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In This Issue“Job Hoppers” and the New Job Market
Onboarding: The Missing Piece of Your Talent Brand
Stop Independent Contractors from Becoming Employees
Managing Multiple Generations
Think Like an Investor at HR Budget Time
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016
HR INSIGHTSf rom the eyes of industry leadersMagazine
Every issue of Imprimis Group HR Insights contains news and observations that HR departments and hiring managers need in order to make the best staffing decisions for their organizations. It all comes down to people: without the right people in the right places, no company can achieve long-term success. In this edition, industry experts share their suggestions for finding—and retaining—the best employees. In the feature article, “Think Like an Investor at HR Budget Time,” Tom McGuire writes that “HR departments need to figure out how to stop behaving like costs and look more like good investments.” He outlines how HR can apply investment strategy to increase its value to other parts of the organization (in particular, the finance department and the CEO). Good branding enables companies to connect with people better. Sharlyn Lauby, in “New Trends in Company Branding,” describes the shift toward a more holistic branding approach that targets customers, candidates, and employees with the same messaging. When making hiring decisions, be sure to look beyond the surface, because appearances can sometimes be deceiving. In “Why High-Potential Employees Fail to Make the Effort,” Ira S. Wolfe points out that people who look like great hires on paper often aren’t the best employees after all. Once you do hire someone, writes Stijn de Groef in “Onboarding: The Missing Piece of Your Talent Brand,” make onboarding a personal experience that supports the company’s talent brand and makes the new hire feel welcomed and valued. And if you want to increase employee engagement and retention, be sure to follow Brian Formato’s advice to “customize your strategy to
meet the specific needs of each person you hope to retain” (“Business Is Good, Thanks to My Highly Engaged Employees”). Whether you’re happy with your current practices, thinking about making a few changes, or looking to shake things up in a big way, Imprimis Group can help you. Give us a call today to see what we can do to make sure that you have great employees on board!
Best regards,
Valerie FreemanCEOImprimis Group, Inc.
FROM THECEO“Great vision
without great
people is irrelevant.”
—JIM
COLLINS
S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 62
FEATURES
DEPARTMENTS
4 Cover Story Think Like an Investor at HR Budget Time
By Tom McGuire
6 New Trends in Company Marketing By Sharlyn Lauby
Workforce Management 8 “Job Hoppers” and the New Job Market
By Charles Coy
10 Why High Potential Employees Fail to Make the Effort By Ira S. Wolfe
12 Make Hiring Great Again: What Trump Can Teach Us About Recruiting By Julia Olson
14 The Problem with Specialists By Andrew Scarcella
15 Onboarding: The Missing Piece in Your Talent Brand By Stijn de Groef
16 Managing Multiple Generations By Valerie Grubb
Employee Relations18 Business Is Good, Thanks to My Highly Engaged Employees
By Brian Formato
Compliance20 Stopping Independent Contractors From Becoming Full-
Fledged Employees By Michael J. Spooner
Ask the Expert21 Marketplace Subsidy Notices – What do they mean?
Exempt or Non-Exempt? A Loaded (and potentially costly!) Question By Strategic Human Resources, Inc.
Water Cooler Chronicles22 In Business, The Only Constant is Change
By Mike McKerns, SPHR
Recipe of the Month22 A Treat for a “Crisp” Autumn Day
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15
8
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18HR INSIGHTS 3
Think Like an Investor at HR Budget Time
Publisher & EDITORIAL DIRECTORS
Mamu Media, LLC
Editor in Chief Mike McKerns
Managing Editor Addy Fillman
Contributing Editor Marsha Brofka-Berends
Associate Editor Lindsay Brockway
director of Sales Robert S. Herbein III
Contributing Writers
Charles Coy
Brian Formato
Stijn de Groef
Valerie Grubb
Sharlyn Lauby
Tom McGuire
Julia Olson
Andrew Scarcella
Michael J. Spooner
Strategic Human Resources, Inc.
Ira S. Wolfe
Design
The Office of Kristian Bjørnard
HR INSIGHTSf rom the eyes of industry leaders
J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 1 64
If you were an investor, what would you need to know about a business in order to make an investment in it? First, you would need to understand the business model and the assumptions that make it work. Because intellectual capital makes up the majority of value growth in most businesses today, the key question to answer is:
“What intellectual capital are we depending on to drive cash flow—and what talent do we need in order to create and sustain it?”
It’s usually easy to identify the key intellectual capital that drives a given industry. For example, brands and trademarks form the founda-tion of consumer products, pharmaceuticals depend on research and patents, and engineering and technologies drive high tech. At the same time, varying strategies drive another level of intellectual capi-tal within industries. Leading in innovation might drive one strategy, for example, whereas mastering partnerships and collaboration might drive another.
In all cases, at the heart of intellectual capital lies the particular talent required to generate it. The roles designed for this talent are the roles that require a different degree of investment from all others throughout the entire talent life cycle. This is the lynchpin to a talent strategy and a convincing investment plan for talent acquisition, tal-ent management, and the rest of HR. With the right dose of financial discipline, HR can be uniquely positioned to express talent invest-ments in these terms. Although management intuitively understands this dynamic, it must see it in HR plans—otherwise, it will react with uncertainty and noncommitment. Anything that falls short of this rational thinking feels like a cost rather than investment proposition.
In order to create an effective investment plan:
· State your understanding of how the business creates value for shareholders.
· Distinguish the most important elements of value in this equation.
· Identify and connect roles that are critical to the value creation process. (Critical roles are those that have a direct link to and are dedicated to the work stream that creates or sustains a particular component of intellectual capital.)
· Explicitly define which investments are required to ensure the best talent for critical roles.
· Quantify those investments in the context of critical talent and define the related returns.
