This is a question I get asked a lot. Of course the answer is, it depends. Smaller organizations tend to have administrative employees who wear several hats. So if an office manager spends 80% of her time performing accounting tasks (including payroll) and 20% of her time dealing with employee issues, that company has 1/5th of an HR person.
Standard benchmarking practice is to exclude dedicated payroll and training/development people from the HR-per-100 employee ratio calculation. The rule-of-thumb metric I've often heard is one HR person per 100 employees. So, in the example above, the office manager can probably effectively provide HR services to up to 20 employees, assuming she knows anything about HR compliance and HR best practices. If that organization has 40 employees, their HR is probably suffering because the accounting is always going to get done.
But the 1-to-100 ratio can be misleading. According to benchmarking surveys conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, companies with 250 and fewer employees have a ratio closer to 2-per-100 on average. Organizations with 250+ employees often have fewer than 1-per-100 due to efficiencies linked to being larger.
When I'm asked that question by organizations with 100 or fewer, I usually ask some follow-up questions before I recommend a number:
1. What is your competitive advantage (how does your company beat its competitors)?
2. What is your employee turnover rate?
3. How effective is your owner/president at assessing talent, developing talent and getting the right people in the right seats?
Cafe du Monde is a famous restaurant in New Orleans right in the heart of the French Quarter. It does a booming business because of its ideal location. I've always found the service there to be below average at best. Cafe du Monde does not need a lot of HR people because its people aren't critical to its success. A restaurant in a less desirable location that depends on its great service reputation to be successful will likely benefit from a higher HR ratio than Cafe du Monde needs.
Likewise, an organization that is in a very stable industry, doesn't have many competitors trying to pilfer its employees, and generally treats its people well won't need as much HR as a company in a high turnover, highly volatile industry where employees have lots of options.
Some owners are really good with people. People like working for them, they listen well and have a knack for positioning people to be successful. Others understand the technical aspects of their business but are terrible with employees. This second type of owner needs more HR help - to protect themselves from themselves.
The Institute for Corporate Productivity did a study a few years ago and found that the highest performing small companies have a higher ratio of HR people per 100 employees than their lower performing industry peers. This may seem counter-intuitive to the owner who sees HR as simply administrative overhead. But if that owner looks at the company he/she most admires in their industry, they'll likely see a company who invests more in their HR platform.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Sunday, June 5, 2016
My Applicant has Green Hair!
One of my clients recently lost a sale. The feedback we received was that the potential customer was put off by our technician's visible tattoos and appearance.
According to the Pew Research Center, 40% of millennials have at least one tattoo. Many millennials are aware that some employers remain uneasy about body art and place their tattoos in areas that are covered by normal business dress. But I'll bet many of your applicants have not been as careful. Applicants I see for service roles and for trades and craft positions seem to have visible tattoos, piercings and unnatural hair colors at a higher rate than college grads looking for white-collar jobs.
So, how should your organization respond to this growing trend? I am reminded of a famous exchange between star basketball player Bill Walton and legendary coach John Wooden at UCLA in the early 1970's. Walton: You can't tell me how I can wear my hair, coach! Wooden: You're right Bill, but I do get to decide who plays and we're going to miss you. (here's the story)
While Coach Wooden stuck with his rigid policies, other college coaches decided to embrace the long hair trend in the 1970s. Wooden won his final championship in 1975 and the championship teams in '76, '77 and '78 had rosters full of players with longer hair than Wooden would allow. Other coaches decided hair length was no longer a deterrent to their university's brand and restrictions on hair length hurt their recruiting efforts. Sound familiar?
The first thing to review is whether your current policies accurately reflect the attitudes of your customer base. Based on the anecdotal evidence provided by a single customer, it would have been easy for my client to overreact and begin enforcing a stricter dress code for its field personnel. Fortunately, we keep metrics on technician performance and we discovered that this technician was #1 in the company in jobs closed and #2 in closing percentage over the past year. That one customer does NOT reflect the true attitudes of most of our customers, so it would have been a mistake to risk losing this technician over that one piece of feedback.
