Hot HR Tips from Edward Navis, SPHR

A client recently asked me if exit interviews were really necessary, and if a “stay” interview (exploring ways to convince the resigning employee to rescind the resignation) was a good idea as well.

I believe well-conducted exit interviews are critical for the obvious reason: it helps a company learn about ways they can improve retention.  Stay interviews are another story.  They do not work because of the following reasons:

1. Once the employee has resigned, my only tool to lure him back is, in all likelihood, a salary increase.  Great employers do not engender loyalty with money, but with relationships.
2. I’ve seen more than one example in which employers play “Let’s Make a Deal” with an employee who threatens to leave, and it never works out.  Inevitably, the employee “threatens” to leave again 6-12 months later.

The best way to retain employees is to combine solid compensation with a strong interpersonal relationship.  If the employee has resigned (or is thinking of resigning), then the relationship is not strong and would take a long time to repair.

It’s been quite a week!  First of all, my latest book, Confessions of an HR Professional: Secrets for Getting Your Foot in the Door has hit the presses.  To order a digital copy, go to http://www.FullSpectrumHR.com and click on the “HRCoachNow” or Products tab.  The paper back copy will be available later in the week at the same site.

This brings me to more news.  The Web site is getting a much needed facelift.  It should be done Tuesday afternoon.

FInally, I’ve also gotten some great press.  The Times Union was kind enough to invote me as a guest blogger.  To see the blog, please go to: http://blogs.timesunion.com/classconflict/?p=890%C2%A0.  

Check them out.  Thanks!

Amidst all of the noise about the economy, it’s important to keep a few critical points in mind if you are looking for a job, or if you think you might be looking for one soon.

First, stay focused and remain optomistic.  Lots of companies are hiring, despite what you’re hearing.  (I’m as busy as I’ve ever been.)

Make sure your resume is tight and customized to the specific opportunity for which you are applying.  You’re asking an employer to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars for someone he does not know, and to do so during economically stressful times.  Truthfully highlight your skills and experiences as this potential customer needs to see them.  Make sure your resume is error-free, easy to read, and contains relevant information.

Networking is the holy grail of a job search.  In all sorts of economic times over the past thirty-some years (and yes, there have been times that were worse than this one), networking has always been responsible for 80-85% of the hiring in this country.

Finally, I have three new resources.  My latest book, Confessions of an HR Professional: Secrets for Getting Your Foot in the Door is now available for download from my Web site, www.FullSpectrumHR.com.  Click on the “HR Coach Now!” tab.  Also on the same page: Two teleconferences specifically for job hunters:  Secrets of a Great Resume, and Job-Hunting in Tough Econoic Times.

Last month, I informed a client of mine about the effects of a recent and now pervasive habit in his workplace. His employees were using their cell phones to text and make calls during work hours (not break times), and it was beginning to interrupt his work flow.

His company has 34 employees and the average salary there is $37 per hour.  If each employee spends only ten minutes on the phone or texting every day, it costs him…are you ready?…$50,592.00 per year.  That’s the cost before we factor in the cost of lost business, on-the-job accidents resulting from a misdirected attention span, and other costs.  Interestingly, his employees feel overworked and have asked him to hire another employee.  If they’d just cut their phone and texting time in half, that new employee would be much easier to afford.

Employers pay not only for the employee’s physical activity, but their attention to detail and focus on work as well.  They pay for these products for the duration of the time that the employee is at work.  Texting or talking on the cell phone at work to handle non-urgent personal matters is selfish and inconsiderate, and comes at the expense of production and customer service.

And if you happen to be unlucky enough to ride on a train in which the conductor is texting while on the job…well, the news speaks for itself.

Just because we have technology does not mean we have to use it constantly, and I wish there were more people out there who remember the times before cellular phone technology during which we all went to work and maintained appropriate contact with people in our lives by calling them on our breaks or from home.  Sure, we could always call from the office to check on a sick relative or to handle a crisis, but there is no way you can convince me all those cellular calls and texts during business hours are true emergencies.

Just my two cents.

There was a time when an employee getting downsized would receive a few weeks of notice and a farewell party on her last day.

Times sure have changed.