The last step in that list is instrumental in winning support from the finance department. When HR calculations that would otherwise be unconvincing focus on critical roles, they then become convincing. For example, quantifying the impact of higher-quality talent becomes less of a leap of faith for critical roles than for all roles in general. Finance people and CEOs do not react favorably to the rote averaging that has become a way of life in traditional HR analysis. Rather, they want rational, pointed analysis and self-evident conclusions.
Tom McGuire is the managing director and founder of Talent Growth Advisors. He also provides HR consulting through his own firm, Human Capital Venture. He can be reached at [email protected].
Whenever a new budget season comes around, many HR leaders prepare themselves to deal with one unfortunate reality: anything that looks like a ‘cost’ invariably ends up on the chopping block. To avoid problems, HR departments need to figure out how to stop behaving like costs and look more like good investments.
BY TOM MCGUIRE
HR INSIGHTS 5
NEW TRENDS IN COMPANY BRANDING
Employment branding as we know it is gone—and so is consumer branding. Organizations are increasingly merging the two practices together into something new: company branding, which focuses on attracting and retaining customers, candidates, and employees.
BY SHARLYN LAUBY
Even though a recruiter might argue that his or her organization already has a company brand, what usually exists isn’t actually a unified presentation. Most of the time, under that “one brand,” the organization creates some marketing materials specifically to attract custom-ers, other materials to attract candidates, and still other materials to promote the
company internally and instill pride among its employees. But companies are increasingly recognizing the value in moving away from having “one brand” with three different types of marketing collateral and moving toward having a single brand with one type of marketing collateral that integrates messaging to all target audiences.
EMPLOYMENT BRANDING
O N E C O M P A N Y B R A N D
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NEW TRENDS IN COMPANY BRANDING
A recent GoDaddy promotional video, for example, successfully presents one brand to multiple audiences. It not only promotes the company’s products (domain registration and website host-ing) to customers but also conveys a sense of the company culture to both job candidates and current employees. By following GoDaddy’s example and fo-cusing not just on “here’s what we can do for customers” or solely on “here’s what we can do for candidates” in messaging, an organization can expand its outreach and do a better job of conveying its “one brand.”
There’s been a lot of important discussion in recent years about how HR needs to adopt a marketing mind-set. That relationship goes both ways, though: marketing professionals can
benefit from adopting an HR mindset, too. Just think of the possibilities that open up when those two departments share resources and communicate with each other! This new “blended” messag-ing can be challenging to achieve, but when it works it can increase engage-ment with all audiences and elevate the organization.
Sharlyn Lauby is the author of HR Bartender (www.hrbartender.com), a friendly place to discuss workplace issues. When not tending bar, she is president of ITM Group, Inc., which specializes in training solutions to help clients retain and engage talent. She can be contacted on Twitter at @HRBartender.
CONSUMER BRANDING
O N E C O M P A N Y B R A N D
HR INSIGHTS 7
In her writing and speaking about the HR industry, Patty McCord, the former chief talent officer at Netflix (where she created the famous document “Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility”), points to a tendency people have to hold on to the
“dream job scenario” of decades past. According to McCord, that scenario no longer exists, and it’s time for recruiters and recruited alike to embrace a transient job market. People who work for companies for fewer than three years before moving on to new jobs were once called “job hoppers” and regarded as unusual. But today those types of employees are now the norm, not the exception.
McCord, who now consults on culture and leadership for companies such as Warby Parker and Hubspot, has many deep insights on workplace trends. She recently sat down for a conver-sation about the current state of recruitment and retention.
“Job Hoppers” and the New Job MarketBY CHARLES COY
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How do recruiting and retention differ between big companies and startups?
What does today’s job market look like? And how is it different from, say, the market of 10 years ago?
“Job Hoppers” and the New Job MarketBY CHARLES COY
There’s a lot more opportunity now for qualified candidates. It’s a buyer’s market, so people who have the right qualifications have many more options for whom they work and how they work. What’s significantly different today is that both organizations and employees can be more honest about the fact that there isn’t lifetime employment in any company.
I often hear HR people at organizations of all sizes continue to give credence to the myths that we have about employment. We still perpetuate the idea that work can be your family, HR is going to take care of you, retention and tenure matter, and companies want to hold on to people. And when I challenge HR professionals about whether or not that idea still holds true, they all admit that it doesn’t—but they usually don’t have the language to talk about it.
How would you advise executives and HR professionals to talk about work culture?
Reid Hoffman recently coauthored a book [The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age] that discussed tours of duty as part of a career. New and different approaches to work culture need to involve conversations about how careers and employment have a 50/50 rela-tionship. Individuals should seek opportunities where they can do their best work and where their best work is important to their employer. The same goes for companies: when they focus on tenure and retention, they encourage people to remain in jobs that they may not be great at any more.
Now that expectations about time spent at a company are off the table, what red flags should HR be looking for when attempt-ing to recruit and retain talent?
When interviewing people, HR needs to understand the reasons why people change jobs. For example, did they work at companies that made a significant impact? And were those compa-nies well-run? HR also needs to look at what people learned as they changed jobs. Companies want to look for employees who not only tick off all the skill boxes, but who have also shown a proclivity for learning something new in every role they’ve ever had.
What advice do you have for HR professionals who are just launching their talent programs?
The most important thing that both startup founders and HR can do is to clearly define what the company is about, what it’s trying to accomplish, and what the time frame is for rolling out the program. If you have clarity around those things first, then you can work backward and put together the right program to hire the best candidates.
Can you describe your ideal job candidate?
There isn’t one specific thing or formula that leads to an ideal candidate. Recruiters should look for people who are not only qualified to help solve problems but who are genuinely moti-vated to help solve problems—not people who are motivated by a higher salary or the presence of, say, a kegerator. You want a company full of many different people who can solve many different problems in many different ways. Organizations should strive for diversity not just in how people look and act but in their opinions and approaches, too.
