Hey, What's Your Cause?

Our workday seems like it never ends, then we go home, tend to the house, spend a few minutes with the family, answer some emails, and if we’re lucky, get some much-needed sleep. Then we do it all over again the next day. Does this sound like your normal day? Unfortunately, it’s an all too familiar scenario we all seem to face. In the middle of this “down time”, the phone rings, or there’s a knock on the door, or something in the mail asking us to donate to some worthy cause. There are so many people who are in need, so many causes to support, so many organizations trying to do good. How do you decide who will get your attention?

Many of us already have a few pet causes, be it church, animal welfare, or at-risk children. But writing a check may not be enough…not for the organization and not for you. Getting actively involved in a cause can be highly rewarding, and yes, time-consuming too. But there are lots of reasons to volunteer your time. Some are altruistic; some more self-serving. Giving back to the community, trying to make a difference in the world, leveraging your skills in other ways, or trying to add new skills for yourself are all good reasons. There’s no guilt in deriving personal satisfaction from doing volunteer work or contributing to worthy causes. After all, they get something and you get something in return.

We just said you’re already tired from work and other responsibilities, how can anyone expect to add to that by volunteering? Believe it or not, volunteering can add mental and physical value to your life. It is proven to reduce stress and can help you maintain a healthier lifestyle. You’ll be in a better mood, be happier, be more optimistic, as well as have an all-around better attitude about life. You will meet and socialize with people in different circles, gain valuable experience to be used in your professional life, and ultimately make a difference. Seems like a lot of upside for you, in exchange for giving back to the community.

No matter what your passion is or where you feel like you can make the biggest impact by volunteering your time, pick a cause, get involved, and know that serving others is one of life’s highest callings. If you need help finding the right place for you, there are lots of sites that help match volunteers to opportunities. Try VolunteerMatch.org, Idealist.org, or HandsOn Network, to name a few.

By John P. Savas

Photo credit: Viktor Hanacek

Fixing a Broken Employee

Maintaining order and maximizing performance are critical elements in the management of an employee population. Just as a parent disciplines a child, a supervisor must call into question unacceptable behavior demonstrated by his or her direct reports. Parents attempt to curb the bad behavior of their child before it becomes ingrained. They use several techniques from talking to the child, scolding them, sending them to their room, or even grounding them when the behavior is bad enough. It’s not likely that your employees have a room at the office to send them to when they are misbehaving, but you will notice that the parent in the example above is using something called progressive discipline. Progressive discipline is one part of an overall corrective action program, whereby each subsequent infraction is dealt with a little more severely. It may begin with a verbal warning, lead to a suspension, and end with termination.

How many people think the goal of corrective action is to create a paper trail to follow so that when an employee is ultimately fired, you can defend your actions? If you answered “yes”, you couldn’t be more wrong. That may, at times, be the end result. But the reason we engage in corrective action is to bring about a change in behavior; to correct a deficiency; to improve performance. We must always focus our efforts on changing undesired behaviors. If we have any other ulterior motive, corrective action programs will not work. In fact, when employees realize that they only get disciplined as a first step to being terminated, there is no incentive to correct the behavior. 

The most important step in preventing unwanted behavior is communication. Communicating rules and policies is usually done during an employee’s first week on the job. An effective orientation program will dedicate a portion of the time to review the employee handbook and cover basic policies and expectations of behavior. Special training programs are also used to communicate expectations. For example, sexual harassment training clearly tells employees and supervisors what is acceptable behavior and what is not as it relates to dealing with others in the workplace.

Probably most important in communicating expectations of behavior and how inappropriate behavior will be dealt with is a written policy. Formalizing your policy by putting it in writing is an essential first step to communicating and developing a program that has teeth. The policy should become a part of the employee handbook that is distributed to all new employees upon hire, as well as reviewed with all employees from time to time. It should also allow flexibility in its application, as there are times that management needs to exercise discretion.

How you treat your employees when they make mistakes will define the company and its culture. A practice of helping employees overcome their problems by giving them every opportunity to improve will in most cases reward the company many times over.

