A colleague sent me this article from the Studer Group called “The Long Goodbye”. It caught my eye because it formalized something I’d been considering for a long time: When someone decides to leave his or her company, it’s rarely an immediate reaction to a shockingly negative experience. On the contrary - it’s often the delayed result of an experience that “left a bad taste.”

The article tells the story of a nurse who applied for a position for which she was ultimately not selected. What left the bad taste was not that she didn’t get the job, but rather that she found out that she wasn’t selected when the new hire was announced and it wasn’t her.  That’s an understandably difficult blow. If your organization doesn’t have enough respect for you to talk to you personally in such a case, why would it be reasonable to invest your loyalty in it?

Now, such an occurrence doesn’t mean the nurse is headed out tomorrow – but “will she return calls from another organization if called? Yes. Will she look online for openings at other organizations? Most likely. Will she leave? Yes, if something doesn’t happen to retighten her loyalty.”

The negative experience plants a seed of discontent that may one day grow into full blown rejection. So how do you avoid alienating your employees like this? The article first suggests a specific communications program for employees who aren’t selected for promotions -but that seems to me to be a point solution. The second suggestion is more appropriate: talk to your employees.

GigaOm highlights Yahoo’s new attempt at retaining top talent. Called Brickhouse, the project is essentially an in-house incubator meant to give it’s entrepreneurial employees another reason to stick with the company. Not altogether different from the Google 20% – wherein Googlers get to spend 20% of their time on a project of their choosing – it is both a way to satisfy the innate desire to create as well as a method for harnessing that creativity.

The blog discussion is also pretty interesting. Some people think money rules, but others see real value in letting employees explore. I wonder if such tactics are purely in the domain of the high-tech world, or if there’s applicability beyond technology. Could you see something like this at Pfizer or Ford?

I was sent this article written by Joe Torre, the manager of the New York Yankees, that was recently published in BusinessWeek. Now, regardless of what you think of the team, you have to admire Joe. Just being able to remain the manager of the Yankees for this long while working for George Steinbrenner has to give you some insight into the man’s pluck.

The truth is that he’s a very insightful guy with real heart (somehow in my mind, I always envision him crying after winning something), and in the article he shares some of his thoughts on managing talent. In part, he talks about how he uses one of the team’s worst moments (letting the Red Sox take the momentum, and the world series, away in 2004) to motivate his people to always be ready. But he contrasts that motivational technique with a keen understanding of the fine balance between emotionality and competitiveness. A quote:

These days it is so important for a CEO, or any manager, whoever it is, to be aware of his or her personnel. We are in an age of computers, and everything is so damn impersonal. But in the end, it still comes down to people. You have to make people feel necessary. Even if their contributions are minor, it adds to everything else. That’s what makes the machine work. I love players with heart, not necessarily emotion, but those who deep down are driven by something more than mind and body. I don’t play favorites. The 25th member of the squad is just as important as the first guy. And I can’t let my own emotions get in the way of competing. I have had to release guys I loved, and keep players I didn’t necessarily care for.

A rather illuminating rant on the state of tie-wearing ensues over at the UK’s guardian. Apparently, the number of professional men wearing ties has dropped 14% over the last 10 years to 56%. This still seems too high to me.  If get a vote on the topic, I say die tie, die. All ties. No exceptions.

I once had a job where I had to wear a tie. I felt as if, at any moment, someone might walk over to me, grab said tie and lead me around the office by it. Like the reins for a horse. Not to mention the airflow restricting qualities. In fact, according to this wikipedia history of the tie, there are other health related reasons to abandon the tie including “entanglement, infection, and vascular constriction.”

Don’t get me wrong, I respect that there are certain situations in which the formality of a tie is appropriate. I’m thinking of weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, deal closings. crucial client meetings and other such instances.  Where the show of respect conveyed by the formality is important. But as a regular, day in, day out kind of thing – the impracticality of an otherwise purposeless slip of colorful fabric seems quite silly. To my mind, it adds to the perception that how you look is more important that what you do. Rubbish.

What’s the consensus, do ties still have a place in the workplace? Can anyone make the argument FOR ties?

