Do The Work

Smart HR Starts With Smart Company Leadership

Frannyo — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:03:24 +0000

I presented yesterday on smart and small HR. The participants were so committed to their field that they showed up at 9:00 on a Sunday morning, just to learn how to better manage their time, utilize the tools available to them, and prioritize. Most of the participants had full payroll, HR, and benefits responsibilities, for companies of around 200 staff. Many also had other responsibilities like billing or front desk. Frankly, their problems are not, to my mind, a training issue so much as an organizational structure and expectations issue. How in the world are these folks supposed to get a seat at the table when they’re setting the table, making the food, and clearing the table? We talked about saying No, managing expectations, prioritizing, and using free help – but honestly – if I left them with hope and tools, I fear it may be a false hope. If organizational leadership wants higher-leverage HR, they have to invest in it. And in that room, no one said a thing to cause me to believe that investment would happen any time soon. I was honored to work with the participants, and I wish them well.

When I get this Slideshare widget installed, I’ll share the resources I made as a followup.

HR Florida 2010 Update One

Frannyo — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:47:35 +0000

So first, let me just tell you. I am blown away by how impeccably the HR Florida conference is run. Professional, friendly, and just plain nice. I can’t imagine how many collective volunteer hours it must take to pull something like this off, but my easy guess is that it’s in the range of thousands.

HR Florida Presentation Report –“Are You Keeping Up?” with Linda Bailey, SPHR

This class was completely full – and by completely full, I mean standing room only in a room for maybe 250. Bailey covered some really good basics, but it felt a little like a 45 minute master’s program. There was no room for discussion, action planning, or examples – just solid tips, read from a paper, with no Powerpoint or other illustrations. This needed to have been at least a three-hour preconference session. The participants must have felt that they were drinking from a fire hose. Or trying to keep up. So to speak.

Some of Bailey’s many, MANY tips:

Get to know the business by showing up, wandering around more, working with operations folks more.
Know what key indicators your business leaders use and use their terms. Don’t use soft and squishy phrases. Be more numbers driven.
Pay attention not to the process, but to the result you are you looking for – for instance, if you’re looking for higher engagement, take a look at better attendance, lower turnover, etc.
Pick one or two measures to start, and get your boss’s buy-in on what to measure.
Only as little as 28% of a company’s value shows up on the balance sheet. #HRLF10 “You won’t get a raise by administering FMLA or COBRA right, that’s expected.”
Be a credible activist – you’re respected, you have a point of view and you share it. HR with an attitude. HR pros who are credible but not activists are admired but silent. HR pros who are activists but not credible are not heard.
Negotiation, project management, presentation skills, coaching, OD knowledge are critical.

I had originally titled it, “Thats MR Lady to You”

Frannyo — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 19:18:29 +0000

But that was a little confrontational, even for me.

I have a little rant up at Women of HR about people’s obsession with transgender issues at work, and our role in channeling people back to their actual jobs, no matter where the distraction may come from. Feel free to have a look if you want to see me at my hyperbole-est.

Thanks, Women of HR, for allowing me a much higher soapbox to stand on!

Waffle House to James Beard Award? Great Hiring

Frannyo — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 02:34:09 +0000

Bryan Caswell of Houston’s current favorite restaurant, Reef, has some very smart things to say about hiring. Caswell commented that he strongly prefers to hire chefs who’ve worked at The Waffle House, a southern breakfast chain. Jason Sheehan, food critic for the Seattle Weekly and another former Waffle House chef agreed. Take a look at Caswell’s short comments:

Caswell has it exactly right. When looking at a set of resumes, I’ll pick the person with hard-won experience, particularly restaurant or farm experience, over fancy schools any day. Similarly, I’ll almost always pick the candidate with a lower GPA who worked their way through school over the candidate who has a high GPA but hasn’t ever had to make rent or pay their own bills.

Don’t be mesmerized by big-name colleges or Fortune 100 experience – go with the person who can show you that they made home runs the old-fashioned way, not just by being born on third base and getting a walk. I’ve rarely seen people successfully move from a huge company to a very small one, and have often seen people with lots of small company, high intensity, broad experience help grow their companies into very big, very successful ones. They don’t fool themselves that privilege is the same as talent. And neither should you.

