Employee vs. Associate: What Should You Call Your People?

Capitalist Note - had someone lecture me about the need to call people "associates" last week. I like that tag fine, but I told them the story outlined below. On my mind, so I'm rerunning the post.

Short answer: It doesn't matter, your actions are much more meaningful than the tag you use..

Short story.  I was a young up and comer in a Director-level position with a Fortune 500 back in the early 2000s - way more responsibility than my resume and age said I deserved.  I was at a national HR meeting - top 20 people in HR in the company, the corporate functional HR heads (comp, benefits, etc.) and all the field leaders.  I don't remember how it came up, but I offered up a cut and dry opinion that we shouldn't call our talent employees - we should be calling them "associates"...

And the Darth Vader of HR at the company (a great guy BTW) proceeded to absolutely assassinate me in front of the group with a 5 minute rant on why that was pure Bull#### (quote).

What he said, I later came to realize, was the truth.  If you're going to be cute with what you call employees, you better deliver on whatever promise you think you're making.  Additionally, you can just keep calling your people "employees" and do all the upstream stuff you think the other names indicate and you'll end up in the same place.  Without risking looking like a moron.

He was right.  He gave me a Nancy Kerrigan whack at the knees.  He later tried to promote me into a higher position in the West that would have required big relo.  I said no based on my gut about the division head I would have been working for.  7 months later Darth flew in and shut down the office I would have been leading from.  

Nothing but lessons from that guy.  Trust your gut when it comes to career.  And it doesn't make one ### worth of difference what you call the people who work for your company.  All that matters is how you treat them and what you've got planned for them.

Thanks Darth.

5 Things to Include In Your "Thanks for the Memories" Email After You Get Fired...

If you're 35 or over and haven't been fired yet in your career, one of two things is likely - you haven't looked for a job that stretches you to the point you might fail, or you take zero chances in your jobs/career and are way too concerned with maintaining the status quo, or what Barry Manilow liked to call "feelings".

Getting fired can actually be a depth-building experience.  In a lot of cases, you're going to want to say goodbye with a "thanks for the memories" letter/email that says goodbye to the people you worked with. Groupon CEO Andrew Mason recently got fired and left the blueprint for the "thanks for the memories" email.  Here's the five elements you want to hit to make yourself look like someone that truly "got it" and is someone the masses would want to work with again - or hire - in the future:

1. Act like you didn't get fired, then admit that you did. Mason did it and it's perfect.  "I'm going to explore other options. I'm exploring those options involuntarily, because I just got canned."

2. Say things weren't going great and you're accountable. 

3. Say that the best way for the people working for and around you to reinvent themselves is for you to get out of the way.  It shows confidence in the team and highlights the fact that you know other people were adding a lot of the value - not just you.

4. Add a pop culture reference to tell people what you got out of the experience. 

5. Give them something you learned that you wish you would have done differently, and encourage them to go for it.  Don't whine on this one - come up with something real but stay classy.  No "If I could share one thing, it would be to watch out for the backstabbers".  Come up with something real that shows you're a self-reflective SOB/DOB.  

See Mason's letter below with highlights referencing my 5 things in the order they appear above.

Next time you get fired, drop some science with this type of letter.  You'll get hired into a future job you didn't deserve as a result of doing it.

The Andrew Mason Goodbye Letter

(This is for Groupon employees, but I'm posting it publicly since it will leak anyway)

People of Groupon,

After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today. If you're wondering why... you haven't been paying attention. From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that's hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.

You are doing amazing things at Groupon, and you deserve the outside world to give you a second chance. I'm getting in the way of that. A fresh CEO earns you that chance. The board is aligned behind the strategy we've shared over the last few months, and I've never seen you working together more effectively as a global company - it's time to give Groupon a relief valve from the public noise.

For those who are concerned about me, please don't be - I love Groupon, and I'm terribly proud of what we've created. I'm OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you. I'll now take some time to decompress (FYI I'm looking for a good fat camp to lose my Groupon 40, if anyone has a suggestion), and then maybe I'll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive.

If there's one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what's best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness - don't waste the opportunity!

I will miss you terribly.