A recent survey by Cyber-Ark revealed that a full 88% of IT administrators admitted that they would steal valuable password and access information should the company fire them.  These rarely altered passwords give the terminated employee access to payroll, client records, employee files, and operating codes.  In the wrong hands, this data allows someone to do everything from altering and deleting financial records, selling client contact and pricing data for sale to the highest bidder, and accessing other passwords to crashing all or part of the entire system.

Prevention is easier than it seems.  First, change passwords and access codes on a regular basis.  New passwords should be completely different from all other passwords in every way.  (A client told me he once learned this lesson the hard way.  He routinely rotated the system access passwords to contain the name of one of his three children.  An ex-employee used this data and hacked into the system.)

Second, have a brief conversation with your highest level IT person just before you terminate the employee. Tell her to deny the terminated employee all system access immediately after seeing you bring the employee into the office for the termination discussion.  (Alternately, ask the terminated employee to come to the office, and then ask them to wait a moment as you step out to call IT and request the system access denial.)

Accompany the terminated employee back to his desk.  Help him pack up or offer to send his personal belongings to his home address.  Do not, under any circumstances, allow the employee to use the computer.

Some terminated employees can adopt hostile behaviors.  Because one employee can do so much damage with so little effort, the days of the long pre-termination notice and farewell parties are over.  It’s sad, but unfortunately a necessity in today’s server-based workplace.  

It may seem like something said by a person who’s been living under a rock, but believe it or not, hiring continues and is even rising in some sectors.

How is this possible?  Well, the media’s reporting techniques tend to rely on government collected information.  They also tend to hyperbole, trying to generate higher sales.  

But the fact is that smaller businesses are continuing to look for employees at all levels.  The general concerns over our economy are influencing the manner in which they hire.  Decisions are slower and more deliberate, but the hiring continues nonetheless.

I tell my clients that there’s both less and more to economic fluctuations than meet the eye.  On the one hand, the downturn is nothing more than an expression of fear as opposed to a result of true economic indicators.  It lacks any tangible cause and is probably more generated by the press than anything else.  (Yes, I know the sub-prime market crashed, but the true ripple effect of that event has yet to be isolated and accurately measured.)

While the psychogenic aspect of an economic fluctuation brings comfort to some, it is worrisome as well. The fact that emotions drive this enormous part of our lives only increases the unknown element, and the unknown increases anxiety.

So my message to both job hunters and employee seekers is simple.   If you are in need of people, make sure the need is real and definitely long term, and then proceed with your hiring.  If you are on the job search side, take a deep breath and continue looking.  You will find a job.  The bottom line for both: Keep moving. This will end sooner than later, and the road ahead will seem more clear and easy to navigate

There’s no lack of discussion about millennial employees (born circa 1987) anywhere on the web or in business journals. The reviews on this generation are still coming in, but “mixed” seems to describe those we’ve received thus far.

Words describing millennial employees range from “technically brilliant” to “cocky,” from “frighteningly expedient” to “lazy,” and “impressively exact in their work” to “lacking work ethic.”

They can be a bit impatient, wanting now the six figure salaries that their predecessors labored for years to achieve. Often their take on work is that if they can get a full day’s work done in an hour, why shouldn’t they take the rest of the day off?

A friend of mine, a CEO of a company with 300 or so employees, got just that response when he came upon a group of new employees sitting - yet again - in the lunch room working on what must have been their ninth cup of designer coffee and playing games on their credit card-sized phones. He asked them why they were still there as opposed to doing their work. They explained that they’d all completed their assigned projects within a few hours, and felt that it was now perfectly reasonable to spend the rest of the day in repose. “After all,” one of them said, “it hardly seems fair to penalize us because we work faster than the older employees.”

Foul! Unless the employee had contracted to receive pay on a per project basis (and my friend swears that’s not the case,) then this particular style of thinking smells like a trout that’s been rotting in the sun for a week in August and is only half as useful.

Here’s a piece of fact to chew on: for all his talent, expedience, technical savvy, and exactitude, this millennial forgot an important point.  His employer, my friend, was paying not only for the product he produced, but for his time as well. If he finished his project early, a more constructive tack might have been to find something else to do: to raise the bar on his own performance, so to speak. That’s how “the older guys” got those six figure salaries: by showing dedication and commitment: by managing their careers like they were important. I’m not suggesting that 16 hour days are the only acceptable path to professional success, but I’m sure that an approach of doing “only what they ask me to do” just won’t cut it, now or any time in the future.