With unemployment rates dropping and the war for talent heating back up, now may be a good time to reevaluate those dress and appearance policies. Here are some things to think about:
1. Safety first - if the presence of earrings, loops, gauges, nose rings, etc. puts the employee at risk for injury or puts your product at risk for contamination, by all means ban those items from the workplace.
2. Unless you're going to stick to a "no visible tattoos allowed" policy, distinguish between offensive tattoos and tattoos in general. Gang symbols, confederate flags, sexual images and profanity pose different risks for an employer than flowers, dolphins or doves, children's names, tributes to family members and other benign images. The former can generate harassment or hostile work environment claims. Your organization must decide to what degree the latter are a business risk.
3. It is OK to have different policies for different categories of employees. No visible tattoos for outside sales people, for example, may make sense. Having no such restriction for back office, warehouse or plant floor personnel may also make sense.
It's a mistake to stereotype a candidate based on the presence of visible tattoos or green hair. Focus your interview on true predictors of success in the role - their knowledge, skills and abilities. And supplement the interview with other tools that will improve your good hire percentage (here's a previous blog on this topic). Stereotyping frequently leads to missed opportunities, no matter whether it's race, age, gender, etc. or lifestyle choices.
The main thing to remember is that if you're stuck in a rigid "no tattoo" mindset like we had in the 80s and 90s, you could be significantly shrinking the pool of potential employees (and potential star performers). Review that policy and decide if it still makes sense for your organization today. And if you're assuming your customers won't like it, find a way to survey them to ensure that your assumptions are accurate.
According to the Pew Research Center, 40% of millennials have at least one tattoo. Many millennials are aware that some employers remain uneasy about body art and place their tattoos in areas that are covered by normal business dress. But I'll bet many of your applicants have not been as careful. Applicants I see for service roles and for trades and craft positions seem to have visible tattoos, piercings and unnatural hair colors at a higher rate than college grads looking for white-collar jobs.
So, how should your organization respond to this growing trend? I am reminded of a famous exchange between star basketball player Bill Walton and legendary coach John Wooden at UCLA in the early 1970's. Walton: You can't tell me how I can wear my hair, coach! Wooden: You're right Bill, but I do get to decide who plays and we're going to miss you. (here's the story)
While Coach Wooden stuck with his rigid policies, other college coaches decided to embrace the long hair trend in the 1970s. Wooden won his final championship in 1975 and the championship teams in '76, '77 and '78 had rosters full of players with longer hair than Wooden would allow. Other coaches decided hair length was no longer a deterrent to their university's brand and restrictions on hair length hurt their recruiting efforts. Sound familiar?
The first thing to review is whether your current policies accurately reflect the attitudes of your customer base. Based on the anecdotal evidence provided by a single customer, it would have been easy for my client to overreact and begin enforcing a stricter dress code for its field personnel. Fortunately, we keep metrics on technician performance and we discovered that this technician was #1 in the company in jobs closed and #2 in closing percentage over the past year. That one customer does NOT reflect the true attitudes of most of our customers, so it would have been a mistake to risk losing this technician over that one piece of feedback.
With unemployment rates dropping and the war for talent heating back up, now may be a good time to reevaluate those dress and appearance policies. Here are some things to think about:
1. Safety first - if the presence of earrings, loops, gauges, nose rings, etc. puts the employee at risk for injury or puts your product at risk for contamination, by all means ban those items from the workplace.
2. Unless you're going to stick to a "no visible tattoos allowed" policy, distinguish between offensive tattoos and tattoos in general. Gang symbols, confederate flags, sexual images and profanity pose different risks for an employer than flowers, dolphins or doves, children's names, tributes to family members and other benign images. The former can generate harassment or hostile work environment claims. Your organization must decide to what degree the latter are a business risk.