By John P. Savas
Photo Credit: Bethany Legg | unsplash.com/@bkotynski

Seasonal Employees Count

During the busy shopping season that is now upon us, many retailers bring on lots of interim and seasonal staff. Some are college students who are on break, others are looking for a few extra bucks. Regardless of the reason people take these seasonal jobs, employers must remember they are still employees and they are afforded the same rights and protections under the law. Though they may be gone right after the new year begins, while they are employed, they fill a big gap for retailers and should be given the same consideration as other employees.

Interim employees are required to pay taxes, so they must fill out all of the required tax forms and payroll records, including an I-9 form. (Be sure to start using the new I-9 form that was recently released.) It is unlikely they will be eligible for other benefits, like paid vacation or dental plans, but they might be, depending on how they are classified and how they are defined by the specific plan documents.

In addition to completing payroll records, be sure to give your seasonal staff a copy of the employee handbook when they start. The handbook will outline expectations of behavior and performance, as well as provide them much needed information about important company policies that they are required to follow. Beyond that, the handbook will usually discuss procedures around filing complaints, reporting concerns in the workplace, and describing their rights as an employee. Regular full-time employees usually go through some type of orientation program where these things are covered. Often times, seasonal staff are just put to work their first day, foregoing an opportunity to learn more about the company and it's policies.

Just because they may only work a handful of weeks, they can still file EEOC complaints for sexual harassment, workers' compensation claims for getting injured, or even FLSA complaints for not being paid properly. An orientation program for interim and seasonal workers might help to develop an immediate rapport as well as direct them internally if they have questions or complaints before they run to an outside agency. Finally, it may be worthwhile to remind managers and coworkers that seasonal staff should be treated like everyone else at the company...as by all accounts, they are just like everyone else, except they won't be around as long.

By John P. Savas

Wanting to work with people, does not make an HR professional.

I often hear young folks tell me they want to get into human resources because they are good with people and they like working with people. It’s true that an HR professional must have good people skills since the product they are dealing with is, after all…people. But for some reason, every time I hear it, I cringe. I think maybe these folks should be thinking about some other field like counseling or something in the social sciences. Yes, there are aspects of counseling in every HR job and there are lots of opportunities to work with people. Then again, most jobs, no matter what the discipline require people skills and interacting with others effectively. Why does someone automatically think of HR because they want to work with people?

Many HR professionals, including myself, are speaking out against the old stereotypes of what used to be called personnel. HR is so much more than just the department that keeps people in line or acts as the gatekeeper to bring people in and out of the organization. Some employees mistakenly look at HR as the representative voice of the people. Executives often call upon HR to deliver tough messages to the staff since they “know how to talk to the employees”. But, for HR to be truly effective, they need to have strong business acumen. They need to understand the business, the products, the sales cycle, marketing, development, manufacturing, service, etc. They need to be able to create a budget and read a financial statement.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently changed their certification program and adopted a competency and knowledge based model. It looks at HR functional knowledge as the foundation, and introduces technical and behavioral competencies. In looking at the technical competencies, they look at four areas; people, organization, workplace, and strategy. People represents only one part of the HR expertise. Just being good with people or liking the fact you work with people is not going to make you a full-rounded, well-balanced HR professional.

So, when someone says they like working with people, help them understand that the HR profession is so much more than that. If that’s the answer they give in an interview, it may be well short of what organizations are truly looking for in their next HR hire.

By John P. Savas

Transition Is No Time For Catching Up On Chores

Inevitably, everyone will find themselves in transition at some point in their lives. Being without a job may come about as a result of your company merging or downsizing, having your job eliminated, getting fired for poor performance, or maybe because you just got fed up and quit. Being without a job can be both a blessing and a curse. It might just give you the time to re-evaluate your life and career goals and give you the push you need to make a change you’ve been contemplating for years. Many outplacement studies have shown that people who lose their jobs more times than not end up in better jobs, perhaps even making more money. There are lots of reasons for this phenomenon, one of which is that we all get comfortable in a job and enjoy the security over taking the riskier chance of leaving a job for a promise of more opportunities and more pay.