Love,

Andrew

HARASSED: Why You Need to Add These Text Exchanges to Whatever Harassment Training You Do...

Gradually - and I mean gradually - your managers are waking up to the fact that text messages don't deserve the informality that they're granted.

What do I mean?  We've learned that conversations can be taped or confirmed through witnesses. We've learned that email is discoverable and generally toxic. With that learning in mind, managers and employees watch what they say and the world is generally a better place, with less bullying in the workplace and a general awareness of what you say being held against you.

But when it comes to texting, our world still grants sending a text with informality that it's more like a one-on-one conversation rather than a email exchange. That might work for someone's private life, but it's poison for the workplace.  Or any merging of workplace and private life.

Ask Tiger Woods what ill-advised texting can do to a career.

I could tell you to add the Tiger Woods texting stream to your next Harassment Training for managers.  But Tiger Woods is too much of a mega-star to really help them relate.

So I found one your managers can relate to.  A Toledo track and field coach who was having relationships with the student-athletes he "managed".  Check it out from Deadspin:

"It was a matter of rules and consequences, he said. On Jan. 24, Kevin Hadsell, the director of the University of Toledo's men's and women's cross country and women's track program, announced his resignation, a move that was as mysterious as it was abrupt. Hadsell had been at Toledo since 1998, and in the intervening years he had built the Rockets into a regional power, becoming an institution unto himself along the way. The 42-year-old was a five-time Mid-American Conference coach of the year. He did color commentary on Toledo women's basketball games, and he hosted a weekly podcast and radio show. He cut a lively figure on campus, and when Toledo's football coach, Tim Beckman, decamped for Illinois, Hadsell evidently felt he had enough clout around town that he could scoff at the decision from his Twitter account. "You couldn't pay me enough $ to take certain jobs in big conferences," he wrote. "Some schools are dead-end jobs in some sports. Think two moves ahead."

What Hadsell and the university did not say is that the coach was forced to resign after a female runner had accused him of sexual harassment. The runner, whom we'll call Andrea to protect her identity, had also revealed to the school that Hadsell had been in a long-term physical relationship with her teammate and friend.

Deadspin has obtained text messages sent to Andrea over the past five months from Hadsell's phone. They range in tone from the flirty to the frankly sexual, growing obsessive and paranoid as he learns of the university's investigation; until the very end, it seems, he was unaware that it was Andrea who had turned him in.

"I'm too ***ing selfish," Hadsell joked to Andrea on Oct. 22, denying a relationship with the other runner, whom we will refer to as Caitlin. "I'm down for drinks, laughs, sex. Other than that I value my free time." Earlier, he had told Andrea: "Not gonna lie. I would hook up with [Caitlin] (I havmt) but if she wasn't psycho I would." He added, "It may be a good ride. Just sayin."

The guy is obviously troubled and there's good reason he's not employed anymore at Toledo.

But there's a lesson for your managers in here.  Stop being informal with texting to the people you manage.  It's going to be leveraged against you.  Check out the informality in these text exchanges from the manager in question as reported by Deadspin:

Hadsell: "I want to talk."

Hadsell: "And Be real"

Andrea: "Okay we can"

Hadsell: "Dude. Straighgt up...can I trust you? And. Are u really interested in me?"

Andrea: "Yes you can trust me"

No further texts for an hour. Then:

Hadsell: "Are u awake?"

Hadsell: ":("

No further texts until 12:57 a.m.

Hadsell: "I guess not. ***k."

Four days later, while in Wisconsin for a cross-country meet, Andrea told Hadsell she knew he'd been sleeping with Caitlin, who had graduated the previous spring. Hadsell denied everything.

Andrea: "you really don't lead her on at all?"

Hadsell: "Dude. I don't. I don't completely discourage. I'm a guy. Duhh. That's honest."

Andrea: "I knew it"

Andrea: "Hahahahaha"

Hadsell: "Like you know what I mean. You're not ENCOURAGING. But you're not"

Hadsell: "DISCOURAGING"

Informality via text. This example is extreme, but your managers are in the margins with the people who report to them way too much.

Add informal texting to your next harassment training/managerial skills training platform.

