I'm on record saying that much of what is written about how different millennials are than we baby boomers and Gen Xers is a bunch of baloney (click here for more). I believe it is the workplace that is evolving, not the people. Millennials simply have different stimuli than we had. But their responses to those stimuli are the same as ours would have been. Plus, I don't like stereotypes of any kind, including stereotypes based on the year someone was born. Not every millennial meets those stereotypes any more than any individual meets the stereotypes associated with their race, color, gender, etc.
But we have learned some things from millennials that we can apply in the workplace. Some of the more important come from video games. While not every millennial is a gamer, a higher percentage of them game than previous generations did. So one might ask, why are those games so addictive and so much fun?
When I ask my college students why they enjoy gaming, the answers are pretty obvious. The games engage multiple senses, they are challenging, and they provide immediate feedback about performance.
Two stereotypes about millennials that I have found to be unfair are: 1) they want the corner office but don't want to have to work for it and 2) they are so fragile they can't handle constructive feedback. In my experience, millennial gamers don't mind their character getting blown up in level 7. Their egos aren't crushed when they fail to advance. It just makes them determined to master that level more quickly in order to move up to level 8, even if it takes multiple attempts. But they will get frustrated if mastering level 7 is perceived to be unattainable or if the standard for advancement is unknown or keeps changing.
In other words, it was the parents who wanted every kid to get a trophy and for organizations to stop keeping score in youth sports, not the millennials themselves. They are as competitive as we were.
What many organizations can do much better is learning to explain what it takes to earn that corner office. Some version of you must be a level 15 to get that office; you're a level 4 right now - but here's what it takes to complete levels 5, 6, 7, 8 ... is the piece that is missing. Sometimes boomers just want millennials to be patient and wait their turn. But it's a myth that we were so patient when we were in our 20s. I clearly remember undervaluing experience when I didn't have any (like many millennials do now). But perhaps I overvalue experience now that I have a bunch.
When organizations have cultures based on if you don't hear from me, assume you're doing a good job, those organizations are not going to appeal to millennials (or Gen Xers or boomers either for that matter). Workers of all ages never were happy and are no longer going to tolerate organizations that give lukewarm feedback once per year when those workers have the option of going to another organization that has learned to build systems that provide immediate or at least more frequent (and relevant) performance feedback and have more clearly defined the roadmap options to help them achieve their career objectives.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Leadership, Growth and Hedging
I work with a lot of small and mid-sized businesses. Some call me because they've grown very quickly and need help. Others I speak with seem to have stayed the same size into their second and third generations of ownership. When I was the GM of a start-up pest management operation, we grew our region from four techs to a dozen in just over two years. When I started marketing HR and management services to pest management firms (as well as construction and trades organizations) in 2013, I was surprised at how many 40+ year old companies still operate with only five or six workers.
Does this mean those stable, smaller companies are not as good as the fast-growing, constantly-changing companies? Of course not. Those owners have generally settled into a size that they are comfortable with, earn a living they are satisfied with, and don't want the headaches associated with growing any larger. I get it!
But I worked for an organization with a clear vision of what we were trying to become, a solid infrastructure to support a growing operation, and systems that enabled us to meet our goals. The companies I work with that say they want to grow but are having difficulty doing so sometimes struggle because the owner/leader has difficulty creating momentum. One behavior that I observe from those leaders that can't seem to get the organization to bust through to the next level is what I call hedging. Here's an example of hedging:
In one of my corporate roles, a division leader asked me to help him roll out a CRM. He had already picked-out the one he wanted - he just needed me to handle the logistics. I did all the set-up with the vendor, communicated with the sales team, and coordinated the implementation and training. Shortly after the roll-out, he stuck his head in my door and said, Your CRM ain't working. He'd overheard a sales rep complaining about it in the hall. That's when I realized he had been sitting in the shadows waiting to see if his initiative was going to be popular. Once he heard the first complaint, it became my CRM. That's hedging.
