On episode 66 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Jessica Lee  and me (KD) come together to discuss the topic of whether geriatric millennials are coming to save the world or not!

Move to minute 21:00 to dig into the topic of geriatric millennials. I might have gone off on a rant or two.

Listen below (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:

1:00 - JLee is in the DC metro area and is currently being overrun by cicadas! 

3:00 - JLee, Tim, and KD were all named one of the top 100 HR Tech influencers of 2021! Our podcast has influence!

6:30 - Tim is getting reached out by not so reputable HR tech companies to be on their “top 10 lists” but he only wants to be on the robust, well-researched lists. 

9:45 - JLee doesn’t know if any of the other hundreds of other HR employees at her company know about her being on this list. She asks the crew the question “does this event matter?”. Tim thinks it’s great for the speaker bio. 

15:00 - JLee hasn’t been on lists for awhile but she’s back since starting HR Famous and starting back on the conference circuit. She says that getting back out there has helped her open her eyes and see what else is going on in the world. 

18:00 - KD says that he may not get more business from being on this list but he’s at the company he’s at now because of being out there in the HR space.  HIs last 2 career opportunities have come from being more active than normal in the HR space.  He also considers the HR Tech/HR Executive Magazine list to be the gold standard.

19:45 - An article has been going around JLee’s office and it’s about “geriatric millennials' ' and their eagerness to go into a world of hybrid work. 

21:00 - What’s a geriatric millennial? They were not digital natives and remember a time before cell phones and other technological advancements. JLee is the resident geriatric millennial of the pod.

23:45 - Geriatric millennials have the ability to go between the online and offline world where older and younger generations may struggle at being online/offline. Also, they have had to learn how to adapt to different digital technologies quickly. 

30:00 - KD calls BS on the concept that everyone in a generational slice is going to have impact in the world, noting that high performers throughout time in the 35-40 range are always "next up" in the world of work. But not everyone within a certain age group is going to save the world. There will always be high potential earners in every group, and they’ll rise to create change.

---------------Jessica Lee, Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett

Kinetix

HRU Tech

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Tim Sackett on Linkedin

Kris Dunn on LinkedIn

The Tim Sackett Project

The HR Capitalist

Fistful of Talent

Boss Leadership Training Series

In episode 35 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn and Jessica Lee discuss their favorite Halloween candy, dig into BlackRock’s recent policy change that mandates employee report all romantic relationships, including those with all company partners and vendors, and wrap it up with a discussion on Performance vs. Trust via a famous Simon Sinek video. 

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player below) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

1:30 – Halloween is right around the corner! JLee is modifying the normal Halloween routine for her two young kids. She’s excited because her kids are getting into Star Wars and they’re doing a Star Wars family costume.

3:00 – Tim’s family is doing a Michigan vs. MSU football/Halloween neighborhood tailgate. He is trying to decide if he wants to be Biden or Trump for his costume.

4:15 – What is your favorite Halloween candy? Tim is team Reese’s pumpkin because of the peanut butter to chocolate ratio. KD likes the bite size (better known as fun size) Snickers. JLee likes a classic Kit Kat.

6:45 – First topic: BlackRock is now requiring all employees to disclose any sort of romantic relationship with anyone in the company or anyone related to the company, including all vendors and partners, which includes 1/5 of the known world by definition. The company may make alternative work arrangements depending on reporting from employees. 

8:00 – Tim, the HR Famous workplace harassment expert, thinks that this new policy is stupid because it limits so many romantic or sexual relationships.

9:30 – JLee doesn’t want to know every possible relationship between employees from an HR perspective. She says it’s TMI!

10:30 – KD says that this policy follows a few scandals with relationship reporting at BlackRock involving high level employees. 

14:30 – The gang suggests a hashtag for Blackrock – #sexlessnation

15:00 – JLee tells us what questions would have to be asked about these relationships. 