Use of Comic Sans Can Ruin Your Career Prospects..

It's true.  Comic Sans generates unbelievably strong reactions and opinions from those who encounter it in corporate America.

The year is 1998.  A young HR Capitalist decides to do a back of the napkin employee survey in a 1500 person unit of a Fortune 500.  After a bit of research, stealing from the best and modifying it to reflect his personal style, the survey was sent out via paper (no Survey Monkey in 1998, yo).

In one week, a complaint went into the Corporate Ombudsman from multiple members of the unit's engineering team,  The complaint is summarized as follows below:

"The HR team is attempting to manipulate responses to the employee survey, as evidenced by their use of Comic Sans on the printout.  Everyone knows that Comic Sans has been proven to generate more positive reactions and responses than would otherwise be expected when used in printed documents asking for opinions."

Really?  I just used it because I thought it looked cool and interrupted the pattern. I soon learned that people HATE them some Comic Sans.  The hatred bordered on pathological.

We did the survey anyway.  Somehow people overcame my attempts to be the puppet-master by telling us how much they hated working for their boss. Our follow up action plan was stellar.

What did I learn from that experience?  Looking to differentiate by using a funky font is a poor plan. For every one person that digs it, four hate it. The rest don't care.  You don't need the hate.

Check out the video below (2:00 in the video) on Comic Sans haters (email subscribers click through for video).  

Long live freaking Arial.  Maybe a little Tahoma when you're feeling alternative.  (h/t on video to Gizmodo)

THE LOVE BOAT: Soon Will Be Making Another Run...

Had to help a manager friend recently with a sticky subject - romance in the workplace.

Most of you know the drill.  Two lovers come together, find fulfillment and... wait, that's the romance novel version.

Let's give a cleaner version.  Two employees in the same work group are hooking up.  They enjoy each others company and aren't afraid to show the rest of the world at work.  They dig each other. What's wrong with that?

There's nothing wrong with that.  Other than humans being completely miserable at times and paranoid basically all the time.  That means if you've got members of the same department/team in your workplace who are together, it's bound to stir some stuff up.

I'm giving you the GlenGarry notes here.  You don't need a policy or a love contract.  

Here's all you need to do - coach them that they should manage their relationship in a way during work that if a 3rd party came to visit the office, there's no chance that the 3rd party could spend 2 hours with and around the team and guess that the love couple in question were buying sheets together after work.

That's it - can an outside visitor guess?  If not, you're (or they) are good to go.  If an outsider could guess, you're not good to go.  Fix it or one of you might have to go.

And of course, 3rd parties coming in to spend time with the team aren't generally available, so manager observation rules the day in this area, with feedback from those around them.

All kinds of couples manage this type of relationship at work in a great way - there's no reason to hide from the conversation.

Coach them up, Scotty.

CHECKLIST: Make Sure You Get the Company Twitter Password From Gen Y Early in Mass Layoffs...

You're going to have do layoffs at some point in the future - it's a reality.

In 2001, you delivered the news with compassion, took the time necessary and then went through the Exiting Employee Checklist.  You probably thought about who you needed to talk to in some order - by most difficult first, who you had to get out of the building, etc.

In 2013, you need to order the employees you need to layoff not by degree of difficulty, but by who has access to the company Twitter account.  If you don't factor in access to social media, you're going to find yourself in the situation British company HMV did, where the Gen Ys started live tweeting the layoffs before the company thought about shutting the account down.

See picture of tweet stream below.  It's a new day, people.  I'm out. 

Is Giving Employees a Yes/No Vote in Firings a Better Way to Go?

Ah yes - let's give your teammates a say in whether you get fired or not.  A vote, if you will!

Check out the video below from the Minute MBA series.  It's featuring a company called Valve, a maker of the video games your kids love to play (Left for Dead, anyone?).  The focus is on the Valve way of firing - everyone on the team gets a vote.

Sounds progressive, right?  I like this in theory, and I think the deeper you get into organizational history of where this has been the case, the more serious employees would take the responsibility.