Another version of hedging is when a productive employee threatens to quit and the owner makes all kinds of concessions and promises to that employee to keep from being inconvenienced. Once the storm passes, the owner often regrets the concessions and forgets about the promises. The employee never forgets about the promises and remains a lukewarm contributor - a victim of hedging.
Hedging can be intentional - like in the first example where the leader chose to stick a surrogate out front as a human shield to take the arrows in case things go wrong rather than own the initiative. Another example of intentional hedging is when the leader is reluctant to commit to a plan or a direction. As an old professor of mine used to say, If we aim at nothing, we hit it 100% of the time! Perhaps fear of missing goals makes some leaders hesitant to define any.
Hedging can also derive from panic - like the second example. Owners convince themselves if a particular event comes to pass, they're screwed. In my experience those fears are often overstated.
Former NFL football coach Bum Phillips said about hall of fame coach, Don Shula, He can take his'n and beat your'n and he can take your'n and beat his'n. When I look back at the best CEOs and COOs I had the pleasure of working with, they never allowed themselves to believe that their organization depended exclusively on one or two people and wouldn't survive if those people went away. They were confident in the vision they had for the organization and they were confident they could surround themselves with people who shared the vision, even if other talented individuals decided to leave. Those panic-driven owners would often be better off if the under-committed but perceived-to-be-irreplaceable employee left and a fully committed replacement was identified, even if the replacement is less talented.
My favorite definition of leadership is, A leader is someone who has followers. Leaders have lots of styles - some are extroverted, some are introverted, some are charismatic, others not so much, etc. But one thing all leaders seem to have in common is that they know where they are going and they are able to communicate that vision to people who are happy to follow them toward that desired state.
It's fine to struggle creating the vision (or the next vision) - that's what strategic planning is all about. But once a set of goals and a path to achieve them is established, a leader is fully committed to the plan and enthusiastically promotes it. Or to put it the way a teacher at my middle school put it, This train don't go but one way, and it don't supply pencils.
Does this mean those stable, smaller companies are not as good as the fast-growing, constantly-changing companies? Of course not. Those owners have generally settled into a size that they are comfortable with, earn a living they are satisfied with, and don't want the headaches associated with growing any larger. I get it!
But I worked for an organization with a clear vision of what we were trying to become, a solid infrastructure to support a growing operation, and systems that enabled us to meet our goals. The companies I work with that say they want to grow but are having difficulty doing so sometimes struggle because the owner/leader has difficulty creating momentum. One behavior that I observe from those leaders that can't seem to get the organization to bust through to the next level is what I call hedging. Here's an example of hedging:
In one of my corporate roles, a division leader asked me to help him roll out a CRM. He had already picked-out the one he wanted - he just needed me to handle the logistics. I did all the set-up with the vendor, communicated with the sales team, and coordinated the implementation and training. Shortly after the roll-out, he stuck his head in my door and said, Your CRM ain't working. He'd overheard a sales rep complaining about it in the hall. That's when I realized he had been sitting in the shadows waiting to see if his initiative was going to be popular. Once he heard the first complaint, it became my CRM. That's hedging.
Another version of hedging is when a productive employee threatens to quit and the owner makes all kinds of concessions and promises to that employee to keep from being inconvenienced. Once the storm passes, the owner often regrets the concessions and forgets about the promises. The employee never forgets about the promises and remains a lukewarm contributor - a victim of hedging.
Hedging can be intentional - like in the first example where the leader chose to stick a surrogate out front as a human shield to take the arrows in case things go wrong rather than own the initiative. Another example of intentional hedging is when the leader is reluctant to commit to a plan or a direction. As an old professor of mine used to say, If we aim at nothing, we hit it 100% of the time! Perhaps fear of missing goals makes some leaders hesitant to define any.
Hedging can also derive from panic - like the second example. Owners convince themselves if a particular event comes to pass, they're screwed. In my experience those fears are often overstated.
