If Yahoo doesn't kill remote working, then Big Data will

A little bit lost in the continuing fallout from the decisions by Yahoo to end remote working arrangements for their staff, and Best Buy's move to end ROWE (Results Only Work Environment), at its corporate headquarters was this much more interesting, (and potentially more important), report in the Wall Street Journal, 'Tracking Sensors Invade the Workplace', that hints at a data-powered future workplace where 'being physically together' is not just mandated, but is tracked, recorded, and interpreted by algorithms and leveraged by management.

How exactly does Big Data, (which usually sounds kind of benign, or at least non-threatening), play a role in the future of telework?  Take a look at this excerpt from the WSJ piece:

As Big Data becomes a fixture of office life, companies are turning to tracking devices to gather real-time information on how teams of employees work and interact. Sensors, worn on lanyards or placed on office furniture, record how often staffers get up from their desks, consult other teams and hold meetings.

Businesses say the data offer otherwise hard-to-glean insights about how workers do their jobs, and are using the information to make changes large and small, ranging from the timing of coffee breaks to how work groups are composed, to spur collaboration and productivity.

"Surveys measure a point in time—what's happening right now with my emotions. [Sensors] measure actual behavior in an objective way,"

The next step in figuring out how people work, communicate, and interact in the workplace and with their colleagues involves wearing an always-on tracking device, (bathroom breaks optional), and harnessing all the data the device collects about who a worker talks to and for how long, how often they get up, when they hit the coffee room and vending machine, how long they stand waiting outside a conference room because the prior meeting ran long - all of this and more.  Mash up that 'experience' data with other electronic data trails (email, IM, internal collaboration tools, etc.), and boom - the data will be able to prescribe optimal amounts of employee interaction, recommend the timing and duration of breaks, send push notifications alerting you that the guy you need to connect with about the Penske account is two stalls away from you, and crucially - keep your managers informed about just what the heck you are up to all day.

But it seems really likely to me that if these workplace tracking sensors gain more well, traction, that organizations will quickly realize that the only way to really exploit them, and the data they collect to its fullest potential, will be in a traditional workplace environment - with all employees together in a physical location and 'on-duty' at the same time. Let's face it, for a remote worker wearing a tracking sensor probably won't produce much valuable data - unless its to try to 'prove' to a suspicious manager that a remote worker is slacking off.

The tracking sensors, if they catch on, will change the anti-telework argument from 'We need you to come in to the office so we can keep an eye on you' to 'We need you to come in to the office so we can track everything you do, say, touch, and feel all day.'

It's a brave new world out there my friends...

The Secret Menu

If you are a fan of Chipolte, In-N-Out, or Starbucks, (that pretty much has to cover everyone I think) you might be aware of each of these chains so-called 'Secret Menus' - alternative items or more accurately variations of existing menu items while not typically on the menu, are sometimes ordered and served for some of the stores biggest fans.

These 'secret' menus are only secret to varying degrees - at In-N-Out the 'secret' menu is actually posted on their website and at Starbucks, well in most of the lines I have been in some knucklehead in front of me orders something to ridiculous and pretentious sounding (Triple-soy-venti-no whip-caramel-with ranch dressing on the side') that almost every order may as well be 'secret'.  Of these three chains, only Chipolte seems to be much more coy and sketchy about the existence of a secret menu - so much so that recently a writer from Fast Company went to pretty great lenghts to try and uncover the truth, which you can read about here in a piece titled 'The Secret Behind Chipolte's Secret, 1,500 Calorie Super-Burrito'.

Aside for the most avid Chiplote die-hard fans, whether or not there truly exists such off-menu concoctions like 'Quesaritos' really isn't that important, but what might be important is how the knowledge of these non-standard menu items are communicated and spread among and througout the restaurant employees.  Check this exceprt from the Fast Company piece:

While (a Chiplote spokesperson) maintains that the restaurant has no formalized secret menu, he admits that two off-menu items we see have become extremely popular, even in Chipotle’s own offices: nachos and quesadillas.  What’s particularly odd, however, is that the line’s machinery isn’t really customized to make either. Without a flat-top grill, quesadillas are typically made in the low-temperature tortilla press (and there are generally only one to three presses per Chipotle, which can lead to backups during busy hours). Without a broiler, nacho cheese can’t really be melted, but employees can get close by ordering the toppings so the cheese sits directly on top of hot beans.