5/22/07

We’ve all seen them before: the handbooks that large corporations give to new employees on their first days on the job.  They usually make for pretty boring reading, much of it in legal-eze. 

But these are important documents, not only for large employees, but smaller companies as well, and I recently worked with a company after the owner learned this lesson the hard way. 

Gabe started his high tech business after closing his 20 years of tenure at a Fortune 50 company, taking a $350,000.00 package along the way.  His dream was to build a place where his employees would feel at home: safe and secure, unlike the years he’d spent at the corporate grindstone.

A year later, Gabe’s business had grown to five employees.  His technical genius, Steven, was hired only 2 months after opening the doors and became the company’s third employee.  After several months, Steven expressed his concern over the new company’s financial stability, and that’s where Gabe made his big mistake.  In a good-hearted effort to help Steven feel more secure, Gabe, said, “It’s OK Steven.  You’ll always have a job here.”  Two other employees overheard the conversation.

Not long after that, Steven’s performance began to slip.  He was frequently late and often left work incomplete.  Gabe confronted him repeatedly, and finally decided that there was no other option; Steven had to go.

Three weeks after his termination, Steven filed a lawsuit claiming that Gabe had violated a verbal agreement that promised him perpetual employment.  Steven’s attorney alleged that as there was no handbook outlining the company’s employment practices, and therefore his client had every right to interpret the statement “you’ll always have a job here” as an employment contract.

To make a long story short, the case never went to court and Gabe’s attorney was able to convince opposing counsel that there was, in fact, no real grounds for a lawsuit.  But it was close, and in addition to the nearly $20,000.00 in legal bills, Gabe lost another employee who maintained a close friendship with Steven.  Business faltered and service dropped as Gabe scrambled to replace his two employees.

He’s now back on his feet and growing again, but Gabe learned that a solid Employee Handbook not only expresses clear performance expectations, but states that he’s an at-will employer who can terminate anyone with or without reason or warning, and that nothing – save a written document signed by him – can change that.

The CEO of one of New York’s many high tech start-ups recently told me that he’d “saved the day” by convincing a resignation-bound employee to stay. The employee had cited a competitor’s offer of a substantially higher salary as her reason for leaving.

My client felt that the best strategy here was to “gently grill” (his words, not mine) the employee for facts about the new job. She said they’d offered her a bigger base and a larger bonus structure. He told her he’d beat their numbers by 10%, if she’d give him the chance. Miracle of miracles: she did. She rejected her new offer and promised her current employer that she’d stay with him.

I guess he showed her.

But she’s really running that company, and I told him so. He should remain abreast of the compensation trends and his employee’s needs. Most employees resign because of a poor relationship with their manager, and as they do not know how to fix that problem, allow the lure of financial reward to influence their judgment. For every employee that resigns for a bona fide, substantial increase in salary, there are hundreds who look at the counter offer and ask, “If you truly appreciate me enough to do this, why couldn’t you say something about it before I resigned?” In other words, “I had no idea you even cared.”

There’s a little secret about salary offers that many execs ignore when an employee claims they’ve been offered a really big increase by another employer. When hiring, most employers use the new hire’s last salary as part of their calculation of what they are going to offer. Few will offer a salary that comprises more than a 10% increase. There’s no real formula or theoretical reason for this; the hiring company simply feels that this is a “reasonable number.” There is a good number of employees who threaten resignation because of a higher salary offer (particularly those with skills in high demand,) who are simply blowing smoke as a ruse to get more money.

As I suggested to this now somewhat deflated CEO: counter offers are the corporate equivalent of swallowing a slow-acting poison. It surrenders the management of your company to someone motivated entirely by a paycheck, instead of passion for the cause and loyalty to the employer. And when it gets around that this technique works (and it will get around - believe me when I tell you this) others will line up with their letters of resignation in one hand and their wallets in the other.

So the next time an employee tells you he’s resigning because he was offered more money, ask him when his last day will be (because you’re going to hold them to it) and get an HR professional to do an in depth exit interview to find out what’s really going on. Then take a cold, hard look at the ways in which you have or have not built trust and loyalty with your employees. That relationship is the key to retention.

An employee’s ability to do harm to a company has grown exponentially over the years. Twenty years ago, a disgruntled employee had to be able to crack a safe or forge a signature to steal money. Now, any employee with minimal computer knowledge and a mouse that works can do serious damage, especially to small businesses with fewer security layers and simpler systems.

