by Janine Nicole Dennis | Nov 6, 2014 | Business, Featured, Leadership development, Talent Management
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Humility is defined as “the quality and/or state of not thinking you are better than anyone else.” When you have made it to the huge conference room and are seated with the suits and powerful figureheads in your organization- what changes? Does the title and other executive accoutrements give you a license to forget the plight of another human namely your employees?
Some of the best leaders in our history are remembered not mainly for their professional pursuits and contributions, but because of how they made people think and feel. For years, we have tried to get to the root of what makes for a successful leader. There’s the theory of emotional intelligence, there are 360 assessments, Myers-Briggs inventories- yet with all of this psychological insight- we still have the wrong people in leadership positions. Moreover, the poor underlings remain where they are to scribe the latest and greatest stories of poor leadership via water-cooler conversations, exit interviews, abrupt resignations etc.
How does humility help business leaders?
It allows your leaders to have compassion when an employee becomes terminally ill and needs flexibility due to failing health and ongoing treatment. Humility provides a different framework for viewing an employee that may be having the worse year of their life due to domestic issues. Additionally, it allows you to see your employees as fellow human beings that are deserving of fair treatment in all things pertaining to salary, upward mobility, development etc.- you know the kinds of things that draw people to your company in the first place.
More often than not, I continue to be approached by people that have never or rarely seen humility in their leadership. What a shame! If you are bringing in business, laying out the new plans for company growth, all while seducing your investors with your witty charm- congratulations you have handily won over your investors, CEO and all the “beautiful people” at the top. The bigger question is how many chalk outlines lead to you? How many casualties have you caused on your road to leadership stardom?
If you have lost track, you may want to rethink your strategy as a leader. Here are some things I know to be true:
1) If you are a jerk and you show no interest in your employees, they will not be productive, they will not enjoy their work and they will use your time and theirs to find something better.
2) If you are a malicious jerk (the kind that goes after people for folly), your employees will not be productive, they will undermine any expectations you have of them. Additionally, they will likely leave and sue those beloved Brooks Brothers pants off of you.
3) If you are a leader and a passive-aggressive jerk, your employees will see right through you and everything I said in 1 and 2 will follow.
How is this helpful?
It’s helpful to know that you don’t have to be a jerk to be an effective leader. You need to know that showing compassion and humility will speak many more volumes to who you are and why you deserve that title where your employees are concerned. I hear the “but, Janine all the other leaders are like this- I can’t be the odd one out?” My answer: tough shit. No one said this leadership stuff was going to be easy. Sometimes you have to be willing to stand tall in your own truth as a person and as a leader. It may be possible that in you doing so, your counterparts will see the virtues of leading with humility and follow suit.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Just so you all know, I am dedicated to awakening companies and leaders to the importance of leading with integrity, intelligence and compassion. I’m also a sucker for companies doing it right. Let me know how you have been successful in ensuring your leaders lead with humility.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Oct 21, 2014 | Business, Featured, HR Policy, Talent Management
Outside of my love for both Recruitment and Talent Management lies a fascination with Compensation Strategy. It is the window of opportunity that every company has to compete for talent. Not every company can deal the same cards. Some will lag the market, some will lead and others will mirror the market. Even more fascinating is this sentiment that a person’s worth in an organization should be marginalized by the salaries of others- a.k.a. internal equity.
If you are unaware of internal equity, here is the breakdown in a story: you are courting a new Accountant from the outside. You already have six other accountants company-wide with varying levels of knowledge, skills, abilities and tenure. You ask the new Accountant for their salary requirements; but before you oblige their wish list- you check the salary spread across the six individuals you currently employ. In doing so, you find that the lowest paid Accountant gets $65,000 per year and the highest paid Accountant gets $85,000. Your rockstar Accountant candidate is making $85,000 plus a $10,000 per year bonus. To make him whole he is looking for $93,000- 96,000 per year. Despite your salary range of $63,800- $94,000, you decide to offer $87,000 because you would hate to disturb your internal equity among Accountants.
Here’s the issue with this strategy:
1) You are likely to either have your candidate decline your offer to move onto greener pastures or he will counteroffer and you get to play that game.
2) This person has an MBA, CPA and has worked at KPMG for over 15 years. You only have one other CPA on staff and they don’t possess the 15 years of experience at a big firm or an MBA. How can you offer him less when he is more qualified?
3) Depending on whether your ranges lag, lead or mimic the market, you may spend a long time trying to make this candidate whole- which may become old and eventually push the candidate to seek new opportunities.
Don’t get me wrong, I like to look at internal equity to give me a barometer for how people are situated salary-wise in the organization. Additionally, it helps you to make equitable decisions regarding both internal and external candidates. However, I have seen companies use it to drive their compensation strategy. It isn’t a strategy at all. If someone meets and/or exceeds the functional and strategic needs of your organization, you may have to bust the internal bubble once in a while.
