Sticky People, Sticky Culture

I’d like to talk for a minute about glue. Not the white sticky kind my kids love to use generously when working on school projects, but the kind that we try to bring into the work place whenever we can. Sometimes glue in the workplace is a person – that individual who brings people and ideas together in a way that others can’t, the person who attracts talent and makes them “stick.” Most organizations have at least a few of these people. Some are the historians, yet other times they can be that new person that almost magnetizes the air with a different way of doing things.

What’s really fun is when you get several of these sticky people in one group – watch out. You know how rubber cement only works when you smear it on two surfaces and then put them together? The best types of organizational glue are sort of like this, but even more three dimensional. They include the people that make things stick, the systems and processes, and dozens of little reminders of what makes an organization special. Yes, I’m talking about culture. Any strong organizational culture is nothing more than really powerful glue that has a way of binding people to it - new and existing employees, business partners, and yes, clients. When the stickiness starts to spread beyond traditional organizational boundaries, it can be pretty cool. I believe that a strong and sticky culture is hard to compete with. Just like the times I’ve helped my kids with those projects and found that my fingers still have a residual ability to stay attached to everything they come in contact with for a while, organizations with stickiness have a tendency to stay on your radar more than the rest. They might share ideas that make you think differently, have a style or personality that you just want to be around, and yes, their people may just be the kind you want to be stuck with for a while.

We think a lot about creating and building stickiness at Pinstripe – both for ourselves, and for our clients. Especially for our clients. We are fortunate to partner with some pretty amazing organizations, many who make products or deliver services that either make people’s lives more fulfilling and rich, or save them (literally). We spend a lot of time trying to identify the formula of their unique glue so that we can accidentally spill some in their candidate pools – oops! We aim to help them find talent that will add to the stickiness and extend it. In doing some, sometimes it makes us stickier too.

Post contributed by Angela Hills. Follow me on Twitter @angelahills.

Peter Drucker, Pizza Hut and RPO

Sometimes when I sit down to write a blog, I feel like a contestant on the Food Network show, Chopped. Chopped is a cooking competition show that's all about up-and-coming chefs taking unrelated, dissimilar everyday items and turning them into a cohesive meal.

As you well know, I’m not a chef and I’m not creating a meal, but in most of my blog postings I try to take unrelated, personal interests and connect them to my Pinstripe professional RPO world. And like the contestants on Chopped, sometimes my creation is a hit and sometimes it is a bust. 

For this entry, my challenge is to take Peter Drucker, Pizza Hut and RPO and connect the dots into a meaningful and relevant message that provides marvelous insight into the Recruitment Process Outsourcing world.

So here we go…

Peter Drucker was an influential writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.” His writings regarding taking risk and making mistakes have always stuck with me. In fact, the one Drucker quote I have memorized is:

“People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.“

And so the other day when I read about the new Pizza Hut Crown Crust pizza, the pizza-cheeseburger hybrid, I tried to think about this gastronomic boondoggle through a Peter Drucker risk taking lens. Many of the foodie reviews immediately jumped on this creation as an abomination of cuisine; however, I believe we should celebrate the risk taking, give Pizza Hut some latitude and temper our criticism. After all, they are taking a gamble, but without taking chances they’d never experience success. I’m sure if we check the history of some of our current culinary mainstays, they were at some point considered just as odd.

And this brings me back to Recruitment Process Outsourcing and why some RPO services providers are thriving more than others. The less successful RPO firms are just simply doing what they are asked. No more, no less. On the other hand, the high growth RPO firms are constantly evolving and driving innovation to their client engagements. Sometimes this forward leaning approach means stumbling; but more often than not, it leads to success. To maximize RPO opportunities, you have to be willing to take risks and cannot be afraid of making occasional mistakes.

Peter Drucker, Pizza Hut and RPO….It all connects for me!

Post contributed by Barry Diamond. Follow me on Twitter @bddiamond

RPO Garbology

Garbology is the study of modern culture through the analysis of what is thrown away as garbage.

Recently, I attended the 2012 HRO Today Forum in Washington DC. While there, I decided to check out my own garbage to see what additional insights I could gain about my event behaviors and Recruitment Process Outsourcing.