Don’t Try This At Home

Frannyo — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:42:47 +0000

After fifteen years in HR and recruiting, a Masters, an SPHR, and reading a book or two about interviewing, I kinda have hiring down. I am a complete harpy about hiring managers who “go with their gut,” aka “listen to their lunch.” I am a ruthless reference checker, using every trick in the book to suss out fibs, exaggerations, and real feedback. I learned in grad school that references, done properly, are more accurate assessors of a future employee’s success than interviews, and spend as much time checking references as I do sourcing or interviewing. In other words, I’m a bit of a hiring know-it-all process snob.

My company is filling several beginner engineer positions in Houston. The ideal candidate is a Chemical Engineer with strong people skills and a high level of initiative who wants to work for 35% below market for first-year Chemical Engineer graduates. I’ve just completed several days in a row of phone screens and face to face interviews for some beginner engineer positions, explaining the career growth curve in consulting and the demands of consulting in general and this job in particular. (I’m a big believer in transparency in the hiring process.) I had found some good candidates who seemed like they could do it, but few seemed truly excited about the job – particularly the social aspects of the job.

Then, after one more lunch in which the latest candidate said that she had a lot to think about but she’d call us, a kid in a suit showed up in our lobby. Bearing cookies. Delicious, warm, chocolate chip cookies. He introduced himself as one of the candidates I’d been playing phone tag with, and asked if I had five minutes to visit face-to-face. He ended up going through our entire interview process in our break room, talking to hiring managers and potential peers over cookies and coffee. His answers were solid, his hands shook a little but he stayed engaged with everyone and asked great questions, and he was completely respectful of the fact that he might be taking up too much time given his unexpected arrival. I checked through all my typical interview questions for the job – now that I include potential peers in interviews, they ask most of them for me, but sometimes they miss one or two. I probed. I pushed. I looked everywhere for inconsistencies – and there just weren’t any. This kid had it.

Reader, I hired him. On the spot.

Okay – actually contingent on our usual background and reference checks. I may have been listening to my lunch. I’m checking his references today but my guess is, his story will check out completely – he is just one of the young people who’ve gotten caught up in this bad economy and has had to learn to show more initiative and creativity than the competition. His actions and his answers were completely congruent with a great future leader at our company, and we have a good story and a full belly to boot. Maybe we can get him to make us bacon chocolate chip cookies for his first annual review.

Houston ERE Meetups!

Frannyo — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:31:33 +0000

Last month, I hosted Houston’s first ERE Meetup. After a few tense moments when I thought I’d be left alone at Block Seven Wine Company to read my Angelina-cover Vanity Fair Magazine with a bottle of wine and some truffle popcorn all to myself (ok – not SO tense,) several interesting and interested HR and recruiting folks from across Houston started popping over to say hello. We had recruiters from the hospital industry, the temp industry, and the refining industry there. We also had a couple of folks without jobs who are staying positive while on the hunt.

The conversation was authentic, lively, and engaging. We had laughs, we told the truth about how things are going, and we engaged far beyond the usual stiff ”elevator speeches” often found at networking events.

I was thrilled. I’ve been looking for a community of smarty-pants HR pros in Houston, people who want the best for their organizations and aren’t afraid to take risks to make things happen. HRQ occasionally holds evening meetings that are focused on conversation rather than Powerpoint slides, and I’m sure there are other private group meetings as well. But this group just fits me. (Plus, since it was open, I was invited!)

We’re meeting again August 17th. Click here to sign up, or if you’re not from Houston, click through to sign up for the ERE meetup in your town. You won’t be sorry!

For Shame.

Frannyo — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:21:36 +0000

You may remember that earlier last year I featured Laurie-Ellen Shumaker in my series on great people who need to get back to work. Laurie-Ellen was recently also featured at the Huffington Post in a series on the unemployed in America. This brief article part of their “Bearing Witness” project designed to highlight the effects of this recession on real families.

The story was fine. The comments were mostly ignorant, judgemental, and angry. For example, a user who defames a Texan great lady with the username LadyBirdJohnson wrote, “…Your story does not add up and is full of self pity and drama. Most of the time when people have trouble they only need to look at themselves to blame. Maybe you should be asking what role you played in this mess you find yourself? Actually, your story sounds as make believe as your unicorn.” Self-righteous comments like this go on for 26 pages, thus far.

Brene Brown, A Houston-based researcher, studies shame for a living. (I know, right? Talk about a Dirty Job) This talk she gave at the UP Experience summarizes her work beautifully. Go watch it. It takes 25 minutes. I’ll wait.

Back so soon? Isn’t her work challenging and intriguing?