There’s a common thought that if you are going to give an employee access to the company funds, use of a credit card, or other such privilege, that you must run a credit check to ensure a healthy credit rating. After all, if the candidate has shaky credit, s/he is more likely to abuse the system, steal money, and God only knows what else.

The rather standardized practice of running a credit check on a potential employee is, in fact, wasted effort and money. It could as well disqualify otherwise terrific candidates.

The fact is that someone’s credit rating can go south for many reasons, none of them remotely connected to honesty. A divorce, a pending mortgage application, illness, or an extended period of unemployment can equally lower a rating. Not all cases of poor credit resulted from someone who just decided not to pay his bills and mishandle his finances. And remember: the guys at Enron had terrific credit ratings.

One more point: there are no studies proving that people with poor credit are any more or less likely to steal or mismanage company funds than anyone else.

A criminal background check is a far better indicator of possible future problems. A candidate with a felonious conviction is statistically far more likely to commit another crime than someone who had never violated the law. Make sure that your job application states your intention to perform the criminal background check, and make sure the employee signs the application. As it’s best to perform the check after the employee has begun work, be sure that your employee handbook and your offer letters clearly state that all job offers are contingent upon the satisfactory completion of a background check.

It’s no secret that the government requires all employees to meet basic legal eligibility standards for employment in the United States. But apparently many companies do not know that they have to be ready to prove eligibility, as a recent report from HR.com shows a marked rise in hefty fines and even jail time for employers who cannot prove their employees’ legal right to work in this country.

Sparked in part by the Department of Homeland Security’s actions in a post-9/11 world, and in part by the current debates we have about eligibility for citizenship, this increased vigilance translates to a simple fact for American employers: you must have documentation for each employee – including yourself – that shows legal employment eligibility.

The form you must use for this is a federal form called an I-9. (The government link for the form is http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/i-9.pdf, but you can also Google “i-9” to find the link. Don’t buy the form; it’s free at this link.)

Have the employee complete the top of the form, and you (or a designee) will complete the lower half. The link also contains a list of acceptable documents the employee can use as proof of eligibility. Divided into three groups, the employee may choose one document from Column A, or one each from Columns B AND C.

If the employee’s status is temporary (for example, an H1-B visa be sure to redo the I-9 as soon as the employee receives their new documents. Their eligibility must be continuous; even a week’s lapse can be problematic.

I recommend to my clients that they photocopy the employee’s proof, draw a line through the picture, initial it, and note the date on which they viewed the original. While there is no part of the law that requires photocopies of the proof, inspectors do ask for them. Best to stay on the inspector’s good side.

Keep the completed forms in a separate folder (probably marked I-9) and keep it locked up securely.

I-9 compliance is an easy and quick way to avoid huge fines. And if you feel you can’t make the bright orange prison jumpers work, I-9 compliance will help you walking among the free.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them here or via email at ed@FullSpectrumHR.com.

Clients frequently ask me about the best way to ensure that the candidate for one of their positions will, in fact, be willing and able to do the job, and do it well.

The answer lies in a technique called “behavior-based interviewing.” In this technique, I’ll ask a candidate to describe - in detail - a specific time when he’s used this skill in the past. For example, instead of testing a programmer on his knowledge of C# (the responses to which could be nothing more than those he “studied” just before the interview,) I ask him to describe the last project in which he used C#. I follow up with questions like:

“Which employer was this for?”

“What were some of the problems you encountered?”

“How did you fix them?”

And so on…

Other examples:

“Tell me about the most difficult customer you had at your last employer. What made him tough to deal with? How did you handle it? What was the response?”

“Tell me about a specific time when you disagreed with your manager. How did you handle it? What was the outcome?”

“When was the last time you had to complete a project with little or no help from your manager. How did it work out? What did your manager say? What problems did you encounter?”

“Tell me about a specific instance when you had to respond to more than one urgent request in a short time period. How did you do it? Did you ask for help? What was the response?”

Asking hypothetical questions like, “Can you multi-task?” will get you hypothetical answers. Unless the candidate can describe - in detail - a specific time when he’s actually performed the task, then you won’t know if he’s actually had the experience. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior…and that’s what behavior-based interviewing helps you explore.

Feel free to respond with questions or comments here or via email at ed@FullSpectrumHR.com