Episodes
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Toms Notes:
Before startup culture (and then COVID) came on the scene and turned traditional recruitment upside-down, most organizations considered candidates lucky to interview with them.
Brad Clark, Director of Talent Acquisition at Article, a direct-to-consumer furniture company, realized early on that the best people always have options. The best way to ensure they pick yours is to make recruitment all about the candidates, not the company.
Article currently employs nearly 1,400 people—but the team wasn’t always so large. Last year was a period of hypergrowth; the 15-person talent acquisition team hired 1,000 “Particles” (people at Article) in a single year. When I asked Brad how his team supported such explosive headcount growth, his answer was all about customer obsession. Article is a customer-focused brand.And while they're customer-focused, they also strive to have a broad and diverse team split across North America, Europe, and Asia. As an example of this commitment to diversity, it’s notoriously difficult to find female engineers, so Article supports efforts that bring women into engineering. “We’re not just widening the funnel; we’re bringing people into the funnel,” Brad said.
Before Brad joined the company, recruitment at Article was decentralized. Hiring managers did their own recruitment without central coordination or direct engagement with larger company goals. When he came on board, he said, it was all about building trust. The hiring managers were getting some sorely-needed help, but they were losing a bit of control, too. Anxious to maintain that partnership, Brad kept the hiring managers closely involved whenever possible.“Last year was about getting the right people on the bus. This year, it’s about who sits where.”
Sometimes there simply isn’t time to slow down and take stock. Most startups hope for the day when they desperately need to hire at scale. But this year, Brad’s focus is on putting more intention around the hiring process.“We’re slowing down and being really clear about why we’re hiring and what that person is going to do,” Brad explained.
More clarity around your decision-making criteria admittedly means more pre-work, but it pays off.
Next, they take an MVP approach to the challenges they opt to tackle. What does a v1 solution look like, and how can it evolve?
Rather than sweeping, revolutionary change, work for one-percent gains. The former is always a day late and a dime short. The latter delivers solutions when they’re needed: today. -
Tom's notes:
What do you really want out of a job?
When George Dobbin got into the talent acquisition business over a decade ago, his answer was money—but today, he says, “That’s a bad reason.”
During our conversation, he shared with me some of the surprising insights he’s gained into the buoyant job market of today—including the fact that people expect far more from a job than money. Instead, he says, the recruitment landscape is all about playing the long game.
He believes that data can help HR teams ensure they’re always asking the right questions and steering clear of bias—keeping them more human, not less.In part, data helps keep their decision-making objective, which is why “agency” is not a bad word at Sabio. The numbers don’t lie, George says. Agencies deliver results when they act as a true partner that reflects and complements your business. They almost work as free advertising, helping spread the word about your employer brand to candidates who otherwise may never have known your name.
Lots of decisions are like this. They aren’t all or nothing; there are shades of gray. Data helps keep teams grounded in reality.
George has dubbed the Great Resignation “the Great Renegotiation.” It isn’t a resignation at all, he says—it’s just a shift in focus.Pre-pandemic, a small cohort of massive companies could easily outpace the competition, luring in employees with sky-high salaries and other offerings that smaller businesses simply couldn’t match. In many ways, COVID has become a great leveler. The focus has shifted away from big salaries and flashy perks to the things people want and need, like flexible working hours or the ability to work directly on high-priority projects.
Focus has shifted to what’s most important: supporting a lifestyle that allows people to spend time doing what they love. That change in perspective has created a much more level playing field for smaller firms, who can finally compete in arenas that were once off-limits.
To learn more listen to the full episode now. -
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Tom's Notes:
We’ve all needed a second chance at one point or another. But for formerly incarcerated people, second chances are a rare thing. They’re often screened out of early recruitment rounds if they identify themselves as having a criminal record.
Here’s what you need to know about the value of second chances:
Data shows that people with criminal records make more loyal employees; on the whole, the attrition rate of ex-offenders is lower than averagePeople with a criminal record aren’t just less likely to quit—they’re more likely to get promoted and less likely to engage in workplace misconduct.That group includes Ken Oliver, now the Executive Director of Checkr.org. Today, Ken is dedicated to the mission of fair chance hiring, or securing equal opportunity for workers with a criminal record. It’s an uphill battle; in the United States alone, there are 48,000 laws that make it difficult for people to secure meaningful employment after a conviction.
