Make Better Hires

One of the things that plagues our organizations are bad hiring decisions.  This had led to an entire industry dedicated to selling us tests, evaluations, and services that promise to help us hire better people.

In my experience, there are two main causes for bad hiring decisions:

1. We don't take time to define what we are looking for.
2. We have pressure to make a quick decision.  

Generally, we are in too much of a hurry to make a hire because we don't think we can survive without the job in question being filled.  If you do the work to define specifically what you are looking for in your new hire and you find enough time to allow for patience to wait for the right candidate, your hiring decisions will improve dramatically.  

Having patience isn't easy.  Most of us don't like the hiring process.  We get tired of interviewing.  We also wear down in the process and it becomes temping to lower our standards.  After seeing five bad candidates in a row, it becomes easy to talk yourself into hiring candidate number six who may not be what you are looking for, but definitely sucks a lot less than the previous five.  Don't fall into this trap.  

After making the mistake of rushing myself into a substandard hire several times in my career (and living with the very painful consequences), I decided to implement this rule for my own hiring (and I recommend it strongly to others):

If you have to talk yourself into a candidate, don't make the hire.  

Unless you are fully on board with the candidate in front of you, keep looking.  Every trade off you make will cost you dramatically in the long run.  

The Wellness Obstacle - The Leader's Health

In my last post, I shared my thoughts about why I think Wellness programs are becoming an increasingly important part of our work in HR.  I'm relatively new to the field.  It wasn't until I joined my current organization that I become really familiar with this notion of wellness within the organization.  

Aside from all of the corporate benefits of wellness programs done right, I have experienced some very personal and specific benefits.  Since the corporate wellness function exists within HR at my organization, I am the executive champion for wellness by default.  For me, that meant that I had better start acting the part.  After all, who would want to hear about wellness from an overweight, out-of-shape HR guy--hardly a credible source on the subject (it's like getting medical advice from an unhealthy doctor).  Since taking on this role, I've started eating better, exercising more and generally being far more conscientious about my health because I feel that it's a requirement of the job. I love this pressure because it's a great motivator to stay in shape.  However, I suspect that not everyone would feel the same way.

As I have thought about this circumstance and the personal changes implied by being associated with leading a wellness strategy, it occurred to me that this might be why wellness is such a challenging thing to get right or to get adopted.  An unhealthy leader might consider that wellness is an intriguing program for their organization until they realize that the act of putting in a program like this might mean that they must personally change.  I suspect that many a wellness program has died before even starting due to this factor.  Generally, it's been my experience that people won't voluntarily put themselves into a position where they knowingly take on significant accountability for personal change.  Instead, it's just easier to argue that wellness programs haven't been proven to work or that company's have no business telling people how to manage their health.  All surface arguments that are hiding a more complicated truth, many of us are insecure about our own health and our ability to manage it successfully.

So, if you are considering presenting a wellness initiative or strategy for your organization, take time to consider the implications on yourself and the other leaders within the organization.  In order for your program to work, you (as the champion) and the key leaders in your organization must not only support the strategy but they must also walk the talk by modeling healthy lifestyles.  Don't overlook the very personal impact this has on each individual leader.  By acknowledging this in the process, you are more likely to get a clear picture of the obstacles that must be overcome on your way to implementing a successful program.  

Why Wellness Matters

I have a confession to make.  I used to think that corporate wellness programs were ridiculous.  I'd hear about weight watchers programs and health fairs and, frankly, it felt like the typical busywork kind of stuff HR departments are known for.  Then, I went to work for an organization that invests heavily in wellness and has for 15 years and I found out that I was wrong.

As I've studied wellness and the impact that well executed wellness programs can have on an organization, I've changed my tune.  I have become a wellness champion.  I believe in wellness programs within organizations and I think that every organization should be investing in it.  It seems so obvious to me that there is benefit to having a wellness program that it's hard to understand why companies wouldn't embrace them, particularly in today's world of health care expenses that continue to spiral out of control.

