Rick Bell – Page 68

August 24, 2017June 29, 2023

Millennials Opening the Doors to Communal Modern Workspaces

Open office spaces can work, but they need a balance and it depends on the industry.

When I accepted my first office internship at Human Capital Media, I asked many of my friends the same question: “What’s your office like?” I heard much of the same answer: an open office space.

As the trend toward open office spaces hits the workplace and studies emerge about their effectiveness and innovation, questions are rising about this Silicon Valley-inspired model that is supposedly the future of office spaces.

How does it boost productivity and deal with office distractions? Does it further disconnect employees with the eternal presence of technology? The discussion becomes more interesting when you consider in conjunction with another rising workplace trend: remote working.

Many employees work from home and have flexible work arrangements, so their comfort level has seeped into the office design. Airbnb’s office is said to be like entering someone’s house; creative homey nooks with hanging lights, colored walls and antique portraits and memorabilia for private concentration, standing-only desk cubicles or large sleek lounges with wall plants and dog-friendly spaces had the company received rave reviews for its space.

Mixed with a modern office setting of ample wooden tables for conferences, meetings and productive vibes, it’s no wonder the space won Glassdoor’s 2016 Best Place to Work. Modern spaces like these are heading toward a future where the work-life balance will be less office space and more working from home. These spaces are acting as a “second home” while losing the title of a typical “office.”

While it depends on the job, most corporate industries and technology-aiding jobs can be done from home or any space that lets you have a flexible schedule and not have much of a commute, like these open environments. In a recent Forbes article by Sydney Parker about humanizing the future of the workplace, she wrote that balance is coming to fruition for convenience, according to experts on office spaces and design.

“Panelists [at the Bisnow Seattle Workplace of the Future event] envisioned office spaces intermingling with residential and retail cores, allowing workers to walk, bike and work remotely from home. In the future workplace, an individually determined work-life balance will not be a lofty aspiration, but a shared reality,” she wrote.

Millennials are one group pushing for flexible work hours and remote work access, according to HR experts and millennials themselves. In my first blog post for Workforce, I wrote about millennials’ influence on shaping the workforce and their growing presence in tech fields.

As a millennial, those benefits in a job are extremely attractive and allow me to have better control of time management and work around other commitments. Being constantly plugged into social media and computers for work, office spaces no longer need to be so segmented and traditional, which younger generations know well.

These office spaces are similar to working from home and allow flexibility in work schedules and boost engagement and creativity, studies show. According to Nicholas Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University, a 2014 study he conducted of a call center’s remote workers showed their increased productivity when they were able to work from home over a span of nine months, as compared to workers in the office. According to the Harvard Business Review interview with Bloom, who is a co-director of the productivity, innovation and entrepreneurship program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, this was because of their quieter environment and their flexible schedule to start earlier, take fewer breaks and work around family commitments.

He brought up the point that not everyone has the discipline and motivation to work remotely; some need manager support and thrive on a work-specific space with obvious company culture. As with anything, balance is key to success, and it applies here in workspaces and work remotely.

Working only from home would not be conducive socially and work-wise, but having a mix of office days and work-from-home days could be a healthy alternative to keeping morale alive, having manager support when needed and keeping employees connected to the organization. Bloom mentioned this model would also save money for companies.

To move with the times, companies need to be open to remote work flexibility, balance modern workspaces that act as a “second home” and less confinement, while also listening to the needs of their employees. If someone is used to a closed office or works better in those spaces, they should have that option.

A New York Times op-ed called out Google for wrongly creating an office open space that is destroying work culture, but what is actually wrong is not accommodating an employee’s need. More recently, Apple’s employees have threatened to quit over the company’s new floor plan, featuring open office layouts. Having the balance between social and quiet rooms and closed offices, like we have seen with Airbnb, is the future of office design and can push employees to work from their office “home” with co-workers.

Ariel Parrella-Aureli is a Workforce intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

August 22, 2017June 29, 2023

Hiring Basics Can Help Avoid a Bad Candidate Experience

It is not breaking news that a bad hire can come with a high price tag — recruiting costs, training costs, man-hours and morale issues — not to mention the lost productivity.

But there’s another recruiting misstep that could cost you as well, and it’s probably something you don’t often think about: poor candidate experience. While you as a hiring manager have decision-making power, candidates with options aren’t going to stick around if they are not having a good experience.

If you come across as unorganized in your search and onboarding — as if the role isn’t a priority — then you’re turning potentially great hires into dissatisfied customers that could have a negative impact for your brand.

Exclusive research and insights from CareerBuilder’s 2017 “Candidate Experience Study” show what peers and competitors have identified as shortcomings in their process, illustrate the role for technology to help improve the process and provide tips to make things easier for employers and prospective employees.