As the Executive Director of Checkr.org, a foundation focused on normalizing fair chance hiring in corporate America, Ken is fighting to make sure those people don’t become second-class citizens.
How can businesses learn and do something about it? First, there needs to be an internal conversation about second chances: Do we believe that people who may have committed a crime deserve the chance to rebuild their lives? And if we believe that, how can we ensure it happens within our business?
Listen now to learn more about fair chance hiring! -
Tom's Notes:
We all know that interviews are inherently uncomfortable. Each side evaluates the other to see if there’s a possibility for long-term collaboration, and that comes with some growing pains—especially in a traditional interview setting. In my chat with Chris Kyriacou, we talked about interview better, measure what matters, and how to use assessments to find the best candidates.
Here are his top tips for improving how today’s businesses interview and hire talent.
Try to disqualifyGive the game awayThird-party perspective questioningWhen it comes to measuring how well a candidate will perform and fit into your culture, Chris has a few suggestions.
Chris says interviewing is like dating. The skills that make someone great at dating don’t always transfer well to relationships—and the same is true of interviews.
When interviewing (also like dating) you should assess candidates along with potential suitors. Chris' advice?
Focus on good employer brandingRequire assessments wiselyMake assessments optionalLet people re-take the testSave them for later -
Tom's Notes:
This week we're sitting down with Mike Shwedick. Mike has 14+ years in the HR space, working with companies like Apple, Tapout Fitness, Moxie, Addressable, and most recently the Pinpoint team.
Mike walked us through his approach to ensuring HR teams eliminate unconscious bias and hire a representative pool of candidates, even if they’re a bootstrapped startup with minimal assets. If you’re looking to make an impact and gain a competitive edge, you’ll love this episode.
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is paying lip service to grandiose Diversity & Inclusion plans before they have the resources to make those plans a reality. “So first, be really honest about where you are. If you’re at a level one out of ten, stop the bad practices and bad actors as a first step. Put a process in place to get you to a two or a three.”
For small businesses and startups, Mike first works to understand the state of things: basics like headcount, established processes, and significant pain points. Then he looks forward to an organization’s ideal state, including elements like growth, funding, etc.
From there, he establishes the core HR processes and software that will create the foundation of a healthy People Ops team, including an HRIS and an ATS. With a single source of truth and a streamlined way to manage employee and applicant data, it’s much easier to take steps to eliminate individual bias from the way companies manage their teams.One of the organizations where Mike put his considerable talents to good use is Opportunity@Work, a nonprofit with a fantastic mission: to increase career opportunities for working adults without a four-year degree. Mike tells us how even with blinded applications, an enormous percentage of diverse candidates are overlooked at the stage of screening for a bachelor’s degree.
His advice for how to open up your pipeline to a more representative pool of qualified candidates:
Write intentional job descriptionsAsk about STAR status in the same way you ask about racial diversityThink about gateway jobsMitigate unconscious bias within teams and with hiring managers by delivering quality trainingBe honest about where you are -
Tom's Notes:
The SaaS market in Human Resources is getting more crowded all the time—but just a few years ago, it wasn’t unusual for Glenn Donaldson to meet with prospects who had never even heard of software as a service. At that time, Glenn and intelliHR founder Rob Bromage saw a distinct gap in the market. Hardly anyone was leveraging all of their valuable HR data to add value and make their organizations better.
Their philosophy? The best software doesn’t simply collect data; it uses that data to proactively identify critical insights.
Gathering data helps, but even the best data is useless if you aren’t sure how to use it. Using data well means going a step beyond collecting and collating data. If you go no further than speeding up the collection process, or replicating lines on a spreadsheet because you’re used to seeing them, you’re missing out in a big way.One of the core benefits we see in HR SaaS is communal learning. The more data we have, the more SaaS products can improve to help other organizations identify and solve similar challenges. More and more businesses are changing the structure of HR to include recruitment marketing and talent acquisition teams, but smaller teams don’t always have the resources for that much specialization.