Former NFL football coach Bum Phillips said about hall of fame coach, Don Shula, He can take his'n and beat your'n and he can take your'n and beat his'n. When I look back at the best CEOs and COOs I had the pleasure of working with, they never allowed themselves to believe that their organization depended exclusively on one or two people and wouldn't survive if those people went away. They were confident in the vision they had for the organization and they were confident they could surround themselves with people who shared the vision, even if other talented individuals decided to leave. Those panic-driven owners would often be better off if the under-committed but perceived-to-be-irreplaceable employee left and a fully committed replacement was identified, even if the replacement is less talented.
My favorite definition of leadership is, A leader is someone who has followers. Leaders have lots of styles - some are extroverted, some are introverted, some are charismatic, others not so much, etc. But one thing all leaders seem to have in common is that they know where they are going and they are able to communicate that vision to people who are happy to follow them toward that desired state.
It's fine to struggle creating the vision (or the next vision) - that's what strategic planning is all about. But once a set of goals and a path to achieve them is established, a leader is fully committed to the plan and enthusiastically promotes it. Or to put it the way a teacher at my middle school put it, This train don't go but one way, and it don't supply pencils.
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Clock is Ticking on OT Compliance
Frequent readers of my blogs are aware that the Department of Labor recently issued new rules governing overtime that take effect December 1, 2016. Summer is flying by and by the time we get to Labor Day (September 5), you'll have less than 90 days to be compliant with these rules.
Here's a quick review. The salary test for most of the Fair Labor Standards Act exemptions has essentially doubled from $455 per week to $913 ($23,660 to $47,476 annually). This means unless your salaried employees spend most of their time in outside sales or meet one of the other rare exemptions, they are no longer eligible to be treated as exempt if their weekly salary is below $913 week, no matter what their duties are.
I've gotten quite a few calls asking for opinions about specific jobs in recent months, and have written a few opinion letters (each with the appropriate disclaimer that I am providing the opinion of an HR professional only and I am not an attorney nor pretending to be one). The interesting thing I find is that many of those jobs were improperly classified to begin with. They met the old salary test but failed the duties test.
It's the salary test that's been in the news this summer, but each job must also meet the standards of the duties test. And this seems to be the forgotten piece of the equation and has put many organizations at risk and they may not have known it.
So between now and December 1 make sure you've reviewed all the exempt positions in your organization to consider both the new salary test and the duties tests to make sure that you are compliant. That's the easy part. Converting everyone who needs to be reclassified to non-exempt - that's the hard part. So develop a strategy for what you're going to tell them and what is expected of them regarding the maintaining of time records, managing their hours, etc. going forward.
If you need some assistance from a third party to conduct the analysis or to communicate the message, feel free to call The Davidson Group.
Here's a quick review. The salary test for most of the Fair Labor Standards Act exemptions has essentially doubled from $455 per week to $913 ($23,660 to $47,476 annually). This means unless your salaried employees spend most of their time in outside sales or meet one of the other rare exemptions, they are no longer eligible to be treated as exempt if their weekly salary is below $913 week, no matter what their duties are.
I've gotten quite a few calls asking for opinions about specific jobs in recent months, and have written a few opinion letters (each with the appropriate disclaimer that I am providing the opinion of an HR professional only and I am not an attorney nor pretending to be one). The interesting thing I find is that many of those jobs were improperly classified to begin with. They met the old salary test but failed the duties test.
It's the salary test that's been in the news this summer, but each job must also meet the standards of the duties test. And this seems to be the forgotten piece of the equation and has put many organizations at risk and they may not have known it.
So between now and December 1 make sure you've reviewed all the exempt positions in your organization to consider both the new salary test and the duties tests to make sure that you are compliant. That's the easy part. Converting everyone who needs to be reclassified to non-exempt - that's the hard part. So develop a strategy for what you're going to tell them and what is expected of them regarding the maintaining of time records, managing their hours, etc. going forward.
If you need some assistance from a third party to conduct the analysis or to communicate the message, feel free to call The Davidson Group.
I've Told 'em a Thousand Times!
