Give a Con a Break

The City of San Francisco banned the use of criminal histories as part of the pre-employment process. Several other government jurisdictions have considered similar legislation. This trend is born of the idea that criminal histories may be racist (because minorities tend to be convicted at a higher rate than non-minorities) and that it exacerbates the unemployment problem – especially among those with criminal records. OK – so I am sympathetic to the whole concern about racism creeping into our judicial system and I understand how that can correlate to unintended job discrimination. But isn’t this more an issue that should be taken up at the judicial level? When it comes down to our responsibilities as hiring professionals, aren’t we the ones best suited to assess whether a person represents a “bad hire” for our companies? If a person represents a real risk to the safety of our employees or our customers or if the person could potentially abuse their position to hurt our company and our shareholders through fraud or theft or some other action that reflects poorly on the company – shouldn’t we try and reduce that risk? Of course we should!

But for me the more interesting question (and more difficult challenge) is how do we truly assess that risk and make smart hiring decisions about people with previous legal or drug problems. Should they all be damned forever and a day? Story ended. That would be the easy way to handle the problem. No need to worry about complex hiring procedures or concerns that people won’t follow the exact dictates of the company. We hire no one with a previous conviction or a previous problem with drugs. Period!

We’re better than that.

A previous conviction does not have to be a permanent sentence of unemployment. The real solution to the problem above is that criminal history alone should not be the only reason for rejecting a candidate. Yes – I understand (I am in the background checking business after all) that there are very real circumstance that mean zero tolerance (access to vulnerable populations like children or elderly for example) where the risk is just too great. But that is what I mean when I say that a criminal history record alone should not decide the hire/no hire choice. A criminal history record PLUS a high sensitive position – should mean no hire. Other situations such as repeat offenders, people with a pattern of multiple problems, a conviction along with lying on your resume might all be reasons for rejecting a candidate. Patterns and context should dictate hiring risk – not just single data points. Its people we are dealing with and people can make mistakes and still move beyond them. This is where our professionalism comes in. We use data to help make decisions – we don’t let data make the decisions for us. 

We’re Spending Too Much on HR

The CEO just stopped by your office and said all the company’s resources next year are going into a major growth initiative and we need to cut cost in all non-essential functions. He wants 10% reduced from the HR Budget.

I was listening to the radio the other morning and there was a story about the wildfires in the west. The interview was with the government manager in charge of forest fire management. He made the following statement:

“We spent so much money last year on putting out fires there was no money left for fire prevention”

I am not making this up.

I am not making up the HR budget story either.

I was with a company a few years back that was hell-bent on growth: Acquisitions, expanded sales, development of overseas markets, new products; anywhere we could grow we pursued. It was expensive and money had to come from departments that weren't directly contributing to this big push. That (it was assumed) included HR.

Do you wonder about cause and effect when you see that two years later the growth is behind schedule, employee turnover is up, morale is down, service quality is down and reputation in the industry suffers?

There wasn't enough money for fire prevention.

Are we spending too much on HR? After a decade of squeezing more and more out of our HR budgets, has this helped make companies better?

Did you see this headline the other day? Americans Hate Their Jobs, Even With Perks.  Here’s a quote from the article:

“Just 30% of employees are engaged and inspired at work, according to Gallup's 2013 State of the American Workplace Report, which surveyed more than 150,000 full- and part-time workers during 2012. ….. A little more than half of workers (52%) have a perpetual case of the Mondays — they're present, but not particularly excited about their job.”

We are spending so much money on putting out fires, there’s not enough money for fire prevention.

An Ode To The HR Professional

You work in Human Resources, you have too much to do.

The promise of new software, never quite comes true.

The sales guy you spoke to, says he has it all.

But then you ask the price and it almost makes you fall.

At the last convention, the future sure looked bright.

So many new inventions, to solve the HR plight.

One company does Big Data, but talks in terabyte.

They've never done HR, and you know he can’t be right.

Your company just merged, and your new boss looks 16

You hope she is much older, but you know it’s just a dream.

Now you have to teach her, how your job gets done

But every time she shows up, she’s always on the run.

Oh, you work in human resources, and you know that it's true

Every project that you need, is back in the IT queue.

The CEO says people, are always number one

But every time you ask for money, something else needs done.

But in the end you love your job, and take some time to Tweet

You let the world around you, know your job is neat.

At times you do think back, to what mama used to say,

You don’t work in HR, if you’re in it for the pay!

You’ll probably stay around, another year or two

You hear that HR mobile, will make your dreams come true.

So maybe if you ask her, your boss will not turn blue

When you ask to have your cell phone 
.........Upgraded from 2002.  

Boston Marathon: HR Heroes

In thousands of companies across the United States, and especially in Boston, the first phone call that company CEOs and Presidents made after hearing about the bombings at the Boston Marathon was to their head of Human Resources.