It is foolhardy to believe that every hire will conform to the confines of your salary structures. The key is to make the right compensation decisions and burst that internal equity bubble only when it makes the most sense. However, inconsistent compensation practices whereby certain employees are paid more and unqualified or under-performing- will undoubtedly undermine any aspirations or hopes you have for a fairly compensated workforce. More often than not, I see under-performers that are better compensated than those who perform at or above their pay grade.
What does that say for internal equity?
If you truly care about a transparent and fair payment system, you have to start with the premise that every person regardless of race, gender, ethnicity etc. is worth the value they provide to the organization. Salary is just one piece of the puzzle, how else can you leverage rewards, benefits etc. to improve your overall offering. I understand the reasons why internal equity is needed, but as a strategy it is stifling and only as good as your overall compensation practices.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Sep 22, 2014 | Featured, Guest Post, HR Innovation, HR Technology, HR Technology Trends and Tips, Mobile, Talent Management
We are a company that believes trusting and supporting the power of individuals will lead to greater things in the workplace. After more than a decade of building HR portals, we realized it was time to revolutionize the way we work, because the reality is that traditional methods are simply not meeting the needs of today’s changing workforce.
Consider the thoughts of a worker: “My work influences who I am and what becomes of me, not only as a worker but as a person. So anything that supports me in being more connected at work and more effective in life is something for me”.
The workers of today are self-taught digital managers. Outside of our working hours, we are used to having all the information we want at our fingertips through apps on our mobile devices. It doesn’t have to be different at work. People also want to be connected and trusted to contribute, without being constantly monitored. Self-service combined with intranet tried to capture this, but is cumbersome for employees, particularly for remote employees without access to computers or email. Adoption is a problem, particularly in a generationally changing workforce where millennial’s represent a growing majority of the work population.
But how do you capture this as an employer? How do you relate to this and support your own goals–and theirs– in a cohesive and non-invasive way? The answer is trust. Trust both frees and motivates.
Trust is a backbone of relationships in work and life. It is often perceived to be granted from the employer to the employee through social collaboration tools, which however are generally attached to strict guidelines or monitoring policies. Employees in turn often view these limitations as undermining the purity of that trust. Facebook or WhatsApp are popular tools among dynamic workforces, but the enterprise cannot really utilize these platforms effectively. Corporate social tools implemented and monitored from the top down are all too often unsuccessful. Workers fear exposing themselves. At best, they use them cautiously; at worst they reject them wholesale. It is a key aspect of why many HR practitioners do not get the results that they would like out of intranet and collaboration initiatives currently.
Hunite sees itself as a connecter within the “black box” of any enterprise, especially among dynamic workforces. By actually entrusting them to a tool that promotes self-organization and growth, employees can become better at what they do and can be recognized within their teams or self-made networks. Employers can positively influence this disconnected realm where there is little reach or control. The key, though, is respecting the balance between control and trust for everyone involved.
Our mission: to access the potential of workers within enterprises for the good of all. By adopting this tool, that mission can be fulfilled for both individual and enterprise. Individual workers can effectively support themselves not only in work, but also in life, while enterprises can reach out to connected workers with meaningful information in a non-invasive way.
Free from fear, workers can begin to learn—and love—an unencumbered and self-organizing way of life, while employers and HR practitioners reap the benefits of increased employee contribution, motivation, efficiency & success.
Hunite will play an important–and revolutionary–role in transforming and building competitive workforces to drive revenue. Help your people be connected in work and more effective in life!
Author Biography
Kym Lukins works as an Industry Specialist at Hunite. He investigates the needs of workers in dynamic workforces. Previous work in customer focused industries such as hospitality and retail along with study in international HR management has spurred an interest in engagement and connectivity of workers on an international level. He is a firm believer that mobile will play a huge role in improving not only the ability for people to communicate in work and life, but also the chance to balance it in a more effective and cohesive manner.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Sep 8, 2014 | Business, Featured, Guest Post, HR Innovation, HR Technology, HR Technology Trends and Tips, Life
In 2002, Patrick G. Riley published “The One-Page Proposal” that became a bestselling self-help book in North America, China, Japan, and Korea, which described how the author succeeded in helping businesses all around the world using one-page proposals. In 2011, Patrick G. Riley and Joanna Weidenmiller co-founded 1-Page. The co-founders wanted to take the successful approach and founding principles of the book, and leverage technology to tackle the largest demographic with the biggest communication problem: companies and job seekers.
For every job post it is reported that companies receive an average of 250 resumes, with leading brands receiving up to several thousands of resumes every week. The problem goes beyond quantity, as the content received within a resumes doesn’t provide any indication on the future performances, fit and motivation of a candidate. HR departments and hiring managers need a new system of engagement to identify top candidates before the interview, enabling job seekers to pitch their value instead of simply providing a list of their past accomplishments.