Despite their popularity, neither nachos nor quesadillas are inside any Chipotle operations manual. Instead, employees teach one another the popular off-menu requests through a sort of “oral history.”

That last part, the bit about the Chipolte secret menu existing but not really existing, at least in the official training manuals or operations procedures for employees, and having that faux existence reliant on employees actually talking to each other, and interacting, and passing down that bit of institutional knowledge and culture is what makes this story interesting to HR and Talent folks I think.

Mostly organizations worry about this kind of undocumented institutional knowledge. They get panicky when they think about this kind of knowledge - usually gained from years of experience and often guarded carefully by long-term employees, walking out the door before it can be adequately documented and captured so it can be passed down.

The Chipolte approach to the 'Secret Menu' is the exact opposite of that typical reaction. It exists, but it doesn't exist. The newest worker on the burrito line can't find a reference to it in his or her training manuals. Maybe even some veterans don't know about it either. 

But instead of rushing to formalize the menu, to create procedures and processes around its preparation, and rules about how workers should discuss it with customers, the company seems to be leaving much of it to informal processes, and more importantly, to ones that seem to serve as a kind of bond between the company, its employees, and its biggest fans.

It truly is a tiny bit of mystery that just might have more value than if it was truly written down, captured, and categorized in some knowledge management system.

That's it for me - heading out for a burrito - have a fantastic weekend!

#HRHappyHour LIVE Tonight - 'Social, Brand, and Recruiting'

The HR Happy Hour Show is back and this week we are really excited to welcome back to the show the great Jessica Lee - a recruiting and employer branding thought leader, the original editor and still a contributor at Fistful of Talent, and who is one of the sharpest minds around when it comes to the use of social networks and social media for candidate attraction and engagement. 

Jessica's influence in the world of corporate recruiting is immense - her company Marriott, has done and continues to do some of the most innovative work in corporate talent acquisition, and Jessica is at the forefront of what the rest of us think is the 'future' of recruiting - she and her team are doing it today.

This week we will talk with Jessica about some of the big-picture trends in corporate recruiting, how social approaches to recruiting strategies are actually done in the corporate world, the best ways to conceive and build an employer brand and even hit upon what technologies are having the most impact, and what we can expect to see in the world of recruiting in the future.

You can catch the show in a few different ways - listen to the live stream starting at 8:00PM ET on the show page here, or using the widget player embedded below:

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on Blog Talk Radio

 

You can also listen via the call-in listener line - 646-378-1086, (if you are brave you can even join the fun).

After the show, you can access the replay anytime from the show page, or from the Apple iTunes store - just search for 'HR Happy Hour' in the podcasts area and download the show for free to your iDevice.

And recently, the HR Happy Hour has made it on to Stitcher Radio - the leading iPhone and Android app for podcasts. Just download the free Stitcher Radio app and search for 'HR Happy Hour'. Not only can you get access to all the HR Happy Hour archives on Stitcher, but also to a massive library of podcasts on every subject out there.

I know it will be a great show tonight - for folks that are into talent and social media, (which I think pretty much covers all our listeners), this will be a great opportunity to hear from one of the industry's most accomplished players. 

So this week we think you wil enjoy the conversations on all things recruiting with the great Jessica Lee, of course also joined by the HR Happy Hour hosts - Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane.

It should be a fun show and I hope you can join us!

Listen to your CEO. On Twitter

A couple of days before he made bigger news by getting fired, then penning a cheeky letter to the troops letting them know what just happened, then-no-former Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, perhaps knee-deep in a frustrating Email session posted this Tweet: 

Possible to write a gmail script to autoreply & bounce emails longer than fifty words?

— Andrew Mason (@andrewmason) February 25, 2013

Perhaps an extreme approach to dealing with Email and message length overload, but entirely out of the realm of useful utilities. We hate and need Email at the same time. I'd say for 99% of the people reading this post, Email is the single most important means of communication in your professional lives.

Don't think so?

Just try to go a day, week, month without Email. You can't do it.

