How Retention is Like Gardening: At Times, You Need to Change the Soil

“What time did you get in last night,” I asked my daughter.

“Around 3 am,” she answered. It was now 5:45 am and I was leaving the house. As I walked downstairs from her room, I shook my head in wonderment. My question was this: how can you continue working people all these hours?

Everyone has a breaking point.

Overlong shifts will eventually impact retention

When my daughter interviewed for the job, she was told that yes, there would be late hours. She assumed that a few nights would be OK.

Offering a Hand: Who in the Talent Pipeline Are You Helping to Pull Up?

"As she climbs up the ladder she has the other hand extended to bring someone else along."

I was watching Oprah’s Lifeclass the other day, and one of the things that resonated with me was that statement that one of her friends said about Oprah and why she was successful.

Who is next in your pipeline? Who do you have your other hand extended to?

Succession or replacement? You choose

I read with interest a few weeks back when it was announced that McDonalds will have Don Thompson as the new CEO after chief executive JIm Skinner retires.

Recruiting 3.0: Today, It’s All About “Making Meaningful Connections”

This is my tweet (see below) from Thursday afternoon after I got a glimpse of this campaign to find a new CTO.

Not only that, but the person that is eventually chosen can have $10,000 donated to his favorite charity.

“A CTO with heart” does not quite fit into my mind when I think of a CTO. I know numerous Chief Technical Officers, but I would be hard pressed to figure out which one had “heart” in this context.

How Would You Do If You Were Ranked By Your Former Employees?

I saw and interesting article this week about a Glassdoor survey  which shows that the highest rated CEO is Tim Cook of Apple.

His approval rating was a whopping 97 percent. That rating even beat out his former boss, Steve Jobs. And as so many have reported, Jobs was pretty challenging to work for.

That was not what surprised me, though.

I wondered about how we, as leaders and managers, would be rated by our former direct reports. How would we fare?

Staying connected with former colleagues

Transparency: Does Your Company “Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk?”

"I am sorry, but we have already identified someone for that role." The next question was, "how could that be, the job was just posted on the Internet?"

What my friend had just found out is a little dirty secret in some organizations. Sometimes when jobs are posted, and even when they are not, hiring managers already have someone lined up for the opportunity.

What message does that send?

My friend was beside himself; what he found out was that this is the norm within this company. There is not much movement so there is a thirst for advancement, but unless you are in the clique, your thirst will not be quenched

I remember back when I worked for IBM that we always pushed internal advancement in an open and transparent process. We posted open positions internally on Thursday’s. It became such a great initiative that we had everyone checking their computer as soon as they hit their desk on Thursday.

When You Ignore Culture, You Get Employees Resigning in the NY Times

“I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.”

That is the defining statement from Greg Smith, the now famous departing employee who resigned from Goldman Sachs last week via an article on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.

As I read the various commentaries about Smith’s article, it seemed like reading the movie reviews before you see the film. That is, the movie being the actual resignation letter.

I would never get into the cause of this breakup because I have always said, in any situation, there are three sides: My side, your side and the truth. What intrigued me after I read the resignation was his statement about corporate culture.

Everyone Wins When You Help Get Employees Into the Value Zone

One of the things I love about being in HR is that everyone always bring you these rich stories that sometimes causes you to have an “a-ha” moment.

A major retail chain this past week did something that, for a retail company, needs to be lauded. In retail, you have a workforce that is largely made up of hourly employees. They are the people that face the customers each and every day. Good mood or bad mood, they must keep the stiff upper lip and remember that the “customer is always right.”

One of the challenges all retail companies face is the weekly schedule. Trying to place people in slots, or work around challenges in their lives, is an enormous uphill battle both for the manager as well as the employee. I owned a 7-Eleven convenience store for 10 years, so I am very familiar with this weekly challenge. I had 11 people on the payroll, and trust me, it is a challenge.

What Great Leaders Know: It’s About Getting the Right People on the Bus

 I have been to the mountaintop.

This past week, I was in Austin, Texas for TLNT Transform, which was billed as a new type HR conference. While not a presenter, I served as conference chair. This allowed me to not only sit in on all the presentations, but it gave me insight into all the speakers since part of my role was to introduce each speaker and to get some insight into their presentation.

From the moment I entered the doors of HR, I always felt that more could be done within the role that could benefit the organization. I say that based on other roles within the company. Marketing, Finance and IT were all not only structurally defined but had a unique role in their organization’s strategy.

Diversity: It’s Good For Business, the Workplace, and All of Our Lives

It’s OK if the formula does not make sense.

I have watched with amusement these past few weeks the reaction in the sports world to the phenomenon called Jeremy Lin.

Not being much of a sports fan (especially basketball), I had to delve a little deeper than the normal fan. Chinese-American and Harvard-educated does not normally equal star in the NBA — or at least, that would have been the thinking before Lin.

But it goes back to show how we humans have certain mindsets, and how we have all painted our own picture of what utopia would look like.