HR is still often treated as an administrative branch of an organization, but that’s starting to change. More and more, HR teams help drive business decisions rather than simply implement them.Previous episodes:
Episode 18 - How to Create Content That Recruits For You
Episode 17 - How the Right Assessments Can Help You Win The War For Talent
Episode 16 - The Case For Talent Acquisition as a Core Strategy -
Tom's Notes:
What if you could ditch job boards and cold outreach for good in favor of a strategy that does the heavy lifting for you?
Recruiter burnout: Talent acquisition teams are exhausted, but almost no one uses their workplace satisfaction to measure success. If you’re meeting your hiring goals but burning out your team to get there, your approach is unsustainable.Candidate insight: When there’s a rush to hire, candidates miss critical information about your company and their role. The long-term impact of this kind of hiring on attrition is yet to be seen, but if you’re rushing the hiring process, we predict high turnover in your future.
Peoplepipe founder Nathan Jefferson sees two conversations developing in the wake of the global pandemic. Both point away from job boards and toward an altogether different recruitment strategy:
The alternative? Inspiring applicants to find you by using content to build a well-regarded employer brand.With overwhelmed recruitment teams already working overtime to keep up with hiring in today's environment, efficiency is everything and Nathan argues that job boards are not just not efficient.
What's his solution? Content marketing. Why? He's seen it work firsthand.
“You’re almost creating this army of advocates outside the business who are becoming your recruiters,” Nathan says.
Give value first.Know your audience.Ditch the low-hanging fruitBalance is key.Give it at least three months.
How?Ready to learn more? Listen to the full episode now.
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Tom's Notes:
Check out what else we discussed in my latest episode:
How to glean actionable insights from big data How Bryq's 'psychologist in a box' concept is about as close to perfect as you can get without eliminating humans from the process completely Why you should be considering the whole team skillset before determining what you're looking for in a candidate to join your teamHow hiring for fit vs. experience can give your company a unique edge against the "Amazons" of the world in todays war for talentHiring based on experience is better than hiring at random—but not by muchSmall to mid-sized players can’t hope to compete with the Facebooks and Googles of the world on salary or brand recognition, but the proper assessments give them a unique edge.Want to hear more? Listen to the full episode now!
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Tom's Notes:
In this weeks episode, host Tom Hacquoil spoke with Adrian Thomas who has spent most of his career fighting to change the perception of TA being an entry-level position in organizations. On the contrary, he firmly believes that TA should have a strategic seat in “the room where it happens”—if not on the board, at least in close proximity.
When viewing talent acquisition as a strategic function, Adrian sees TA as an enabler of a business rather than a “mere” seat-filling function. He makes a strong case for the global head of TA joining the board, or at least keeping in close contact with them. “They [TA] can bring a real competitive edge by accessing labor market insight and best practices,” he told us.
In Adrian’s view, recruitment is the most important part of the employment lifecycle. One of his main sources of frustration is when businesses slap a new label on an old technique and call it “modern.” He believes putting a job advert on Indeed isn’t a modern technique at all—it’s simply the digital equivalent of putting a want ad in a print newspaper.The true skill lies in developing a unique approach to every market and every role, because there’s no such thing as “one size fits all” in a global marketplace. Any decent recruiter knows they should work differently in the Philippines than in the UK, because people think and work differently based on their country and culture.
“If you’re not adapting your processes for the sophistication of the market, you’re not going to hire the best people,” Adrian said.
In other words, the fact that you excel at recruiting in one country doesn’t mean that success will extend everywhere. Great recruiters understand their markets, which is why Adrian’s advice to global organizations is to hire TA people who are experts in the regions you’re looking to hire.
But there’s more to it than global insight. Adrian heartily recommends proactively working to prevent staffing problems in the first place—looking at market perception and retention planning to ensure that your employees stay on and you hire less often.
We discussed that one common practice that could use some maturing is the use of lagging success metrics like time to hire and cost per hire. Adrian argues that the parameters around these metrics are so fluid, they don’t mean much.