You can forget Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn (at least until you need to look for a new job), literally for weeks and weeks and it probably won't really matter. Try that trick with email and you will probably get fired, lose business, or get reported to the police as a missing person.

But the point of this post isn't another 'email is horrible' riff, rather it is to call out a response to the former Groupon CEO's tweet, from a Groupon engineer no less, that was sent exactly one hour and one minute after Mason's original Tweet:

@andrewmason got something working: gist.github.com/rboyd/5027691 -- just customize variables to suit and schedule to run on a timer.

— Robert Boyd (@rboyd) February 25, 2013

Pretty amazing and awesome, and perhaps instructive as a clever method of sucking up getting the bosses attention in this new Age of Social Media. I have no idea if before he was ousted at Groupon if Mason had any kind of relationship, or even knowledge of Mr. Boyd - but let's pretend for a moment that they did not, and Mason (at that time), was the CEO and Boyd was just one of the rank-and-file staff working away, and personally invisible to Mason.

What better way to get on the big bosses radar than answering his Twitter question, within an hour, with a solution that works - and in the middle of the night?

Just another item to add to your bag of tricks as you try and climb up, over, or around the corporate ladder. If your CEO is on Twitter you ought to follow him/her. And maybe just maybe you can help your own career in the process.

If you need something ask for it. For that very thing.

The author and academic Dan Ariely (of 'Predictably Irrational' fame) posts an occasional Q&A or 'advice' type column on his blog. Last week's column titled 'Ask Ariely: On Begging, Bad Waiters, and the Facebook Blues' included a reader question about a situation most of us have probably encountered, but with a slightly different twist that made it interesting.

Here is the original reader question:

I was recently approached by a panhandler who asked me for 75 cents, and I gave him the money. I was late for my train, so I didn’t have time to stop and try to understand why he chose 75 cents. But I wonder: Do you think the 75-cent request could be a “market tested” amount, one that yields a higher overall level of “donations” than asking outright for a buck or more?

Ariely's reply was more or less in agreement with the reader - that perhaps the panhandler had 'found' a donation amount that would yield the most success, but then Ariely also added this observation that I found really apt and probably instructive:

"asking for general help is unlikely to be as effective as asking for exactly what we need"

The notion being that the ask for 75 cents rather than the more general 'Hey pal, can you help me out with a little donation?', connects more directly, can be evaluated more rapidly, and when you think about it, is probably more effective over the long term.

Why the direct ask for 75 cents would be more effective seems to me to narrow down quickly to the fact that it asks less of the giver, not in terms of actual money, but in terms of time spent in the process and the mental and emotional cycles required to reach a conclusion. It is a really simple request - 'Can you give me 75 cents?' vs. a much more complex and nuanced question of 'Can you help me out?'

This difference in directness and its impact on effectiveness those of us with children probably understand - it generally seems much easier to narrow a kid's options, spell them out as plainly as possible, and be very, very, clear about expectations and consequences. But as we head to work and deal with 'adults' - they could be peers, partners, staff members, bosses, etc. - we sometimes have to lose clarity and expand focus out of respect, deference, or just wanting to treat people like grown-ups.

I had a friend who managed about 20 or so hourly production workers in a sort of light industrial setting. The work was connected through a kind of loose workflow, meaning if one worker was late arriving by a few minutes it would not stop production, but could become a minor irritant or impediment to productivity if the lateness persisted.

Naturally, there were always issues with staff arriving late - weather, personal things, car trouble - you name it.  But whenever the lateness issue needed to be addressed, my friend the manager often started with a kind of friendly 'Hey, we really need you to make the effort to get in a little earlier' and explained the impact on the rest of the team (workflow, morale, etc.). It was only when an individual's lateness persisted that he had to call in HR, have a sit down meeting with the employee and spell out the expectations and consequences in detail - 'We need you here and ready to work at 8:00AM or you will be fired'.

Usually, not always, the person kind of straightened up after that, and the lateness issues went away. You could argue it was the threat of getting canned that did the trick and not the explict 'ask' that drove the behavior change, I suppose.

But after hearing my friend relate the more or less same story a few times over the years I wonder if he had cut right to 'You need to be here at 8:00AM' rather than making a more vague - 'We need you here earlier' would have been more effective.

Note: If you liked the post, please send me 75 cents.