16:20 – The HR Famous crew wishes the best to the BlackRock HR crew with this new policy. #sexlessnation

19:30 – Second topic of the day: Simon Sinek’s video Performance vs. Trust. In this video, Sinek talks about the Marines and how value trustworthiness vs. high level performance.

22:40 – JLee thinks that this is a hard lesson for a leader to learn because you often only learn you can’t trust someone once someone has made a mistake.

23:30 – Tim brings up Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent book Talking To Strangers and how humans tend to default to trust when often people are not being trustworthy.

26:00 – Shoutout to Ed Baldwin and the book The Thin Book of Trust by Charles Feltman. He defines trust in his book as sincerity, reliability, and competence. 

27:00 – KD and JLee would love if Simon would button up his shirt one more button!

Got a good one for you this week on The HR Famous Podcast! We cover news of Google giving up and moving to an Annual Review Cycle schedule, how their employees participate in writing their own reviews and are concerned they have to wait a year for a salary increase (sound familiar?).  Included in the discussion is the fact they call their performance process a "perf", which is too close to other words for our comfort.

Bonus - we break down the CHRO move of the week, with IBM changing out their HR leadership. Please subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

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In episode 31 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn and Jessica Lee discuss Google's move to a very uncool/unhip annual performance review cycle (called a "perf" which is dangerously close to bad stuff), David Blaine’s recent dangerous endeavor, and the latest CHRO move of the week involving IBM's new HR leader.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

1:30 - Did you watch David Blaine’s balloon descension excursion? Tim doesn’t think that he’s human. 

4:30 - Do you ever dress up at home just to feel better? JLee dressed up today because she’s sick of athleisure.

5:30 - Time for the CHRO Move of the Week! IBM Senior Vice President of HR and CHRO Diane Gherson announced her successor, Nickle LaMoreaux, this week as she has decided to retire. JLee commends IBM for this classy move of publicly passing the gauntlet onto their next CHRO.

9:00 - KD points out LaMoreaux's former positions at IBM and how that helped her get into the top HR spot at the company. 

12:00 - KD talks about how IBM was one of the first to move people to remote work and also the first to take it away, and why it had a number of lawsuits around age discrimination based on allegations of a strategy, to bring in younger people, that would cost less. 

14:20 - The HR Famous crew doesn’t know what IBM does anymore! Does this mean that they’re on the outs?

15:00 - Who remembers the old adage “No one ever got fired for buying IBM”? JLee has never heard it, but Tim and KD remember those days.

17:00 - Next topic of the day: Business Insider published an article about Google’s performance reviews being resumed and how some employees are concerned that the new 12 month cycle will hurt their chances for promotions. 

18:00 - Internally, Google’s performance reviews are known as “perf”... That’s something the HR Famous crew has never seen! Tim sees this as a sign of Google growing up.  The gang also has fun with the word "perf" which borders on the worst corporate slang ever.

21:30 - A lot of companies either had to or chose to pause performance reviews during the beginning of the pandemic. KD thinks it was a good move to pause performance reviews for the first months of the pandemic to allow employees to focus on other worries. 

24:30 - JLee and Tim comment on their frustration with the fact that Google employees are so worried about their pay increases when so much else is going on in the world. KD reminds everyone that there are a lot of people in the company who aren’t complaining about their lack of a raise. 

27:45 - One of the things that Google is doing to make performance reviews more simple is having employees list up to 5 of their biggest accomplishments/achievements, but they must say less than 160 words for each item. KD notes the fact that via this strategy, managers at Google are like everyone else - they'd prefer you write your own review!!

28:30 - Reach out to Tim Sackett if you need help writing your perf!

30:30 - Tim laughs at the fact that the pandemic has forced HR to go back in time to once a year performance reviews, when research for years has shown that more frequent performance reviews are more effective. 

32:00 - JLee brings up the fact that those with children they are taking care of at home may be negatively affected by performance reviews right now. Tim thinks that people are going to be judged by their performance during the pandemic anyway and there’s not much you can do to change that. 

