Employee Satisfaction or Serfdom?

In HR, there’s lots of talk about employee engagement. Those discussions revolve around creating high involvement workplaces. But what does your work environment indicate about your possibilities of success to create the ideal place to work?

In Why to Not Not Start a Startup, writer Paul Graham writes about the creative urge and the unfortunate reality facing too many employees:

Now we look back on medieval peasants and wonder how they stood it. How grim it must have been to till the same fields your whole life with no hope of anything better, under the thumb of lords and priests you had to give all your surplus to and acknowledge as your masters.

I wouldn’t be surprised if one day people look back on what we consider a normal job in the same way. How grim it would be to commute every day to a cubicle in some soulless office complex, and be told what to do by someone you had to acknowledge as a boss—someone who could call you into their office and say “take a seat,” and you’d sit! Imagine having to ask permission to release software to users. Imagine being sad on Sunday afternoons because the weekend was almost over, and tomorrow you’d have to get up and go to work. How did they stand it?

Here’s an idea: If your employees use words like “boss” and will sit when their “boss” tells them to sit, then you have no chance to have meaningful employee engagement. None. Get rid of that word. I’m not talking about euphemisms like calling “bosses” things like “coaches” or “mentors.” We work with adults. Let’s treat them like adults. Yeah, let’s start with that.

[Via RecruitingBloggers.com]

One-Minute Writing Lesson

Scott Adams wrote a post that’s a powerful lesson for HR people who have to write for a living. (Don’t we all?) In The Day You Became a Better Writer, Mr. Adams says:

Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

and…

Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.

That’s your one-minute writing lesson from one of the finest writers and cartoonists out there. Now get writing. Keep it short.

Resume Testimonials

I saw this really great idea on Louise Fletcher’s Blue Sky Resumes site: Resume testimonials. She writes:

Marketers know the power of third-party testimonials. You see them all the time in TV ads and on websites. People claiming that this computer learning CD, or washing powder brand or cell phone changed their life. They’re ubiquitous because they work. We are all nervous about plonking down cash for something untested - hearing from someone else who has tried it is a powerful persuasive tool.

Why not use the same technique on your resume?

How about that? Show, don’t tell. Journalists know that it’s more credible to let their interview subjects advance the story than it is to just write their own story. That goes double with selling your story.

Help Employees Understand the Value of Their Benefits

Benefits are free.

Well, butterflies are free, but benefits are not. In fact, companies spend 43% of their payroll on benefits, on average. So, what looks “free” to employees isn’t free at all.

In a story called “Do Employees ‘Get’ Benefits — Not,” writer Susan Heathfield summarizes recent research by Charleton Consulting Group that says employees significantly undervalue their benefits:

Even more of a mystery than compensation, though, is the cost and the value of your benefits. According to a survey conducted by the Charlton Consulting Group and analyzed and reported in the HR Daily Advisor, employees “estimate the cost of benefits pay to be 30 percent or less over and above pay. In fact, according to government statistics, the average cost of benefits is nearly half again that … 43 percent of pay.”

Here’s what works:

  1. Tell them what they have. Seems simple, but just writing out a list on a mimeographed piece of paper or burying information five clicks deep on your website doesn’t count toward “telling them.”
  2. Write in plain English. Okay, if you’re in Denmark, write in Danish, but make it a plain Danish. Fancy words and legalese don’t work. Write like you talk, unless you happen to be Sir Lionel Barrymore, in which case you can write Benefits: The Shakespearean Sonnet.
  3. Don’t lead with “look at all we’re paying for you.” Kids hate this one. I know mine do. “Look at all I do for you” is annoying at best, and cloying at worst. Sure, you want employees to be able to understand how much money it takes to fund benefits, but leading with that is a sure-fire way to get them to stomp on your total compensation statement.
  4. Make clear and simple pictures of what you invest versus your competition. Too many times employees leave for “a dollar more an hour” only to discover that they’re giving up a LOT more. People think in pictures in their heads. Know that. (I wish I could draw a picture right here.)
  5. Tell them more than once. Yes, it’s great to tell employees about their benefits at orientation and then again at open enrollment. But that’s not enough. The way to reinforce the value of benefits is to communicate regularly about benefits. Maybe just one at a time would do. How about pushing information about your long-term disability insurance? That’s one that often takes a small investment by the employee but can be highly valued and essential if they are ever injured. Make your communication come in bite-sized pieces and frequently.

How to Run Ads Guaranteed to NOT Find Any Qualified U.S. Workers

There’s a foreign worker hiring firestorm that’s spilled onto the political front pages. Sure, excesses in executive compensation is front page news, but hiring and H-1B visas?

This is nuts. Companies run fake ads so they can eliminate American workers and hire foreign workers? Say it ain’t so.

At least one law firm advises companies on how to do just that. Here’s the description from the YouTube video:

Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers…[See what] …thousands of…companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.

Here’s the video. You should watch it. If you’re a hiring manager and are using these tactics, I say you should stop it. There’s the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. In HR, you should know the difference.

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