Best of 2015: What HR will be talking about most in 2015, (and what we need to stop talking about)

NOTE: As 2015 winds down, so will 'regular' posts on the blog. For the next two weeks, I will be posting what I thought were the most interesting pieces I published in 2015. These were not necessarily the most popular or most shared, just the ones I think were most representative of the year in HR, HR Tech, workplaces, and basketball. Hope you enjoy looking back on the year and as always, thanks for reading in 2015.

First up, from January 2015, What HR will be talking about most in 2015, (and what we need to stop talking about).

What HR will be talking about most in 2015, (and what we need to stop talking about)

My completely unscientific, biased, personal, and guaranteed to be 100% accurate take on what HR, work, and workplace technology topics we will be spending endless cycles dissecting and analyzing in 2015, followed by a short list of topics that we have, have, have to stop it already with lamenting.

These 'hot' topics were complied from a scientific review of all the stuff I saved, tweeted, bookmarked, or emailed to myself over the holiday break, because since I read everything, that is the only research that is really needed. Also, and as an aside, I still email myself stuff all the time and every time I do that I feel like a noob. Oh well, here goes...Mark Rothko, Rust and Blue, 1953

What HR will be talking about most in 2015:

Predictive Analytics - Amazingly in three short years we have moved from talking about Big Data, to talking about analytics, and in 2015 we have arrived at even better analytics - the 'predictive' kinds. This is despite having (mostly) not all that much to show for all the focus on Big Data and regular analytics. But in 2015, expect to see HR tech companies espouse the power of their solutions ability to use data to 'predict' which employees will quit, which ones will perform well, which ones most likely to steal your Chobani from the break room fridge. 

Retention - 2015 is going a be a fantastic year for some folks in the talent game as churn (and therefore recruiting) activity ramps up even more. More organizations are growing than are shrinking, more talented employees are ready to move, the 'quit' rate is climbing, and the best, most in-demand talent is completely in charge. Keeping your best, most difficult to replace people happy is going to be job #1 for HR in 2015. 

Branding/Marketing/Attraction - In other words the hard job of 'selling' the company and its opportunities to talent that has the power. In 2015 this conversation is going to have to start expanding beyond just the external candidate facing aspect, and become much more of a complete, strategic priority. Marketers always remind us that it is much less expensive to keep, renew, and occasionally upsell existing customers than it is to try and find brand new customers. The same type of logic I think applies to people in the organization as well. It is easier, cheaper, and probably a better long-term play to keep working, investing, developing, and yes marketing to the existing employees than to always be on the hunt for external talent.

What HR needs to stop talking about in 2015:

'Social' HR - If you are someone, in 2015, who is still trying to get more HR folks engaged on social media I beg you to let that go. Twitter has been a thing, and a popular, well-known thing, for YEARS. If someone has not been able on their own to figure out if there is some value there for them by now THEY NEVER WILL. Lots of folks, possibly even me too, had some fun, got to travel to events, and got to pretend we were somehow cool or smart because we had a bunch of followers. That was fun. In 2010. In 2015 it is kind of sad. Please let this one go.

Candidate Experience - I think treating candidates respectfully, professionally, and communicating the status of any of their applications in a timely manner is important, and basic. Everyone should do this. I think spending any more time on 'experience' beyond ensuring those elements are in place is likely a less than optimal use of any organization's time and resources. If you have ALL your other internal talent management challenges in order, then sure, focus more effort on candidate experience. Then again, if you did have all of your other talent management challenges in order it is pretty likely you provide a perfectly satisfactory candidate experience as well.

Employee Engagement - Only 30% of employees are 'engaged'. That has become an immutable truth of work and workplaces. It is right alongside 'Average annual salary increases will be 3% this year' as the most expected headline of the year in HR. And so maybe it is time to just accept it. Lots of people are not 'engaged' and probably will never be no matter what. Quit worrying about it. Worry about if they show up, they get their jobs done, they don't leak the company intranet to the North Koreans, and they don't microwave leftover fish in the lunch room. We (collectively) have spent ages of time, effort, and energy trying to 'fix' engagement and we have (so far) failed. Maybe it's time to take a year off.

Ok, I am out. What say you? Am I close on this? Off the mark? 

Have a great week and a fantastic 2015!

How to quickly solve your engagement, retention, and employer brand problems

If you (and the people in your organization) are representatives of what has been happening more generally in work and workplaces over the last decade or so then you are likely working more hours, remain as disengaged as ever, and now, more acutely, are struggling to find and retain the needed talented people for many of your key roles.

These challenges of work/life balance, engagement, and retention collectively have had about 4,958,909 articles and 'advice' pieces written about them in the last few years, (I looked it up), and yet most organizations and people still struggle with one or all of these problems. But what if there were one simple change to the design of work and workplaces that actually could improve the situation across all three of these measures? What if there were the equivalent of an HR/Talent/Org Design magic wand that you could wave and you'd pretty quickly see employees happier with their work/life balance, become more enthusiastic and engaged with their work, and be much less likely to leave your organization to search for greener pastures?