The general argument against corporate wellness is that companies have no business mandating anything to do with employee health.  It is argued that requiring employees to get in better shape or care for their general health and well being better is an intrusion of their privacy.  I've this coming from some pretty smart HR pros and I find this objection to wellness to be silly and short-sighted.  The fact is, we mandate things to employees every day.  We tell them how to dress.  We give them standards for their hygeine.  We require them to attend training classes.  We give expectations on how to execute their job. We tell when they can and can't take personal phone calls.  We tell them what they can and can't say to who and when.  And we do all of this because the specific behaviors that employees chose relative to these issues has direct financial impact on the organization.

But, when it comes to wellness, we get squeamish about setting the same kind of standards despite the fact that employer paid health insurance benefits has become the second largest expense line item for many companies behind salary.  And the research tells us that 75% of healthcare expenses in America come from chronic diseases that are largely preventable through behavior modification.  So, to extrapolate, it can be assumed also that approximately 75% of our health insurance expense at the organization level is being caused by the behaviors of our employees and that if they changed these behaviors, there could be a dramatic decrease in healthcare expenses for the employee and the organization. This doesn't even take into consideration that people are doing real damage to themselves and their families through these unhealthy choices.

With this much at stake, why wouldn't a responsible organization get invested in wellness?  It almost feels like an imperative to create healthy organizations that proactively help employees make healthier decisions.  In fact, if we are willing to dictate how employees dress when their's so little at stake, why wouldn't we dictate what they eat or how much they exercise when there's so much at stake?

Style Matters in HR

Today, I attended a seminar.  My schedule is busy, so I try to chose wisely how I spend my time.  The topic was of interest to me.  The speaker was flown in and touted as an expert.  I had high expectations.  My mistake.

Here's a short summary of my experience of the session:

• The presenter seems like a smart guy who clearly knows his stuff.
• The presenter is also a guy who has some great experience and has probably done some good work.
• The topic was interesting and a lot of content was shared.
• I left early because the overall presentation design and delivery was terrible. 

Today should have been an engaging, educational experience for me where I took away great lessons to help my organization.  BUT, because the presenter lacked some very basic presentation skills, I lost out.  That sucks.  Maybe I'm lazy that way, but if I feel like I'm having to work as hard as the presenter to extract the meaningful information from the session, I check out.  Don't get me wrong, I made a couple of notes, but it could have been so much more.  

All too often, presenters assume that if they put together powerpoint slides with tons of data, that it doesn't matter how they deliver it or how polished the presentation is.  WRONG.  This is a trap that I've seen HR pros and others fall into over and over.  They assume that they don't need to work hard on presentation design when it's an internal presentation.  They assume that style doesn't matter.  In fact, I've even heard HR folks criticize others who invest in style as if it's cheating or something.  This makes for rambling, data overkill presentations that are ineffective at best or credibility killers at worst. Don't do it.   

If you want to stand out as a rock star in HR, invest your energy and time in knocking presentations out of the park.  (Note: A presentation doesn't have to be in front of a large audience.  It can be simply presenting an business case or idea to your boss.)  Here's how it's done.

1. Study how to design great presentations (there's lots of online resources out there) and put that to work.  
2. Write out the speaking part of your presentation word for word. 
3. Revise those words until they are just right.  
4. Then, rehearse until you can do it in your sleep.  This programs the words into your brain so when you make the presentation, even if you are nervous, the words will be there.  
5. Finally, find a couple people you respect and do the presentation for them and have them give you some critical feedback.  Use that feedback to tweak things to make it better.  
6. Dazzle your audience.   

Taking the time to put a little style and polish in your approach will set you apart from your peers.  You don't need to have the most experience or knowledge to seize this advantage.  Great presentations build credibility and credibility puts you in the game.