In partnership with Inavero, CareerBuilder surveyed 4,512 workers (ages 18 and over), 1,500 hiring decision-makers in the United States and 504 workers in Canada in an effort to understand the factors that influence candidates’ job search experience. Here are some aspects employers are struggling with according to study results:

Not having a quick apply process for every device: The application process itself can contribute to a negative experience for modern candidates as “applications taking too long” (28 percent), “having to customize documents for every job” (34 percent) and “uploading a résumé into a system but still having to manually fill out fields” (29 percent) are reiterated as frustrating aspects of the process by a considerable number of candidates.
Not preparing hiring managers: On average, only 2 out of 5 hiring managers are prepped by recruiters or talent acquisition specialists. Of those who do, only 2 out of 5 prep hiring managers specifically on the topic of candidate experience. This means only 16 percent of hiring managers overall are prepped by specialists to help manage the candidate’s experience.
Not having an effective career site: An employer’s career site is important for getting key information, according to 89 percent of job seekers. But a quarter of employers (24 percent) say their company career site doesn’t accurately portray what it’s like to work for their organization, and only 45 percent of candidates say they can typically tell what it would be like to work for a company based on their career site.
Not tailoring communications methods to specific segments: The ever-emerging multigenerational workforce demands a shift in the way we communicate. Millennials significantly prefer email communications (57 percent) over phone calls (31 percent), whereas baby boomers significantly prefer phone calls (58 percent) over emails (37 percent). Generation Xers have equal preferences toward email and phone calls (47 percent for both).
Not recognizing when the employee experience really begins: The lines between the candidate and employee experience are blending — at least in the eyes of candidates, as 3 in 4 say their candidate and onboarding experience with a company is the first part of their broader employee experience with that company.
Not building relationships with candidates for future opportunities: The most valuable resource an employer has is their talent pool. While it is important to attract the top candidates, it is equally as important to frequently and effectively communicate with your talent pool, but more than a third of employers (35 percent) say they don’t put time into doing this.
Not having an efficient background check process: Employers that want to keep top talent from talking to other companies while they want to receive employment screening results should improve their screening process. Sixty percent of candidates continue communicating and interviewing with other companies while waiting on background results.
Not having the right ATS or an ATS at all: Organizations currently utilizing an ATS, or applicant tracking system, reported placing more emphasis on the candidate, employee and hiring manager experiences. For example, those who currently use an ATS are 25 percent more likely to have a standardized process to help deliver a consistent candidate experience.
Not informing the candidate where they stand: More than half of job seekers say employers don’t do a good job of setting expectations in terms of communication at the beginning of a potential hiring interaction. Eighty-one percent of job seekers said continuously communicating status updates to candidates would greatly improve the overall experience.
Not staying connected with candidates once they have accepted the position: Once the hiring process is in the post-acceptance and onboarding stage, the expectation is for the process to be seamless and frustration-free for new hires — yet a noticeable number of candidates say this stage has not been ideal. Two in 5 candidates (40 percent) say they’ve experienced a lack of communication in the past between when they accepted the job and their first day of work. This is not surprising, since less than half of employers (47 percent) have a formal process in place for communicating and interacting with candidates between the day they accepted the job and the day they start work.
Not paying attention to how their employer presence/brand is portrayed on social media: Employers are trying to reach an audience, and they can’t afford to let their brand’s social media pages fall by the wayside. Yet, 60 percent of employers don’t monitor their employer presence/brand on social media. Of those who do, 68 percent take steps to encourage positive reviews while 16 percent just react to negative information.
Not treating candidates with the same respect as employees: While the majority of employers (51 percent) say the line is blurring between the company experience and employee experience, less than half of job seekers (49 percent) say employers treat candidates with the same level of respect and accountability as current employees. This is an issue since the vast majority of job seekers (nearly 4 in 5) say the overall candidate experience is an indicator of how a company values its people.

One in four employers says the amount of time it took to fill their last opening was too long. Hiring isn’t easy, but don’t lose sight of the plight of candidates. Job seekers on average say it takes them about 2 1/2 months — 10 to 11 weeks — to find a job, from when the search begins to when they accept the offer. During this time, they spend just over five hours a week on average on job search related activities.

Your job is hard, but so is the candidate’s. That’s why it’s crucial to understand how to improve your candidate experience — and technology can help you get there.

Rosemary Haefner is chief human resources officer at CareerBuilder. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

August 18, 2017October 18, 2024

Time Management Clock Ticks Toward Value and Away From Hourly Pay

Clocking in, signing time sheets and clocking out are normal occurrences in most standard jobs. Working a certain amount of hours and getting paid for them is how work is documented, but the luster of hourly wages and two-week pay periods may not be the shiny gem of the workday that it once was.

Being a time watcher at work is taking on a whole new meaning among millennials.