Charles Coy is the senior director of analyst and community relations at Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD), a leader in cloud-based applications for talent management that helps organizations recruit, train, manage, and connect their employees. He thinks a lot about how technology can influence how businesses evaluate, motivate, and value their employees—especially in light of the rapid changes happening in today’s workplace. Coy can be contacted at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on ReWork (www.cornerstoneondemand.com/rework), an online magazine published by Cornerstone OnDemand that features news and ideas on the future of work.
HR INSIGHTS 9
Many people believe that intelligence and personality are fixed from birth and can’t be altered later. Many managers and consultants hold a similar belief about talent: as far as they’re concerned, some people have it, and some don’t. “So why waste time on de-veloping people who don’t have talent?” they argue. “Why not just hire talented people and let them do what they do best?” The problem with that approach is that people who have only “natural” talent often lack the motivation and resilience they need to do the work.
Under this fixed-mindset view of talent (“either you have it or you don’t”), people often focus on proving their talent (or intel-ligence) instead of developing it. They, like the employers who hire them, believe that talent alone—without effort—yields success. They’re wrong.
Why High-Potential Employees Fail to Make the EffortBY IRA S. WOLFE
Recent research has all but debunked the long-held belief that past performance is a good predictor of future success. According to Carol Dweck, one of the founders of achievement goal theory, mindset is the key to talent prediction. What separates top performers from mediocre ones may not be the raw talent they have but the effort they put into applying their abilities and skills. Consider this formula for unlocking potential and achieving desired outcomes: effort + talent = success. Predicting peak formance may lie in understanding not just innate talent but also the sources of individual motivation that drives effort.
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High-potential talent often believes that hard work makes them look weak. They care-fully choose their career steps so that each foot lands safely. Their natural talent propels them up the ladder almost effortlessly until the scope and scale of a challenge stymie them. Because they regard trying harder—applying more effort—as a sign of weakness, they deflect responsibility and accountabil-ity. To avoid self-doubt, they assign blame to others and unpredictable forces of nature.
Albert Bandura, the psychologist who originated the theory of self-efficacy, points out that individuals with a fixed mindset eventually tend to doubt themselves when challenged. Many high potentials who have talent but experience a few setbacks begin to doubt themselves and even question those people who believe in their abilities. And those who lack “natural” talent just give up.
But new advances in the study of human behavior suggest that abilities aren’t fixed at all. Robert Sternberg, a renowned expert on intelligence, believes that a major factor in whether people achieve expertise and unleash their full potential “is not some fixed prior level of capacity, but purposeful engagement.”1 That’s why the people who start out the smartest aren’t always the ones who end up the smartest—and why the people with the most talent aren’t always the ones who end up the most successful.
People with a fixed mindset regard risk and effort as two things that might reveal
1 Robert J. Sternberg. 2005. “Intelligence, Competence, and Expertise.” In Handbook of Competence and Motivation, edited by Andrew J. Elliot and Carol Dweck. The Guilford Press: New York, pp. 15–30.
inadequacies. They quickly fear challenge and devalue effort, and those with self-doubt don’t even try. It is remarkable how many people with a fixed mindset don’t believe in effort, especially if they believe they have the
“gift” of natural talent. Because saving face and protecting their image are paramount, they may even prefer to lie or make excuses rather than admit to making a mistake or having any weakness. Fixed-mindset people don’t want to expose their deficiencies and inadequacies.
The people who step up to challenges are those with growth mindsets. People with this “improve and become better” attitude believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. For them, brains and talent are just the starting points. This view creates a passion for learning and a resilience that are essential for great accomplishment, motivation, and productivity in the business world.
In both talent management and succes-sion management, fixed-mindset managers tend to look only for natural talent and cat-egorize their employees as either competent or incompetent. Growth-mindset managers, on the other hand, identify and develop
potential and therefore broaden the possibili-ties of their workforce. With the shortfall of skilled workers in today’s labor market, em-ployers need to stop looking at talent pools through such distorted lenses by prioritizing only innate talent. Companies that nurture and cultivate the skills of growth-mindset employees are more likely to fill open posi-tions—and thrive—in a challenging job market and in the long term.
Ira S. Wolfe is a nationally recognized thought leader in
talent management and an expert in pre-employment
assessment testing, workforce trends, and social media.
Wolfe is president of Success Performance Solutions
(www.succcessperformancesolutions.com), a pre-
employment and leadership testing firm he founded in
1996. He is the author of several books, including Geeks,
Geezers, and Googlization; The Perfect Labor Storm 2.0;
and Understanding Business Values and Motivators. He
can be reached at [email protected].
HR INSIGHTS 11
MAKE
HIRING GREAT AGAIN
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is undeniably good at one thing: being in the spotlight. From his days as the boss yelling “You’re fired!” on The Apprentice to his current position as the Republican nominee for president of the USA, Trump has understood the immense importance of personal branding—and he’s become a master at it. During the 2016 election cycle, he has garnered an unprecedented amount of media time and has successfully injected himself into the Facebook feeds and television screens of nearly every American.
So how does he do it? And why does it matter to recruiters? All politics aside, it is clear that employers have a lot to learn from watching Trump’s unorthodox yet seemingly successful strategy to get people to notice him.
MAKE
HIRING GREAT AGAIN
What Trump Can Teach Us About RecruitingBY JULIA OLSON
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Many of Trump’s supporters say they are attracted to him because he “doesn’t act like a politician.” Somehow, the billionaire real-estate mo-gul and reality television star has convinced a large number of people that he is actually “one of them.” This message succeeds not so much because of its content but because of its tone and delivery. In the same way that corporations look to connect with candidates in recruitment marketing campaigns, Trump aims to connect with voters—and his efforts are working.
What can recruiters learn from Trump’s campaign? The lesson is a simple one: language that conveys “authenticity” makes a better connection with audiences than corporate messaging. Clearly, people are getting tired of hearing the same old message again and again, whether it comes from a politician reciting carefully formulated talking points or a corporation describing its “dynamic work environ-ment” and need for “passionate self-starters.” When staffing firms follow this example and distance themselves from the usual formulas of corporation-speak, they connect better with candidates and enable them to see job opportunities as something they can relate to and trust.