It was not very difficult to generate RPO trash during the 2 day conference at the Gaylord Hotel.  In fact, on average, each of us produces around 7.1 pounds of garbage a day - and I’m no exception.

Here are 3 things I learned about myself by peaking into my hotel room waste receptacle:

1. As an RPO Service Provider needing to maximize event networking, I spent way too much time working on client and prospect stuff during my stay in DC. The proof (rough copy proposals and early contract drafts) lay shredded in my hotel room garbage can.
2. There were lots of brochures in my pail too. I always have good intentions when I accept human capital pamphlets and booklets. However, when faced with lugging all that paper back to Milwaukee, I go into purge mode and dispose of all non-essential items. Actually, in the future, I really need to collect electronic collateral only.
3. Lastly, I really like quality giveaways (nice pens, cool notebooks, etc…) but not all premium items are created equal. I have to be more selective and stop being so polite about accepting schlocky souvenirs.

I truly enjoyed the HRO Forum… great content (Senator Daschle’s Healthcare Reform talk, the Pinstripe / Allstate transition presentation, and The Goods Jobs tech award were among my favorites) and fabulous networking; however, next year I’m going to be greener and generate significantly less RPO trash.

Post contributed by Barry Diamond. Follow me on Twitter @bddiamond

The Key to More Innovative and Creative RPO

…just take a walk.

"Americans now walk the least of any industrialized nation in the world," says writer Tom Vanderbilt. In a series of stories for Slate about "The Crisis in American Walking,"  Vanderbilt writes about pedestrian life in America, from "sidewalk science" to possible ways to make the U.S. less car-centric.

What started in America as a push for convenience has become a difficult problem, as many parts of the country are now designed specifically for cars, not pedestrians. Basically Americans have engineered walking out of our everyday life. And while Americans have cut down on walking, they've been putting on some pounds. A recent study found that about 35 percent of adult Americans are obese,

Equally important to me, as the positive health impact, is how walking stimulates thinking and ideas. Some of my best Recruitment Process Outsourcing solutions and talent attraction strategies come to me during exercise.

There are 2 schools of thought around maximizing “thought walking”

1. Some proponents recommend focusing on random stimuli or observing interesting objects or situations to unlock creativity and help shed new light on your specific problem.
2. Others suggest that when you walk you are simply better able to connect your subconscious mind which has vastly more thinking capacity to your conscious mind. The key to success is the activity of movement and not the remarkableness of your surroundings.

For me, I believe in the "subconscious conscious" thought walking theory. If fact, I feel so strongly about the cerebral benefits of walking that I have begun lobbying Pinstripe for a treadmill laptop workstation for our employees.

I believe that in the near future this workstation will be an essential office fixture of the top innovative and creative Recruitment Process Outsourcing firms. Not only will this enhance their RPO thought leadership and critical thinking, but those who adopt this strategy will also be much healthier.

 I’m adding the laptop treadmill to my RPO wish list.

Post contributed by Barry Diamond. Follow me on Twitter @bddiamond

Get Creative - Cutting Costs in HR

I was asked recently to participate on a panel on cutting costs in HR. Now that sounds exciting, doesn’t it? How many years has it been now that most organizations have been struggling to eke out another year with fewer people, shrinking budgets and the perennial request to “get creative?” I saw it over my nearly 20 years in the learning and development space. Do any of you remember when companies offered five day training programs for anyone who wanted to attend them? I do. First the ask was to do them in three days instead of five (which strikes me as hilarious now that the same content is being asked for in less than an hour). Once the trend toward shortening took hold, next was the online learning craze. Why have people travel when they can learn at their desks? No travel expense, no free lunches provided on training day, and virtually no time away from the job. And of course, after 9/11, the days of the corporate university were changed forever. No longer was training offered up as freely as a perk. Programs that had been offered for years because of their popularity were questioned. If it didn’t tie directly to the business needs, a new initiative, or core focus, it was gone or moved to a modular, self-service offering. Then came the move to focus learning investment disproportionately across a population – only high potential employees have full access to learning and we might even spend more on them than before, while the “masses” get minimal, and some get none. With each of these changes, stalwarts felt that learning was compromised; that these moves signaled the demise of an era, that it was all a big mistake. Yet, some of the best new ideas came out of each of these moves. When forced to cut time out of a session, you have to look long and hard at how every single minute is spent. When you can’t fix the learning problem with big training $$, you provide people with ways to learn on the job, and guess what, sometimes, it actually works BETTER.

