Tuesday July 29th, 2008
Shorten Work Week, Improve Everything

Working less will probably lead to higher productivity, says a new study at Bringham Young University.

The state government of Utah recently implemented a four day work week and experts believe it will result in higher job satisfaction and lower levels of work-family conflict. The researchers, Rex Facer and Lori Wadsworth of BYU’s Romney Institute of Public Management, believe these benefits will lead to higher productivity.

Most of the state employees in Utah work four 10-hour days a week during the transition period.

According to the researchers, Utah implemented the new schedule to save money on utilities and to give citizens a broader time range to access city hall services. Now they find they have also improved the morale of employees and improved their rate of retention among employees who save on fuel costs by commuting just four, instead of five days a week.

Even though four day work week employees work the same number of hours as their traditional work-week counterparts, they said they were more satisfied with their jobs, compensation, and benefits, and were less likely to look for employment elsewhere in the next year.

“I am hopeful that the state’s move to a four day work week will be a positive one,” said Wadsworth. “There are going to be very real benefits for employees, specifically decreased gas cost, decreased commute time (both because they only have to commute four days, but also because they’ll be commuting during off-peak times, so the commute could potentially be shorter each day), and hopefully, improved work-life balance.”

The study appears in the June issue of Review of Public Personnel Administration.

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Monday July 28th, 2008
Treasure Mapping for Mutual Rewards

The other day, a friend of mine started drawing a treasure map that would lead her toward the perfect job for her. It looks a little like something that you might use to create a plot for another Indiana Jones movie. 

Her treasure map is not just another new age exercise in visualizing what she wants. Her treasure map includes barriers that she knows she has to overcome in order to add value to the right company. Let's call it professional adventurism.

She has to do back flips over the dangerous "mommy-track." She knows that flexibility is a two-way street. She combines the occasional need to work late when the company needs her to by setting up a child care cooperative with two other single mothers. They each take the other's child or children on different evenings.

She has to walk through the valley of "NO!" until she learns how to say it. If family and work are her priorities, she says no to other committments that interfere with what is important.

She diffuses boobie traps with foresight, efficiency and careful observation. She is not going to fall into anything she isn't prepared for because she's prepared for everything.

I think she is the kind of candidate who will become an employee who will be truly treasured.

Image credit.

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Wednesday July 23rd, 2008
Racism, Sexism, Ageism, Homophobia

I have a hot question for the heatwave:

Have you ever referred a great candidate to a client and then had them refused as a result of blatant discrimination? How did you handle the client relationship from that point onward?

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Sunday July 20th, 2008
The Feiler Faster Thesis: the most important concept you've never heard of

I know, I know - the last thing any of us need is some new acronym-defined term to describe a phenomenon arising from the way the internet is changing the world.

But the Feiler Faster Thesis (FFT) is one you really should know about, because it defines a concept which will increasingly affect recruiting, especially in countries like Canada where we have some of the highest internet-adoption rates in the world.

FFT is defined (on Wikipedia) as follows:

"The Feiler Faster Thesis (of FFT) is a thesis, or supported argument, in modern journalism that suggests that the increasing pace of society is matched by (and perhaps driven by) journalists' ability to report events and the public's desire for more information."

First used in an article on Slate.com in 2000, FFT is largely used to describe the absorption of large amounts of politics-related information, by large groups of people, in a very short period of time. Thanks to online journalism - including blogs - political candidates can go from 'totally unknown' to 'everyone's talking about them' in as little as 48 hours.

But FFT is applicable far beyond political journalism. Thanks to blogs and sites like Facebook and YouTube, if a Formula 1 car crashes and the driver dies, even people who never watch car racing know about it within hours; if the previously-unknown Miss South Carolina makes a speech in which she says "The Iraq" and refers to South Africa as a continent, millions of people know who she is within 48 hours, and suddenly she's in the top 10 most-Googled names.

So what does this mean for recruiters? Two words: Employment brand.

All information travels faster and farther than it used to, but BAD news travels at the speed of light - and what happens on the internet, stays on the internet. Which means that if your organization has a customer service or employee disaster, it can affect your employment brand broadly and quickly - and it won't go away overnight.

Consider Verizon Math.

In 2006, a guy named George Vaccaro tried to get Verizon to fix his phone bill: Verizon's contracts promised a rate of .002 cents per minute but had been charged .002 dollars.