Another post from a few days back on SystematicHR (I just can’t keep up with the guy) in which Dubs hopes that the future of SaaS is a world in which vendors can use abstracted data from their systems to help customers learn what’s working and what’s not for others in their business / industry. After all, across millions of users and hundreds of companies one could imagine all kinds of delicious data that, in anonymous and abstract ways, could be used to identify trends, successes and failures across all kinds of situations.

In fact, this has been the holy grail of such systems for years. Today, such data comes from surveys. But if one could get data directly from what companies are doing, as opposed to what they are saying, how much more accurate and powerful would it be? We think a lot. That’s why were already doing it. We think it’s a huge value to our customers – and one of the ways we’re helping to drive customer success.

Erik took a moment to reply to Dubs’ post. Here’s part of what he said: “We are looking at aggregate data from that enormous resource of ours. To look at what works and not we use publicly available financial information and cross reference those two. The findings we make are very interesting and are being used to further push our thinking of leading practice in different areas.”

You can read more about SuccessFactors research here. And if you have questions for Erik, just email him.

Depends on who you ask.

Via digg.com, I came across an article from the WSJ entitled “Employers increasingly favor bonuses to raises” – which discusses the whole concept of performance-linked bonuses. According to the article, 80% of companies will offer some from of bonus program this year up from 78% last year and 67% in 1997. The article discusses the pay-for-performance initiatives of Whirlpool, which has made more employees eligible for bonuses and increased the maximum bonus that can be achieved.

According to the article “Whirlpool also awards merit raises based on performance. But it considers bonuses a more powerful motivator. “It starts breaking away at the notion of entitlement,” says David Binkley, Whirlpool’s human-resources chief. With merit pay, “if you just spread it around, it just raises your costs.” Across corporate America, he notes, “those days are coming to an end where everyone just automatically gets this 3.6%, 3.7%” merit raise.”

In case you were wondering, the average raise for 2007 is projected to be 3.7%, up from 3.6% this year  – according to data from Hewitt.

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A Note: this post was written by a guest writer, and does not necessarily represent my opinion. That said, I think it’s important to host a variety of thoughts and perspectives on the blog and thus, I give you the following article written by Frank Lynn, Proposal Manager at SuccessFactors. As always, please feel free to comment.

Imagine this nightmare – You leave your house in the morning juggling your keys, your coffee and your cell phone as you set off for work where you are the Director of HR at a growing, global organization. As you approach your car you notice your windshield is smashed to pieces and you realize instantly that your laptop is gone, along with a spreadsheet you created last week containing payroll information on your 1,500 employees.

Many companies understand the risk associated with sensitive customer data, but they don’t realize that an employee data breach could be just as serious. In today’s post-HIPAA, post-Sarbanes-Oxley environment, implementing controls to safeguard information such as financial statements and medical records is top of mind. CIOs and Risk Management professionals are under a lot of stress. All it takes is one lost or stolen laptop to put an entire organization at risk – and generate a barrage of negative publicity (e.g., the recent Dept. of Veteran Affairs mishap that exposed 26 million patient health records).

The European Union led the way in protecting employee data privacy with its 1995 directives regarding collection and use of employee data; which included giving employees rights to access and correct data concerning themselves. This means EU residents can check their personnel file for errors like you’d check your credit report. The EU also restricts transfers of personal data to countries that do not ensure “an adequate level of protection.” Many EU nations impose strict fines and penalties in the event of an employee data breach.

Canada has also followed suit with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) that states companies in certain sectors such as banking and aviation must have a legitimate purpose for collecting, using and disclosing employees’ data records.

In response to foreign data privacy laws, the US Department of Commerce created the Safe Harbor Certification process. Safe Harbor Certification is comprised of an annual self-certification process where companies are required to abide by seven principles of data security. This takes navigating the legalese of foreign laws out of the equation, by adhering to a data privacy standard that is universally acceptable.

This issue is upon us and it is here to stay. Make sure your internal systems and processes are safe, your data is restricted appropriately and your application vendors can live up to the highest security standards.