3. It is OK to have different policies for different categories of employees. No visible tattoos for outside sales people, for example, may make sense. Having no such restriction for back office, warehouse or plant floor personnel may also make sense.
It's a mistake to stereotype a candidate based on the presence of visible tattoos or green hair. Focus your interview on true predictors of success in the role - their knowledge, skills and abilities. And supplement the interview with other tools that will improve your good hire percentage (here's a previous blog on this topic). Stereotyping frequently leads to missed opportunities, no matter whether it's race, age, gender, etc. or lifestyle choices.
The main thing to remember is that if you're stuck in a rigid "no tattoo" mindset like we had in the 80s and 90s, you could be significantly shrinking the pool of potential employees (and potential star performers). Review that policy and decide if it still makes sense for your organization today. And if you're assuming your customers won't like it, find a way to survey them to ensure that your assumptions are accurate.
The New Overtime Rules Are Here
Regular readers of my blog have seen numerous articles over the past year claiming the new overtime rules were coming. When the rules were delayed time and again, I'm sure I sounded a bit like Chicken Little - they really are coming!
Well now they're here and we know what is expected. The DOL eased up a bit on the salary test minimum from what they originally proposed. The number is now set at $47,476 annually and will go up every three years. They've also given us until December 1 to become compliant.
What this means for your organization is that, if you haven't already, now is the time to identify everyone that you pay on a salary basis rather than hourly who earns less than $47,476 annually. Then you need to develop and implement a compensation strategy for each of them. Here are a few options:
1. Raise them to the new minimum. If they're pretty close to that level now, the easiest solution may be to give them a raise and keep them exempt. But remember, they must meet the salary test and the duties test. The DOL might still consider them misclassified based on their duties, so review this as well.
2. Convert them to hourly. This may be well-received by some employees who will be happy to become eligible for overtime compensation, but may be poorly-received by others who will see it as a demotion.
3. See if salaried non-exempt or fluctuating workweek overtime will work in your situation. For some workers whose workload is heavy some weeks and light other weeks, a salaried non-exempt or fluctuating workweek structure may be a viable lower cost alternative. This may also work for employees who rarely work more than 40 hours in a week. The key here is that the employee must "win" sometimes and the employer "win" sometimes. You can't pay the lower overtime rate one week and then dock the employee for leaving early the next week. This approach will not work in situations where employees regularly and consistently work overtime or in states where it is illegal.
There are also some morale and engagement issues to consider before executing your strategy:
1. Employees moving from salaried to hourly who see this as a demotion. Hold meaningful conversations with these folks to help them understand why you're making this change, what it means to them in terms of tracking their time, and what your expectations are with regard to their working extra hours. Explain that this is not a change you would have made if not for the new regulations.
2. Employees who have worked hard to get to a $48,000 salary level only to have entry level people in their same job category now starting at $47,500. This is a case-by-case situation that organizations need to address. In many situations it's probably going to make sense to adjust compensation for these folks as well. The costs of allowing those employees to drift into a disengaged state or leave your organization altogether are probably greater than the cost of making them happy.
3. Understand the role of bonuses and commissions in achieving the minimum salary threshold. In some cases up to 10% of the $47,476 can be achieved through bonuses and commissions so long as they are performance based and paid at least quarterly.
Contact The Davidson Group if you'd like some assistance analyzing and developing strategies for your particular situation.
Well now they're here and we know what is expected. The DOL eased up a bit on the salary test minimum from what they originally proposed. The number is now set at $47,476 annually and will go up every three years. They've also given us until December 1 to become compliant.
What this means for your organization is that, if you haven't already, now is the time to identify everyone that you pay on a salary basis rather than hourly who earns less than $47,476 annually. Then you need to develop and implement a compensation strategy for each of them. Here are a few options:
1. Raise them to the new minimum. If they're pretty close to that level now, the easiest solution may be to give them a raise and keep them exempt. But remember, they must meet the salary test and the duties test. The DOL might still consider them misclassified based on their duties, so review this as well.