One versus Many

The holy grail in HR seems to be to find a system or process that will impact every employee and affect change uniformly across the board.  We strive to build performance management and talent management processes that can be applied at every level across the company.  We look to find a way to get all managers to embrace the same best practices and become better leaders collectively.  We spend money on consultants and technology that seem to hold the promise of this elusive holy grail.  We want a clean, easy and elegant solution to our organization's people problems.  

The problem is that HR is about working with (and changing) people.  People are complicated and messy.  I, just like everyone else, still spend hours in pursuit of the elegant process-driven approach to broadly changing employee behaviors because these approaches have merit.  But, the underlying truth of the work we do in HR is that each person is unique and they change on their own terms and at their own speed.  And, much more importantly, change within an organization actually happens one person at a time.  

This is where my thinking has taken a turn in recent years.  It's not a new thought, it just took me a while to arrive here.  Given that our role in HR is to impact employee behavior company-wide while change in behavior happens one person at a time, we appear to have a dilemma.  However, when you break down how organizations of people work, there are key players within the organization who have broad influence on how others in the organization choose to behave.  In essence, if you get these people to change, the rest of the organization will follow.  Here are a few of the key groups:

1. Executive leaders.  Clearly, the group with the most significant influence.  But, we don't always have access to these folks.  
2. Emerging leaders.  Those who are either formally or informally identified as the future leaders of the organization.  This group may be the most significant because not only do they have influence today, but their influence will grow in the future.
3. Informal leaders.  These are the employees who may not have formal titles, but who others look to for what to do in times of change or conflict.
4. Connectors.  Those employees who have relationships that are broad and stretch across divisions.  These connectors have the ability to spread ideas quickly due to their network.  

HR is a busy profession with lots of demands on our time.  So, we aren't going to have the luxury to literally work with each employee one on one in the organization.  The big payoff is focusing efforts on the key groups of people outlined above and focus on strategies to influence them..  If you want to get everyone to do a particular thing a certain way, get these groups to do it and the rest will follow.  


Change happens one person at a time.  The key is to start with the right person.  

If you're in, be in

I recently read a blog post by a blogger who is an HR professional by day.  In the post, she said something to the effect: "I have a love/hate relationship with HR."  This struck me the wrong way.  In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it chapped my . . . well, you know.

You see, I used to say silly things like this when I was new to HR.  I didn't respect HR early in my career.  I was a hardcore headhunter prior to coming into HR and part of my training had been that all HR people were either worthless or washed up--they were failures.  In the headhunting world, HR is nothing but an obstacle between you and a commission check (hey, that's how I was trained).  So, when I made the jump to HR, I had a little identity crisis to work through.  I had an love/hate relationship with HR at the beginning because I wasn't bought in yet.  My expectations were way out of whack with the reality of HR.

But now it's different.  When you work in HR, you are HR.  If you have a love/hate relationship with HR, you have a love/hate relationship with yourself.  You have an identity crisis and a self-esteem problem.  Imagine how you'd feel if your child's teacher said that he had a love/hate relationship with education.  How in the world is your organization supposed to respect you if you aren't even sure if you respect yourself.  Aaarrrggghh!  Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it!  

There's a saying that you have probably heard many times.  From the first time I heard it, it has rung in my ears:

If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.  

Not only did the words, "I have a love/hate relationship with HR" come from a practicing HR professional, but from one who blogs to the world professing to help others be better at HR.  While I'm sure that this particular blogger would argue that she's helping HR move forward, but I think that this type of mindset is part of our problem.

If you are in HR, be HR.  Love the work.  Love the profession.  Love the people.  Yes, we are flawed.  Yes, we have a lot to improve.  But, so does every other discipline.  Instead of trying to distance yourself from HR, start being the solution.  Model the way HR should be.  Have a vision for the future of HR and share it with others. Hold yourself, your team and your peers to incredible high standards.  Mentor, teach, lead, grow.  That's what we need in HR.

I am HR.  So are you.  Start acting like it.