I recall an event about 20 years ago when I was a General Manager for a company in Colorado. I came into the office around 7:00 AM and as I started to settle into my routine I received a call saying that one of my employees had just shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself: Both dead.

I called HR.

As HR Directors do the world over, she rushed into the office and took over the task of finding out more details, making sure our employees knew what was going on, and taking time to talk to the friends and co-workers who knew this individual the best. I don’t think the HR Director was trained in psychology, or disaster response, or managing human emotions in the face of unbelievable circumstances. But you couldn't have proven that to me or to any of the people she (and the others in her small department) helped that day. They seemed to know exactly the right things to do.

The HR department is the emergency response group that spearheads how companies will help their employees respond to tragedies.  They do this without fanfare and without questioning whether it is in their job description. They know helping people cope is a key part of helping keep the company performing.  But it goes beyond that. The little appreciated fact about most HR professionals is that they care about how people are doing. They want to help. Period.

That is just what HR does. They help. They try and make whatever life sends our way a little more tolerable.

In the aftermath of Boston the day was met with a lot of silent HR heroes. 

Finding work at 60: Is HR Failing a Generation?

Upper middle-management and out of a job.

Too qualified,

Too set in your ways

Not right for the job

Too old fashion for our hip new company

And too many other things you aren't allowed to say.

How many really talented people are out there looking (and looking) for work who can’t find a job because the 30 (or 40) something that is in charge of hiring has a pre-conceived notion that the person they are looking for is “younger.” How many automated resume screening tools see someone who was highly successful for 30 years as not qualified for the new product manager position that just opened up? 

I am closing in on that generation. I know a lot of people who are there (guess when you've been around a long time, a lot of the people you know seem to have aged on you). My brother is 59 and just got laid off from a career of 25 years as a successful disc jockey. Seems they don’t need disc jockeys much anymore and really don’t need old ones. He’s applied to sell cars, drive trucks, work at most anything that a 20-something might apply for. Nothing, Nada, No reply.

I just got off the phone this morning with an old (sorry for the use of that word) friend of mine who was a very successful business man. Built a company from scratch and made himself and a lot of other people a lot of money when he sold it. He doesn’t need a lot of money now, but he wants the stimulation of work. For 4 years now: Nothing, Nada, No reply.

Seems to me that we have a lot of talent out there that current hiring (and recruiting) processes don’t know how to deal with. The Great Recession put a lot of talent on the street, but the great boom in new business processes leaves them out of the picture.

That’s a shame: A generation lost. 

Give A Con A Break

The City of San Francisco was one of the first to take up a measure to ban the use of criminal histories as part of the pre-employment process. Several other government jurisdictions are considering similar legislation. This trend is born of the idea that criminal histories may be racist (because minorities tend to be convicted at a higher rate than non-minorities) and that it exacerbates the unemployment problem – especially among those with criminal records.

But for me the more interesting question (and more difficult challenge) is how do we truly assess that risk and make smart hiring decisions about people with previous legal or drug problems. Should they all be damned forever and a day? Story ended. That would be the easy way to handle the problem. No need to worry about complex hiring procedures or concerns that people won’t follow the exact dictates of the company. We hire no one with a previous conviction or a previous problem with drugs. Period!

We’re better than that.

A previous conviction does not have to be a permanent sentence of unemployment. The real solution to the problem is that criminal history alone should not be the only reason for rejecting a candidate. Yes – I understand (I used to be in the background checking business after all) that there are very real circumstance that mean zero tolerance (access to vulnerable populations like children or elderly for example) where the risk is just too great. But that is what I mean when I say that a criminal history record alone should not decide the hire/no hire choice. A criminal history record PLUS a high sensitive position – should mean no hire. Other situations such as repeat offenders, people with a pattern of multiple problems, a conviction along with lying on your resume might all be reasons for rejecting a candidate.

Patterns and context should dictate hiring risk – not just single data points.

It's people we are dealing with and people can make mistakes and still move beyond them. This is where our professionalism as recruiters and human resource people comes in. We use data to help make decisions – we don’t let data make the decisions for us.

Are there Republicans and Democrats in Your HR House?

Bickering, drawing lines in the sand, creating controversy where none really exists, refusing to compromise, perceiving slight, grandstanding: Sound like the national political scene, or does it sound like one of your staff meetings!

I have never really understood people who have to win an argument at all costs. It has never made sense to me why some people make things personal so easily or have to take exception to everything certain people say. I also don’t get why people get so stubborn about a topic they become irrational and immovable.

Sure, I believe strongly in things. Sure, I can get pretty assertive about my agenda when I am passionate about the topic. But I have never felt that I had all the answers. I don’t take other people's input personally and I don't tend to set my feet so firmly in the ground that I cannot be moved. Don't call me Speaker of the House.

Why do people get so obdurate that they are willing to sacrifice success to win a point?