When you hear this idea (especially if you are from the USA), your first reaction is almost certainly going to be 'There's no way that will ever work here', but I ask you just suspend your cynicism for three minutes and at least allow your imagination to play with the concept - it's Monday morning and you are having a hard time getting going anyway.

So here it is, the easy solution to burnout, engagement, and retention:

Change your standard workday to 6 hours.

That's it. Keep everything else (salary, benefits, performance standards, org structure, etc.) the same. Just cut the workday from the 8 hours down to 6, and remind everyone that you still expect and require the same productivity and outcomes as you did on the 8 hour day, but you now only 'require' them to work for 6 hours.

This is an idea that has been in the news again lately, based on a few experiments both in the public and private sectors in Sweden, and are reviewed in this recent piece in the Guardian. Organizations that have either tested or totally adopted the reduced hours have consistently reported improvements across the three key objectives I have been mentioning - work/life, engagement, and retention.

From the Guardian piece, the experiences of a tech startup, (a type of company much more commonly associated with 12 or more hour days):

For Maria Bråth, boss of internet startup Brath, the six-hour working day the company introduced when it was formed three years ago gives it a competitive advantage because it attracts better staff and keeps them. “They are the most valuable thing we have,” she says – an offer of more pay elsewhere would not make up for the shorter hours they have at Brath.

The company, which has 22 staff in offices in Stockholm and Örnsköldsvik, produces as much, if not more, than its competitors do in eight-hour days, she says. “It has a lot to do with the fact that we are very creative – we couldn’t keep it up for eight hours.”

And what about a more 'normal' job, say as an auto mechanic? Well their is evidence that shorter workdays can be successful there as well:

Martin Geborg, 27, a mechanic, started at Toyota eight years ago and has stayed there because of the six-hour day. “My friends are envious,” he says. He enjoys the fact that there is no traffic on the roads when he is heading to and from work. Sandra Andersson, 25, has been with the company since 2008. “It is wonderful to finish at 12,” she says. “Before I started a family I could go to the beach after work – now I can spend the afternoon with my baby.”

I know what you are thinking - there is no way a 25% reduction in work hours without a reduction in comp and ben costs will EVER work for you. 

The bosses will never go for it, and for US companies, it just sounds too 'European' and vaguely socialist an idea to ever merit serious consideration. But if you can get past your instinctive reaction as an HR pro and just consider the notion as an individual employee you might think differently.

How much time, really, do you spend each day on 'non-work' - catching up on your idiot friends posts on Facebook, calling to schedule a Dr. appointment, or doing the lunchtime 'bank/dry cleaner/pharmacy' trifecta? 

How many of your kids school activites to you either miss or have to guiltily sneak out of work to try and attend?

How many times to you sit in traffic from 5:45PM - 7:00PM only to reach home completely frazzled and wiped out?

And after all of that, how much work, actual important and quality work did you get done that day?

Definitely some, you are a solid pro, but definitely not 8 hours worth, that is for sure. Work expands to fill the available space and time provided, often crowding out the other, 'non-work' parts of our lives. And, if your job is similar to many of the other folks I know, it never really is 'done' anyway - no matter how much time you spend in the office.

These small experiments with shorter working days all seem to turn out the same - employees are more focused, have more energy, provide better service, are happier, and are much less likely to leave what they perceive to be a great working situation.

What's not to like about that?

Nah, it would never work here.

Have a great week!

Two important engagement questions that employers never ask

Caught this fascinating piece over the weekend from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Labor Review publication titled Worker's expectations about losing and replacing their jobs: 35 years of change. The piece describes changes over time in American worker's feelings about job security, confidence, and (I would argue), their ability to focus wholly on doing their actual job well, and not just trying not to lose that job.

This data about worker's expectations comes from analysis of data from the General Social Survey which has been administered each year since 1972. The results of the General Social Survey are representative of the adult population of the United States, as the respondents are in line with population characteristics drawn from the population in surveys of the U.S. Census Bureau.

In the piece, author Charles Weaver notes that:

"Workers were less secure about retaining their jobs in 2010 and 2012 than in 1977 and 1978; they also were less secure about the ease with which they would find a comparable job if they were separated. As might be expected, the two measures of job security track unemployment, although other factors certainly play a role as well"

This conclusion is drawn from the responses to the following two specific survey questions (repeated every year in the survey)

1. Thinking about the next 12 months, how likely do you think it is that you will lose your job or be laid off—very likely, fairly likely, not too likely, or not at all likely?

2. About how easy would it be for you to find a job with another employer with approximately the same income and fringe benefits you have now? Would you say it would be very easy, somewhat easy, or not easy at all?