And until now, organizations could get away with ignoring retention strategy. It was an employer’s market, and companies made the rules. Today, that old system has been flipped on its head. For the modern TA team, preventing recruitment is just as important as perfecting recruitment—if not more so. -
Tom's notes:
In this weeks episode, Pinpoint CEO, Tom Hacquoil sat down with Arthur Matuszewski, a jack-of-many trades but particularly with a knack for growing high volume and quality teams in the talent acquisition space. He has helped companies like Wayfair scale at hyper speed and with quality candidates coming in the door. Here are the highlights of our discussion:
Professional skills can be taught. Instead, we should hire for values and abilitiesHow how to hunt for core abilities over traditional skill setsHow to scale at speed without compromising qualityWhy quantity isn't the enemy of qualityCharacteristics of high growth people teamsDown to clownTolerance for uncertainty plus the desire to shape it into something more definedCommitment to personal growthA level of self-awareness and honesty about what you can contribute to your teamWillingness to shareRecognizing that success happens at the collective level, not the individual levelHow to work backward from a desired output to accomplish your team-building goals
Want to learn more? Listen to the full episode now! -
Tom's notes:
If you started looking for a new job tomorrow, what would you look for in a job ad?
When Ed Ross started recruiting talent for tech companies in the early 2000s, he was tasked with sending applicants lengthy job specs. These specs contained the information companies thought candidates required—namely, a list of skills and requirements for the open position.
After running his own consultancy, Ed’s now the Senior Tech Talent Acquisition Manager at Skyscanner, a flight search engine and booking marketplace. He took the time to teach us a thing or two about what candidates look for in a job description and how to recruit top engineering talent in a fiercely competitive market.
Back when Amazon was doubling down on their London-based engineering teams, Ed was one of the lead recruiters tasked with sourcing talent. Six months into the job, his agency was one of the only companies left in the ring. Customer-obsessed Amazon had a very different culture than most other UK tech companies at the time, and they proved extremely difficult to hire for.
Ed also took the business lessons of Amazon’s “Flywheel Effect” to heart and applied them to the recruitment process. Where the center of Amazon’s flywheel is customer obsession, Ed found himself obsessed with candidate experience.Lengthy job specs became a thing of the past. Instead, Ed and his firm created one-pagers for each job they needed to fill.
We gave them that idea of, if you went down to the pub on a Saturday with your friends and they said, ‘What’s your new job?’, that’s the kind of language you would use.”
Listen to the full episode now to learn more! -
Tom's Notes:
We’ve all run into some version of the same problem. As candidates, we know we can do a job well, but we lack the professional experience to land an initial interview. As employers, we’ve got open positions to fill, and we want to fill them with the right candidates. Unfortunately, a traditional resume makes it nearly impossible to predict who those candidates are.
This problem affects Fortune 500 companies and small startups alike, and it’s one Omer Molad and co-founder David Weinberg set out to solve. They’ve since created Vervoe, an AI-powered skill-testing platform that helps companies hire based on merit, not background.
Resumes have been around since Leonardo da Vinci. (Literally—he created the first one in 1482.) Once upon a time, a chronological representation of your working life made sense. The important part was proving that you’d spent a certain amount of time working away at a trade.
Hiring based on background means you’re less likely to end up with the best person for the job. So it isn’t just a form of bias and discrimination (even if it’s unintentional)—it’s bad business.
So why do we do it? Apart from our cognitive biases, Omer says, recruiters are screening for efficiency gains and time savings.In a way, we’ve weaponized screening tools by focusing more on the tools themselves than on the reason they exist in the first place: hiring the right person for the job. Vervoe has approached the challenge of hiring talent in a fundamentally different way: see people do the job before they get the job.
“Most people don’t want a guarantee,” Omer says. “They just want a fair chance and a level playing field.”Episode 12: How to Grow Your Team By 5X Without Breaking a Sweat
Episode 11: Why Company Values Should be Discovered, Not Designed
Episode 10:Why Traditional Employer Branding Is Broken—And How to Fix Yours -
Tom's Notes:
By the time Dan Caines joined the team at LumiraDX in 2019, they’d grown to 300 people and were looking to uplevel their talent acquisition strategy. Dan helped grow the team by 150 people in one year as the sole recruiter. He made the last 50 hires in a single quarter. When COVID hit, the company shifted focus from R&D to manufacturing and distribution almost overnight.