The bigger issue for me?  It's not show friends, it's show business. I'd be worried that I don't get enough votes to fire someone because they're a nice person.  We hear it all the time in employee surveys - what do you like best about working at ACME?  The people. I love the people I work with.

Unfortunately, liking someone doesn't equal results. I'd be more worried in this system about not getting people fired than the people who actually got fired, because let's face it - if 10 of your 12 teammates voted to kick you to the curb, you had it coming.

It's the other way I'd be worried about.  What about you?

(email subscribers click through for video below) 

Manti Te’o, Notre Dame and the Art of the Crappy HR Investigation...

When bad stuff happens, who's left to sort out fact from fiction at your company?

More often than not, it's the HR Manager/HR Director that leads the client group and is responsible for the employee relations scene as part of that responsibility.  About 50% of the biggest HR leadership job (5K FTE count) I ever had was pure play employee relations, and I have to say there are times when I miss going into a pure, high stakes, "he said, she said" situation, preparing with data and interviewing the people involved.

Conducting a fair, yet aggressive, investigation of bad stuff in your company is a hallmark of a great HR Manager and up (director, VP) generalist.  People who can aggressively interview and figure out who's lying are worth their weight in gold.

Of course, there's the wrong way to conduct an internal investigation of bad stuff.  The Manti Te’o/Lennay Kekua/Notre Dame affair is a great example.  Notre Dame decided not to interview anyone or get aggressive in any way before they pronounced Te'o a victim.  More from the Big Lead:

"The South Bend Tribune published a thorough accounting of Notre Dame’s reaction to the Manti Te’o/Lennay Kekua affair. This accounting revealed Notre Dame’s “investigation” to be cursory, almost designed not to find anything unsavory. It confirmed what Te’o intimated in the ESPN interview. Investigators, hired a week after speaking to Te’o, conducted no interviews. Investigating something that happened on the Internet, they did not examine e-mails, cell phone records or any other form of electronic correspondence.

The investigation ordered by Notre Dame was limited to the electronic search, Brown said. Investigators did not interview Te’o or his family, nor did anyone attempt to contact Ronaiah Tuiasosopo or any of his relatives.

In response to questions, university officials said the investigators did not examine cell phone records, e-mails or other electronic communication to determine the length or extent of Te’o’s communication over the past few years with the person claiming to be Lennay Kekua, nor did the university ask Te’o to take a lie detector test."

What's missing from Notre Dame's action plan in this investigation?  What can you learn for your company?  When bad stuff happens, you investigation plan is basically as follows:

1.  Find as much data as possible about the situation - emails, phone records, etc - any thing in print or digital that help you get your head around what you're dealing with.

2.  Create a list of people you need to talk to/interview.  Order them in a way where early interviews are really about collecting data to add to #1.  As you get later in your interview schedule, you're talking to people closer to the issue in question.

3.  When you start interviewing the primaries in the situation (those who know what the truth is, you just have to get it out of them) you do the following:

a. Use the data you have to gradually box them in to agreement on the general situation in question.

b. Use critical data points to test if their telling you the truth - you generally need data from #1 to do this.

c. If you catch them in a lie related to 3b, use that fact to leverage them to come clean and give you more than they were going to.

d. Rinse.  Repeat. Don't be scared to stay in an interview for a couple of hours.

Welcome to the world of the effective HR investigation.  If it sounds like nasty business, it is.  Only the best HR Managers and Directors are really good at what I've outlined above.

But at the end of the day, you want an HR Manager/Director who knows how to leverage investigations and the people in them to get to the truth.  You want them on that wall.  And yes, you need them on that wall.  Who else is going to do it?  You?

If Manit Te'o was an employee, Notre Dame gets an F for how they handled it.  And a bunch of internal onlookers feel less certain about the Notre Dame brand as a result.

What Song Plays In Your Head When Career Stuff Goes Badly?

I was on the road late in 2012 and met an old friend who had called me back in the day when some bad stuff was happening at his place of work, specifically to him.  Hadn't talked to him for 3-4 years since that time, and while I remembered talking, being supportive and helping him figure out what to do, he had a perfect memory of what I said.

He clung to one thing specifically that I said in his time of need.  That quote?  "Whatever happens with this situation is not going to define you."