In this age of information, most voters have become pretty good at spotting inauthenticity when they see it. Just as voters see through ge-neric platform promises, job seekers are no longer fooled by big smiles and “innovative companies” that all promise the same couple of perks. The script is in plain sight—and job seekers aren’t impressed. By add-ing language that conveys authenticity to your corporate message and broadcasting it to your audience through recruitment marketing, you can begin to stand out among competitors as an employer who can bring something truly desirable to the table.
Undeniably, recruiters are so much more than just recruiters: they are also marketers and salespeople. In order to attract the best talent, recruiters have to sell their companies, sell their jobs, and sell all the perks that go with those positions. Whether it’s a political campaign or a recruitment drive, any endeavor that’s subject to public opinion must project authenticity, passion, and simplicity in its messaging in order to succeed. It doesn’t matter if your organization has stellar 401(k) offerings or other great perks: if your message doesn’t resonate with job seekers, they won’t give you a second look.
Creating an employer brand that is clear, concise, and passionate will work wonders for your success as a recruiter. Your company’s brand should be memorable and have a lasting impression on job seekers. Trump has mastered branding with his “Make America Great Again” slogan, which appeals to his audience’s feelings and is incredibly easy to repeat and remember.
Regardless of the outcome of his bid for the presidency, Trump will undoubtedly continue to hold his own with his successful brand-ing methods. Similarly, recruiters and employers can build stronger connections to candidates by emulating Trump’s straightforward and authentic approach when marketing their own employer brands. Those who do so will enjoy “huge” success.
Julia Olson is a content strategy associate in custom marketing at iCIMS. iCIMS is a leading provider of innovative Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) talent acquisition solutions that help businesses win the war for top talent. Scalable, easy to use, and backed by award-winning customer service, iCIMS enables organizations to man-age their entire talent acquisition lifecycle from building talent pools to recruiting to onboarding, all within a single cloud-based platform that is connected to the largest partner ecosystem of HR technologies in the industry. Supporting more than 3,200 contracted customers, iCIMS is one of the largest and fastest-growing talent acquisition solution providers. To learn more about how iCIMS can help your organization, visit http://www.icims.com.
AUTHENTICITY IS KING
SIMPLE YET PASSIONATE
HR INSIGHTS 13
The
PROBLEM with
SPECIALISTSBY ANDREW SCARCELLA
With the exception of NFL kickers, almost no one gets hired on the basis of one skill. People tend to find employment because of diverse skill sets they’ve acquired over time, rather than because of one thing that fits neatly into the “what I do” category. Of course, that doesn’t mean people should stop trying to improve their
“what I do” skills. But becoming really, really good at one thing—be-coming a specialist—isn’t necessarily the best way to become a top talent. And companies that want to recruit top talent should look to generalists, not specialists, first.
On his blog (named after his groundbreaking book, The 4-Hour Workweek), entrepreneur and angel investor Tim Ferriss skewers specialization and makes the case for versatility:
Was Steve Jobs a better programmer than top coders at Apple? No, but he had a broad range of skills and saw the un-seen interconnectedness. . . . The specialist who imprisons himself in self-inflicted one-dimensionality—pursuing an impossible perfection—spends decades stagnant or making imperceptible incremental improvements, while the curious generalist consistently measures improvement in quantum leaps. It is only the latter who enjoys the process of pursuing excellence.1
People who want to succeed need to broaden their horizons, ac-cording to Ferriss. And companies that want to succeed need to hire people who keep growing and learning.
For some hiring experts, the argument against specialization is more of an argument against the tyranny of overly specific roles. The bigger a company gets, the more detailed its job titles become, narrowing already narrow positions. Eventually, everyone is so specialized that no one can see beyond his or her own desk. Collaboration withers, communication wanes, and engagement and productivity die a slow death.
Google combats this problem by focusing on recruitment of “learning animals or generalists as opposed to specialists,” according
to Jonathan Rosenberg, the former senior vice president of products at Google. “Specialists tend to bring an inherent bias to a problem, and they often feel threatened by new solutions,” says Rosenberg, and “in a dynamic industry where the conditions are changing so fast . . . things like experience and the way you’ve done a role before [aren’t] nearly as important as your ability to think.”2 Of course, not all companies can replicate Google’s strategies. But companies of ev-ery size can learn from Google’s example, especially when recruiting for leadership roles, where versatility has the most impact.
Generalists embrace context over content, preferring to under-stand how each part of a company works together rather than focus on the details of how each part works separately. They encourage cross-departmental collaboration and foster the acceptance of new ideas, thus inspiring greatness in everyone around them. This ability to have broad positive impact—and not a narrow approach that rules out possibilities—is the ultimate sign of true top talent.
Andrew Scarcella is a freelance copywriter.
This article was originally published on O.C. Tanner’s blog, ‘a’ Magazine (www.amagazinedaily.com) 1. Tim Ferriss. 2007. “The Top 5 Reasons to Be a Jack of All Trades.” Four Hour Work Week
blog. fourhourworkweek.com/2007/09/14/the-top-5-reasons-to-be-a-jack-of-all-trades/. 2. 2014. “How Google Manages Talent.” Harvard Business Review online.
hbr.org/2014/09/how-google-manages-talent/.
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Companies want to attract the best talent. People want to work for the best companies. The definition of “best” varies, of course, but that’s the beauty of a brand: it doesn’t have to be “one size fits all.”
Now a business imperative, a good talent brand successfully attracts the kind of people who help a business grow. A strong talent brand also reflects the new workplace paradigm: a two-way relation-ship between organizations and talent. Hiring is no longer just a matter of an employer deciding whether to hire someone but now includes candidates researching and considering companies in much the same way they evaluate consumer products.