This is just an example, but the fact is, most in HR have been given tremendous opportunities to strengthen their “cost savings muscles” over the years. Yet, it must clearly be a topic that still concerns us. What could I have to say that would help people carry on their cost savings path for just bit longer? I realized a lot of what I have to say has been fueled both from the perspective of my past experience, and from that of my current work in leading Pinstripe’s RPO business. Recruitment Process Outsourcing is booming right now and we’re booming along with it. How can it not? During our last economic crisis, most organizations I know cut their HR staff and budget yet again. And if you’re not hiring, who are you going to let go first? Your recruiters. Now, with a bare bones staff and a function and process that has largely been put on the sideline for a while, things are starting to move. Demand is picking up for some, pent up for others, expected soon for the rest. As there are two choices – build your internal staff back up again, or use this time to revisit the entire model. RPO is growing because not only do we help businesses deliver a variable cost model and cost savings to our clients, but because we actually tend to make things better at the same time. Many studies, including one by Aberdeen in November, 2011 show that quality of hire goes up, time to fill goes down, and candidate and manager satisfaction improves when recruitment is outsourced. You CAN save money and get better results at the same time. We have been wired to think that these two things are mutually exclusive. That saving money means we are sacrificing something, that we are doing without, or that we are scrimping. But true innovation often is born of unreasonable constraints. The most creative ideas come when we DON’T have a blank sheet of paper, but when we are forced to do things without the easy crutches we might be used to. “Get creative” sometimes has a negative connotation when used in the same breath as cost savings, but it shouldn’t. Getting creative pushes us to prove that you can improve things while cutting costs. You don’t have to compromise. Demand both, demand it all. Faster, Better, and Cheaper. What’s your best example of refusing to compromise on this?

Post contributed by Angela Hills. Follow me on Twitter @angelahills

What’s Inside Your RPO Program?

I was recently reading an article about how the Fairfax County (VA) Public School system has decided to phase out the 26-ingredient burger served in the cafeteria. I knew that this staple of school lunches was probably not 100% ground beef, but I was absolutely shocked that the component count was over 2 dozen.

I couldn’t help but wonder:

“How does something as simple as a hamburger become so complex?”

Over the past 12 months, I have had the opportunity to look at several companies with non-Pinstripe RPO programs that are considering changing service providers. As part of our due diligence, we are able to peek behind the curtain and see how things are working.

Like the Fairfax County Public School burger situation, I am amazed at how cluttered and convoluted some of these outsourced relationships have gotten. These programs have become derailed, in part, because the service providers have forgotten about the 3 basic ingredients of a solid RPO program: People, Process and Technology. 

• People - There is no real governance overseeing the program strategy. Sure there might be a RPO client services director watching over the day-to-day recruitment team but there is almost no engagement and guidance at the executive level from the RPO service provider.
• Process - The most efficient path between two points is a straight line. The same is true with recruitment and, yet, these unwieldy programs zigzag and twist without real reason or purpose.
• Technology - Many of these troubled programs lack technology. Simple tasks are manual versus automated. Recruitment technology, including social media, has flourished over the past ½ decade yet many of these legacy programs haven’t been updated since the initial implementation.

I fully acknowledge that making observations is much easier than making changes; however, the 1^st step towards making improvements, whether it is a school lunch hamburger or an RPO program, is recognizing you have a problem.

Post contributed by Barry Diamond. Follow me on Twitter @bddiamond

Cactus League RPO

Recently, Elliot, my son, and I went to Baseball Spring Training in Arizona. Spring training in Arizona is referred to the as the Cactus League while preseason baseball played in Florida is called the Grapefruit League. These have been nicknamed respectively after plants typical of the respective states.

Our father/son vacation was a fabulous 5 day trip that included 4 stadiums (Goodyear, Maryvale, Peoria and Phoenix Municipal) and 8 different teams (Angels, Athletics, Brewers, Indians, Mariners, Padres, Rangers and Reds). We also managed to get in 1 round of mini-golf and a couple of loops around the Lazy River at the Squaw Peak Hilton.

