Paid time off or vacation/sick pay?

March 18, 2008 · Filed Under Slacking Off at Work · 5 Comments 

Evil HR Lady puts out an interesting post about PTO versus vacation/sick time.

I know it is foolish but I always assume that HR people hate vacation/sick time and love PTO if only for the simple administration of the policy. If you are gone, we use time from your PTO bank. End of story. I love it.

HR Lady puts forward a compelling argument, one that I can relate to given my recent story about bosses forcing employees to come to work. If employees are saving their PTO for something else, they will be compelled to come in sick. I don’t think her solution (unlimited sick time) is a great choice for many organizations but it is a better solution than the current one.

I am going to completely disagree with her on the idea that good employees do not abuse sick time policies. They do. And many company policies encourage abuse. I know good employees who have used it, I know I have used it. Like the poster on HR lady’s site, I have rarely been sick and because I don’t have sick kids, I get maxed out at 40 hours of sick time. If I am away on a weekend and don’t feel “good enough” to come in, I am sick. It doesn’t happen often but if a policy forces me to use it or lose it, I will use it.

That being said, I simply don’t care why people are gone from work. I’d much rather risk the possibility of someone coming in sick (they probably will do so anyway) and make up the productivity in the fact that you can actually plan for people being away from work.

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How do you evaluate your boss honestly?

March 13, 2008 · Filed Under For the love of HR · 7 Comments 

lead_boss.jpgA mailbag for the HR wonks who read this blog:

We’re going to do a survey of our employees about their supervisors but we haven’t done it before. Have you seen it done well? Where should we look for a list of questions that will give us the best opportunity for constructive feedback?

Funny thing about this e-mail: it is from my old boss. Why is she suddenly interested in employee feedback for supervisors now that I am gone? These are questions that MUST be answered first!

In all seriousness, I have not seen anything really great for evaluating supervisors honestly from an employees point of view (and in ways that are useful for the supervisors). And before anybody mentions it:

I loathe 360 degree feedback systems/variants.

I feel like I have just eliminated hundreds of possible advertising opportunities for this blog but every implementation of 360 degree feedback systems seems to be terrible and are usually scrapped in a year or two. There are exceptions, yes. Of course, a 360 vendor would say “they just haven’t implemented it correctly.” No, it isn’t worth it and I wouldn’t risk it for this particular organization.

Everything else has been either a scheme to submit comments (non-anonymously) to a supervisor’s supervisor or (worse) the supervisor themselves or a totally anonymous system that doesn’t promote worthwhile feedback. No matter how open to feedback a supervisor is, it will never be enough to get a truly honest feel for it. Anonymous systems don’t work either in my opinion.

So I turn to you HR people! What has worked for you in employee to supervisor feedback systems? Feel free to try to sell me on the two schemes above that I just totally discounted too.

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Learning to Slow Down and Speed Up

March 12, 2008 · Filed Under Learning and Living · 2 Comments 

Nobody likes to admit they need to slow down at work. It is counter to everything you are ever taught about work. You shouldn’t ever work slower because there is no way that working slower is going to get more done. In fact, you should be both quick and accurate. Great! Perfect world theory: everyone can attain this standard! Real world theory: most people who think they can do this are hilariously wrong.

That being said, I came from an environment where working quickly was alright (and mistakes were quickly forgiven) and moved to an environment where mistakes are to be avoided and I should be more methodical. I can accept that. When you increase the number of employees you are responsible for by tenfold and you are new to a job, that makes sense. I need to slow down.

Here’s what I’ve found out though: sometimes being methodical and working slowly doesn’t always ensure success. In fact, sometimes it is just a waste of time.

To me, it is all about process. Smart processes that speed things up while eliminating the chance of human error. Whenever I do an audit (even of my own stuff), it is easy in the heat of the moment to skip a step or two when you don’t have a process that keeps you on track and on schedule. And really, whenever you are writing a process or procedure for something, you should really be focusing on the goal of eliminating human error and speeding the entire process up. Consistency and efficiency are a side effect of doing those two things. And while they may feel one in the same, when you are writing processes, thinking about it from this point of view is actually better than just thinking a process will make everything more consistent.

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Generation Y + Blogging = Crazy Delicious

March 6, 2008 · Filed Under Finding Your Job · 3 Comments 

Brazen Careerist has opened for business. This is one of Penelope Trunk’s ideas and whenever I talked to her about it last year, I was pacing around and ultimately thought it was a good idea.

I don’t know about anyone else but I am definitely a pacer. Back in the good old days, I’d be that guy that has the 50 foot telephone cord wrapped around the house. I am also one of those dreaded people that talks on the cell phone while driving. I will personally be a spokesman for your hatred of cell phone talkers if you like.

In my pathetic defense, I’d like to state for the record that I don’t do it because of some misguided productivity boost that taking your life and the lives of your fellow people on the road into your own hands allows. I have a really hard time sitting still and talking on the phone at the same time and I think much better if I am walking, driving, or doing something (I assembled a coffee table from Ikea while on the phone to my Dad talking about sports).

Anyway, I got distracted. What was I saying? Oh yeah…

So I talked about this site that focuses in on Generation Y and trying to make Generation Y more accessible to employers who fail to understand the paradigm there. And I am a bit conflicted.

See, I like the idea from a Gen Y and hiring manager standpoint. And I am in the enviable position of being in Gen Y and also routinely making decisions on recruiting sources, hiring practices, etc as an HR manager.

And a lot of bloggers (professionals and amateurs alike) have recommended blogging as a great way of reaching out to employers in a different and more authentic way. I agree with this personally and received a great many leads that eventually led to me applying at my current job as well as interviews and job offers from several other companies.

So yes, the idea is good.

So why the apprehensiveness? Because I know why I read blogs and I know what I am attracted to: Good writing. People who write about interesting things and who write about them well get me interested enough to read through an entire article (I rarely read full blog articles). Being a good communicator is great too but…

I am looking for all kinds of employees (not just great writers). Just blogging about whatever comes to mind works only if whatever comes to your mind is useful at demonstrating something interesting about your background or experiences. And being that I don’t think the gap between Generation Y and the rest of the working world isn’t as huge as people think, I am worried about the potential risk of targeting a group of people that isn’t that difficult to understand.

I know that the co-founders of the venture with Penelope are often considered representative of Gen Y in the workplace and that they do their best to show distinctions between Gen Y and the rest of the workforce. I’ve spent time with managers though and after talking with them for about five minutes, they got it enough to understand the dynamic better.

The last issue is that simply Gen Y still isn’t widely sought after yet. It is still much easier getting a position with five to ten years of experience in your field and given that I am on the leading edge of Gen Y (age-wise, not philosophy-wise), most people don’t have that yet. In fact, my argument is that a lot of Gen Y probably doesn’t have more than a couple years of experience of anything. That makes the site ahead of its time but not in the complimentary way that is usually stated.

That being said, for companies looking to target Generation Y, BC is positioning itself to be “THE” place. Now if we can only figure out a way to get Gen Y to do what they perpetually fail at (stay in one place for long enough to see site growth), this is an idea that could see tremendous growth.

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    Your HR Guy is a Human Resources Generalist practicing in the field. But don't let that fool you, this isn't a boring blog. I seek relevance and humor in a place we will spend much of our lives. Everything from workplace issues, job seeking and terrible bosses. Read more...

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