38:30 - Who else has become a cycler in the pandemic? JLee and Tim are now fans!

There's been a lot of guessing related to how the world of work is changing in a COVID world, especially for white collar professional jobs who have the ability to work remotely in the lockdown. Hot takes include the following:

--Remote work is here to stay, pack up the office.

--Productivity is at an all-time high! 

--Everyone hates Zoom.

Are any of those true? Maybe, maybe not - I find the truth always lies somewhere in the middle. 

But the best study I've seen to date is the one below from NBER, which looks in depth at the impact of the COVID lockdown on a specific topic - meetings - across meta-data from 3 Million users. Yes, 3 million!  So meaningful that we talked about it on a segment of one of my podcasts, HR Famous.  See the top line notes from the study below and then take a listen to the podcast for discussion.

More meetings. More participants in those meetings, shorter meetings in length, longer workdays.  Best study yet, check it out and take a listen to the pod segment as well.

More from Marginal Revolution:

Using de- identified, aggregated meeting and email meta-data from 3,143,270 users, we find, compared to pre- pandemic levels, increases in the number of meetings per person (+12.9 percent) and the number of attendees per meeting (+13.5 percent), but decreases in the average length of meetings (-20.1 percent). Collectively, the net effect is that people spent less time in meetings per day (-11.5 percent) in the post- lockdown period. We also find significant and durable increases in length of the average workday (+8.2 percent, or +48.5 minutes), along with short-term increases in email activity.

That is drawn from data from Europe, North America, and the Middle East, in this new NBER paper by Evan DeFilippis, Stephen Michael Impink, Madison Singell, Jeffrey T. Polzer, and Raffaella Sadun.

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In episode 27 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn and Jessica Lee discuss theories on why meeting times have decreased during the pandemic (but the number of meetings is up) and workplace relationship issues that have reemerged surrounding former McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook (McLovin from episode 2 of HR Famous).

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

1:00 - The resident ginger of HR Famous is back from vacation! Welcome back Tim!

4:40 - Tim got some flowers for his wife and tried to share the great deal with the HR Famous crew and Jlee had to kindly reject (she doesn’t like roses!) and KD had bought flowers for his wife 30 minutes prior to Tim's text. Jlee also implores her vast knowledge of flowers onto the men of the group. 

7:00 - First topic of the day - a new study was released from the National Bureau of Economic Research about changes in the workday. The study shows that the number of meetings and number of attendees per meeting have increased during the pandemic, but there is a reduction in meeting length. 

9:20 - Jlee thinks the reduction in meeting time can be attributed to less travel time from meeting to meeting and the convenience of meeting remotely. How far do you have to travel to get to meetings in your office? KD thinks the reduction is due to having more meetings. Tim thinks it can be attributed to the digital platforms. 

12:30 - KD had to lead his first in person, socially distanced, masked up long meeting recently and he said it was horrible. He would prefer to do it through Zoom. 

15:00 - One more stat from this study: the average work day has increased by 48.5 minutes while working remotely. Tim doesn’t believe people are actually working more but they are just working at different times of the day. 

17:15 - How early do you schedule your meetings? Jlee is a fan of 7:30 am meetings. 

You know it's true. When your arch enemy does good, you could applaud them. But it just feels better to bitch by questioning their motives behind the good idea they're pitching.

You know the idea I'm talking about - the one YOU had in mind. It just turns out that you weren't in a position to deliver on that idea, so your arch enemy, nemesis or competition did it before you could get to it.

I know - you really hate them. You hate them more for announcing the idea that's a part of your identity.

Case in point - this week on The HR Famous Podcast, we're talking about the Trump administration announcing moves to make it easier for people without degrees to get government jobs. That position/move sounds more progressive than arch conservative. As such, the spin from the media was predictable - It's a ploy to try and buy votes from the poor people on the fence who might vote republican.