2. Convert them to hourly. This may be well-received by some employees who will be happy to become eligible for overtime compensation, but may be poorly-received by others who will see it as a demotion.
3. See if salaried non-exempt or fluctuating workweek overtime will work in your situation. For some workers whose workload is heavy some weeks and light other weeks, a salaried non-exempt or fluctuating workweek structure may be a viable lower cost alternative. This may also work for employees who rarely work more than 40 hours in a week. The key here is that the employee must "win" sometimes and the employer "win" sometimes. You can't pay the lower overtime rate one week and then dock the employee for leaving early the next week. This approach will not work in situations where employees regularly and consistently work overtime or in states where it is illegal.
There are also some morale and engagement issues to consider before executing your strategy:
1. Employees moving from salaried to hourly who see this as a demotion. Hold meaningful conversations with these folks to help them understand why you're making this change, what it means to them in terms of tracking their time, and what your expectations are with regard to their working extra hours. Explain that this is not a change you would have made if not for the new regulations.
2. Employees who have worked hard to get to a $48,000 salary level only to have entry level people in their same job category now starting at $47,500. This is a case-by-case situation that organizations need to address. In many situations it's probably going to make sense to adjust compensation for these folks as well. The costs of allowing those employees to drift into a disengaged state or leave your organization altogether are probably greater than the cost of making them happy.
3. Understand the role of bonuses and commissions in achieving the minimum salary threshold. In some cases up to 10% of the $47,476 can be achieved through bonuses and commissions so long as they are performance based and paid at least quarterly.
Contact The Davidson Group if you'd like some assistance analyzing and developing strategies for your particular situation.
Sunday, May 8, 2016
Advice on Criminal Background Checks
Criminal background checks are an important preemployment screen for many organizations. And rightfully so. If I own a company that sends service workers to other people's homes or businesses, I don't want to send someone I wouldn't want in my own home or business and expose my customers to potential risks they wouldn't find acceptable.
But this once commonplace practice has come under scrutiny in recent years. And the criticisms do have merit. Some segments of the population are convicted of crimes at a much higher rate than other segments, and critics suggest that requiring a criminal background check and screening out candidates for infractions that are not really job related may be a type of discrimination.
Employers should evaluate each job on its own merits. Certainly rejecting a candidate for a bookkeeper position who has a felony fraud conviction is hard to debate. But bouncing a candidate for a scaffolding erector position for a non-violent misdemeanor five years ago might be considered overzealous.
The key for employers is avoid having a blanket policy regarding what constitutes a passing or failing criminal background screen. Instead, set criteria for each job title or job grouping separately. For example, the company may set higher standards for candidates who will be driving company vehicles than those who will always be passengers or those working on the plant floor. The company might have a different set of standards for employees who will have access to cash or the company's books than for administrative roles that have no such access.
And finally, conduct the background screen post-offer! There are several advantages of conducting the screens after an offer has been made (contingent upon meeting the screening standards) versus conducting the screen in advance of the offer:
1. It's less expensive - why pay for a screen if you haven't come to financial terms with the candidate. Furthermore, the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires employers send a specific kind of notice to candidates who are rejected on the basis of a criminal background or credit check. Run the screen on several finalists, and you may have to send multiple notices out.
2. It provides a much stronger defense against discrimination. If you have a signed offer letter from a minority candidate conditional upon meeting the company's standards, and those standards are reasonable, it's hard for the EEOC to conclude that your organization utilizes discriminatory hiring practices. If you conduct the screen pre-offer, you can't prove that you would have hired the minority even if the screen results were acceptable.
3. Some states don't allow pre-offer criminal background screens (it is legal in NC, SC and VA). If your organization operates in multiple states, make sure you know the law in each state.