However, he ended up spending hours and hours with various Verizon customer service people, largely because no one at Verizon understood decimal systems - including their marketing department, who'd created materials using ".002" synonymously with "2 cents".

The whole thing became so hilarious to this guy that he created a whole website about it. He posted all his email communications to and from Verizon, but it wasn't until he posted an mp3 recording of his actual phone calls with Verizon that the internet started to wake up - hearing George try to explain basic mathematics to one customer service person after another (none of whom ever managed to understand it) was hilarious, especially to the computer geek-types who are instrumental in deciminating information of this type.

He posted the recording of the phone call on YouTube. YouTube removed it - but not before it got more than 1,000,000 views in a matter of days. There were t-shirts, video parodies, satiric articles - it was everywhere.

Verizon lawyers came down hard, but the damage was done. Even though all of this happened in 2006, 'Verizon Math' still lives on as a generic term for any company which regularly bilks customers or provides egregiously bad customer service.

What does this have to do with recruiting?

Well, it immediately became more difficult to find candidates for Verizon customer service roles - who wants to work at a company where everyone is stupid? And who wants to tell their friends they've just gotten a new job at Verizon, the laughing stock of the internet?

In the longer-term, Verizon Math is still costing Verizon Wireless serious money: they have to offer $24/hour plus bonuses, benefits and relocation packages in order to get customer service people. (Other US telecom companies pay more like $15/hour, and relocation packages are unheard-of.)

Bottom line? The Feiler Faster Thesis is just another reason why it's imperative for the HR/recruiting function to be cognizant of and connected to the overall business strategy and communications department.

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Friday July 18th, 2008
$100 million is a big 'tip'

(If your first reaction was "Tips at Starbucks? I just had to stand in line for 10 minutes to get a $6 cup of coffee - I'm not tipping anyone!", and your second reaction was "A hundred million dollars in tips? I've got to get myself a job at Starbucks!", you're not alone.)

This is just one of the recent cases involving tips and gratuities in the US: American Airlines recently had to pay 12 skycaps $325k, and a Massachusetts restaurant chain settled out of court for an estimated $2.5 million in damages.

What's so interesting about all this?

Most of these lawsuits have been brought about by a lawyer named Shannon Liss-Riordan, who seems to be carving an entire career out of recovering lost tips in class-action lawsuits.

Lawyers' fees for cases like this are generally based on a percentage of the total judgement amount (typically 20-30% of the total), so winning a couple of lawsuits for $100 million comes with a very attractive paycheque.

But it doesn't bode well for the 'little guy' in the long-term. Most jobs that involve tips and gratuities (such as waitressing, valeting, etc.) are low-paying, and the workers in these roles rely on tips to make ends meet. If companies start getting too scared of possible tip-related lawsuits later on, their response may be simply to ban tips entirely - leaving these workers with a real gap in their income.

(sigh)

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Wednesday July 16th, 2008
July Recruiter Trend Poll

I just realized that last month's poll is the most-commented on post of the last 30 days on the whole ERE blog network!

I am so flattered that, even though the month is barely half over, I've decided to launch the July poll.

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Monday July 14th, 2008
Lifetime Learning Support

We all know corporate executives and banking professionals who have enrolled in MBA programs to enhance their existing careers. We all know tradespeople who regularly update and upgrade their skills at community colleges to get regular promotions and raises.

Outside of those examples, though, it seems that "going back to school" as a "mature student" is something that employers and colleagues view as a personal interest or hobby. Or, they view it as advanced planning for a career change rather than a means of adding knowledge-value to an existing job.

The more we talk about lifetime learning, the less it seems that employers are actually embracing the concept as part of their retention strategy. While in-house seminars and training programs are certainly on the rise, how many companies are actually supporting their employees (and would-be employees) in their self-directed efforts to earn diplomas, degrees and certifications?

What does support look like? It looks like time off to study and to write exams. It adds up to partial or even full tuition support. Support shows working students what new opportunities will become available to them. And, what's more, educational support is spelled out in HR policies and procedures that aren't daunting and impossible to meet.

What are your experiences in this area? Do you find more and more candidates are searching for educational support? Are employers looking to provide it?