Of course, there's one little problem - the bill is actually a good one and there's no way this bit of news impacts the election.  We don't need more degree requirements - let's help more people get into consideration for good jobs by eliminating requirements that are barriers, as well as non-predictive of success in the role. While the media loved to spin this one, it's a great example of what I described at the jump.

We love good ideas - until whoever we consider our nemesis launches the idea before we do.

Human nature 101. Check out the conversation at the podcast below starting at 22:30 and highlighted below, and subscribe while you're there!

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Ah, company phones.  Here's the deal - they really don't exist much anymore. 

Why are we talking about company phones? Last week was a doozy as Amazon directed its employees to remove TikTok from company devices, only to take the request back later in the same day. Wells Fargo came in behind Amazon and gave the same directive - and held to its guns.

TikTok is a concern because of data security concerns combined with the fact that it's a Chinese company. China has a long history of being rogue with all types of IP. You can expect that more companies will follow suit and direct their employees to remove TikTok from company devices.

But can we be real a second? Companies long ago transferred the financial responsibility for devices to employees. While a small percentage of employees have company provided devices, at the end of the "Blackberry" age companies began the march to the "bring your own device" world, where employees had access to company email and other apps on the device that they chose. My Gen X and old Millennial friends will remember in the 2010 timeframe when IT departments started allowing personal iPhones to be able to get corporate email.

And like that, the need to provide devices to employees was gone. The pitch went something like this: Your choice, we can give you a clunky ass company-owned Blackberry, or you can use your iPhone to pick up email. Some companies provided a stipend, but most did not.

Poof! Expense related to telephony gone!

Unintended consequence of that revolution - companies don't own the devices that are being used by employees in 90% of the workforce in America.

That means mandating TikTok being off phones goes something like this:

1--Companies mandate no Tiktok on device being used for company work (but that the employee owns), employees say yes (sounds unlikely)

2--Companies mandate no TikTok, and provide phones to a higher percentage of employees (unlikely due to cost)

3--Companies say if you won't remove TikTok from phone, you can't use company apps like Outlook (unlikely due to the hit on immediate response and productivity)

4--Companies look at the do-do bag of options above, do nothing about TikTok (ding, ding! Most likely outcome!)

We talked about this issue on the latest episode of HR Famous.  Take a quick listen below, see the time stamps on this issue shared below and while you're there, subscribe to our pod!

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In episode 23 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn and Jessica Lee are back to discuss Jlee’s recent vacation, Tim’s new favorite shorts, different proposed plans for return to work bonuses, and privacy concerns about TikTok and other apps on company owned devices. 

Listen below (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:

1:20 - Jlee is back from vacay! Jlee went on a working vacation to the beach and returned with a nice tan. 

3:45 - Do you turn on an out of office reply on your email when you go on vacation? The HR Famous crew has rarely if never turned on their out of office reply. 

6:00 - Tim comes through with the much needed fashion advice. He says to check out Fair Harbor shorts! (Also, we’re open to a sponsorship!)

21:45 - Next topic of the episode: TikTok and employer’s rights! Last Friday, Amazon emailed employees to delete TikTok from their phones. Later in the day, they issued a statement that the email was a mistake and their employees didn’t need to delete TikTok. Wells Fargo also directed their employees to delete TikTok from company owned devices. 

24:00 - Tim brings up the bitcoin hack on Twitter and privacy/security concerns on there as well. Although TikTok is a Chinese owned company, there is still risk coming from American owned companies like Twitter. 

25:50 - KD discusses the differences in security issues on different kinds of devices or softwares. Tim brings up how many tech companies have allowed their employees to work on whatever operating system they’re most comfortable with and how there may be IT concerns surrounding that. 

28:00 - KD asks Jlee if she thinks that people will delete TikTok from their personal mobile devices even though most people have other privacy sensitive information on their devices. Jlee thinks it’s not going to happen and says the only way employers could have complete control over the employee’s devices would have to be somewhat similar to government agencies that work with national security concerns. 