Think about the features of your own talent brand:
· Beautiful and regularly updated career site? Check!
· Good traction and interest from top graduates at university career fairs? Check!
· Cutting-edge benefits program and great development opportuni-ties? Check!
· Employee engagement and satisfaction survey implemented? Check!
If your organization already puts significant money and effort toward many of the important pieces of a successful talent brand, congratulations! But if your organization is like most, it’s probably neglecting one element that really puts a company’s talent brand to the test: what happens once a candidate accepts an offer.
Some hiring and recruiting experts use the term “preboarding” to describe the transition between accepting an offer and starting a new job. But considering the period as part of the larger onboarding process is not only more accurate but also makes handing off owner-ship of the candidate from recruitment to HR or a direct manager clearer. Many companies struggle with that handoff, and the resulting ambiguity too often leads to an awkward pause in the process, even at some of the best companies. Additionally, a new hire’s transition into
a new company (and even just into a new role at his or her current organization) is too often a cumbersome and uncoordinated process filled with forms, outdated intranet systems, and endless introduc-tory meetings, trainings, and presentations. A company is unlikely to have a more enthusiastic and engaged person than one who has just accepted an offer, so why let that excitement fade?
A great onboarding experience can dramatically improve employee overall performance, and new hires in longer and more consistent employee-onboarding programs gain full proficiency faster than those in shorter programs. And although any onboard-ing process is usually better than none at all, companies should take advantage of the opportunity to use onboarding programs to support their talent brands. A company that does an awesome job of onboard-ing its people—going the extra mile, reaching out to them early, and starting to build the company-talent relationship before they start their new jobs—can really stand out. Every company should imple-ment those steps, which aren’t difficult to take (think of them as HR and management’s low-hanging fruit). Those aspects of onboarding can have a huge positive impact, maybe because most people rarely expect them.
An onboarding checklist is a must, an employee handbook of some kind is probably a good idea too, and a welcome activity with the team is helpful and fun. But onboarding needs to feel personal in order to be a positive influence on a company’s talent brand. Every-one wants to feel like an important part of the team, especially when he or she is “the new person.” There’s a false perception that a per-sonal touch can be time-consuming and difficult for many companies to achieve. But in this era of connectivity, companies that get creative and embrace technology can bridge the gap between employee and employer, bring future talent into the fold early, and get a jump start on integrating new hires into their new roles and teams—and they might just be pleasantly surprised and just that more successful because of it.
Stijn de Groef is the CEO and cofounder of Talmundo, an app for employee preboarding and onboarding. Previously, he worked in senior talent manage-ment roles at EMEA, Swarovski, and Goodyear. He can be reached at [email protected].
WORKFORCEMANAGEMENT
Onboarding: The Missing Piece of Your Talent BrandBY STIJN DE GROEF
HR INSIGHTS 15
Managing Multiple GenerationsBY VALERIE M. GRUBB
are offering flexible schedules to older work-ers too, to encourage them to stay with their organizations rather than retire.
REWARDING EMPLOYEE BEHAVIORWhen managing workers of any age, it’s important to understand their motivations and what rewards (both short-term and long-term) they value. Whereas Millennials may be gunning to get a promotion as quickly as possible, for example, Baby Boomers may prioritize a more flexible work environment that requires fewer hours but includes more vacation time and maintains their benefits. (The latter is particularly important to employees near retirement who aren’t yet eli-gible for Medicare.) Members of Generation X fall somewhere in the middle, seeking both promotional opportunities and the flexibility to manage personal situations that arise.
When considering generational gen-eralities, though, remember that for every Boomer eager for retirement, there may be others who wouldn’t dream of leaving the workforce. And for every Millennial looking to move up quickly, there are others who have no interest in sitting in the CEO chair one day. The key is to teach your managers how to have productive conversations with workers of all ages to determine what each one values. With that information, managers can then devise a plan to help each employee achieve his or her goals and desired rewards.
MANAGING PERCEPTIONSIn addition to offering programs to at-tract and retain workers of all ages, it’s important for HR departments to facilitate smooth interactions among the generations.
A great deal has been written on how companies need to prepare for the knowledge exodus as Baby Boomers retire in droves, making way for the younger generations to take their place. However, the reality is that Boomers aren’t retiring in the numbers originally expected. In recent years, the average retirement age has steadily been creeping up, and Baby Boomers are expected to push it even higher. At the same time, Generation X and Millennials have come into their own as workers (according to demographic researchers, each group currently makes up about 34 percent of the workforce),1 and Generation Z is poised to enter the workplace in a few short years. As young and old share the workplace and increasingly work side by side, HR professionals (even more so than senior executives) are in a unique position to lead companies in their efforts to manage multiple generations in the office.
UPDATE YOUR COMPANY POLICIESWhen did you last review your company policies to ensure that they meet the needs of your current workforce? If you’ve been practicing HR for even a year, you know that the different generations have very different needs. So before focusing externally on your managers, make sure that your own internal HR policies align with the new reality of a mixed-age workplace.
One oft-discussed topic is whether employees need to be chained to their desks in order to do their jobs. Increasingly, the an-swer to that question is “no.” Many companies are implementing flexibility in their operating
policies that appeal to workers in various age groups and life situations in order to keep them around longer. For example, organiza-tions that want to keep Generation X employ-ees happy often offer benefits that help those employees balance their personal lives with their jobs, such as flextime schedules, regular work-from-home days, more vacation days, parental leave, and telecommuting options. To appeal to Millennials, some companies are targeting that group’s interests by offering in-creased job flexibility, rotational assignments, formal mentoring programs, and support for social and volunteer efforts. And companies
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Encouraging employees to ditch blanket generalizations is a good first step. HR can also take several other specific actions.