I was sitting in a conference room waiting on an executive meeting to get started when the CEO casually mentioned to a division manager that he'd noticed something at one of the jobs. The division manager said, I've told those guys a thousand times not to do that... The CEO replied, Have you ever actually done anything about it?
Company culture is 100% based on what behaviors the organization, through its leaders and its most engaged employees, rewards, condemns and condones. I once heard a speaker say that organizations will spit out a person who doesn't belong like sour milk. Management's challenge is to make sure that good workers are spitting out bad and not vice-versa!
If a company has built a solid safety culture, for example, it will self-police unsafe work practices. I was hanging lights in a warehouse facility when one of my co-workers climbed on a short stack of pallets. We hadn't really noticed any warehouse workers back there, but before he was able to stand up, there were five of that company's workers circling the pallets yelling at him to get down immediately and go get a ladder! In that organization, safe work practices were a way of life and anyone who risked their safety record, safety bonus, whatever, was held accountable and potentially spit out.
Contrast that with the culture at an organization that constantly struggles with its workers comp mod rate and can't seem to get its employees to wear their PPE. The owner at that organization probably tells his insurance company, I've told them a thousand times..
If there are no consequences to off-brand behavior (behavior you don't want) and no rewards for on-brand behavior (behavior you do want), then your culture is going to be what the front line workers want it be. Rewards can be tangible (cash, bonuses, gift cards, promotions, etc.) or they can be intangible (recognition, public or private words of thanks, pats on the back, etc.). Consequences can also be formal (write-ups, verbal warnings, etc.) or informal (the other workers get the bonuses, the preferred shifts, public recognition, etc.).
When I was an operations manager in a service industry, I knew that terminating a worker for consistently ignoring our standards would be inconvenient and I might end up having to run a route or cover a shift myself. But I was taught and have always believed that the decision to let that worker slide just so that I will not be inconvenienced is the fork in the trail that leads to mediocrity.
The real win occurs when your front line workers begin to self-police off-brand behaviors rather than waiting for management to do it. This happens when your organization has the right mix of rewards and consequences in place, the first and second tier leaders know you are committed to the brand, and build they their teams with people that are also committed to the brand. Do that and you'll find that you don't have to tell them a thousand times anymore.
Or, you could do try it the easy way and just say it for the one thousand and first time. Maybe if you say it a little louder this time.
Company culture is 100% based on what behaviors the organization, through its leaders and its most engaged employees, rewards, condemns and condones. I once heard a speaker say that organizations will spit out a person who doesn't belong like sour milk. Management's challenge is to make sure that good workers are spitting out bad and not vice-versa!
If a company has built a solid safety culture, for example, it will self-police unsafe work practices. I was hanging lights in a warehouse facility when one of my co-workers climbed on a short stack of pallets. We hadn't really noticed any warehouse workers back there, but before he was able to stand up, there were five of that company's workers circling the pallets yelling at him to get down immediately and go get a ladder! In that organization, safe work practices were a way of life and anyone who risked their safety record, safety bonus, whatever, was held accountable and potentially spit out.
Contrast that with the culture at an organization that constantly struggles with its workers comp mod rate and can't seem to get its employees to wear their PPE. The owner at that organization probably tells his insurance company, I've told them a thousand times..
If there are no consequences to off-brand behavior (behavior you don't want) and no rewards for on-brand behavior (behavior you do want), then your culture is going to be what the front line workers want it be. Rewards can be tangible (cash, bonuses, gift cards, promotions, etc.) or they can be intangible (recognition, public or private words of thanks, pats on the back, etc.). Consequences can also be formal (write-ups, verbal warnings, etc.) or informal (the other workers get the bonuses, the preferred shifts, public recognition, etc.).
When I was an operations manager in a service industry, I knew that terminating a worker for consistently ignoring our standards would be inconvenient and I might end up having to run a route or cover a shift myself. But I was taught and have always believed that the decision to let that worker slide just so that I will not be inconvenienced is the fork in the trail that leads to mediocrity.