While this was an almost work free vacation, I naturally couldn’t help myself when it came to seeing the similarities between our Cactus League excursion and Recruitment Process Outsourcing. 

So, here are my 5 top reasons why Cactus League Baseball reminds me of Recruitment Process Outsourcing at Pinstripe:

1. Process Efficiency – Our hotel was 15 to 20 minutes from 5 different stadiums and it seemed that every facility was just off the I10 freeway. The proximity and simple logistics facilitated more baseball and less down time. Our cycle time between games was significantly improved.
2. Greater Reliability – The Brewers have only been rained out 3 times in 8 years in Arizona. The weather is predictably going to be great. Even when it cools down to 60 degrees, it is still tremendous for Midwestern fans who are just exiting from their winter hibernation. Knowing things are going to work out definitely reduces stress and makes for a better experience.
3. Access to Talent – Cactus League baseball gives the fans a chance to interact with the players. At almost every facility, we able to get right by the major leaguers while they were practicing. We were also able to engage in conversation with them and get numerous autographs. Elliot favorite connection was with Norichika Aoki, the Brewers new outfielder from Japan. Regular season baseball keeps the fans at a distant while the Cactus league is all about access and, ultimately, building customer loyalty.
4. Greater Return on Investment (ROI) – Some of the best seats are lawn seating in the outfield. Most stadiums have a grassy slope just beyond the outfield fences and these tickets are only $8.00. $8.00 for a major league game is outstanding. And, almost equally important, we used frequent flyer and hotels points for our airfare and lodging. I probably spent as much going to 4 Spring Training games as 1 regular season Major League game. To me that’s a 4X improvement in ROI!   
5. Focus on Core Competencies – Our main reasons for going to Arizona was to watch baseball, have fun and just hang out together. The Cactus League is designed to maximize the fan experience and give families an opportunity to be together and enjoy each other. And the baseball is really good too.

So whether you passion is baseball or RPO, I would recommend a Cactus League vacation for the sun, the activities and the almost uninterrupted family time. 

Post contributed by Barry Diamond. Follow me on Twitter @bddiamond

Memo to HR: What Have You Done For Me Lately?

Guest post by China Gorman. Follow China on Twitter @chinagorman.

In a webinar I led last week for the great folks at Pinstripe, I talked about the questions that HR gets asked – and why they typically are the wrong questions.

Why is it that HR gets asked “what have you done for me lately?” instead of “HR, what do you think?”

Why isn’t HR asked “What’s the impact of the projected shortfall of college graduates on our workforce plan?”

Why isn’t HR asked “What’s the impact of Baby Boomers not being sure when they’re going to retire on our workforce plan?”

Why isn’t HR asked “What’s the relationship between our customers’ satisfaction rates and our employees’ satisfaction rates?”

What would life be like in your organization if your C-Suite were asking questions like these – instead of “HR, where are we having the company picnic this year?”

Or, even worse, “What’s your name again?”

The issue, of course, is business influence. It’s not enough to be functionally competent in HR – as most HR professionals are. It’s not enough to be competent about how the business works –as most HR professionals are.

Mastery of the internal business environment and mastery of the external economic environment are critical foundations of business influence. Those, together with functional and company-specific competence, create the essential elements required for HR’s voice to be heard.

And then wielding business influence effectively ensures ongoing influence. If your voice is only heard talking “HR-speak” you’ll lose the C-Suite audience and the business influence you crave.

If your voice is heard connecting the dots between economic trends and their impact on the people management programs and investments your organization is making you’ll continue to have the audience you want.

If your voice is heard drawing a straight line between your organization’s financial performance and your organization’s HR metrics you’ll continue to have the audience you want.

If your voice is heard supplying people-related business solutions backed up by fact and data you’ll continue to have the audience you want.

And if your voice is helping the organization ensure that the people part of the strategic plan is ensuring the organization’s ability to meet its growth goals you’ll continue to have the audience you want.