LumiraDX currently employs about 1500 people worldwide, a whopping 500% increase from the time he joined the company in fall 2019.
Using just a few basic digital tools like video interviews, team interviews, and tracking SLAs for metrics like response time, they cut their time to hire in half.
Keeping agency spend down and “getting under the skin of the business” have always been key focal points for Dan. He made a conscious decision early on to learn about the business from the inside out, from entry-level to senior roles. This in combination with implementing candidate feedback has helped speed up the company growth massively since 2019.
That boots-on-the-ground point of view proved invaluable when recruitment ramped up in 2020, enabling Dan and a small team to scale LumiraDX from a headcount of 300 to 1500 employees globally.He also used word of mouth 'drip feeding' strategy to help build their brand in the industry and spread the word about what they were doing. Dan also started to look at the future of recruiting at LumiraDX through a data-driven lens which is now what guides their efforts. What's next for them? Bringing on a more robust HRIS and ATS to handle their data and recruitment load more efficiently.
Listen to other episodes next:
Episode 11 - Dont Design Your Company Values - Discover Them
Episode 10 - Why Traditional Employer Branding is Broken and How to fix Yours
Episode 9 - Recruit Your Ideal Candidate in 3 Steps -
Tom's Notes:
Remember the company values your organization put on the wall somewhere? Hopefully you do, but the odds are that you don’t. Studies show that most employees don’t know what their company’s core values are. Many organizations struggle to define their values, but it’s essential to get them right—and not just because companies “should” have them.
If your company selected values because you “had to” have them, you’re making a classic mistake—and you probably picked the wrong ones.
Company values only matter if they are unique and meaningful. Could an employee look at your list of values and recognize the company behind them? If the answer’s no, your values aren’t unique or meaningful enough to be truly important.
Everyone should know their company values for two main reasons: to make sure they’re in the right place, and to make the right decisions for the business.
If you don’t have them, get them.Values are a team exercise not just a mirror of the CEO's behaviors.If you’re stuck, steal ideas from another company.There is no perfect number of values.Incorporate your values in every employee touchpoint.It’s okay to change them.
So how do you create values that are meaningful and actually a part of your business?
Want to win a free copy of Debra's latest book, Bringing Your Values Out to Play 📚? Simply email [email protected] with your name and physical mailing address to be entered.PLUS: We're giving away 1 free copy of Debra's DIY values tool kit. Reply with your name and let us know you want to enter to win the DIY values tool kit!
Links from this weeks episode:
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
Valve Handbook
Bring Your Values Out to Play by Debra Corey
Zappos Values
Debra's DIY Values Toolkit
Free Chapter from Bring Your Values Out to PlayListen to other episodes next:
Episode 10 - Bryan Adams
Episode 9 - Recruit Your Ideal Candidate in 3 Steps -
Notes from Tom:
Traditional employer branding is used as a magnet to attract a high volume of candidates. Companies share their strengths, benefits, and opportunities, presenting themselves in the best possible light. (Not unlike the corporate version of a Tinder profile.) The more people who swiped right, tradition said, the better a company was doing.
But this logic has a fatal flaw. You can’t possibly hire everyone you reach, so high application volume is actually a net negative.
Instead of using employer branding as a magnet, you should be using it as a smart filter to find the best matches. “The best candidate experience is the information required for them to decide not to apply in the first place,” Bryan says.The goal isn’t to attract more volume—it’s to polarize your audience. If you draw in some people and repel others, you’ve done employer branding right.
Bryan suggests that if you deeply understand your organization and the capabilities required to drive your business forward, you can turn that understanding into a message that will divide an audience.Therein lies the magic that convention will tell you not to talk about: the harsh realities and adversities that come along with your employee experience.