But if you’re not careful, being in transition can also cause you to sink to emotional lows and perhaps even depression. It’s easy to start to feel sorry for yourself and begin to question your self-worth. It’s also very easy to sleep in each morning, turn on the television or surf the internet for a few hours, and call it an early day, all while convincing yourself that a new opportunity will come along any day now. There’s an old saying that finding a full-time job is a full-time job. That means that you need to be spending 8 hours a day, 5 days a week on your job search. It does not mean surfing the job boards for 40 hours per week. Only about 20% of all jobs are filled through job postings, so why would you spend 100% of your time on that one task? Job boards should be considered one arrow in your quiver. You need to be attacking your job search from every possible angle; networking, phone calls, emails, lunchtime meetings, coffee meetings, association events, etc. Fill your week with productive opportunities to find that next great job, and save the job board surfing for the evenings and weekends.

You need to stay busy! You need to approach each day as if you were going to work. Get up at your normal time, shower and get dressed, and be ready to start your day, just as if you were going to the office. If you don’t normally cut your grass until the weekend, then you should not be out in the middle of a workday cutting your grass. Obviously, if there is a school event that you would normally miss because of your work schedule, take a break, and put a smile on your child’s face by showing up. And stay active with a regular workout routine, as this will prepare you physically and mentally for the challenges you are facing.

Want to learn more about how we can teach you or your team these essential skills? Visit us at www.odasiconsulting.com.

By John P. Savas

Some HR folks still haven’t gotten the memo!

I find it so gratifying to follow LinkedIn articles about the latest and greatest advancements in the HR profession. I read blogs and posts on HR association websites and am pleasantly amazed at the seminars, webinars, and conferences being put on regarding HR and how it is evolving. Being a part of the HR community for the past 30 years has given me a unique perspective to see how the profession has advanced from the days of “personnel” to true “human capital management”. At times, I’m actually proud.

But I continue to be reminded that there is still a long way to go. There are folks out there calling themselves HR managers, when in fact they are remnants to the old way of doing things. There are still too many HR professionals (using the word “professional” very loosely in their case) that do not understand what it means to support the organization, service the employees, and provide the tools and resources that creates a meaningful employment experience.

A day doesn’t go by that I don’t get a call from someone asking me if their company can legally do this or that. Legally? Those are the easy questions to answer. Once we determine that nothing illegal transpired, I must give this person my usual answer, “Unfortunately, there is no law against lousy management”, I typically substitute the word “lousy” with something more colorful.

I recently came across an organization that refuses to give its employees their pay stubs, unless the employee drives over to the corporate administration building to sign for it and pick it up in person. This company is based in Illinois, so the law requires an employer to furnish employees with a wage statement; it just does not prescribe the manner in which it is provided. In these days of technology and access, I find it difficult to believe their payroll provider doesn’t have an online portal or some form of electronic pay stub. Be that as it may, the HR person won’t even take the time to email or fax the pay stub to the employee, rather deferring to their “policy” to sign for it in person. Reminds me of the archaic pay windows that used to be in the factories in the middle of the last century.

There are far too many companies, and HR people at these companies, that did not get the memo. Times have changed! We support and respect employees now; we treat them with human compassion and decency; we help them. Let’s stop focusing so much on what makes an HR person’s job easier and focus on making the job of our employees easier. That, in turn, will help the entire organization.

Stepping off the soapbox…

By John P. Savas

How great leaders end their day

How you end your day is just as important as how you start it.

There are tons of articles about being a successful leader. They talk about the habits and behaviors you should emulate if you want to be part of this elite group. What do great leaders eat for breakfast, how much do they exercise, how do they dress, etc.? Great leaders do some things differently than others. So, let’s focus on just one area and talk about how they end their day.