If you really want to be an early adopter and reduce your risk with the EEOC even further, consider revising your employment application to comply with the national "ban the box" trend. This means you don't ask candidates to list any convictions on the application (thereby demonstrating that you don't reject applicants on the basis of criminal background, alone). Instead, have a statement on the application that tells applicants that the company conducts post-offer criminal background screens and that criteria varies by position.
But this once commonplace practice has come under scrutiny in recent years. And the criticisms do have merit. Some segments of the population are convicted of crimes at a much higher rate than other segments, and critics suggest that requiring a criminal background check and screening out candidates for infractions that are not really job related may be a type of discrimination.
Employers should evaluate each job on its own merits. Certainly rejecting a candidate for a bookkeeper position who has a felony fraud conviction is hard to debate. But bouncing a candidate for a scaffolding erector position for a non-violent misdemeanor five years ago might be considered overzealous.
The key for employers is avoid having a blanket policy regarding what constitutes a passing or failing criminal background screen. Instead, set criteria for each job title or job grouping separately. For example, the company may set higher standards for candidates who will be driving company vehicles than those who will always be passengers or those working on the plant floor. The company might have a different set of standards for employees who will have access to cash or the company's books than for administrative roles that have no such access.
And finally, conduct the background screen post-offer! There are several advantages of conducting the screens after an offer has been made (contingent upon meeting the screening standards) versus conducting the screen in advance of the offer:
1. It's less expensive - why pay for a screen if you haven't come to financial terms with the candidate. Furthermore, the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires employers send a specific kind of notice to candidates who are rejected on the basis of a criminal background or credit check. Run the screen on several finalists, and you may have to send multiple notices out.
2. It provides a much stronger defense against discrimination. If you have a signed offer letter from a minority candidate conditional upon meeting the company's standards, and those standards are reasonable, it's hard for the EEOC to conclude that your organization utilizes discriminatory hiring practices. If you conduct the screen pre-offer, you can't prove that you would have hired the minority even if the screen results were acceptable.
3. Some states don't allow pre-offer criminal background screens (it is legal in NC, SC and VA). If your organization operates in multiple states, make sure you know the law in each state.
If you really want to be an early adopter and reduce your risk with the EEOC even further, consider revising your employment application to comply with the national "ban the box" trend. This means you don't ask candidates to list any convictions on the application (thereby demonstrating that you don't reject applicants on the basis of criminal background, alone). Instead, have a statement on the application that tells applicants that the company conducts post-offer criminal background screens and that criteria varies by position.
Age Discrimination by Millennials?
Jason is a 27 year-old recently promoted to operations manager. Donna, 53, held Jason's position for several years before receiving a promotion of her own into a supporting technical role. By all accounts (except Jason's), Donna performed the role very well. She beat budget, achieved high customer satisfaction scores and won awards for her business unit. In addition to her new responsibilities, she is charged with serving as a mentor to Jason.
Jason, however, believes Donna never did the job right and those upper managers at corporate who think she performed well and this job can be done with what he sees are impossible financial constraints are idiots and he's going to prove them wrong (presumably by spending as much as he wants). Jason either ignores or very publicly chides all of Donna's efforts to help him learn the ropes. Jason makes it clear in his rants that if he had the authority, he would fire Donna so he wouldn't have to listen to her anymore. Jason has run off or terminated several over-50 supervisors and replaced them with workers in their 20s. Jason's boss, who is also a millennial and was influential in getting Donna promoted out of the unit, is committed to Jason's potential and Jason is empowered by that support.
This is a true, though slightly modified, example of a disturbing trend. Age discrimination cases have been increasing. Part of this is demographic - there are more older workers today than there were in 2000 due to birthrate trends after World War II - but part is cultural.
I am on record as saying that much of what is being taught in seminars around the country about millennials and generational differences is hokum. For some reason it's acceptable to stereotype individuals based on the year they were born in ways we would never stereotype people based on their skin pigmentation or national origin. (For more on this subject, read my earlier blog).