As Mr. Weaver reports, over time the number of workers who felt it was very likely or fairly likely to lose a job or be laid off rose to 11.2% from 7.7%, while only 48.3% felt it would be very easy or somewhat easy to find a comparable job, down from 59.2% in the late 1970s.

So in the period from about 1977 to 2012 job security on the macro level had declined, while confidence in one's ability to find a comparable job had also declined. There are potentially thousands of reasons for these declines, and while important, and interesting, are not why I wanted to post about these findings today.

What I thought about was the two questions themselves, and how an individual worker feels about them might relate to their job satisfaction, performance, and potentially their engagement.

Are you in fear of losing your job or getting laid off? If you were laid off, how easy/hard could it be to find a comparable job?

The answers to these questions can tell you plenty about workers. They speak to uncertainty, fear, anxiety, etc. about work and their livelihoods. The less optimistic one feels about job security, the more likely they are to approach work as something to fear, a place not to screw up, and I think these kinds of fears might improve short-term performance, (and other things not directly related to performance, like showing up on time, following rules, etc.)., but a anxious worker is not going to be a happy worker, (or an engaged worker) very long.

For those reasons, (and probably more), employers would probably like to know how their employees would respond to the two questions above. Wouldn't you like to know if your workers are tiptoeing around, hoping the other shoe isn't about to drop?

Sure. But here is another sure thing. You will never find either of those two questions on any internal employee survey. 

LIVE Tonight - #HRHappyHour Show 200 - The Final Conversation on Employee Engagement?

HR Happy Hour #200 - Celebrating the Final Conversation on Employee Engagement

Broadcast LIVE - Thursday January 22, 2015 - 8:00PM EST

Listen LIVE (and after the show to the replay) on the show page here, or using the widget player embedded below

Hosts : Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

Guest: Paul Hebert

Call in 646-378-1086 to be a part of the show

Check Out Business Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Steve Boese Trish McFarlane on BlogTalkRadio

For the celebratory 200th Episode of the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve and Trish will broadcast LIVE just like in the old school HR Happy Hour Show days, this Thursday at 8:00PM ET.

Long time friend of the show and frequent guest Paul Hebert will be along for the ride as we talk employee engagement, hopefully for the last time ever on the show. We have beaten this subject TO DEATH and still we are no closer to 'solving' engagement, or even deciding if it can be solved.

So this week on the show we will beat the topic around one last time, see if there really is a solution to engagement, and maybe and finally move on to more interesting subjects. Like robots. And the Internet of Things. And basketball.

Additionally, we will have some fun looking back at the history of the HR Happy Hour and have some laughs at Steve's expense.

This will be a really fun show, especially since we will be back LIVE this Thursday at 8:00PM ET.

Hope you can join us and jump in to the conversation on the Twitter backchannel - use hashtag #HRHappyHour to join the fun.

VIDEO: 56 seconds to drive home the importance of manager engagement

If you have not yet seen the 'Target manager fires up the employees on Black Friday' clip (it made the rounds pretty widely this week), then take literally one minute and check out the short video (embedded below, Email and RSS subscribers will have to click through).

The manager (Note: I could not verify 100% that he actually is the store manager, but from the content itself and the fact that no one else tried to stop him, I am going to assume he is in store leadership in some capacity), from a Target in Maryland, prepared his fellow employees for the start of the Black Friday 'battle' with a speech that echoed the stirring "This is Sparta" speech from the movie 300.

"Whatever comes through those gates, you will stand your ground with a smile on your face. They come here with bargains in their heads and fire in their eyes and we shall give those bargains to them."

Pretty cool stuff, if a little bit goofy. But the short speech illustrates, I think, a fantastic point about one of the topics that can be overly dwelled upon - employee engagement.

You, me, everyone else has written, seen presentations, and talked about employee engagement for years. And thanks to our friends at Gallup, (no comment on whether or not we should care about Gallup, just making a point), we are reminded, annually, that NOTHING WE EVER DO impacts overall engagement levels all that much.

And yet we continue to debate, discuss, even obsess about engagement.

But in all this copious amounts of words and attention paid to engagement we don't seem to think or talk or consider manager engagement all that much. And not managers as just another employee too whose engagement or lack thereof gets tallied up by Gallup or whomever runs your survey.

But manager engagement as it directly impacts, influences, and even helps change engagement levels of their teams - often, as is the case in this Target store, the front line staff that is the last mile in customer experience and satisfaction, well it seems to me we don't think about that much (or enough anyway).

This little one minute pep talk from the Target manager is a great example of the how one person's high engagement has the potential to have a multiplier effect on the team. He may have swung one or two or maybe even ten of the employees to get charged up to perform at a high level, to take care of the customers, and to even get engaged themselves.

Managers have the ability to influence a disproportionate number of staff every day. We should talk about manager engagement as much as we talk about employee engagement I think.

Have a great weekend!