I’ve always found it amazing that when talking to great leaders, they talk about how much they work out, go on weekend getaways, try new restaurants, spend time with their family…all after working a 60-hour work week. How do they do this? Many actually employ the same strategies at home that they do at work. They allocate time for all of these other things by compartmentalizing their lives. There is a time for work and a time for play. When they leave work at the end of the day, they leave work. They spend time with family, explore new restaurants, and think about great adventures for the weekend. Sure, they may still check their phone and answer an important email or call, but they do it efficiently.

It’s very important that at the end of the day, they think about what they accomplished during the day. They think about prepping for the next day so they already know what they need to do when they get up; no time is wasted getting started on the day. And at some point in the evening or on the weekend, they actually do unplug. They also understand that they need time for themselves, and often that time comes when they exercise; something they also recognize is critically important for overall balance and creating a healthy personal and professional life.

So to review, here are some of the things you can try to get yourself on the road to becoming a great leader:

•  Organize your personal life just like you organize your professional life – plan ahead
• Make time for your family – give them your full attention
• Allocate time for yourself – a healthy body is just as important as a healthy mind
• Process the day’s events – explore how things went; the good, the bad, and the ugly
• Plan ahead for the next day’s agenda – prep for the next day

By John P. Savas

Why do they keep leaving?

How many times have you thought to yourself that you work at a great company? You offer good benefits, a nice work environment, you don’t push your employees to the brink of exhaustion, but you still keep losing employees. If benefits alone were the magic bullet, every company would spare no expense… and some actually spend a ton on benefits. Large companies that can afford the perks and niceties many times enjoy lower turnover, but that might just be for different reasons. Some employees work for large companies for the name cache on their resumes. Others do love the benefits and opportunities for growth. Paying higher salaries may seem like the right answer, but we’ve all heard that pay is not a motivator. So if it’s not pay or benefits, and we can’t all run companies with the deep pockets of a large multinational, how do we attract and keep our employees?

One word…leadership. Great leadership is what attracts employees and poor leadership is why they leave.

Often times, companies are prepared to spend money on training and development for employees, and many take advantage of it. They recognize the value of bolstering their skills and developing new talents, if for no other reason than to make themselves more marketable, internally or externally. However, if you were to ask employees whether they would prefer to go to training or the money should be spent sending their boss to training…I wonder how many would choose the latter. If more managers were trained to be better leaders, companies would surely enjoy happier employees, lower turnover, and as a result, higher margins.

Providing great pay and benefits in a poorly managed situation is tantamount to torture for an employee. They may feel stuck and can’t leave…but don’t let that fool you. They have already left; they just haven’t told you.

By John P. Savas

Mystery of the Rings

In the not-so-long-ago early 90’s, I read an article about how different an interview can be for men and women. The article was referencing a study of the perceptions that existed around the marital status of men and women and how that played out in a job interview. If I recall, the article was called “Mystery of the Rings.” It stated that when a woman went on a job interview, it was best to remove her wedding ring. It went on to say that men were best served by putting one on. Apparently, a married man was considered stable and he needed to provide for his family, so he needed a job more…and likely needed to be paid more. A married woman, on the other hand, didn’t need a job as much…plus, she was likely to take time off to raise children. A hiring manager surely did not want to hire a woman of child-bearing age who was already married. If she appeared single, at least there was likely some time before she would get married and start her family.

By now, you are probably doing a full-on, head-slap; I’ve done many of them in my career. I have never been able to get that article out of my head. Thankfully, that thinking doesn’t exist any longer…or does it? Even though there have been lots of laws attempting to curb this type of behavior, has it gone away? In my travels as a consultant, I’m seeing more and more companies, especially start-ups (those employing lots of young millennials, for example), not even give things like this a second thought. I have trouble believing it’s the laws that are changing behaviors, as most of these start-ups don’t even think about HR stuff, at least not initially. They just seem to want to treat people with the dignity and respect they deserve. Kudos to those companies and to the many others who have seen the light.