Overall, I'm bullish on millennials. The purpose of this article is not to indict talented, young, millennial managers, it's to warn business owners that if they are investing in talented, young, millennial managers, they need to keep an eye out for potential biases against older workers. Your confident, aggressive millennial manager could land you in hot water.
When I turned 14, my father told me that for the next 7 or 8 years, he'd be the dumbest human being I ever met, but by the time I was 22, out of school and on my own, I'd eventually figure out he wasn't so dumb after all. He was absolutely right!
My theory about the prevalence of age discrimination by some millennial mangers lies in my dad's observation. Because some millennials have been much slower to mature due to a combination of economic factors that kept them home longer and parenting styles that kept them dependent longer, we have many young adults in their mid-20s who still regard adults in their 50's and 60's the way we did when we were 16. We figured it out by age 22 or 23. Some of them still haven't figured it out by age 29 or 30.
So, my advice is to continue to promote millennials like Jason. It's good for them and good for American business. Jason will either learn that some of those boomers and Xers at the corporate office aren't so dumb after all, or he'll bounce from job to job never advancing nor achieving the potential his millennial boss sees in him. But if you have a Jason, make sure you have some checks and balances in place so that you're not standing before an EEOC officer or a judge trying to explain how after Donna was replaced by Jason, your hiring and firing statistics show a clear trend toward age bias. You won't win that one.
Jason, however, believes Donna never did the job right and those upper managers at corporate who think she performed well and this job can be done with what he sees are impossible financial constraints are idiots and he's going to prove them wrong (presumably by spending as much as he wants). Jason either ignores or very publicly chides all of Donna's efforts to help him learn the ropes. Jason makes it clear in his rants that if he had the authority, he would fire Donna so he wouldn't have to listen to her anymore. Jason has run off or terminated several over-50 supervisors and replaced them with workers in their 20s. Jason's boss, who is also a millennial and was influential in getting Donna promoted out of the unit, is committed to Jason's potential and Jason is empowered by that support.
This is a true, though slightly modified, example of a disturbing trend. Age discrimination cases have been increasing. Part of this is demographic - there are more older workers today than there were in 2000 due to birthrate trends after World War II - but part is cultural.
I am on record as saying that much of what is being taught in seminars around the country about millennials and generational differences is hokum. For some reason it's acceptable to stereotype individuals based on the year they were born in ways we would never stereotype people based on their skin pigmentation or national origin. (For more on this subject, read my earlier blog).
Overall, I'm bullish on millennials. The purpose of this article is not to indict talented, young, millennial managers, it's to warn business owners that if they are investing in talented, young, millennial managers, they need to keep an eye out for potential biases against older workers. Your confident, aggressive millennial manager could land you in hot water.
When I turned 14, my father told me that for the next 7 or 8 years, he'd be the dumbest human being I ever met, but by the time I was 22, out of school and on my own, I'd eventually figure out he wasn't so dumb after all. He was absolutely right!
My theory about the prevalence of age discrimination by some millennial mangers lies in my dad's observation. Because some millennials have been much slower to mature due to a combination of economic factors that kept them home longer and parenting styles that kept them dependent longer, we have many young adults in their mid-20s who still regard adults in their 50's and 60's the way we did when we were 16. We figured it out by age 22 or 23. Some of them still haven't figured it out by age 29 or 30.
So, my advice is to continue to promote millennials like Jason. It's good for them and good for American business. Jason will either learn that some of those boomers and Xers at the corporate office aren't so dumb after all, or he'll bounce from job to job never advancing nor achieving the potential his millennial boss sees in him. But if you have a Jason, make sure you have some checks and balances in place so that you're not standing before an EEOC officer or a judge trying to explain how after Donna was replaced by Jason, your hiring and firing statistics show a clear trend toward age bias. You won't win that one.