The real win occurs when your front line workers begin to self-police off-brand behaviors rather than waiting for management to do it. This happens when your organization has the right mix of rewards and consequences in place, the first and second tier leaders know you are committed to the brand, and build they their teams with people that are also committed to the brand. Do that and you'll find that you don't have to tell them a thousand times anymore.
Or, you could do try it the easy way and just say it for the one thousand and first time. Maybe if you say it a little louder this time.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
What Scale is Best for Performance Reviews?
Dr. Ed Cornelius, one of my business school professors, was adamant that a traditional performance review form should have an even-numbered scale. He said it didn't matter if you chose a 4-point, a 6-point, an 8-point or a 10-point scale. He felt a mid-point - like a 3 on a 5-point scale - was a magnet for managers, and an easy way for them to cop out. An even-numbered scale has no mid-point.
I experienced this cop out once when I received a 3 out of possible 5 for Profitability when my business unit had literally tripled its budgeted profit. When I asked my VP what it would take to earn a 4, he just laughed, but didn't change the rating. Dr. Cornelius was right - mid-points really are a magnet for managers who don't take the time to properly prepare a review.
Another problem with Likert Scales like these is that the ratings seem to always be grouped around the top 3 numbers. So if an organization uses a 10 point scale, there will be a few 8s, a lot of 9s and a few 10s. If they use a 6 point scale, the ratings will distribute across 4, 5 and 6 in the same way. Most people get a B, and B is generally the number right below the top number on the scale.
So which scale is best?
If the goal of your performance management program is to provide meaningful feedback that leads to performance improvement, links to compensation and supports career development and succession initiatives, then my answer is, None of the Above!
More and more organizations have decided that rating attributes or behaviors on a Likert Scale has little impact on performance and can even be demotivating when poorly executed. I never really took my review seriously with that company after the 3 for Profitability incident. Plus there were no obvious links between my ratings and my compensation, anyway. The review devolved into an exercise that I tolerated each year so my boss could check the box. That's why organizations are abandoning their traditional Likert Scale reviews and either replacing them with something better or not replacing them at all.
But if forced to use a Likert Scale, I'll defer to a 4-point scale - that way, when the scores are distributed across 2, 3 and 4, the lowest rating will be below the mid-point of the possible ratings. But I'll be kicking and screaming that there is a better way!
If you would like to discuss alternatives to the traditional review, contact me for a free consultation.
I experienced this cop out once when I received a 3 out of possible 5 for Profitability when my business unit had literally tripled its budgeted profit. When I asked my VP what it would take to earn a 4, he just laughed, but didn't change the rating. Dr. Cornelius was right - mid-points really are a magnet for managers who don't take the time to properly prepare a review.
Another problem with Likert Scales like these is that the ratings seem to always be grouped around the top 3 numbers. So if an organization uses a 10 point scale, there will be a few 8s, a lot of 9s and a few 10s. If they use a 6 point scale, the ratings will distribute across 4, 5 and 6 in the same way. Most people get a B, and B is generally the number right below the top number on the scale.
So which scale is best?
If the goal of your performance management program is to provide meaningful feedback that leads to performance improvement, links to compensation and supports career development and succession initiatives, then my answer is, None of the Above!
More and more organizations have decided that rating attributes or behaviors on a Likert Scale has little impact on performance and can even be demotivating when poorly executed. I never really took my review seriously with that company after the 3 for Profitability incident. Plus there were no obvious links between my ratings and my compensation, anyway. The review devolved into an exercise that I tolerated each year so my boss could check the box. That's why organizations are abandoning their traditional Likert Scale reviews and either replacing them with something better or not replacing them at all.
But if forced to use a Likert Scale, I'll defer to a 4-point scale - that way, when the scores are distributed across 2, 3 and 4, the lowest rating will be below the mid-point of the possible ratings. But I'll be kicking and screaming that there is a better way!
If you would like to discuss alternatives to the traditional review, contact me for a free consultation.
How many HR people should I have?
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.
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.
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.
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