HR has never been more critical to an organization’s success than it is today. The combination of demographic shifts, proliferation of regulatory hurdles, global economic interconnectedness and economic uncertainty creates huge opportunity for HR to make immediate contributions to all areas of organizational success.

Just make sure you’re ready for the right questions.

For a replay of the webinar visit: http://resources.pinstripetalent.com/PinstripePresentsMemotoHR.html

I Didn’t Believe in Outsourcing Either

Close to 15 years ago I got a call from a Chief HR Officer I knew asking me what I thought about outsourcing HR. At the time, I was a consultant focused on leadership and culture. He had just taken a new job with a company that was about to expand rapidly – taking their retail concept national. Given the aggressive plans they had and timelines, he was exploring all options. I remember my initial reaction to his question. It was visceral, it was automatic, it was powerful. How could you outsource the part of your business that was focused on people? His was a services business. It was dependent upon people, upon talent. What message are you sending your employees or your customers for that matter if they got wind of it, by in a sense saying that your people are “non-core” to your business? I think, or at least I hope, I softened my feedback to him, but I don’t tend to hide it well when I have strong opinions.

Fast forward to now. Guess what? I work for an HR outsourcing organization. How interesting are the lessons we learn in life. I wasn’t looking to go into outsourcing. In fact, when I was first approached about the opportunity to make this career change, I was still skeptical. My perception of outsourcing wasn’t great. Isn’t it all about shaving costs and driving every last inefficiency out of everything so that the outsourcing company could maximize their profits and the client organization could deliver the outsourced HR service to their employees at the absolute lowest price point possible? That didn’t sound like an inspiring career move to me. I wondered why they would want me too. Here I was, focusing most of my energy leading an organizational change practice, what might that have to do with Recruitment Process Outsourcing?

Little did I know. Eventually, I went for a visit and took a look for myself. What I learned was shocking and it spurred me to make a career change that I never would have envisioned. I saw an obsession and passion for talent and talent acquisition. I saw process “geeks” who were constantly looking for ways to apply the best practices from other functions and areas of expertise, to HR and recruiting. And they were as focused on doing it to deliver better quality as they were to be more “efficient.” I saw innovation and creativity and transformational work. I saw hard work too, and then it became clear to me. What I saw is that the key is keeping the human in human resources. Bringing dedication, excellence and expertise shouldn’t be a crime just because you’re outside the walls of that business. Bringing a business focus to the work of HR shouldn’t be either.

I’m not saying all outsourcing is great, but I did have to eat crow. I’m proud to say I work for an RPO and I love it. I love the impact we have on clients every day, and I thoroughly enjoy working with anyone who shares a personal passion for making people and HR better every day.

Post contributed by Angela Hills. Follow me on Twitter @angelahills

RPO Insights from Gary and Walter

In the song “Man or Muppet” from the movie “The Muppets,” Gary (Jason Segel) and Walter (voice by Peter Linz) sing about their identity crisis as the man or the Muppet.

I reflect on my reflection
and I ask myself the question
what’s the right direction to go
I don’t know
am I a man or am I a Muppet
if I’m a Muppet then I’m a very manly Muppet
am I a Muppet or am I a man
if I’m a man that makes me a Muppet of a man

As I think about the lyrics from this Academy Award nominated song (written by Bret McKenzie, best known for “Flight of the Conchords,”) I can’t help but wonder about my RPO competitors and their ongoing identity issues.

I believe many of my Recruitment Process Outsourcing competitors struggle with who they are, what competing products and servcices should they invest in and which marketplace(s) do they belong in. This burden impacts both their success and the success of their clients.

So here is my list of the top 5 existential crisis questions most RPO service providers must be asking themselves:

• am I RPO or am I MSP?
• am I RPO or am I HRO?
• am I RPO or am I ATS?
• am I RPO or am I Temporary Labor?
• am I RPO or am I HR Consulting?

Some might say you can be all things to all people, but at some point you have to make a choice or risk being poor to mediocre at everything you do.  Just ask Gary and walter from "The Muppets." Fortunately, we (Pinstripe) know who we are and have a clear RPO vision where we are going.

Also, I’m truly amazed by how much I still can learn from the Muppets.

Post contributed by Barry Diamond. Follow me on Twitter @bddiamond