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Thursday July 10th, 2008
Where Gen Y Wants to Work

We've been talking a lot about what Generation Y wants and how to deal with them. DECODE, Brainstorm Consulting and Universum have been finding out where they want to work and what they want from employers.

“The competition to hire top graduates is more intense now than I’ve seen it in twenty years,” stated Graham Donald of Brainstorm Consulting, one of the co-authors. “This Report gives us a good idea of which companies will be able to attract the best and which need to revisit their recruitment strategy.”

In the spring of 2007, DECODE, Universum and Brainstorm Consulting conducted a survey of 23,826 Canadian students from 41colleges and universities. They asked the students about their top employers, their career aspirations, and about how key career decisions are made.

The 2007 Learning to Work Report examined many of Canada’s leading employer brands and their relative ranking as places to begin a career. Students have ranked The Government of Canada as the number one most desirable employer for the last three years running

Other highlights:

• Google took the top spot among technology companies
• RBC Financial Group came out as the most desirable bank
• Deloitte and Ernst & Young led the accounting firms on the list
• L’Oreal and Procter and Gamble emerged as the leading Consumer Packaged Goods employer brands

That sums up the “where they want to work.”

The study found that today's students and recent graduates are focused, informed and rational in their decision making. Tomorrow’s workforce, the authors maintain, wants to achieve a healthy balance between career and life, expects opportunities for advancement and learning, and are striving to build a secure financial base.

The study also found that students believe that finding great people to work with is almost as important as finding opportunities for advancing their careers. Today’s students also look to parents and professors for advice on career opportunities first and foremost when seeking advice.

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Tuesday July 8th, 2008
Sought Out or Bought Out

Have you read this Globe and Mail article about the online retailer Zappos?

The article outlines "the deal" every new employee is presented with following their training program:

If you don't like what you've seen, quit now and we'll pay you for time worked and give you a $1500 bonus, the company says. According to a quote in the article, 2 to 3% of new employees take the deal and quit.

The measure is designed to preserve the company's vibrant, start-up culture and weed out the people who may have gotten past the personality screening, but really aren't the Zappo kind.

Needless to say, the comments on the article present tons of food for thought.

Mark from Calgary said that in the effort to preserve their culture, the company is probably doing the opposite:

"How does that keep the 'duds' out? Usually the 'duds' are the ones that aren't the most wanting to leave anyways -- there for the paycheque essentially. "

James Hare from Saskatoon says that the smartest are probably taking the pay out:

"Why be at work for anything other then the paycheck? Work isn't life, its just a way of paying for it. People at work maybe nice and work maybe interesting but if employers don't pay enough or demand to much time why stay? It just means they want you to work more then they want to pay you for. Take the money and run."

Dan Strasbourg sees something more incidious about the "culture" of Zappo:

"Companies should never make employees chose between family and work. And they have the gall to do it in the name of 'corporate culture'?"

What's your reaction to the sought out and bought out policy at Zappo's?

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Monday July 7th, 2008
New Tool for Recruiters

We've been watching the development of Eluta.ca pretty closely. Here's what we like about it:

Its tools monitor new job announcements at tens of thousands of employers across Canada. When an employer posts a new job, Eluta adds the position to its database.

Eluta lets you set up an email notification that alerts job seekers as soon as new jobs matching his/her search are posted. You can also set up an RSS feed to receive the information.

Eluta's search results include editorial information to help job-seekers evaluate the job announcements. This editorial content includes:

• a popup tooltip that describes what each employer does
• a review that rates the recruiting programs at thousands of employers
• a review of working conditions at the best employers in Canada, supplied by the editors of Canada's Top 100 Employers.

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Saturday July 5th, 2008
NOTE TO GOOGLE: Your employment brand is weakening your share price

Since mid-2006, Google has had to deal with an increasing amount of bad press critical of their recruiting and hiring process: How the process could take 4-6 months and was so involved that more and more A-list candidates ended up accepting offers from other companies.

Google made noises about fixing the problems, but the truth was that their employment brand was so strong - the cool offices, free snacks, the bringing of pets to the office, etc. - that it really didn't matter. They always had plenty of top talent applying.

But it's the classic story: When you've been a media- and business-world darling for so long, and many of your employees are pre-IPO millionaires, you tend to get cocky.