As technology advances and millennials crave quicker monetary value in their careers, billable time — based on the value of an individual’s work rather than the hours put into it — could be the new normal and propel better time management and productivity at work, experts say. The millennial generation is spearheading this movement to change the way they get paid and give more value to their workday, although it has already been successful in the legal profession, consulting and design agencies.

“Is your employer billable?” is the question Brian Saunders asks when he is completing payroll for his employees, which translates to the productivity of an employee. The CEO of BigTime, a Chicago-based billing and time-tracking software company, he looks at employees as “billable” to maximize their productivity and value in their work. Like a flat rate for a design project or a case review, it’s not about watching the clock but logging specific duties, he said.

“If I am charging you $2,500 for corporate identity work, you don’t need to know how long it took, I just need to do the work,” Saunders said. “The idea of what you are doing on a day-to-day basis and connecting it back to the value has utility beyond just generating an invoice.”

BigTime works with over 2,000 organizations in consulting, legal, engineering, architecture and government contracting that track work based on the time spent on projects and duties, which helps them save money and improve workplace productivity.

A 2016 BigTime study looked at 12 million timesheets and their daily record keeping from clients that use the software to show the implication of the potential revenue companies could have saved by using this method. The study found that the more frequently employees tracked their time, the more money was left behind — $35 billion to be exact.

Saunders said logging time twice a week is what the study found to be most conducive to people’s mind recollection. From a company’s standpoint, looking at what was accomplished on a specific project is more productive than the number of hours. What is equally important is knowing what productivity means to each employee and each firm; knowing how to manage time needs measurement and actual thought.

“At the end of the day, you need time to sit back and reflect [and say], What did I do today?” he said.

While it may not work for every industry, this kind of productivity measurement is working in specific industries that have seen increased employee independence, company success and more deliberate thinking on time management.

These boosts come not only because of better software and a more innovative mindset around billable hours, but how millennials are accessing their funds to motivate their business and personal growth.

Financial wellness is a growing tool used by employers to pass on financially smart time management choices to workers. At McDonald’s, millennial employees are experiencing this first-hand.

Avoiding Bill Collectors

Having immediate access to 50 percent of their daily wages makes them more productive, manage their time more efficiently and not be late for a bill payment, according to Steve Barha, CEO and co-founder of Instant Financial, a tech company that works with McDonald’s to change traditional paydays and help companies give their employees access to money, technically called a pay disbursement program. Instant Financial also works with other restaurants, including Outback Steakhouse and Earl’s Kitchen and Bar.

According to an Instant Financial customer satisfaction survey, 90 percent of surveyed millennials say they would like to work for a company that offers daily pay compared to getting paid every two weeks. Additionally, 32 percent of employees with access to Instant Financial pay have used it to avoid high interest single credit options such as payday loans to balance income and expenses, something Barha said is needed by employees.

“In a world where everything is real time, the only thing that hasn’t changed is how we pay people,” Barha said, calling this the “millennial-style” of instant gratification and information that aligns with other aspects of life today.

But with the technology Instant Financial has created, disrupting the traditional flow of income can be unsettling and controversial because it assumes millennials are smart about their finances, Barha said. He was quick to add that anybody who thinks employees, specifically millennials, are not smart or responsible enough to have daily wage access is incorrect — people are smart and need financial control, he said.

“Employees’ finances are in duress while they sit and wait for their pay to come every two weeks,” he said.

Barha noted that as billing cycles evolve to make for more independence and loan cycles are more frequent, access to money creates more engaged employees, a stronger work culture and less absenteeism among millennial workers.

Keeping Track of Time

A more traditional program that has also improved productivity and engagement among employees was implemented by HR software company Kronos Inc. The employees at Goodwill of Central and Coastal Virginia are two years into the new Kronos initiative headed by John Leopold, director of IT and project manager at Goodwill.

He has seen his store’s new time-management program give employees more mobility to track their hours, clock in, schedule shifts and keep track of their finances. The program has helped eliminate money spent tracking employee time from the HR department, saved money and given the employees more independence, Leopold said. Having all of the services on the Kronos Workforce Ready platform for HCM has provided increased transparency within the organization and empowered the employee, he added.

“That transparency increases the trust factor and they are paid more accurately than they ever were before,” Leopold said.

Leopold said the idea of value and billable time is not currently present at Goodwill, but with many different tasks and better communication among the team, he could see that system being implemented in the future to help employees pick specific tasks and skills with varying pay rates and get paid for their specific work. Through the program, managers can have insight on who is best for the job because everything is logged in the system, which opens that channel for responsibility and goal-setting for the employee.

Whether billable time is the future of payroll, getting value out of your work is important to employees as well as employers. BigTime’s Saunders said working on a project is more fulfilling when you are steeped into its value in the moment, rather than just clocking in and clocking out in terms of physicality.

However, it is too soon to fit it for all companies. He added that what it comes down to is knowing what productivity means and feeling that improvement in your organization based on individual and company measures taken.

