PODCAST: #HRHappyHour 323 - The Evolution of Learning and Leadership Development

HR Happy Hour 323 - The Evolution of Learning and Leadership Development

Host: Steve Boese

Guests: Elvis Ha, Cornerstone OnDemand, Melissa Lanier Preston, T-Mobile

Sponsored by Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com

Listen HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Elvis Ha of Cornerstone OnDemand, and Melissa Lanier Preston of T-Mobile,recorded live from Cornerstone OnDemand's Convergence Conference in San Diego.

On the two-part show, Elvis Ha, Director of Product Management at Cornerstone, discussed the evolution of learning in the workplace, how modern learning technology is evolving as well to support new learning models and processes, and where learning in the workplace is heading in the future.

On part two of the show, Steve was joined by Melissa Lanier Preston, Director of Leadership Development and Talent Management at T-Mobile, where she shared how T-Mobile is working to both develop future leaders at all levels of the organization, as well as help all employees at T-Mobile succeed in their careers. This was a deep dive into some really innovative learning and leadership development programs at a really large scale.

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE, on your favorite podcast app, or by using the widget player below:

This was a fun and informative show on learning and leadership development - thanks to Elvis and Melissa for spending some time with us. And thanks to Cornerstone OnDemand for having us out at the Convergence event.

Remember to subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts - just search for 'HR Happy Hour.'

CHART OF THE DAY: Job Openings Continue to Increase to New Record Highs

I know I've covered this territory a hundred times, it seems like every month lately, but I feel compelled once again to share the headline number from the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics  JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) Report released earlier today.

Here's the headline (and an accompanying chart from our pals at the St. Louis FED) - Total Job Openings have climbed to 6.7 Million - reaching another new record high in the history of the data series.

The steady increase in record high job openings has been one of the truly amazing developments in the aftermath of the financial crisis and recession, which saw openings bottom out at about 2.2M in July 2009.

The questions are now twofold I think. One, just how high is the ceiling for US job openings to climb towards? I mean these records continue to be set even while trade wars are constantly in the news and many financial and labor markets observers have no idea what strange 'news' emanating from Washington might do to the market and the economy?

And two, when and by how much do we begin to see a much more pronounced increase in wage growth, as companies are finally forced to increase wages in order to try and fill these millions of openings? The sluggish nature of wage growth in the face of seemingly and endless supply of open jobs has been one of the must puzzling aspects of the labor market in the last several years. Something has to give soon, right?

It's a good time to be looking for work, I would say.

Have a great day!

If not enough candidates fail your drug screening, maybe the problem is you not them

While catching up over the weekend on the latest from Willamette (Oregon), Week, (I mean, who doesn't spend at least part of their Sunday catching up on all things Willamette?), I hit this beauty of a headline - Oregon is Running Out of Workers Who Can Pass a Drug Test.

Since I think from the headline of the piece you probably have an idea where this is going, so I won't bother setting it up too much and just take you to the money quote from our friends in Willamette:

“One labor issue that continues to crop up is drug testing. At least anecdotally, more firms are reporting trouble finding workers who can pass a drug test,” the economists write.

Ok, so maybe I should have set up the quote a little. Oregon, like a lot of the rest of the country, is seeing unemployment levels at almost twenty year lows - about 4.0%. That, coupled with Oregon's decriminalization of marijuana for most uses in 2014, and many employer's slow reaction to changing existing and traditional screening practices has led to a bit of a conundrum in the Beaver State - plenty of open jobs, and also plenty of candidates who are 'failing' old-school employment drug screens.

As the trend/tendency for more and more states to adopt more permissive laws concerning recreational drug use - typically marijuana - I think organizations still conducting pre-employment drug screens and who are facing a shortage of 'acceptable' candidates in these states have three main options as to how to proceed:

(Note, all of the rest of this assumes jobs/roles that are not directly in public safety domains, i.e. I am not going to advocate that airline pilots for example are not screened for drug use)

1. Do nothing - What at least some employers in Oregon and elsewhere are doing. Maintain your strict policy of pre-employment drug screening, knowing that in places like Oregon you will effectively screen out more and more candidates as time/social mores evolve. The potential positive? Not everyone is so permissive about recreational drug use, and you might be able to score some points with that crowd - both candidates and customers. "We're the drug-free burger place" - that kind of thing.