Maybe laws have had something to do with it, but often times managers just handle their biases more discreetly to not “get caught”. I really want to believe there is true change happening, however long it takes. I am sure, by now, that many of you are confident that you can look at two candidates and not let something like their age or marital status influence a hiring decision, but does it creep into your mind...even for a brief, fleeting moment? If it does, you are not alone; we are only human. But, thinking it and acting on it are two very different things. To remain competitive these days and to be recognized as one of the best places to work, organizations must not only think differently, they must act differently. Let’s hope that we can continue to unravel the mystery and truly recognize individuals for what they can and do contribute, regardless of their gender…or age…or race…or anything else that makes us different.

By John P. Savas

The Power of Networking

According to Merriam Webster, networking is defined as “the exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions.” It’s this first part that I want to focus on; the exchange of information.  Most of us become so involved in our daily grind that we may not have time to network.  In fact, we may have our calls screened or sent directly to voicemail to avoid talking to just about anyone.  We just do not have time.  But what are we giving up when we do this?  According to our definition, “information.”  We all learned early on that information was power and with information, better decisions can be made.

If you are like most busy executives, the last thing you can afford is to be on the phone chit-chatting for hours each week talking with vendors, old friends and former business associates.  What I find amazing is that these same very busy executives might someday find themselves on the outside looking in.  People in transition realize very early on that they need to talk to vendors, old friends and former business associates to help them in their job search.  Unfortunately, after years of neglect, your networking list might just be a tad bit out-of-date or maybe even “empty.”

Networking is not a one-way deal.  It’s an exchange of information, meaning that it takes two to communicate and share information.  You may not think you need to spend the time to network now, but if you don’t, someone on the other end may not need to network when you do.

Talking to vendors and service providers, for example, is not just about listening to their sales pitches.  It’s also about learning what’s going on with new technologies, new products, new ideas, etc. It might just be that silver bullet you’ve been looking for to solve some problem you’re faced with.  Or, it might give you a different perspective on the way your company is currently doing something.  Maybe they don’t have the solution you are looking for, but they can refer you to someone who does.  By taking this call, you might just learn something.  Remember, it’s a chance to gain information.  Nobody said you have to buy anything.

What I realized early in my career was that vendors, for example, are out in the marketplace.  They are in and out of different companies everyday.  They may actually know where the openings are and who to talk to about getting an interview.  Now, imagine that you’ve blown off someone’s phone calls for years and then you want to plug in again because you need something, like information on job opportunities.  Do you think you are really going to feel very comfortable calling someone out of the blue that you had neglected for years and then ask them for a favor?  Do you think they’ll really want to help?

Networking is as easy as taking a couple of minutes each day to talk to a select few vendors that call on you.  Tell them your time is limited, but you wanted to hear what was going in their world.  Maybe you’ll have time for a brief meeting with them, or maybe you’ll invite them to call back down the road when you might have more time.  At a minimum, don’t just blow them off.  You also might want to go through your list of contacts and see who you’ve not talked to in a while and give them a call.  Tell them you just wanted to stay in touch and see how they were doing.  Again, we are not talking about long phone calls; we’re talking about 3-4 minutes to say hello.  Remember, they are busy too.  A couple of calls a week is all it takes to stay connected.  Let’s see, if we make 2 calls a week for 52 weeks, that’s over a hundred contacts that are now part of your networking stable.  Pretty impressive!

Another way to stay connected is to attend association meetings, seminars, luncheons, etc.  You might learn something, meet some new people to network with, and maybe even be more productive when you get back to the office.  We all need to walk away from the in-box once in a while.

So, the next time your phone rings, pick it up and take a moment to hear what’s going on in someone else’s world.  No, you don’t have to pick up every call every time, but think about the fact that someday you may need something and will be praying that the person you are calling picks up the phone.

By John P. Savas

New Overtime Regulations Coming Soon

By now, most everyone has heard that the new overtime rules go into effect in December. If you’re one of the 4.2 million people (or 12.5 million, depending on which survey you read) who will be benefiting from this new law, you’re likely rejoicing…as you should. The new law raises the salary exemption level to $47,476. This means that all employees, regardless of the company size will earn overtime if they make less than that threshold…automatically. It does not matter what type of work you do and there is no need to apply any of the exemption tests to determine if you might be classified differently. I won’t get into the various exemption tests here, or the various nuances of the legislation, but it’s important to note that even if you make more than $47,476, you might be eligible for overtime, depending on the type of work you do.