30:00 - Tim discusses concerns over TikTok being a Chinese company and therefore, somewhat state-controlled. He thinks a solution may be getting a US owned TikTok alternative to replace the platform. Jlee is very sad about the potential outlawing of TikTok. 

32:00 - Tim thinks that people should be allowed to have multiple logins on a phone like you can have on a laptop or a computer. KD thinks that companies should just pay for their employees to have their own company device to solve any security concerns. 

33:30 - The HR Famous podcast promotes wearing a mask! Mask up!

In episode 22 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett and Kris Dunn are joined by Shana Lebowitz Gaynor to discuss her work at Business Insider and specifically her articles about SHRM’s handling of BLM statements and top HR innovators. The crew also talks about Tim’s Utah adventures, the CHRO move of the week, and KD’s many ideas for HR-related articles at Business Insider. 

Listen below (click this link if you don’t see the player below) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:

1:00 - No Jlee this week! We hope she’s having fun on her beach vacation!

2:00 - Tim just got back from another (socially distanced) Southern Utah vacation. Tim and KD talk about how to get into Zion National Park and how Tim works the system to get into Zion the easiest way. KD thinks Tim is getting spoiled with views. 

4:50 - Check out Tim’s instagram for all of his cool Utah excursions and his most recent jet ski and cliff jumping adventure. 

7:20 - New segment alert: CHRO move of the week! Eileen Moore Johnson is the new EVP and CHRO at Scientific Games. Johnson moves from an operational role at Caesars to this new role. KD and Tim break down what they like about the move.

12:00 - Time to welcome our guest for the episode! Shana Lebowitz Gaynor is the correspondent and HR insider writer at Business Insider. 

14:00 - Where are most HR people getting their news from? Shana thinks most HR people are getting their news like many other industries, on social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. 

16:00 - Tim asks Shana about her experience at Business Insider and what she sees people are connecting most with their content. She says that people respond the most to articles about what to do if you hate your job. 

17:50 - Shana says that her time at BI has taught her to get to the point and be succinct in her articles. KD praises BI for this formatting. 

20:00 - Tim asks Shana about her article about SHRM and their response surrounding BLM and the response she got to the article. She says she learned about the passion of SHRM members 

22:00 - Tim discusses his and KD’s criticism of SHRM and how the toughest critics are often the ones that want to see an organization succeed the most. Shana talks about how she sees the criticism of SHRM as a microcosm of what’s going on in the business world. 

24:20 - KD asks Shana what surprised her about SHRM and the HR community that she learned in the writing of her article. She responds by saying that she doesn’t see the demands from racial injustice and other injustices going away. 

27:00 - KD has a lot of requests for HR reporting! He brings up an idea to create a list of HR companies that are doing the best work to take meaningful action to get results. 

28:30 - Tim brings up Shana’s article “HR innovators who are transforming company culture”. Shana talks about FedEx’s program to hire young tech talent and a tech startup’s effort to make a non-homogenous workforce. 

34:00 - KD asks Shana about any grassroots efforts she’s seen that she is excited about. Shana talks about PWC’s training program for new employees and their commitment to better mental health programs for employees. 

36:30 - Tim asks Shana about how she foresees company culture changing in our new WFH environment. Shana takes an optimistic view and sees a better and more flexible company culture and increased humanism in the business world. 

42:00 - Check out Shana on LinkedIn, Twitter, or read her articles on Business Insider! Thank you to Shana for joining us this week and for all of her great work about the HR industry! Check out their paid membership for all of their content.

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Kris Dunn on LinkedIn

Jessica Lee on LinkedIn

Tim Sackett on Linkedin

HRU Tech

The Tim Sackett Project

The HR Capitalist

Fistful of Talent

Kinetix

Boss Leadership Training Series

In a word, yes.