Ariel Parrella-Aureli is a Workforce intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

August 17, 2017June 29, 2023

You Call It: HR Best Practices or HR Biased Practices?

People in human resources often refer to certain methods as their “best practices.”

The term best practice is somewhat misleading since it is not possible to find a method that is best for every company’s culture and industry. Nevertheless, it is commonly used when referring to HR practices that are widely accepted as “the way we do things.” These tend to be traditional HR processes — things like merit increases, annual performance reviews or the nine-box grid for succession planning — that haven’t changed in decades, and continue not to change simply because, well, they continue not to change.

The problem with many of these best practice methods is they were designed for a workforce that looked different in the past than it does today. Decades ago the workforce was much more homogenous than it is now with significantly fewer women, minorities and older workers.

At that time the norm for these individuals was to pursue other life goals that weren’t necessarily compatible with a traditional career. Now they are entering the workforce in droves, but the concept of career remains traditional, and so do the practices we use to develop employees and grow careers within our organizations.

The annual performance review is a great example of a common “best practice” that is now being recognized as being far from best for today’s workforce. In the past several years, organizations realized that this practice isn’t effectively meeting the needs of their people. It has prompted a performance management revolution with companies ultimately finding ways to embed more ongoing feedback, continuous learning, and relationship-based coaching and guidance into those traditional evaluation processes. What a great thing it was to be able to recognize so broadly the need for change in this area.

But what if your pain points were hidden beneath the surface? What if your company was adopting other traditional best practices that were ultimately hurting the productivity of your workforce and you didn’t even know it?

Chances are this is happening in your company to some degree. But the people your practices are hurting are underrepresented and are therefore sometimes invisible when it comes to your company’s programs and initiatives designed to engage, retain and develop them. Somewhat ironically, your company is also probably struggling with how to build and maintain a diverse workforce. This is ironic because the resolution to one challenge lies in resolving the other.

There are key decision points that tend to favor majority status employees over the underrepresented ones. But it can be difficult to create change in these processes, especially when we’ve done them a certain way for so long. Take, for instance, the extremely common practice of awarding merit-based raises and bonuses that are a percentage of an employee’s current salary. This practice makes a lot of sense. After all, we want to motivate employees to perform well in a way that effectively rewards their contributions and encourages them to strive for more. Where it doesn’t make sense is in the real world, where salary gaps continue to exist between men and women, and between white employees and those of different races and ethnicities. Those who start out with higher salaries are going to see greater rewards, and more importantly, they’re going to grow that salary at a faster rate because of their initial advantage, perpetuating the gap to an even greater extent over time.

Consider also the example of employee self-assessments as part of the performance evaluation cycle. For a long time we’ve used self-assessments as a way of giving employees voice in the process, allowing them to make the case for the performance rating they feel they deserve. The problem is research has shown that women tend to underrate themselves in an effort to appear humble and cooperative, and these lower self-ratings influence how their manager then evaluates their performance. And yet we continue to encourage employees to rate themselves and share these ratings with their manager. In an effort to be fair in our performance management practices we are unknowingly creating a further obstacle for women seeking to grow their careers.

We are in a new era of workforce management where we are increasingly realizing that solving the diversity challenge is not going to happen with greater investments in diversity training or by continuing to carry the “be less biased” message forward that business leaders adore hearing.

Where we need to focus is our people processes, recognizing that the best practices of the past have become biased practices that are no longer what is best for our changing workforce.

Gabby Burlacu is a human capital management researcher at SAP SuccessFactors. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

August 17, 2017June 29, 2023

Diversity Training Under Scrutiny Following Fallout With Google Employee

Former Google employee James Damore’s 3,000-word assertion that women land fewer tech jobs because of biological differences rather than skills sparked a lot of conversation, particularly about the state of diversity training.

Organizations use diversity and inclusion training to prevent hostility and build inclusive, respectful work environments that foster a productive workforce. Google introduced diversity and bias training in 2013 and about three-quarters of its employees have gone through it.

The search engine giant fired Damore days after his manifesto went public. In part, Damore claimed it was the D&I training that led to him writing the memo.

Bill Proudman, co-founder and CEO of leadership development consulting firm WMFDP LLC, or White Men As Full Diversity Partners, said Damore’s argument sounded familiar to opinions he’s heard from other white males.

D&I is usually focused on the experiences of minority groups: African Americans, women and the LGBTQ community. Proudman said he sees the reason for this, but one of the downsides is that it sets up white men to feel discriminated against, as well.

“When the dominant or normative group sees inclusion, it’s about everybody else other than them,” Proudman said. “When it gets hard, [white males] don’t know how to stay in it because they don’t understand their mutual self-interest. They don’t understand how they’re being impacted by inequity in the system.”

Proudman said often in order for white males to care about diversity and inclusion, they need to be shown directly how it affects them.