Tr a i n i ngTraining is a two-way street: younger manag-ers must learn how to motivate and engage older workers, and more seasoned employees need to learn how best to approach a supervi-sor who is younger than them. As you design your training programs, keep the following in mind:
It is a common misconception among new managers that they must know all the answers from the mo-ment they’re promoted. Teach your junior managers that it’s okay (and expected) for them to consult with their employees. With that informa-tion in hand, a manager’s job is to set priorities and goals, then help employees of all ages reach those goals. Encourage junior managers to seek guidance from senior employ-ees (who may have insight on what works in the organization’s culture) and take advantage of their knowl-edge and experience to learn and to make better decisions!
With older workers, don’t ignore the elephant in the room: have an open discus-sion about how, regardless of anyone’s age, it can be hard for someone to work for a manager who knows less than he or she does. Teach senior employees how to approach a less seasoned manager to offer suggestions without threatening that person’s authority or making him or her feel unqualified to lead.
Accom modation of Differ en t L e a r n i ng St y l esThe Baby Boomers ushered in the era of fax machines, whereas the Millennials grew up with the Internet. Each generation’s experi-ence with technology can shape its different learning styles. So be sure to build train-ing that accommodates multiple learning methods, including in-person, online, and self-paced programs.
R ev er se M en tor i ngWhen most people think of mentoring, they typically picture a senior executive helping a more junior employee. This arrangement certainly has its benefits, particularly if an older team member is interested in transi-tioning to fewer hours. However, reverse mentoring, in which a junior team member helps a more seasoned employee, has its own appeal, too. For example, it can enable older workers to learn the latest trends or technol-ogy they need to know to stay current. In any mentoring relationship, be sure to set goals, identify measurable outcomes, and celebrate achievements.
M u ltipl e com m u n ication m ethodsUsing multiple communication methods is smart business within any team. When big age gaps exist among team members, how-ever, communicating via several platforms can ensure that everyone gets the same message. IMs, texts, e-mail, written memos—use them all to ensure that you reach every employee via his or her preferred communi-cation methods.
SUMMARYEach generation brings a unique set of skills into the office. Fostering an environment of open communication with understanding and respect for those differences will go a long way toward strengthening a company’s ability to remain competitive in the market-place. With older generations staying in the workplace and younger generations joining them there, the multigenerational workplace is rapidly becoming the norm, not the excep-tion. So don’t just watch this scenario play out on its own—take action now! A work-force strategy that addresses the presence of different age groups of employees head-on can demonstrate how age diversity (with the differences and similarities it brings) can cre-ate stronger companies.
Valerie Grubb of Val Grubb & Associates Ltd. (www.valgrubbandassociates.com) is an innovative and visionary operations leader with an exceptional ability to zero in on the systems, processes, and personnel issues that can hamper a company’s growth. Grubb regularly consults for mid-range companies wishing to expand and larger companies seeking efficiencies in back-office operations. Her expertise and vibrant style are also in constant demand for corporate training classes and seminars. Her latest book, Clash of the Generations: Managing the New Workplace Reality, will be published by Wiley this fall. She can be reached at [email protected].
1. Richard Fry. 2015. “Millennials Surpass Gen Xers as the Largest Generation in U.S. Labor Force.” Pew Research Center report. www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/11/millennials-surpass-gen-xers-as-the-largest-generation-in-u-s-labor-force/.
HR INSIGHTS 17
Business Is Good, Thanks to My Highly Engaged Employees
BY BRIAN FORMATO Even though business is booming these days, many companies are still having trouble keeping their best employees around. Why? Some experts think that poor salaries drive people to leave their organizations. Others maintain that lack of upward mobility, meaningful work, or clear business strategy are the reasons. Still others point to incompatibilities between employees and their companies’ cultures.
All of these reasons are valid. But none of them tells the whole story: people leave for different reasons. The key to retaining top employees is to customize your strategy to meet the specific needs of each person you hope to retain. Determining why people leave can help an organization to craft a retention program. But is retention really the goal? Rather than figure out how to get people to stay, the goal should be to figure out how to get people to want to work for your organization and to feel so fulfilled that they are never tempted to look for a job elsewhere. Stop trying to block the exit door. Instead, focus on getting your employees engaged in opening new doors within your organization.
When describing situational leadership, management expert Ken Blanchard writes about “different strokes for different folks, but also different strokes for the same folks”—that is, the need to tailor a management approach to each specific employee. Getting the best out of employees is about creating individualized plans based on what motivates each person (and also modifying those plans based on his or her changing needs and interests). The five-step strategy outlined below can help organizations improve each employee’s engagement and culture, therefore maintaining peak employee performance.
Stop trying to block the exit door. Instead, focus on getting your employees engaged in opening new doors within your organization.
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Step 5: Provide stretch assignments periodically. Everyone wants to grow and learn, and the usual work can become monotonous. Provid-ing each employee with work opportunities outside of his or her daily responsibilities is a great way to keep work interesting and to give employees growth opportunities.
Step 1: Engage in a development dialogue with each direct report at least twice a year. Ask what is most important to him or her over the course of the next six to twelve months. You might find that certain personal concerns outside the office are creating work-life balance issues in the short term. Awareness of such issues can help a manager to meet the employee’s specific short-term needs (with the understanding that the employee must take some ownership for un-derstanding his or own motivations as well).
Step 2: Communicate often to each employee about the business strategy and how his or her role affects it. People need to feel that what they do matters. Connecting each employee’s work to the strategy is the best way to show how he or she is adding value to the organization.
Step 4: Make work more fun. Even the stodgiest workplace can be more exciting if the manager is open to mixing things up a bit. Hold team meetings outside on a nice day or in another part of the build-ing (and serve a tasty snack!), for example. Employees who are having fun while at work will be more productive, so make the effort to find news ways to make the workplace more interesting.
As you pursue these strategies, remember to keep in mind that not everyone can be satisfied. There will always be employees who continue to complain that they are underpaid, undervalued, overworked, etc. They are taking up seats within your organization that can be better filled by people who appreciate the company. So your best course of action is to help those unhappy employees exit gracefully. Parting ways is not always a bad thing.