I've written about the NFL's Rooney Rule here. Go dig into that for a primer. 

The whole point to the Rooney Rule is opening up the perspective of a walled-off hiring manager/executive.  That's why WMware announced a new commitment to include a minority and female candidate in every search at the company.

We're talking about this at length this week on The HR Famous Podcast. Take a listen below!

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In episode 21 of the HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to talk about The Rooney Rule and VMware’s new commitment to include a minority and female candidate in every search at the company. The gang also discusses how often they’ve filled up their car tanks during quarantine, and something called Generation Zoom.

Listen below (click this link if you don’t see the player below) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights:

1:30 – How many times have you filled your gas tank during quarantine? Jlee has only filled her tank once since March!

3:00 – Who doesn’t love a best friend duo that runs together? KD and Tim went running in Celebration, Florida together. KD was on Zillow on his phone the entire time they ran in the community and Tim was dying.

5:45 – KD has been reading a lot about “Generation Zoom”; our younger generation that has been learning through distance learning. Jlee talks about how her young kids may have trouble learning in the future since they are losing a lot of development time in school.

9:00 – Do you think there will be a dip in SAT and ACT scores in the coming year? Tim is interested to see where the data falls.

10:45 – First major topic of the day: The Rooney Rule. This NFL rule places interview quotas for minority candidates for coaching positions. Tim talks about how more minority candidates have been put into the interview process and what it’s meant in hiring minority coaches.

16:00 – Jlee discusses her own personal experience getting an opportunity that she might not have based on her resume and how she relates to the experience of Mike Tomlin.

18:00 – Tim talks about some negative views on the Rooney Rule and how often coaching positions are planned and picked out far in advance.

20:00 – KD and Jlee bring up another positive of the Rooney Rule, in that it forces forcing hiring managers to look harder and potentially finding special people that they may not have been able to find before, even if it’s not for that particular position.

22:30 – Second topic of the day: VMware’s CEO (Patrick Gelsinger) announced their company would commit to interviewing a POC and a woman for every single position. KD thinks this sounds similar to the Rooney Rule. KD and Tim praises VMware and other companies who have come out recently with new processes and practices to help diversify their workforce.

26:20 – Jlee brings up potential backlash from recruiters and other hiring managers. She notes that leaders need to give recruiters some leeway in order to reach performance metrics and new interviewing goals.

29:40 – How will this new hiring practice work in practice? KD brings up the self ID process and when it comes into play in the hiring process. Jlee discusses the data recruiters will be giving to hiring managers and how they will report that they are meeting a certain requirement.

33:00 – KD reads VMware’s CEO statement again to Tim and gets his reaction. Tim thinks there are many aspects to this new rule that need to be addressed in order to be successful in finding the best possible candidates.

36:00 – Pat (CEO of VM Ware) is a new best friend of the pod!

36:20 – Jlee and KD praise the leadership at VMware for going ahead with this announcement and implementation of the rule instead of getting bogged down in details and complaints.

38:45 – Jlee and KD talk about the concept of equality vs diversity, with KD bringing up Salesforce’s move years ago to grab the high ground of equality.

41:00 – HR Famous would like to congratulate Patrick Gelsinger from VMware on a job well done with their new version of the Rooney Rule.

In episode 20 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to discuss this week’s Supreme Court ruling, pronouns, and Zoom fatigue. The trio talk about the new developments that may come out of the SCOTUS ruling, the calling for the resignation of Adidas’ CHRO, and micromanaging WFH employees. 

Listen below (email subscribers, click this link if you don't see the player below) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

2:40 - Weird voicemail time: Tim talks about a voicemail he got from a young person looking for a job with no information whatsoever. Do you have any crazy voicemail stories?

4:50 - Do you put your phone number on your LinkedIn profile? Tim has his out there and he doesn’t get a lot of spam calls (yet).