“They need to understand how inequality is impacting how they assess talent, how they promote people and how they give performance feedback, so they really can hire and promote the best talent rather than the talent that is most comfortable —which becomes a huge win for them on a personal level,” Proudman said.

As Damore asserted in his memo, white males often come out of diversity trainings feeling like they are personally responsible for inequity or that they shouldn’t say anything about race or gender — and that’s a problem, Proudman said.

“Straight white men have to be brought into this inclusion work in a very different way than they have been historically,” he said.

The Current State of Diversity Training

In D&I training, the key is to focus on improving and enhancing the capability of people rather than correcting issues, said Doug Harris, CEO of the D&I consulting firm Kaleidoscope Group.

He said D&I education is most effective when employees receive individual training with the goal of learning specific behavioral expectations and desired competencies.

Some problems may lie in that the training is often not personalized.

“We have different things we have to overcome, different thought processes that we have to address,” Harris said. “We have to allow people to be able to do that.”

Harris stopped short of blaming training for Damore’s response.

“Everybody goes through education to get their driver’s license. Does that mean there’s not going to be any speeding tickets or accidents?” Harris said. “People aren’t saying that we need to go back and change the driver’s test because people are getting into accidents.”

That’s why accountability systems are so important, he said.

“Unfortunately, people are people,” Harris said. “And you can’t allow for behaviors impacting an inclusive environment.”

Many diversity education programs are focused around awareness rather than based around skills. Experts say that many people are uncomfortable because they haven’t been around a lot of diversity in their lives.

“Instead of judging those individuals, we have to support and assist them,” Harris said. “If we don’t, they are going to get in those circles of discontentment, start reinforcing their thought processes and believe it’s a good idea to send out a letter saying that women are inferior to men.”

Harris said there needs to be a way to speak respectfully about issues when people have questions and concerns. And if people want to talk about a problem, they should talk about their own.

“One of the biggest D&I issues is men getting together and speaking about what the problem with women is,” Harris said. “Work within yourself. There’s not a lot of energy for other people getting corrected while you’re staying the same.”

Room for Improvement

Part of Damore’s complaint was that there was too much shaming and emphasis on telling him what he can’t do or say. Harris said that’s a legitimate concern.

“Shaming, guilt and judgement should not be the objective of our education,” Harris said. “D&I education when done well should give people comfort, skills and beliefs to allow them to go to the other side and hopefully get new insights on how they see the world.”

Harris added that Damore’s reaction is not uncommon and that it’s probably why he felt the confidence to share it.

Proudman said he can see the eyes roll when some employees hear they will be doing diversity training again. “They think oh is this going to be another blame and shame the white guy session?” he added.

Unfortunately, a lot of people doing D&I work want to correct other people instead of building them up to be more inclusive leaders, Harris said.

“I can’t just stay on my side and say, ‘Diversity education is just so beautiful and done so well,’ ” he said. “We’re an unregulated industry that gets unregulated results sometimes.”

Proudman said they don’t even call their work training, but rather awareness work centered around creating safe spaces for dialogue.

“Training is a tool but it is just one way to reinforce a particular set of skills, insights or efforts,” he said. “It has to be linked with other efforts within the organization.”

This development work takes place over years and Proudman said he has not figured out a shortcut in helping leaders live a culture of full inclusion.

“Part of it is how to help leaders have patience but also a sense of urgency — and have both of those running simultaneously,” he said. “It’s a paradox — and often people just want a quick fix.”

It’s a two-sided responsibility, Harris said. People need to speak to each other respectfully, but also need to hear what’s being spoken to them.

“The key is to choose people to support your organization who are really coming from a place of love,” he said. “And that love is not just for those who have been historically excluded, but it is for everyone.”

This story first appeared in Workforce’s sister publication, Chief Learning Officer. Ave Rio is the associate editor for Chief Learning Officer. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

August 16, 2017June 29, 2023

How Much Wasted Work Time Is Too Much?

According to a recent survey conducted by OfficeTeam, on average, employees spend eight hours per workweek on nonwork activities.

What does this non-work time look like?

Personal emails: 30 percent
Social networks: 28 percent
Sports sites: 8 percent
Mobile games: 6 percent
Online shopping: 5 percent
Entertainment sites: 3 percent

Moreover, try as they might to regulate this activity, employers fail. The same survey reports that 58 percent of employees simply use their personal mobile devices at work to access websites blocked by their employers — a 36-point jump from OfficeTeam’s last survey in 2012.

So, what is an employer to do? I say embrace the distraction. As I’ve long argued:

Employers that try regulate personal social media use out of the workplace are fighting a Sisyphean battle. I call it the iPhone-ification of the American workforce. No matter your policy trying to regulate or outright ban social media in your workplace, if your employees can take their smartphones out of their pockets to circumvent the policy, how can you possibly police workplace social media access? Why have a policy you cannot police and enforce?