Bryan recommends researching three perspectives to gut-check your company values and your employer branding strategy:#1: Leadership View
#2: Employee View
#3: Market View
That’s just one example of turning data into insight that moves your organization forward and using your employer brand to craft tomorrow’s narrative.With authenticity, you can help candidates disqualify themselves (or you). Focus on the qualities that will exist today and will persist tomorrow—those universal truths are crucial to your business.
Also check out:
TTR, Episode 9 - 3 Steps to the Ideal Candidate Experience
TTR, Episode 8 - Why You Should Buy HR Software Like a Toddler -
Notes from Tom:
Creating the ideal candidate experience might sound complicated, but it’s actually quite simple: find out what your candidates want, and offer it to them. Simple, right?
Simple, but not necessarily easy.Here are 3 simple steps any business can take to improve their candidate experience.
Step 1: Anticipate questions before they’re asked
- Think ahead about what those questions might be, and answer them honestly before anyone even has to ask.Step 2: Create the content that answers those questions
- Think about job descriptions as job ads- Include hiring manager profiles
- Describe the journey in detail- Add team- or persona-based pages to your careers site
- Tell team member stories
- Consider the big pictureStep 3: Distribute that content far and wide
- The simplest way is to know what content to create is to ask the people you’re interviewing. Ask them what they wanted to know but couldn’t find, and where they searched for it. Ask how their journey could have been better, and how they like to consume information.- Get a feel for your candidate personas, what they’re looking for, and where they go to find it.
Also check out:
TTR, Episode 8 - Why You Should Buy HR Software Like a Toddler
TTR, Episode 7 - How to Nail Your EVP to Attract the Right Candidates and Weed Out the Wrong Ones -
Notes from Tom:
There’s no one-size-fits-all software solution, so there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to vetting software. When looking to vet HR software, Phil suggests taking an approach similar to that of a toddler. Asking the questions "why" and "how" over and over. Most people stop at the outermost layer when they’re searching for an HR software solution. They might download a general RFP template and have vendors complete it, ask a few peers about the software they love or hate, and use that information alone to make a purchase.
Ask questions internally about what you need your software to do for you and why. Decide on the one or two most important modules before you even start to shop.That way, you’ll narrow your focus and quickly eliminate vendors that don’t support the functionality you need, while floating to the top vendors that do those things very well.
When asking questions you might ask:
What do you like most about X software?How does X software enhance/detract from your daily experience?What are your favorite and least favorite features? Why?
Phil says that shopping for HR software is more art than science. That’s because vetting, selecting, and purchasing software involves much more than ticking boxes related to security measures and feature offerings. There are other, subtler signals to look out for.
For example, we discuss taking a holistic assessment of any vendor’s company health, along with other strategic markers.Keep an eye on indicators of health that might not show up in sales decks. Things like:
High net retentionHealthy finances: profitability, employee headcount growth, investment in R&DFrequency of updates/code releasesPaying attention to metrics like these positions you as a sophisticated buyer, which in turn leads to a better overall buying experience.
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Notes from Tom:
Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is something a lot of companies struggle to get right. They try to compete with the loudest, best-known voices in the market—but, of course, those companies are fundamentally different.
This kind of EVP yields candidates who don’t want to work for your company in particular; they just want to work in general. They’ll take home a paycheck, deliver mediocre work, and leave the moment a competitor offers them more money.
But here’s the good news: you can compete with the best and brightest in your industry for top-level talent. You just can’t do it by playing the same game as everyone else.If your EVP includes elements like salary, paid leave, and a ping pong table, it’s time to take another look. Those things don’t separate you from any other listing on a job board.
Your EVP should answer questions like: How do you get people excited about working for your business? What can you offer that’s unique in your industry?
Your recruitment marketing should tell a compelling story. Show candidates who they’ll become as a direct result of working for you, and what their skill set and career will look like when they leave.
Start this in the first interview. Ask how you can help them figure out if your company is the right place for them to be. Then try to screen yourself out.
Putting off the wrong people is a great thing. It gives you more time to invest in the candidate experience of people you want to work with, and who want to work with you.