2. Better segment their jobs and screening protocols - Ok in almost every organization there exists some jobs that are more, say, 'sensitive' than others. The payroll manager has access to lots more information (and can do more damage if she chooses), than say, the person who manages the cafeteria. The point is that not all jobs in the organization need to have the same strict pre-employment screening protocols. And chances are you know that, the CEO knows that, everyone knows that. If you are an employer facing 'clean pee' issues, maybe its time to think about how universal your policy needs to be?

3. Throw in the towel - Or, said differently, let a little bit more of the world in, realize you are recruiting (largely in Oregon), from a candidate pool who considers recreational pot use just fine, (and by the way is also legal). Sure, make or continue to enforce 'on the job' rules of conduct as you see fit, no one is arguing that, but let go of this kind of old-fashioned idea of having a 'drug-free' workforce. Because you know what? You don't have one of those anyway, despite whatever rules or policies you have. Said differently - a drug-free 'workplace' is your right (and the right thing to have), and drug-free 'workforce' is more or less none of your business and is out of your control.

Organizations usually often are slow in adapting to changes in the world around them. The great Grant McCracken wrote recently that "organizations are great at keeping things out, not so great at letting things in", (I might be paraphrasing a bit, but that is the gist.

The smart HR/talent leader not only know what is happening out there, they also know how their talent strategies have to adapt. Even in Oregon.

Have a great week!

Five observations from the new Fortune 500

Dug out from my Feedly 'Read later' list was the announcement a couple of weeks ago of the latest iteration of the venerable Fortune 500 - the annual list of the largest 500 US companies (ranked by annual revenues).

The Fortune 500 has become a synonym for 'big business' in America, and taking a look through the list, and especially looking at changes and trends in the list, has become an annual exercise for folks like me who like to think about macro trends in the economy, and to think about how these trends suggest what might be coming next.

Also, it's just fun. If you are a geek like me.

So for an almost-summer Friday, here's my first five quick observations from looking the new Fortune 500"

1. For all the talk about technology that dominates most business news cycles and programs, old-fashioned retailer Walmart remains number one on the list - and it isn't really even close. Walmart has double the revenues of the next closest rival for the top spot, ExxonMobil. And while we know all about the massive businesses in retail and in cloud computing, (an odd combination), that Amazon has built over the years, Walmart still has almost 3x the revenue as their competitor from the Northwest. I know I like to think of Amazon as the most interesting and important company in America, but we can't or shouldn't forget the outsize impact of boring old Walmart. And don't forget their 2.3 million (with an 'm', employees).

2. Lots of 'The future is changing, are you ready' presentations like to talk about how much turnover there is over time in the list of Fortune 500 members. While interesting, I find it even more interesting, given the massive changes in business, technology, society, and more since the list's inception in 1955, that 53 companies (ExxonMobil, GE, Chevron, and GM to name some), have been on the list every year since 1955. That over 10% of the largest companies in American have been there for over 60 years is remarkable to me.

3. Despite point 1 about Walmart's staggering size, it is true that technology or tech-dominated firms make up large portions of the upper end of the Fortune 500. Household tech names like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, IBM, Intel, Facebook, Oracle, and Intel all crack the top 100. And further down the list we see Netflix, Qualcom, Nvidia, and Adobe - all companies doing incredible things in their respective markets. And while the Fortune 500 ranks by revenue, if you think about company value as expressed by market cap, (subject to stock prices fluctuations), the most valuable list is also dominated by tech - Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft,  and Alphabet are five of the top six most valuable companies in America.

4. There are 30 'mega-employers' on the list - companies with over 200,000 employees as of the date the list was compiled. The above mentioned Walmart leads the employment table, but some other notable massive employers are Amazon, (566,000); Home Depot, (413,000); Starbucks, (277,000); UnitedHealth Group (260,000); JP MorganChase, (252,000); and Ford Motor (202,000). And coming in just below the 200k employee threshhold are big names like Disney, Marriott, Boeing, Oracle, Microsoft, and Apple - each having more than 100K employees. 