Instead of regulating an issue you cannot hope to control, treat employees’ use of social media for what it is—a performance issue. If an employee is not performing up to standards because he or she is spending too much time on the internet, then address the performance problem. Counsel, discipline, and ultimately terminate if the performance does not improve. A slacking employee, however, will not become a star performer just because you limit his or her social media access; he or she will just find another way to slack off. Instead of wasting your resources to fight a battle you cannot win, reapportion them to win battles worth fighting.

We ask so much of our employees. The 9-to-5 is no longer relevant. If my employee, who is giving up night and weekends for me, wants to spends a few minutes during the workday posting to Facebook, or checking the score of last night’s game, or buying something on Amazon, I just don’t care (unless you are working in a safety-sensitive position, and then why the hell are you on your phone at all‽), unless and until it reaches the level of distraction and impacts performance. Then, however, we are treating the performance problem, not the technology problem, which is the appropriate and practical solution.

So, how much wasted work-time is too much? To me, the answer is only when it hinders performance. Otherwise, I say read your Game of Thrones recaps and post those cute back-to-school photos of your kids (did I just divulge too much?)

August 16, 2017June 29, 2023

Why Vetting for Work Martyrs During the Hiring Process Isn’t the Answer

Logging extra hours or being on call during evenings and weekends does not guarantee results. It can lead to burnout and diminished productivity.

Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini became a victim of public scrutiny in August after telling the New York Times about a test she uses to measure a candidate’s commitment during the hiring process. Her system involves texting at an odd hour of the weekend to see how quickly the candidate will respond.

Not surprisingly, the internet jumped on the soundbite. In vein with the premise of Jon Ronson’s “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” the executive is being tied to a single comment in a rather extreme fashion. Regardless of your take on Nardini’s vetting process, I’d argue that the conversation that has resulted is a net-positive for those of us in the business of building teams and companies.

I must admit: The concept of “overwork” is a bit foreign to me. I grew up in Belgium, where society takes a much different approach to work-life balance. Last year, for example, France passed legislation making the case that employers cannot penalize their employees for failing to respond to emails during non-working hours. These types of policies are designed to protect workers against conditions that serve to threaten their well-being.

On this very subject, Vox recently published an opinion piece that makes the case that today’s employers are like “dictators,” creating societies within the workplaces in which regulations (or “laws”) are placed on employee-citizens that are designed to subjugate them to “tyrannical” conditions. Of course, the counter to this argument — and to Nardini’s policy at Barstool — is that employees choose to work at private companies at-will, and if the systems aren’t a fit for their lifestyles, they can always leave.

From a business owner’s perspective, I would argue that policies and “tests” that promote over-work are counterproductive in the long term. Squeezing out productivity from employees during off-hours or cutting into their personal time might serve a short-term purpose, but in the long term these cultures are harder to sustain and make it difficult to attract and maintain top talent. Here’s why.

Work-Life Balance Correlates to Overall Happiness

Earlier this year, my company ran a study based on data compiled from a sample of 5,000 Butterfly users (employees) in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Our aim was to understand the correlation between key drivers of engagement in the workplace — like team dynamics, leadership and work-life balance — and overall happiness. Our results showed that work-life balance had the strongest correlation with employee happiness, ranking above things like office environment (I.e., “work perks”) and even managers.

Companies have been using tactics like free beer and company merchandise to recruit millennials, but our study and other observations (like those made in Dan Lyons’ book, “Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble”) suggest that superficial perks aren’t what’s keeping young talent happy and productive at work. Instead, millennials are looking for balanced lifestyles promoted by strong managers who care about their well-being and professional development.

The notion of servant leadership was birthed by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970. His philosophy was that the strongest leaders are those that live to support and serve the needs of their teams. Managers with a “servant-first” mindset, therefore, are compelled to make sure that their employee’s highest priority needs are being met first — in other words, it’s about being there for your employee at 9 p.m. on a Sunday and not the other way around.

As a co-founder of a company that has grown from three co-founders to more than 15 employees in less than two years, I can’t help but scratch my head at the idea of expecting my people to be there for me during odd hours. In my mind, it’s about letting my team know that I will be there for them, regardless of the time of day or reason for their outreach.

In fact, this idea that managers should be sourcing feedback from their teams on an ongoing basis is the founding principle of the employee intelligence startup I co-founded with my colleagues David Mendlewicz and Marcus Perezi-Tormos.

Value Achievement Over Activity

Setting aside the cultural implications of expecting employees to sacrifice work/life balance for the “cause,” this philosophy also misses the mark when it comes to what truly makes great businesses survive and thrive. As a basketball player, I’ll reference Hall of Fame coach John Wooden’s quote: “Never mistake activity for achievement.”