Brown notes that we most severely judge others in areas that we ourselves feel insecure. We do everything we can to create a wall between ourselves and those we see as failing or less than ourselves. As the economy continues to lag and jobs remain in scarce supply, the self-righteousness level of our coworkers, family members, and friends may continue to ratchet up. The comments in the HuffPo story are a perfect example of that phenomenon.

My Great Grandmother Was Too Busy To Die. Are You?

Frannyo — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:04:42 +0000

My great-grandmother, Francelia Crittenden, was a force of nature. She lost her husband in the Great War, and raised her two sons on her own by working as a business organizer and community activist. She died, at the age of 103, in an old folks home she helped found. Gran had two sayings that have always stuck with me: “The only sin is not using the talents God gave you to make the world a better place,” and “You are how you spend your time.” She stayed busy until the very end, walking the halls of the home, “offering suggestions” in her gracious but firm way. I often fail her model, but she’s always on my mind.

In the last six days at work I’ve:

Placed job postings at 45 universities
Processed 120+ resumes for three positions using only Outlook and my good judgement
Performed 30+ phone screens
Set up eight face to face interviews
Participated in three face to face interviews
Checked references on five candidates
Made four job offers
Set up a rule in Outlook which sent 95 “no thanks” responses to resume submittals
Processed a couple of employee exits
Talked to our company employment lawyers three times (all good things, thankfully) and our tax accountant once
Worked through some 401(k) issues and checked references on a couple of potential new vendors
Worked with employees on performance issues and opportunities
Talked company execs and a few staffers into seeing eye-to-eye on various cultural or retention matters
Analyzed compensation and performance metrics across the company and recommended a couple dozen compensation adjustments
Improved the hiring process to allow all new hires to be more effective from day one of employment
Made recommendations regarding operational effectiveness opportunities

At home, I:

Celebrated my partner’s birthday
Moved from a Blackberry to an iPhone, with lots of “training time” on my part – aka “Angry Birds” and “Words with Friends”
Hosted the first Houston ERE meetup
Started a conversation about an oil and gas/petroleum industry-specific recruiter’s group
Provided a couple of quotes for a local paper regarding business uses of social media
Cleaned out my garage to give my crib and some of my daughter’s infant stuff to some friends
Took my daughter to four birthday parties, including buying and wrapping the presents and wrapping my daughter’s brain around the fact that the presents aren’t for her
Hosted a neighbor for swimming and dinner
Reconnected with some online friends over the phone
Unexpectedly babysat another neighbor’s child when the neighbor had to run to the hospital to check on her dad
Had an intense but productive conversation with the principle at my daughter’s school
Read most of two books – “The Upside of Irrationality,” and “I Thought it Was Just Me“
Read 160 postings regarding business, HR, economics, and just flat interior design eye candy, (according to my RSS feed)
Made a tiny nod to my health by sleeping 8 hours a night and attending a weekly yoga class
All while acting as the primary caregiver to my little stinkbomb, since my partner is working nights and sleeping days this month.

I have to admit, I rarely enumerate how I’m spending my time like this. When I see it in black and white, I feel, frankly, sick. Because the fact is, it’s Not Enough. There’s still laundry to be done, a regular exercise program to pursue, that employee manual that needs a serious overhaul ASAP, that staffer who’s still waiting on my confirmation that her address has been changed in payroll. You’ll notice I neither lent an hour to any volunteer efforts, nor listed “made it to church” as one of my achievements.

Being busy is not the same as being effective. I can delegate more, make better use of help at home, and deepen my impact with company owners. I’m still struggling there, and I’ll keep exploring that intersection, hopefully until I myself am 103. Though I’m no expert, HRFlorida has been kind enough to extend an opportunity for me to lead a conversation on effectively using your time at work. We’re sending out a brief survey to all attendees ahead of time, to make sure we cover what the participants want to learn, and we’ll discuss both practical and philosophical tools to lead the HR departments, or be the HR department, for small companies. I hope you’ll join us. Maybe you can teach me a thing or two, and I can offer you a couple of pointers as well.

Family Day!

Frannyo — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:22:10 +0000

About three and a half years ago, I had a daughter. Though my wife is not biologically related to my daughter, in Texas, provided you jump through some slightly shady hoops, same-sex partners can adopt. We got that process started as soon as my daughter was born. Our life became a flurry of lawyers and check writing and social workers and lots of documentation, in addition to the diapers and sleeplessness usually associated with an infant. On June 8 of 2007, we stood in front of a family law judge in San Antonio Texas and my wife became a mom and my daughter suddenly had two parents.