Get your ideal candidate excited, and illuminate the exit for everyone else. Play a different recruitment game than everyone else, and you’ll have a much better time.
See Also:TTR, Episode 5 - Why Your Job Ads Should Repel Candidates
TTR, Episode 6 - Why Recruitment is All About Selling, Not Buying -
Notes from Tom:
In this weeks episode we jump into some controversial but powerful topics around candidate experience and what a positive, or negative one, can do to your talent pipeline and future hires.
More specifically we'll focus on:
How treating your candidates like customers will yield higher results of great hiresWhy it's important to recognize that the right candidates have choice and if you aren't seeing ones with choice in your pipeline then you're seeing the wrong peopleWhy being open and honest about your Glassdoor reviews is not only necessary but also can become a selling pointWhy showing candidates who they’ll work with, the projects they’ll work on, and the impact they’ll have is what really matters The proof is in the numbers: teams with a diverse array of backgrounds and experience have higher-performing output.
And more!
See Also:TTR, Episode 3 - Why Employee Experience Matters (and What To Do About It)
TTR, Episode 4 - Double Down on Diversity with The Power of Internships -
Notes from Tom:
Most recruitment is a lie. Open, honest communication can make the hiring process—and your company—stronger. But how do you do that and what does it look like in action?
Glenn believes that there are two employee engagement strategies that work (almost) everywhere:
Open and honest communication, warts and allOffer employee share ownership
But what does each mean and why does it matter?Open and honest communication can look like a lot of things. In one example, Glenn spoke to a firm’s head of IT about whether they should invest in a particular software. The individual felt the software was too expensive, but Glenn pushed back. “You’re a $20 million revenue business trying to grow into a $40 million revenue business,” he said. “So maybe it’s not too expensive.”
The head of IT was incredulous. “We’re a $20 million revenue business? I had no idea we were that big.”
When even senior members of staff lack the context to frame decisions that can move the business forward, you’ve got a problem.
Many companies are nervous about the consequences of sharing too much, because they’re worried that employees might become disengaged or leave the company.
But often, the reverse is true.
People need context to make good decisions, and they’ll work harder for you and your business if they feel like they’re a trusted part of it.
And when you have trusted and engaged teams who have context for decisions they also feel like they are contributing to their own success. In terms of shared ownership of a company, this approach links very closely to open communication; once everyone has a financial stake in the company, it’s like writing a permission slip to openly discuss P&L. Suddenly, everyone is working toward a common goal. If the company wins, everyone wins. The organization has the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.
And in order to secure talent that wants to be a part owner of your org, you need to start by having job adverts that tell candidates exactly what they're walking into and why they should want to join your team.Glenn makes a bold statement by talking about how he believes that your job adverts should repel 90% of candidates looking to apply. Why?
Because job adverts often bear no resemblance to what hiring managers say they want.
It seems counterintuitive, but the goal of a job description should actually be to put people off. You don’t want everyone to apply. You want the right people to apply.
Once you have the right team on your side and are crushing goals, its time to start considering what happens to those people when and if they decide to leave your company. The average length of an employee to remain at a company these days is about 3-4 years depending on tenure and age. With that in mind, it's not likely that everyone you hire will break the mold and stay forever.Glenn and I discuss why the myth of the permanent job should be sidelined, and why loyalty isn’t a valuable commodity in this day and age.
If people no longer find the work challenging, no longer enjoy it, or can’t find a role that makes them happy, it’s in everyone’s best interest if they leave.This may sound harsh but in reality its liberating for candidates, employees, executive team members and CEO's alike. It’s got nothing to do with disloyalty. For Glenn, it’s all about the learning, peak, and plateau of an employee’s life cycle. Very often, people stay at a job past their peak time, which benefits no one. Not the firm, and not the disengaged employee, who starts to stagnate.
His advice? Let employee departures be what they are.Mentioned in this episode:
Glenn's Book - Build It: The Rebel Playbook For World-Class Employee Engagement
See Also:
TTR, Episode 3 - Why Employee Experience Matters (and What To Do About It)
TTR, Episode 4 - Double Down on Diversity with The Power of Internships - Show more