For more information about data privacy laws, take a look at these sites:
http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/index.html
http://www.privcom.gc.ca/legislation/02_06_01_01_e.asp

Sometimes I read these articles and wonder who benefits from all this fear-mongering. Clearly, someone is out to scare the heck out of us. In any event, Forbes presents “Where have all the leaders gone?,” a rather sanguine look at the looming talent shortage at the C level.

In the article, commentator Kevin Cashman (CEO of a leadership development firm) responds to reader questions. One reader asks “…what practical measures can senior leaders take to deal with potential crises?” Cashman responds:

It may sound simplistic, but the best thing a top leader can do is be a great coach, boss and mentor. After conducting 19,700 exit interviews of key employees leaving companies, the Saratoga Institute found that 85% of bosses thought their top people left for more money and opportunity. But the real reason behind the turnover: 80% said they left due to poor management and leadership or because of a dysfunctional company culture. If you’re a board member, a CEO or a leader on the front lines, paying more attention to the development of your people and teams is the crucial variable for retaining key people.

It’s a point well made. Talent shortages are far more acute for companies that don’t actually work to develop their employees. Keeping the top performers you already have is far easier and more efficient than going back to the well.

Though perhaps a bit risque for an HR-related blog, one of my colleagues sent me this link and I thought I would pass it along. I figured it might be good for a Friday afternoon chuckle at the very least.

I wont get into details - if you want to know, you can click the link and listen – but suffice it to say that this radio DJ is not going to take it anymore, and she wants all her listeners to know. I bet she’d vote yes on the open salaries question, too.

(Related thought: I wonder if such public outburst are cathartic. I’m sure there are plenty of people who wish that they could tell their employer off, but when it’s over, do they feel better? Would you feel better?)

Though it’s always true with anything on this blog, i should note here in particular that this post represents my personal opinion on this matter, and not necessarily that of SuccessFactors.  – Max

Why public disclosure of vendor selections will make analysts and vendors more accountable to customers.

Gartner’s Jim Holincheck poses an interesting question. He wonders:

The reality is that industry analyst firms are also customers. We need technology to run our business. It does not make sense for us to build it all ourselves. So, like our clients, we use packaged applications. How transparent should we be about what vendors and products we use?

It’s interesting because Gartner, like most analyst firms, has very specific rules and regulations about when and how vendors can use Gartner’s name in marketing materials. That is to say – basically, never.

It’s not that I don’t understand the dilemma. Surely, in any competitive market, most vendors will be left unhappy when a 3rd party firm (whose value resides in their presumed objectivity) chooses one over all the rest. It can be construed as an implicit endorsement. How can Gartner (and others – like Forrester, Bersin, etc.) be considered objective once they have made a purchase decision for themselves?

But I’m honestly not sure there is a real conflict here. As a professional services firm, Gartner represents a very specific type of company. And, there are other factors that differentiate them as well – like size (medium), industry (technology) and geographic distribution (global). Those factors account for some of the most important considerations in the choice of a vendor for just about anything.

Therefore, the only realistic conclusion is that analyst firms choose vendors that are right for them; for their situation, specifications and needs. Its not logical to assume that the same situation, specifications and needs are shared by every company that might be influenced by a Gartner report. To put it another way, companies that follow in Gartner’s footsteps purely on the thinking that “whatever is right for Gartner is right for me” are probably making an ill-informed decision.

In that way, it can be argued that analyst firms are doing a disservice to their clients by hiding their own choices. By allowing customers the illusion that those choices are the only correct ones, they miss an opportunity to say “here’s why we picked vendor X, but your company is different in this way and so the choice of vendor X may not be right for you.”

Funny enough, Jim makes an innocent but telling misstep at the end of his post. Having apparently posted to his blog from his mobile device, the post is appended with the line: “Sent via Cingular Xpress Mail with Blackberry.” Clearly we all now know that Gartner (or at least Jim) is a customer of both Cingular and Blackberry. They have opened the proverbial kimono. Gartner’s choice of wireless vendor and wireless email service are now public information: Gartner chooses Cingular and Blackberry.

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