5. There are only 17 new companies on the list this year. The most interesting 'newcomers' to the Fortune 500 are, for me, Molson Coors Brewing, (Coors was my preferred beer once upon a time), Wynn Resorts, (I still need to get to Macau), and Conduent, (I just talked with them this week, look for an HR Happy Hour Show coming soon featuring some folks from Conduent). The last new entrant on the list is corporate supply company Cintas checking in at 500. For perspective, the last company on the list is a giant organization of 42,000 employees and 900,000 customers.

Ok, that's it from my quick walk down the Fortune 500 this year, I find it interesting every year, hope you do too.

Have a great weekend! 

Corporate uniforms and what they say about the workplace

My airline of choice is Delta, the best airline in the world, (or at least that flies out of my home city), and because of my loyalty to Delta I read with interest a recent piece on Business Insider, 'Delta's 64,000 employees now have new designer uniforms', covering the news that soon Delta's uniformed employees would soon be wearing a new set of uniforms designed by Zac Posen. See below for a pic of the new duds:

They look pretty sharp, right?

Seeing the pics of the new Delta uniforms got me to thinking about workplace 'uniforms' more broadly - not necessarily for airline staff or retail workers or any kind of business that actually has an official uniform - but rather the kinds of uniforms or perhaps more accurately, how standards of dress come to be adopted in workplaces and industries where people have a wide set of options about how they dress in the workplace.

And by that, I'm not talking about 'dress codes', that fun HR topic from the 90s, but rather the more subtle, cultural drivers that lead people to dress in certain ways, what 'looks' are accepted and which are not, and how adaptive and flexible workplaces are to fashion trends and evolution. Thinking about this quickly, (and with the caveat that when I'm not on the road, I work from home, so NBA t-shirts are the 'dress code' most days for me, and that I am largely considering this from a male POV), I think what, how, and when people make certain choices about workplace uniforms break down into the following categories:

We all wear the same five things- Doesn't matter if your workplace is business, business casual, or casual - everyone's work wardrobes revolve around tiny variations of the same five pieces. If it is business, think gray and navy suits, white or blue shirts, brown shoes, etc. If it is business casual, everyone wears the same khakis, gingham or polo shirts, blue blazer if things are a touch more dressy, and brown/tan loafers. Think what an accounting convention looks like - a sea of middle aged dudes in blue jackets and tan or gray pants. Finally, if the office is totally casual - jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies. Stan Smiths or if you are a flush tech company - Yeezys.

There's a little bit of experimentation, but it helps if the boss signals approval- this kind of workplace is almost the same as the above, but where it differs is how/when new trends are adopted and embraced into the uniforms. A great current example of this is the new'ish trend in men's sneaker fashion - the recent increase in higher-end, expensive, 'dress' sneakers as an alternative to dress shoes in business casual situations and even sometimes worn with a formal suit. The key here is do you as a cog in the machine feel emboldened to be the first person to rock a new trend like this at work, or do you need to spy the CEO wearing a pair of Lanvins before you think it is ok to wear your new pair of Greats to the office?

Role-based uniforms- pretty straightforward and pretty common. Sales dresses a certain way (what they think will impress prospects), Execs wear nicer, more expensive versions of what Sales wears, back-office staff more or less follows the rules above, and 'technical' folks are left to their own devices - since no one wants to dare offend their delicate sensibilities by trying to place any guidelines or expectations on them. 

Pretend Steve Jobs- this is more of an individual choice rather than a workplace norm, but it is worth mentioning because some high-powered types like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Barack Obama became associated with the idea of wearing exactly, or almost the same clothes every single day, as a way to lessen 'decision fatigue.' If you rock the same dad jeans, black turtleneck, and New Balances every day, the thinking goes, you have more mental bandwith for the important things at work. If you have one of these kinds of guys in your workplace, be wary, chances are they are no Steve Jobs, and are just doing the turtleneck thing to make people talk about them.

No one really cares - probably only really exists in really small organizations, where entire departments consist of one person. If there is only one person in Finance, what he/she wears sets the tone for whoever comes next. And so on across the company. Nothing resembling a uniform code forms in a department until you have at least three people. You need the dynamic of two people being able to sneak off and talk about what the third person is wearing, (behind that person's back) in order for some kind of cultural direction to take form.

That's it for today, have fun out there in your uniform of choice.

Note: My pal KD over at the HR Capitalist has promised me an in-depth look at one of the new trends I mentioned above, the 'dress' sneaker, so be on the look out for that.