Today, the New York Times ran a revealing front-page story: Google has just raised the price of their in-house daycare by 75%, which means that an employee with 2 kids in daycare now pays $57,000. The resulting brouhaha reveals that Google, once the model of a fun, friendly, perq-filled work environment, is fast becoming just another company.

The problem is that when so much of your phenomenal success is based on your employment brand - we've all seen profiles of co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, riding their Segways around the office, or relaxing in beanbag chairs in the super-funky meeting areas - you really can't afford to start acting like 'any other company'. An eroding employment brand leads swiftly to an eroding consumer brand.

Even though Google is now so huge as to have virtual monopolies in online tools - like search engines, web-based email, online advertising, to name a few - they have largely avoided the 'Evil Empire' backlash that has plagued other behemoths like Microsoft, mostly because of their 'kinder, gentler' employment brand.

But that's changing, too. Google's control of such huge amounts of data, and the secrecy surrounding its search algorithms, have always attracted a certain amount of criticism - no one likes to think that one organization is in a position to take a 'Big Brother' role.

Until recently, the average person dismissed these fears: it was hard to believe that a company which let you bring your dog to work would ever actually use all that information for nefarious purposes. As Google reveals itself to be 'just another company', however, the chorus of criticism is getting louder, more pervasive, and less confined to computer-geeks-on-the-fringe.

The bottom line? If Google doesn't address its employment brand issues soon, they're going to find that some new company is going to do to them what they did to Microsoft a few years ago: provide a hip, friendly alternative to the Evil Hegemony.

(The decline may already have begun: Between November 2007 and April 2008, Google's share price had dropped by 44%. It's recovered somewhat, but is still down by 28% since November.)

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Thursday July 3rd, 2008
Experimental philosophy for recruiters?

• Imagine a business executive who thinks: “I know that this new policy will harm the environment, but I don’t care at all about that – I just want to increase profits.”
  
• Is the business executive harming the environment intentionally?
  
• Faced with this question from a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill philosopher, 82 percent of people polled said yes.
  
• But then UNC scholar Joshua Knobe changed the word “harm” to “help.”
  
• This time, the executive thinks: “I know that this new policy will help the environment, but I don’t care at all about that – I just want to increase profits.”
  
• Is the business executive helping the environment intentionally? This time, only 33 percent of respondents said yes.

These questions are linked to a new movement called experimental philosophy. A new book by Knobe and Shaun Nichols discusses the approach that sees philosophers leaving the ivory tower to talk to people about their values and morals. They then perform psychological experiments to get to the root of what is primarily a philosophical problem.

• “If you look back through the history of philosophy – all the way from the ancient Greeks to the 19th century Germans – you find in-depth discussions of how ordinary people actually think and feel,” said Knobe, an assistant professor of philosophy in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. “The aim of experimental philosophy is to return the discipline to this more traditional approach. The only difference is that contemporary experimental philosophers address their questions by actually going out and running experiments. Experiments like these are beginning to suggest that people’s ordinary way of understanding the world is suffused through and through with moral considerations.”

  
  

• “This sort of research is important not only for its philosophical implications but also for what it tells us about how people ordinarily think,” Knobe added. “The more we know about how people make moral judgments, the more we will be able to understand how people come to blame each other and enter into conflict.”

Obviously recruiters need to learn as much as we can about how people think and how conflicts arise in the workforce, but there are also huge parts of assessment tests that are based on psychological/philosophical experimentation. Maybe we should be conducting our own experiments on ourselves.

Here's my experiment. Comment to reveal your philosophical position.

Let's look at the difference between lip service and practice. How many companies do we work for that say they want to attract and retain a diverse workforce, but have then turned away every candidate with an accent that you have sent them?

What kind of impact do these clients have on your behaviour? Do they make you send the kind of candidates they actually hire rather than the kind they say they want? Does it make you have a sensitive and worried conversation with client rep about what diversity is? Do you force (gently, sensitively) them to articulate their behaviour so that they can think about it?

What is the moral way to respond to these clients?

Can you behave according to your moral judgement or do you have to get the job done and get paid?

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About the Authors

Paul Dodd
Co-founder and President
Head2Head Canada

Paul has one simple goal: To help companies hire great people - and get the most out of every recruiting dollar they spend. That's why he's recognized as one of the best recruitment-industry thinkers in Canada.

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