So can a law be good for employees and businesses alike? Yes. Is this one of those laws? It depends on your perspective. It’s great for employees (and employees in most cases absolutely deserve to make more for working overtime.) For businesses though, most were not objecting to raising the limit, they were objecting to the dramatic increase hitting all at once, in the tune of a 100% increase. Granted, the limits hadn’t been changed in years, but why shock the businesses with such a dramatic increase all at once. After all, it’s not their fault the limits haven’t kept pace with wages. And what businesses are most likely to get hurt by this new change? Small businesses and non-profits! Small businesses employ roughly 80% of all workers in this country.

Businesses are already getting ready for this change by ensuring that all employees are classified properly, determining how they might need to adjust schedules to reduce the overtime impact, training supervisors on how to handle the changes, and also by identifying those positions that might be split into part-time positions, where they won’t need to pay overtime at all (and those employees might actually lose benefits by being forced to a part-time status). That may not seem fair to employees, but then again, this is one more example of a change that many businesses don’t feel is fair to them. Regardless of which side you’re on, changes like these reinforce the need for businesses, employees, and government to work together to ensure it is fair for all.

If your organization hasn’t begun looking at how this change will impact them, you better get on it. Effective planning and a communication plan to affected employees are going to be critical.

By John P. Savas

The Impact of Domestic Violence in the Workplace

Workplace Violence and Domestic Violence are Related

People often wonder why we talk about domestic violence in the same breath as workplace violence. After all, one happens at home and the other is usually some ticked off former employee who goes back to the office to wreak havoc, right? While the former employee scenario is just one of many types of workplace violence, other perpetrators of workplace violence include disgruntled employees, criminal outsiders, and those who have a personal relationship with the victim. This last one is normally characterized as domestic violence that spills over into the workplace with women at a higher risk of being victims of this type of violence.

The Numbers Do Not Lie  

Statistics tell us that one in four women is likely to be a victim of domestic violence in her lifetime. Consider the enormity of that statistic and then think about your own workplace. That means that virtually every business has women who have been, currently are, or will be victimized by a partner. In 2014, 7% of workplace homicides were a direct result of a personal relationship. It is so important for companies like yours to step up efforts as they relate to domestic violence. Aside from it being the right thing to do to protect your employees and provide them a safe and supportive environment in which to work, businesses are incurring significant costs as a direct result of domestic violence, above and beyond the effects of the actual violence that occurs at work.

Understanding the Health Issues of Workplace Violence

The cost of domestic violence for your business usually falls into one of two categories: health benefit costs and lost productivity. Let’s spend a moment talking about health benefit costs. Did you know that one in three women seen in an emergency room is there as a direct result of domestic violence? Health care costs for women of domestic violence are in excess of $2,000 more each year than those of other similarly situated women. And that estimate is based on the most extreme cases of physical and sexual assault. Less extreme examples such as mental, emotional, and verbal abuse also result in medical plan usage, but statistics are not readily available for these issues.

Lost Productivity from Absence and Abuse  

As for lost productivity, some conservative estimates put absenteeism for victims just over eight days per year, but once again, this only accounts for the most extreme cases of physical and sexual assault. And what about non-absentee lost productivity? Victims of domestic violence are distracted at work due to physical, mental, and emotional abuse.

Domestic Violence Mitigation in the Workplace     

Effective workplace violence policies can make a difference in the lives of the women who work in your organization in addition to creating a supportive workplace culture. Do your policies encourage open communication between employees and your organization? Do your employees feel that they can confide in you if they are experiencing threatening behavior at home without fear of retribution in the form of disciplinary action, lost wages, or possible termination?

When it’s all said and done, the costs to the company for domestic violence can be significant, whether it spills into the workplace or not. When was the last time you thoroughly reviewed your policies, outreach and support programs, and how you handle domestic violence in the workplace? We’re here to help.

By John P. Savas