1-Page provides the Challenge-based Assessment Platform that gamifies hiring, giving recruiters the access to predictive data for enhanced decision-making on talent. With 1-Page, companies engage candidates to compete for jobs based on their ability to solve real-time business challenges, to achieve company’s strategic objectives. Candidates’ ability to pitch their value to the company for that specific role, and propose their solution on a 1-Page Job Proposal, is at the core of the process.
Some of the largest US and global companies like First Republic Bank, BevMO!, UST Global, Orange, rely on the platform for:
- Hiring talent
- Engage passive candidates
- Internal promotion
- Open- source innovation
The platform helps the talent acquisition team to turn job descriptions into real-time business challenges that are unique and specific to the role, and share them through their ATS, customized email invitations, referral lists, and social media. Companies can track in real time the status of candidate’s progression, and leverage collaborative and automated proposal scoring (powered by Natural Language Processing technologies) to identify the best. Thanks to the innovative approach to hiring, the technology behind the scoring model, the great candidate experience delivered, and the results achieved by their enterprise clients, 1-Page has been awarded as one of the top three HR technologies in the US (HRO Today, iTalent 2014). 1-Page has also been endorsed by some of the leading experts in the field of HR technologies:
– “While I always ask candidates to describe how they’d solve a job-related project as part of the assessment, the folks at 1-Page.com have taken this idea a few steps further … candidates submit a one-page proposal summarizing how they’d handle some challenge likely to be faced on the job.”- Lou Adler, Best-selling author and CEO of The Adler Group.
– “The idea of a company engaging with a candidate through evidence of what he or she could do, rather than for what they have done in the past, is a very bright light in recruiting.” –Bill Kutik, Founder of the HR-Tech Conference, on HRE Online.
1-Page’s clients have been able to lower cost per hire by 70%, increase retention by 75% and reduce time to hire from an average of 13 to 4 weeks. With 1-Page, companies have significantly increased the quality of interviews and hires, while delivering the greatest candidate experience.
Author Biography
Joanna Weidenmiller is CEO and Co-founder of 1-Page, the next generation hiring solution that revolutionizes talent acquisition.
Successful and active woman in tech, prior to launching 1-Page Joanna was CEO and Founder of Performance Advertising, responsible for building one of the US leading outsourced direct sales and marketing firms for two Fortune 500 companies, with a successful exit in 2007. Joanna moved back to the US after spending 5 years in China where she developed and led technologies in the mobile and e-commerce fields. On top of building 1-Page, Joanna most recently served as Managing Partner for Hubert Burda Media (one of the largest magazine and digital publishers in the world) in China, where she headed the expansion and led all strategic operations. Joanna earned her BA degree in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia where she was a Full Scholarship athlete and National rower. Joanna was recruited to the FBI out of college, where she trained police in the Middle East.
Currently she lives in San Francisco, CA.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Jul 1, 2014 | Employment Branding, Featured, HR Innovation
As I take a deep dive into consulting life, I am finding that businesses both big and small are pouring major dollars into digital marketing, social media and branding. The one puzzling thing is when I have conversations with these companies about their business needs for these things all they seem to know is they want and need to be doing it. The issue is the want and need to get involved with these mediums doesn’t always begin with the necessary basics of knowing what your brand is.
You can’t interest people in patronizing your business when you don’t know what you stand for. Why should they support you? What do you offer? More importantly, what is your value proposition? These are not questions you ask yourself after you launch a social media presence.
People need to understand clearly and quickly what you are about and what the call to action is. You may be successful in business, but being able to articulate your value and purpose in this digital age is paramount.
Before you take that directive to engage your audience online-think about the following:
1) What is the brand? In considering what your brand is- think about your niche-what makes you unique in the marketplace. What is your product or service and how does it solve a problem for your customers. These are just some starters to get your branding juices flowing.
2) What resources will you have available to support your digital presence? This means considering who will need to manage this. Will it be managed in-house or do you need to outsource it? You will also need to consider what your budget is.
3) Do your research. It’s imperative that you understand how your target market searches and makes purchasing decisions on products/services like yours. Doing this allows you to meet your consumers where they are and in a way that is most meaningful for them.
4) Once you are clear on one and two, you will need to consider your strategy. Start small and measure the results of your campaigns to gauge what works for you and what doesn’t.
5) Keep it real, engage, and be consistent with how you portray your company on and offline. Any crack or inconsistency in any of these facets of digital marketing and your reputation could suffer.
Here’s another consideration: when customers take to your social accounts to resolve an issue with your product or service- how will you respond? Since transparency is a top concern for most businesses you will have to decide how transparent and actionable you are willing to be to resolve a customer complaint.
Setting out to get involved in social media and branding your company without any idea about why you are there and who you are is like driving a car with faulty brakes- you are bound to crash and burn. Take the time to seriously evaluate the above-mentioned considerations and set yourself up for success rather than failure.
Want more on how you can set your brand up to succeed? Contact us.