Friday, April 1, 2016
Make Better Hiring Choices
Recently I was playing golf with a friend of mine and we were paired with a father and son we didn't know. After a couple of holes I asked the son, engineer or accountant? He smiled and said, Mechanical Engineer. As a certified professional behavior analyst I recognized fairly quickly that his behavioral style (or personality style) was consistent with someone you would expect to be successful in engineering or accounting, and I guessed correctly.
I began using DISC in my hiring process in 1997. Before that I was a skeptic. Personality profiles were hocus-pocus and a waste of money. Plus, it was obvious to me that the people I hired could have done a good job if they wanted to, they just chose not to and I had to fire them. It was their fault, not mine. But I couldn't ignore that my turnover rate was stubbornly high and that my business unit was not performing as well as some of my peers' business units. At the urging of my CEO, I began incorporating DISC into my selection decisions.
The results were almost instantaneous and within two years my turnover rate had dropped to among the lowest in the company and my branch performance had risen to among the top as well. Was it all because of DISC? No, we made some other adjustments too, but DISC was a big contributor.
We observe contrasting behavioral styles all the time. Some people are naturally outgoing, others are more reserved. Some people are more detail-oriented, others are more achievement-oriented. Some are animated, some have a poker-face. Some are sensitive, others are more about getting the job done even if people get their feelings hurt. It only makes sense that people who are in a job that rewards a certain natural behavior style are going to perform better if they share that style.
The problem I had prior to using DISC was that I judged candidates on the combination of their technical skills and their interviewing skills. But I eventually figured out that we could train technical skills and that interviewing skills weren't that relevant to nor predictive of performance in most jobs. I began to focus on finding people who were trainable, had a demonstrated work ethic, and had a DISC profile that was compatible with the natural demands of the job. That proved to be the combination that lead me to start hiring winners.
If your good hire percentage is lower than you'd like it to be and you're not utilizing DISC in your selection process, contact me and I'll show you how easy it is to benchmark a role in your company so that you can hire more people who have a chance to be great and hire fewer people who are likely going to hate the job.
I began using DISC in my hiring process in 1997. Before that I was a skeptic. Personality profiles were hocus-pocus and a waste of money. Plus, it was obvious to me that the people I hired could have done a good job if they wanted to, they just chose not to and I had to fire them. It was their fault, not mine. But I couldn't ignore that my turnover rate was stubbornly high and that my business unit was not performing as well as some of my peers' business units. At the urging of my CEO, I began incorporating DISC into my selection decisions.
The results were almost instantaneous and within two years my turnover rate had dropped to among the lowest in the company and my branch performance had risen to among the top as well. Was it all because of DISC? No, we made some other adjustments too, but DISC was a big contributor.
We observe contrasting behavioral styles all the time. Some people are naturally outgoing, others are more reserved. Some people are more detail-oriented, others are more achievement-oriented. Some are animated, some have a poker-face. Some are sensitive, others are more about getting the job done even if people get their feelings hurt. It only makes sense that people who are in a job that rewards a certain natural behavior style are going to perform better if they share that style.
The problem I had prior to using DISC was that I judged candidates on the combination of their technical skills and their interviewing skills. But I eventually figured out that we could train technical skills and that interviewing skills weren't that relevant to nor predictive of performance in most jobs. I began to focus on finding people who were trainable, had a demonstrated work ethic, and had a DISC profile that was compatible with the natural demands of the job. That proved to be the combination that lead me to start hiring winners.
If your good hire percentage is lower than you'd like it to be and you're not utilizing DISC in your selection process, contact me and I'll show you how easy it is to benchmark a role in your company so that you can hire more people who have a chance to be great and hire fewer people who are likely going to hate the job.
Bruce, Caitlyn and Transgender Restrooms
NC Governor Pat McCrory recently made news by signing into law the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act which basically stops localities like Charlotte from passing ordinances that allow transgender individuals to use public restrooms that align with their gender identity, not their birth gender. The ACLU has quickly gotten involved and a lawsuit has been put in motion to declare the NC law unconstitutional.