In the next few months, I fell in love with my new family all over again. I was so proud of my partner, who stayed home full time with my child, and of course I was completely enamored of our baby. Since up to that point we’d been kind-of in the background, I was happily shocked by all the love, support, and encouragement shown by my family, friends, neighbors, and strangers at the grocery store.

As so often happens, once our daughter was born, our priorities changed. Before I had her, I was a traveling machine. I was on the GO, sometimes to two or three cities a week. After she was born, I tried – I really tried. We took her to New York for a work meeting two weeks after she was born, then my breastpump and I got back on the road. It was hard. I was failing at work and failing at home, or at least it felt that way. My wife was more than a little tired of being at home alone with our baby four nights a week, let alone all day every day.

We sat down, talked about what was most important, and agreed it was time to focus on our family. One way we knew to to that was to hit the reset button in all areas of our lives. So I quit a job I loved maybe too much and took a much less demanding job that allowed me to help out a lot more with our daughter.

We decided to celebrate our “reset” by surrounding ourselves with the friends and family who had been so supportive of us. We wanted to make a public commitment to take care of each other and ourselves a little better than we had been, and I wanted to tell my family and friends how excited I was to create my life together with my partner. We got married June 8 of 2008, surrounded by a small group of loving friends and family. My dad read 1st Corinthians, my mom read from The Velveteen Rabbit, my sister was the minister. There was cake. And tears. And gratitude, community, toasts, and some pretty big promises.

Being married takes work. Love is a verb. We create love every day, through our gratitude to one another, listening to each other, and being respectful of one another. By the time we got married, there were no endorphins chasing us to the altar. But we knew we wanted to create a family, and to recreate, support, and renew our family, for the rest of our lives. So we do! Family Day is a big deal around our house. We take cupcakes to school, thank our parents and in-laws for supporting our family both logistically and philosophically, and tell our story. This is a work blog, and it feels a little risky for me to put my story out here, but we want everyone to know how happy we are, and how we work to create happiness, every day. We think that’s what family is all about.

SHRM 2010: Don’t Waste Your Time

Frannyo — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:14:54 +0000

If you’re attending SHRM 2010, don’t waste your time, or your dime.

Use this opportunity to learn something new, make new connections, land that next gig, get those new clients – whatever is truly on your mind as your Next Big Step. With a conference this big, attracting so many HR Pros and business leaders, you have the perfect opportunity to do what you want. But don’t show up, expect to be spoon-fed training, and leave. That would be a big waste.

I once landed my dream job at a National SHRM conference. I was working in a small town, disconnected from other opportunities, and I knew I wanted a bigger platform to do my thing. So since the SHRM National conference was being held nearby, I set my sights high. I decided I was going to walk out of the conference with at least three funny stories, fifteen new friends, two major job leads, and thirty-five non-vendor-related business cards. I asked a friend, who wasn’t attending, to help me keep score every morning – and I went to work. Here’s how I did it.

I spent time on the SHRM bulletin boards before the conference, getting to know some people and arranging for a meetup or two.
I went alone, so no one could bust my momentum or distract me from my goal.
I came up with a loose elevator speech explaining what I’d done up to that point, what I was looking to do, and my goals for the conference. This was important – it helped get strangers at the conference “on my team” and they introduced me to lots of their friends and invited me to parties.
I made myself show up. I went to every party, every luncheon, every large class I heard of. I also, frankly, crashed a party or two – sorry SHRM Best Small Companies partygoers, that was me with the lampshade on my head.
I applied for jobs through the SHRM on-site job board, and asked to meet with company interviewers during the conference. This is actually what did it for me. I was in the computer room and saw that Dream Job had JUST been posted. I quickly shot an email out outlining why I was The One and asking to visit immediately. The recruiter, Shannon Maroney of HR Backbone, introduced herself, and we talked right there! We immediately clicked, and over the course of the next couple of days, she and I got to know each other much better. I told her about my goals for the SHRM conference and we attended a couple of the same parties. On the last day of the conference, I took her to lunch and to the airport. By the time she introduced me to her client, she was comfortable selling me as the best possible match to Dream Company’s CEO.

I know SHRM National is about more than networking. The seminars are great and you can learn a great deal just by listening. But if you are one of the attendees who goes to every seminar, takes notes, and then watches bad cable in your hotel room all night, you are REALLY missing out. There’s no reward for being a wallflower. You don’t need to be me, totally goal-focused and intent, but you do need to stretch yourself. HR is an isolating and often depressing job. Use this time to make some new friends and have a laugh or two. If you don’t, you may be wasting your time.