In the context of business, the act of logging extra hours or being on call during evenings and weekends does not guarantee results. It can lead to burnout and diminished productivity.

No co-founder, myself included, is naive enough to believe that great businesses are built by clock watchers. Disrupting an industry, launching a new product, or overtaking fierce competition takes hard work, and a lot of it — but this work should be measured by tangible goals and milestones — not hours.

Piling onto the scrutiny of a single soundbite from one CEO is not going to solve the broader issue of work martyrdom, but constructive conversations can help. While leaders will differ in their individual styles, I would offer that managers should explore ways that they can prove to their teams that they are committed to their employees’ personal growth and overall health. And, as always, actions will matter much more than words.

Simon Rakosi is co-founder of Butterfly, an employee intelligence and management coaching platform that uses AI to help develop leadership skills at all levels of an organization. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

August 15, 2017June 29, 2023

Does a LinkedIn Request Violate a Non-solicitation Agreement?

In Bankers Life and Casualty Company v. American Senior Benefits (Ill. Ct. App. 8/7/17), Bankers Life sued a former sales manager, Gregory Gelineau, for violating the following non-solicitation agreement after he jumped ship to American Senior Benefits, a competitor:

During the term of this Contract and for 24 months thereafter, within the territory regularly serviced by the Manager’s branch sales office, the Manager shall not, personally or through the efforts of others, induce or attempt to induce:

(a) any agent, branch sales manager, field vice president, employee, consultant, or other similar representative of the Company to curtail, resign, or sever a relationship with the company; [or]

(b) any agent, branch sales manager, field vice president or employee of the Company to contract with or sell insurance business with any company not affiliated with the company.

According to Bankers Life, Gelineau allegedly asked three of its employees to connect via LinkedIn. By connecting, Bankers Life argued, the employees could then view Gelineau’s profile, which would uncover job listings at American Senior. Galineau argued that he never used LinkedIn to send direct messages to Bankers Life employees, and instead merely sent “LinkedIn generic emails” asking them to form a professional connection on social media.

The court held that the mere act of asking someone to connect on the social network, via a generic, canned email generated by the network itself, did not violate the non-solicitation agreement:

Here, … the undisputed facts established that the invitations to connect via LinkedIn were sent from Gelineau’s LinkedIn account through generic e-mails that invited recipients to form a professional connection. … The generic emails did not contain any discussion of Bankers Life, no mention of ASB, no suggestion that the recipient view a job description on Gelineau’s profile page, and no solicitation to leave their place of employment and join ASB. Instead, the emails contained the request to form a professional networking connection. Upon receiving the emails, the Bankers Life employees had the option of responding to the LinkedIn requests to connect. If they did connect with Gelineau, the next steps, whether to click on Gelineau’s profile or to access a job posting on Gelineau’s LinkedIn page, were all actions for which Gelineau could not be held responsible. Furthermore, Gelineau’s post of a job opening with ASB on his public LinkedIn portal did not constitute an inducement or solicitation in violation of his noncompetition agreement.

In other words, like other courts to consider this same issue, a breach of a non-solicitation agreement requires active efforts on the part of the former employee to induce a former co-worker or customer to do something. The mere act of connecting on a social network is not enough; it’s akin to keeping the person’s email and phone number in your Rolodex.

If, however, you are concerned about ex-employees using LinkedIn or other social networks to connect with employees or customers, why not include language in your no-solicitation agreement to cover such a possibility?

“Solicitation” includes, but is not limited to, offering to make, accepting an offer to make, or continuing an already existing online relationship via a Social Media Site. “Social Media Site” means all means of communicating or posting information or content of any sort on the Internet, including to your own or someone else’s web log or blog, journal or diary, personal web site, social networking or affinity web site, web bulletin board or a chat room, in addition to any other form of electronic communication.

By defining “solicitation” to include passive social media connections and activities, you are at least putting yourself into a position to have a court consider shutting down an ex-employee for creating or maintaining these online relationships.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

August 14, 2017June 29, 2023

When You Discover That You Employ a Nazi

In the wake of Friday and Saturday’s horrific, evil events in Charlottesville, the the twitter account YesYoureRacist posted many riot photos and identified many of the rioters. And, as a result, some have lost their jobs.

Question: Does one participating in a Nazi rally enjoy any job protections from said participation?

Answer: Absolutely not.

“But Jon,” you ask, “just six months ago you told us that the National Labor Relations Act protects individuals’ political advocacy during the their own time in non-work areas? What gives?”

What gives is that you missed the key first part of this standard — the political advocacy must be non-disruptive. There was absolutely nothing “non-disruptive” about what happened in Charlottesville. In fact, it was the very definition of disruptive.

Thus, even if Mr. White could argue that the protest was “for or against a specific issue related to a specifically identified employment concern,” (and I would strongly argue that racial purity is not such an issue, see Title VII), the violent and disruptive nature of the protest removes all hope he and anyone else at the rally could hold for any employment protections.

