition is a sure fire way to drive disengagement.

So there you have it: Equitable Compensation + Lack of Respect – Professional Development & Training + Work life Imbalance covered in Communication issues and lack of recognition = TURNOVER.

And who said HR people weren’t good at math?

As I told you before, totally unscientific but I challenge you to find the gaps in the recipe. Now the key is to find out which parts of the recipe you can address within your organization and how you can make sure they don’t become key ingredients. Now, I need to get something to eat as I am starving…..

Image courtesy of Simon Howden/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net