All this will certainly play out in the political arena and in the courts. The purpose of this article is not to take sides in the dispute, rather to provide guidance to organizations like yours if faced with this dilemma in the meantime. Let's say "Bruce" joined your company a couple of years ago and has been a solid contributor. But Bruce has recently decided to reveal to his co-workers that he really identifies himself as a female, begins wearing female clothing to work, and asks the company to begin referring to him as "Caitlyn." He has also asked to begin using the women's restroom. How do you respond?
This story is becoming more common. The Social Security Administration reports that in the 2010 census some 90,000 Americans had changed their name to reflect the opposite sex and over 20,000 have actually changed their sex in the official record. This, however, is a small percentage of the reported 700,000 Americans who consider themselves transgender according to a study by the Williams Institute. If the Williams Institute is correct, it is only a matter of time before your organization faces this question, "what do we do about Caitlyn?"
The NC statute may give a sense of cover to those traditional employers in NC who may feel that an individual should really use the restroom that matches their actual plumbing rather than what they wish their plumbing to be. But I would caution against rushing to judgement over Caitlyn's request, expecting the NC law to protect you.
It is wise to consider that both OSHA and the EEOC have gotten involved in this debate. OSHA published a guidance on the topic last year in which it recommends that employers allow employees to use the restroom with which they identify. And while it is fine to offer unisex alternatives, it is not fine to require the transgendered to use them. The EEOC also made it clear in its Lusardi v. McHugh decision in April 2015 that it considers transgender rights to be covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, so employers who choose to discriminate against LGBT employees are doing so at their own risk. Personally, I wouldn't want to stand in front of the EEOC depending on the NC law to justify my employment actions, and I definitely recommend you confer with an attorney before deciding to take a hard line stance on this issue.
Bruce becoming Caitlyn is one more example of a circumstance when a small business owner might benefit from having an HR Business Partner on speed dial.
All this will certainly play out in the political arena and in the courts. The purpose of this article is not to take sides in the dispute, rather to provide guidance to organizations like yours if faced with this dilemma in the meantime. Let's say "Bruce" joined your company a couple of years ago and has been a solid contributor. But Bruce has recently decided to reveal to his co-workers that he really identifies himself as a female, begins wearing female clothing to work, and asks the company to begin referring to him as "Caitlyn." He has also asked to begin using the women's restroom. How do you respond?
This story is becoming more common. The Social Security Administration reports that in the 2010 census some 90,000 Americans had changed their name to reflect the opposite sex and over 20,000 have actually changed their sex in the official record. This, however, is a small percentage of the reported 700,000 Americans who consider themselves transgender according to a study by the Williams Institute. If the Williams Institute is correct, it is only a matter of time before your organization faces this question, "what do we do about Caitlyn?"
The NC statute may give a sense of cover to those traditional employers in NC who may feel that an individual should really use the restroom that matches their actual plumbing rather than what they wish their plumbing to be. But I would caution against rushing to judgement over Caitlyn's request, expecting the NC law to protect you.
It is wise to consider that both OSHA and the EEOC have gotten involved in this debate. OSHA published a guidance on the topic last year in which it recommends that employers allow employees to use the restroom with which they identify. And while it is fine to offer unisex alternatives, it is not fine to require the transgendered to use them. The EEOC also made it clear in its Lusardi v. McHugh decision in April 2015 that it considers transgender rights to be covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, so employers who choose to discriminate against LGBT employees are doing so at their own risk. Personally, I wouldn't want to stand in front of the EEOC depending on the NC law to justify my employment actions, and I definitely recommend you confer with an attorney before deciding to take a hard line stance on this issue.
Bruce becoming Caitlyn is one more example of a circumstance when a small business owner might benefit from having an HR Business Partner on speed dial.
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