If you tailor your approach to each person on your team, you will find that your best employees not only stay, but continue to grow and have an even greater impact on the organization. Their success justifies additional compensation, reflects well on you as a manager, and lifts the performance of the entire organization. So stop talking about retention and start talking about engagement and development.
Brian Formato is the CEO and principal at Groove Management, an organizational development and human-capital consulting firm focused on helping individuals and organizations maximize their strengths in order to achieve superior performance. He can be reached at [email protected].
Step 3: Provide timely feedback to each employee. People need to know where they stand. When you catch people doing something great, praise them publicly. And when you catch them doing something wrong, let them know that, too, but do so privately. Timely feedback is a great motivator that can be a very effective way to inspire someone or to correct mistakes and poor performance.
HR INSIGHTS 19
OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS the use of independent contractors has been a growing trend throughout the American economy. Some companies (particularly those in the so-called gig economy, such as Uber) rely almost exclusively on independent contractors, and there has been significant increase in their use in nearly all traditional industries as well. Employers benefit in many ways from using independent contractors. For example, the relationship between hirer and independent contractor is not governed by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), or the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Nor are employers liable for the payroll taxes or negligent acts of independent contractors.
Because of the versatility and ubiquitousness of independent contractors, many staffing and HR experts believe they are here to stay. As the demarcation line between an employee and an independent contractor begins to get muddied, however, it’s critical for organizations to understand whether their independent contractors truly are independent.
SHORT-TERM CONTROL AND NEGLIGENCE LIABILITYIn the typical relationship between a hirer and an independent contractor, the hirer contracts with the independent contractor for one job to be completed at a certain date for an agreed-upon amount. In most states, the hiring party is not liable for the negligent acts of the independent contractor. But if a hiring party exercises enough “control” over the contractor, it may become liable.
For example, when you hire a painting company to paint the outside of your office building, the painter normally goes about his or her business without much interference from you. Usually you just explain when the work needs to be done and which color of paint to use. But what if you require the painter to use a certain type of ladder or a particular brush? Or specify the type of safety equipment he or she must use? Through such requests and requirements, at some point you will have exercised enough control that you can be held liable for the negligence of that independent contractor and may have to pay for injuries to one of the contractor’s employees or to an innocent third party.
Making sure that you don’t exercise control to the point of liability doesn’t mean you have to let the independent contractor run freely around your workplace. As the hiring party, you can retain broad general power to supervise and direct behaviors related to safety or to access to the job site. But you should be careful when directing exactly how an independent contractor goes about the work. The blurry line between independent contractor and employee is defined partly by whether the hirer has stopped the independent contractor from doing the work in his or her own way.
LONG-TERM CONTROL AND THE EMPLOYEE/EMPLOYER RELATIONSHIPCompanies that use independent contractors as the foundation of their labor supply should be wary of the far-reaching implications of long-term control of or the right to control independent contractors. The two main concerns on this front revolve around the FLSA and the NLRA.
Under the FLSA, if you hire an independent contractor, you may still be found to have an employer/employee relationship, depending on the answers to the following questions:
· How integral to the employer’s business is the work performed by the worker?
· Does the worker determine his or her own profit or loss? · Does the worker have a permanent relationship with the
employer? · How much control does the employer exercise over the worker? · Does the hirer refer to the worker as an independent
contractor? The implications of such a relationship to the employer can be
significant: the hiring party might have to comply with the FLSA (and FMLA) for overtime, vacation pay, breaks, and myriad of other regulations.
Under the NLRA, the determination of an employer/employee relationship is simpler to accomplish. An employer who exercises control over the terms and conditions of employment or retains the right to do so may be a joint employer of an employee for the purposes of unionization under the NLRA. The company that hires an independent contractor and merely reserves the right to control the contractor’s work may find itself sitting across the bargaining table from a group of workers it thought were simply independent contractors.
BOTTOM LINECompanies that use independent contractors should be careful. No company wants to unexpectedly owe overtime or vacation pay to a worker it thought was employed by another party. So long as companies respect the relationship between hirers and independent contractors and minimize the amount of their control over the contractors, they can likely avoid being found as true employers of their independent contractors.
Michael J. Spooner is an associate at Steptoe & Johnson, where he focuses on labor and employment law. He can be reached at [email protected].
Stop Independent Contractors From Becoming Employees
BY MICHAEL J. SPOONER
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hand & m
arker: ©iS
tock.com/kyoshino
Q. I just received a Marketplace subsidy notice notifying me of em-ployees enrolled in the Marketplace. What are these documents and what do they mean?
— A. Employers began receiving Marketplace subsidy notices in late June/early
July from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notify-ing them that they have an employee who applied for a subsidy through the Marketplace program. These notices do not mean that an employer will automatically be assessed penalties under the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate (applicable to large employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees). These notices mean that an employer could be assessed a penalty. If an employer does not believe the employee is eligible for a subsidy or the in-dividual is not actually employed by the employer, they should file an appeal. This is HHS’s process to verify subsidy eligibility. The IRS is the agency that will actually assess any penalties. Employers will also have the opportunity to appeal penalty determinations should they receive one from the IRS. However, filing an appeal with HHS now may prevent frustration in the future because HHS is responsible for notifying the IRS about individu-als receiving financial assistance. In short, employers should respond to these notices if appropriate to prevent the subsidy notice from going to the IRS. However, if they miss a notice or fail to respond, the HHS notice is not the final determination on penalties. THANK YOU to HORAN for providing the content for this Question of the Week. HORAN (www.horanassoc.com) has an evaluation process to assist clients in evaluating Marketplace subsidy notices and taking appropriate steps as it relates to these notices.
Q. With all the hype over the DOL changes to FLSA, I’m trying to evaluate our staff. What is the difference between exempt and non-exempt? Is it the same as hourly vs. salary?