Mr. White absolutely has the constitutional right to hold whatever opinion he wants to hold. And he even has the constitutional right to peacefully express those opinions, no matter how vehemently one might disagree with his point of view. Those rights are what make America great.

Those constitutional rights, however, stop at a private employer’s door. And I, as a private employer, have the right to hold my employees accountable for their viewpoints and terminate when I, in good faith, determine that those viewpoints may bleed into my workplace and create a hostile environment for other employees. I certainly have the right to fire when those viewpoints cross the line into violence or threats of violence.

More deeply, NLRA or no NLRA, free speech or no free speech, if one marches in public exposing a connection to this brand of hate, I would dare the individual to sue after being fired. Do not pass go, do not collect severance, just bring it on.

Because what kind of employer am I if I ignore an employee’s role in what happened over the weekend? What message does it send to my minority employees, my Jewish employees, my Muslim employees, my anyone-but-alt-right employees (not to mention my Title VII obligations to provide a workplace free from racial and religious harassment)?

Silence in the wake of hate at best condones the hate, and at worst participates in it. If it’s my business, I choose not to stay silent.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

August 11, 2017June 29, 2023

Namely Sells Its HR Technology Platform as a Managed Service

To make it easier for resource-strapped small and midsized companies to set-up HR systems, Namely Inc. is borrowing from the past and selling its existing cloud-based HR technology platform as a managed service.

The New York-based company on Aug. 9 said it is offering a managed version of its HR technology platform called Managed Services, including core functions such as payroll, benefits and compliance along with features such as time keeping. Customers will have dedicated account managers who can do everything from run payroll to track benefits. Existing customers “frankly were asking for additional support,” said Namely founder and chief executive Matt Straz.

Straz said he is unaware of another company that runs payroll, benefits and compliance through managed services, which places Namely as the first to make such an offering. “There are companies like TriNet that run it through a professional employer organization, or PEO. And companies like Workday, Oracle and SAP” target much larger customers, Straz said. “As far as I know, we’re the only one that’s brought this type of offering to the market.”

Namely hopes its first-mover status will steer prospective customers toward it and away from competitors such as BambooHR.

Startups and fast-growth companies have been averse to adding sufficient HR systems, policies and personnel early in their life cycles. Whether by choice or accident, they wait too long and then develop serious people management problems, as a string of recent high-profile incidents at companies such as Uber, Tesla, Thinkx and Skip the Dishes have shown.

HR technology alone won’t stop sexual harassment and other illegal or unethical behaviors from happening, especially if a company’s upper management, board and financial backers condone it or turn a blind eye.

But a service with templates for compliance and other HR systems can save companies from building everything from scratch, which could make them more amendable to adopting the systems in the first place, Straz said. “I’ve founded three companies, and we had to build it as we went. It would have been nice to have been handed this stuff,” he said.

Managed services are a throwback to the HR outsourcing of previous decades, when major HR technology players offered to “lift and shift” large enterprises’ entire HR back-office operations. The transitions proved to be more problematic than anticipated, and thanks to the emergence of cloud-based services, HR outsourcing never grew as big as expected.

Regardless of size, any type of HR outsourcing might be a good short-term solution but bad in the long run because it encourages top management to view people as expenses not assets, said Bernie Aller, an HR industry veteran who now helps companies vet people-management systems.

“Would they consider outsourcing management of financial assets? That would never happen,” said Aller, who ran and sold an HCM and payroll processing business to Ceridian in 2000 before consulting. “As companies grow, at some point they recognize it’s their people who determine their performance” and are motivated to do better at managing them, Aller said. “Outsourcing it to a third party will never get you there.”

Managed services aren’t the only alternative for smaller organizations that can’t handle HR in-house. Technology vendors have offered comparable services through service bureaus. Small and midsized employers still use professional employment organizations for HR and recruitment process outsourcing for hiring.

HR technology integrators also fill the role of go-between for HR departments and vendors. Derrick Ware, founder and principal at Atriad in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, provides such services for his clients. At small companies, “The HR function is always overlooked,” said Ware, who got his start in HR technology working as vice president of global technology operations at PeopleFluent. “Or they bring someone in and call them an HR generalist and they don’t have the right background to keep the business out of trouble.”

Namely has been testing the service with an undisclosed number of customers. Managed services customers will pay a fee over and above the $12 per-employee, per-month subscription cost for the company’s technology platform. Target users for both the managed services and the platform are companies with 20 to 2,000 employees, with a sweet spot of 180 to 200 employees, Straz said.

Namely will run the managed service division from a year-old office in Austin, Texas, where it expects to add to a staff of 20 that’s already there. The company is using some of the $50 million in venture money it raised in December 2016 to fund the expansion.

Michelle V. Rafter is a contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.