That's what he remembered, clear as day.  It mattered to him that someone said that and focused him on the good stuff to come.  

Flash forward to this week. Some people I like a lot professionally got impacted by a change. They're worried about their career, and what people might think.  My help wasn't as profound as what I gave the previous friend.

This time I said they needed Jay-Z. Or, to be more specific, music in general. Baseball players have music they choose when they walk up to the plate for an at bat. I think you need the same thing for your career, especially when bad stuff happens.

I liked "On to the Next One" by Jay-Z for my friends, specifically the following lyrics:

"I got a million ways to get it...
... Choose one......
Ay, bring it back, bring it back (uh-huh)
Now double your money and make a stack
I'm on to the next one, on to the next one
I'm on to the next one, on to the next one
I'm on to the next one, on to the next one
(Hold up) Freeze! Ay!
Somebody bring me back the money please..."

The rest of the song is a mess of slurs and stuff that HR pros probably shouldn't be quoting, but I like those lines. Every time I hear that song, I think about the future.

I first heard the cut a couple of years ago at spring training in Arizona when Matt Kemp was using it as his walkup music. Videos below of Kemp talking about his scientific process for picking his at bat music ("I like hip-hop" and cuts that have "hits" in them"... Great Matt, who doesn't?) and Jay-Z doing the song on Letterman. I'm giving you Letterman because the bad stuff is bleeped out for the most part (Email subscribers click through for video).

You gotta million ways to get it. Choose one, bring it back, double your money and make a stack.

That's my outplacement program.  Boom.

COACHING EMPATHY: Your Best Tool in Preventing a Workplace Shooting

You've heard about the CT school shootings.  You've read the news accounts, watched the 24/7 coverage that makes us all wring our hands and worry about the great unknown.  HR people have a special place in this, since you terminate people every week, if not every day.  Those people feel wronged.  Those people own guns.

I'm not going to tell you the people who walk into a school and start shooting aren't crazy. I'm not going to tell you that the gun situation in America is good or bad.

I'm going to tell you that your best chance at minimizing the probability a workplace shooting happens in your workplace is to coach the people who aren't doing well (and ultimately get terminated) from your company with empathy and a focus on moving forward.

You know the drill.  Bad employee needs to be termed.  Everyone starts locking down for the session where you and the manager deliver the news.  We're coached to get to the point quickly, which is good.  We're also coached to say as little as possible.

Which is a problem if you want to minimize the already low probability your company will be a victim of a workplace shooting or other forms of workplace violence.

The alternative? Seek to coach the person on the fact that while there wasn't a match/fit at your company, the fact that it didn't work out doesn't have to define their professional career. Is there a place where most of the people you terminate can work, be productive and be happy?  For most of the people you term, there is.  

That's what you need to focus them on.  But you can't do that unless you're willing to coach after the termination decision is communicated.  Saying as little as possible makes the person on the other side of the table feel like it's them against your company - and everyone who works there.  Hard feelings ensue, and combine that event with a nasty relationship with a manager and co-workers, and it's clear that a lot of termed employees wish the worst for your company.

And one in a million do more.  What if you did the following when terming a problematic employee?

1.  Communicate the termination decision.

2.  Handle the Transactional details.

3.  TRANSITION TO WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE EMPLOYEE

4.  Be open and honest enough to say that while it didn't work out here, there's a place out there that's a fit for them - without question.

5.  Give them some resources on what they need to do next to find their next role.

6.  Follow up with them and ask them how they're doing.  Tell them that while it didn't work out at ACME, you know that's not the end of the line for them and they'll land on their feet.  Tell them that's why you're calling.  Help them if you can.

7.  Repeat #6 every month until they land.  Find a way to help their search in some small way.

I know.  It's BS, right?  After all, the more contact you have, the more legal exposure you have, they weren't a good person, blah, blah, blah.  I get it.

But today's not a normal day when it comes to thinking about how you handle people transitioning out of your company.

Want to manage the risk associated with workplace violence from terminated employees?  It starts with coaching empathy from HR pros on the ground.

You don't have to do it.  You'll probably be OK.

One in a million won't.