— A. You are right, the Department of Labor has released the changes to the Fair
Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which is having a huge impact on the exemption status of employees. The biggest change is that an employee cannot be “ex-empt” if their salary is less than $47,476 (a few exceptions — i.e., outside sales). FLSA provides details on an exemption analysis you can do to deter-mine if an employee is exempt from compliance with the law. Details about each exemption are provided on the FLSA government website. The exemp-tions are based on the duties the individual performs. The second test that has to be done is a salary test. In the past, a salary of less than $23,660 had to be non-exempt regardless of whether the job role met any of the exemptions. Now this threshold has been moved to $47,476. An employee can be paid hourly or salary and be classified as non-exempt, and any hours the employee works over 40 per week must be paid as overtime. An exempt employee can only be paid a salary and is not entitled to overtime based on the FLSA as long as they meet the job duties and salary test mentioned above. This is a big change for many organization that have had employees (i.e., managers) making less than $47,476 but paid as salaried exempt. You’ll want to review all your exempt employees to see who may be impacted by this change. There are many ways to “fix,” but the basics are mov-ing the employee to non-exempt and begin paying them overtime for hours over 40 OR keep them as exempt and raise their salary above $47,476.
Strategic Human Resources, Inc., is a national full-service HR management firm based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Its president and founder, Robin Throckmorton, can be reached at [email protected].
MARKETPLACE SUBSIDY NOTICES –
WHAT DO THEY MEAN?
&EXEMPT OR NON-EXEMPT?
A LOADED (AND POTENTIALLY
COSTLY!) QUESTION
BY STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCES, INC.
ASK THE EXPERT
HR INSIGHTS 21
IN BUSINESS, THE ONLY CONSTANT
IS CHANGEBY MIKE MCKERNS
WATER COOLER CHRONICLES: A TREAT FOR A “CRISP” AUTUMN DAY
If you’re one of those people who like to go to pick-your-own orchards as a fun family outing or can’t visit a farmer’s market or grocery story in the fall without bringing home lots of fresh local apples, you may find yourself with more of this fruit than you can handle. Fortunately, apples are amazingly versatile and can be enjoyed in many different ways: pureed into soups with butternut squash, covered with caramel, chopped into salads, sliced and partnered with sharp cheddar, mashed into sauce with cinnamon and sugar—those are just a few possible preparations. Apple pie is one seasonal classic that makes the best of apples’ tart-sweet flavors and their ability to handle some time in the oven without turning into mush. But making a pie is a significant undertaking that takes hours from start to finish. Fortunately, there’s a quick and easy way to create a dish that maximizes baked apple flavor and minimizes the time and effort needed to get it: apple crisp!
Yield: 8 servings Time: about 90 minutes (including one hour for baking)
NUTRITIONAL INFO PER SERVING: Calories: 248 cal
Fat: 7 g
Dietary fiber: 3 g
Sugars: 32 g
Protein: 3 g
What you’ll need:5 large apples1 tsp butter, softened¾ tsp cinnamon3 Tb white sugar½ cup rolled oats (not quick-cooking or steel-cut)½ cup brown sugar⅓ cup all-purpose flour¼ tsp salt4 Tb unsalted chilled butter, cut into small chunks
Directions:1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.2. Use the 1 tsp of butter to coat the interior of a medium-sized baking
dish (something around 8″ × 8″ works well).3. Peel, core, and slice the apples. Combine them with the cinnamon
and sugar in a bowl, then transfer the apple mixture to the baking dish.
4. In a separate bowl, mix the oats, brown sugar, flour, and salt together until thoroughly combined. Use a pastry blender or two forks to blend in the butter slightly (the dough will still have small lumps), then spread the topping evenly over the apples.
5. Bake for one hour or until the topping is crispy.6. Cool for at least 20 minutes.
This dish is perfect as is, but if you want to gild the lily, feel free to top it with some whipped cream or vanilla ice cream—or both!
Think about all of the aspects of your business that have changed over the past 20 years. Perhaps you’ve been in this field long enough to remember having to call the local newspaper to post a “help wanted” classified ad for you when you had an open position. Or maybe you remember when your sales team’s primary method of generating leads was the good-old-fashioned
“cold call”!Fortunately, new technologies have revolutionized how those
tasks are handled. Today, recruiters can post job ads themselves with two minutes of typing and a few mouse clicks. And although cold calls are still around, they’ve largely been supplanted by new outreach methods, such as social media, corporate websites, online social net-working, and new forms of print media (such as branded magazines).
Now think about how the industry has addressed other types of challenges in just the past couple of years. In addition to the usual advertising of open positions and working on new ways to generate leads, companies also have to deal with the current talent shortage and increasing rates of staff turnover. No matter what industry they’re in and what challenges they’re facing, organizations need to be able to handle change.
Long-term planning is important, of course. But for a variety of reasons, even the best-laid plans can go awry. Companies with quick reflexes can often recover from surprises. But their responses are still just reactions. The key to being prepared for change is to focus on seeking out and addressing challenges in the following areas:
· Staffing: Where will you get your people—and can you get them when you need them?
· Operations: Operational efficiency lies at the heart of a suc-cessful business.
· Culture: A strong, unified corporate culture is critical to a company’s success. Have you done a culture checkup lately?
· Leadership: Great leaders who know the market well often have instincts that let them predict trends and outcomes. How can you develop your leadership, either by cultivating current members of the company or by bringing new leaders on board?
· Competition: Don’t hesitate to emulate your competitors if they see a trend before you do. (At the same time, be ready to learn learn from their mistakes, too!)
Obviously, no one can predict the future. But with some thought-ful self-analysis, research, and open-mindedness, you can make some progress toward anticipating what will change and knowing ahead of time how to adapt to it.
Mike McKerns, SPHR, is the editor in chief of HR Insights and cofounder of Mamu Media, LLC. He can be reached at [email protected].
Water: ©iStock.com/GrafissimoJ U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 1 622
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