The example set in Washington lately brings the point to a national spotlight. The leaders of both parties have become so entrenched, are trying so hard to make sure the other side looses they are guaranteeing that nobody wins.

Do you have people like that in your company? Are there people like that in your HR department? My bet is the answer is yes.

In my experience this atmosphere of irrational competition is at the heart of most dysfunctional companies.

Just chill

I wonder, do we teach this to our children at an early age? Do we model this behavior in ourselves or in our society?

How many people will suffer in our nation because of the stubbornness of a few? How many will suffer in our companies for the same reason?

Nine Months In Jail

I have a friend, a fellow that I used to work with. He just got out of jail. It all started with drinking. Most of these stories do. He was an IT director, very successful, had a wife, one young son, nice house. But he and his wife drank a lot. I never knew they did, it did not show up in his work. He hid it well. But things got worse for him over the years.

He lost his job, got a DUI or two, and violated his restraining order one too many times. They put him in jail.

Now he needs a job.

Would you hire him?

This is a guy with a lot of great technical skills in an economy where there is high demand for those skills. But he has an arrest record. That is challenge enough. But I learned something else about his struggle to find a job: he can’t get there. Or at least he can’t get to a lot of places.

I had breakfast with this friend of mine the other day. He was excited to announce that he had finally been offered a job. The interview went well. They questioned why a guy with so much experience and background would want this lower level position, but they also understood that someone with his past history needed to start over. Job offered, job accepted.

Then they told him the job started at 7:00 AM.

The buss that he has to rely on to get from where he lives to where he wants to work can’t get him there in time. When you have a DUI you lose your license. When you are in jail you can’t take the mandatory courses to gain it back.

I said I would drive him for the first two weeks.  

Recovering from Company Disasters

As people up and down the east coast struggle with the effects of yet another storm, I started thinking about how companies respond when faced with severe problems. A key question that comes to mind:

Is disaster response a lot easier than disaster recovery?

The recent headlines about the areas hit by Hurricane Sandy are no longer about the devastation. They now talk about how long it is taking to relieve the suffering left in the hurricane’s wake. Sometimes the process of getting people back on track is a lot harder than managing the original disaster.

In my career I have been called on several times to do organizational “disaster recovery.” I worked with a firm for several years helping them turnaround difficult acquisitions. I recall one company in particular where the employees, the managers and the customers were so dysfunctional that it was a wonder that any work got done at all. I vividly remember the HR Director meeting with me and several other senior executives from the acquiring company. With a serious look on his face (and I think a sense of empathy for my plight) he turned to me and said: “Think of it this way Jerry, at least you have a lot of room for improvement.”

He was right. We saw the disaster as a chance to make things, not just better, but truly great.

The employees, managers and customers (and suppliers) were starving for relief.

As with all disasters, the first step is to stem the bleeding. Disaster recovery really is a lot like emergency room triage. You have to relieve those things that cause the most suffering first. In the case of the victims of Sandy, it is things such as housing, electricity, clean water, heat, safety. When a company is in disaster recovery it is usually about trust, poor communications, and dysfunctional processes. If you can plug a few of the worst holes, you can give yourself time to work on the foundation that will completely turn the situation around.

That is the key to recovering from any kind of disaster: First make sure the people’s biggest needs are met and then move on to creating bigger changes. Thankfully I have never had to deal with the level of suffering that a hurricane can create. But my experience with the very real suffering a poorly run organization creates suggests that people who have experienced it are ready and eager for something better. They just need someone to take charge (and remember there are people involved).

Vote HR: It Is All About Responsibility

We are all sick and tired of the political advertisements, the robo-calls (that’s one technology I wish they’d zap with a ray-gun), the mud-slinging and the unseemly pandering. But at the end of the day none of that matters – what matters is that we make democracy work by exercising our personal responsibility to:

GO VOTE

I saw a great political cartoon in the local paper today (I live in Fort Collins, Colorado – so LOCAL really means local. I think the vote for Homecoming King got equal billing this morning) but anyway the cartoon basically went like this: In the first panel it showed the White House and said “The site of the second most powerful person in the nation” and the second panel showed a polling booth with a person in it and said “The site of the first most powerful person in the nation.”

I also woke up to the inspiring stories on the news about people standing in lines in New York, New Jersey and other areas affected by Hurricane Sandy to go vote. Many of these people lost their homes, have no heat, have ruined basements, or cars without gas. But they took the time to vote!

As people who work, innovate and explore the issues of Human Resources, we have a special duty to show how important it is to meet our responsibilities. And today that responsibility is to get out and vote! Voting is all about responsibility and voting is the responsibility we all accepted when we decided to be part of a democracy. There really is no difference between the responsibility as a citizen to vote and the responsibility as an employee to do our job.

Today – our job is to vote.

I’m Jerry Thurber and I approve this message