5:40 - First major topic of the day: SCOTUS ruled last Monday that the Civil Rights Act protects LGBTQ workers from workplace discrimination. Jlee thinks that this is may open up a new dialogue about transgender workers amongst HR professionals and compliance. KD wonders about self IDs and any new developments with affirmative action. 

10:00 - Tim discusses the importance of collecting gender in order to collect data on discrimination. He also talks about how he first was hesitant about the importance of pronouns and how he’s come around on the importance of proper pronouns in the workplace. 

12:00 - Any Billions watchers out there?

13:00 - KD brings up the issue of a few corporations encouraging or forcing the use of personal pronouns on platforms like LinkedIn profiles. He thinks it may slow the progress of the adoption of this new practice. 

16:00 - Tim thinks that companies can force pronoun use and identification onto employees if they’re a company that fosters a more progressive culture. He thinks it may help with less offensive situations by encouraging leadership to adopt the practice and see the culture change from the top down. 

18:30 - Second topic of the day: Adidas employees are calling for the resignation of the brand’s CHRO Karen Parkin due to previous problematic comments on racial issues within the company. Jlee discusses how companies can’t have any missteps right now and if they do, they have to react quickly. 

23:00 - Tim and Jlee comment on their distaste for digging up old dirt and bringing it back up years later. He commends Howard Stern and his genuine apology for doing blackface. He also brings up the differences in racial issues across the world and from country to country. 

26:20 - KD says that it is hard for him to fathom a business leader that isn’t able to acknowledge issues within a company when confronted. Jlee discusses the need for humility and empathy as HR professionals. 

28:15 - Final topic of the day: micromanaging! We’re not talking about the messaging platform but about leaders who micromanage their teams. Tim calls out Jlee for being a micromanager but she claims her extra micromanaging is due to the uncertainty of the times. 

31:40 - Tim doesn’t believe in Zoom fatigue. Do you?

33:50 - “Do you know what’s worse than Zoom fatigue? Not having a job.” - Tim

34:00 - Jlee stands up for permanent remote employees who weren’t forced to show their face on camera before but are now due to everyone working remotely. 

35:20 - Did you know KD writes on the side?

37:15 - Tim thinks that 25-30 working at home may equate to 40 hours to an office.

Resources:

Jessica Lee on LinkedIn

Tim Sackett on Linkedin

Kris Dunn on LinkedIn

HRU Tech

The Tim Sackett Project

The HR Capitalist

Fistful of Talent

Kinetix

Boss Leadership Training Series

In episode 19 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee are back to discuss a number of topics about diverse hiring. The trio talk about Adidas’s new hiring goal, tech companies’ contribution to the BLM movement, and Starbucks’ uniform debacle. Later in the episode, Tim is joined by HR leader Jonathan Zoob about hourly hiring and sitting courtside at an NBA game. 

Click through if you don't see the player below, and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!

1:30 - The gang is finally back together! It’s been a few weeks, but Tim, Jlee, and KD are all back on the podcast this week!

2:30 - First topic of the day: popular brand pronunciations. Apparently, the US says everything different than the rest of the world. 

3:45 - Adidas has announced that 30% of their hires will be diverse hires. The gang praises Adidas for putting a number out there to start progress but they question where the hiring is going to cause change. 

8:40 - Tim discusses a goal that he had at a previous company for diverse hires in leadership roles. He talks about push back from hiring managers and other certain people that feel victimized by diversity hiring goals. 

10:30 - KD talks about his favorite “Tim working at Applebee’s” story. Tim says that Applebee’s restrooms are like “a war zone”.....

11:30 - CNBC compiled a list of different tech companies and what they’re doing to support the BLM movement. Every company on the list contributed lots of money, but only one organization announced a change in leadership, when the CEO of Reddit stepped down from his board seat to fill it with a POC. Tim accuses many tech companies of “buying their way out of this conversation” instead of making real change happen. KD thinks that monetary contributions are still commendable but they need to effect real change too. 

14:45 - “You have to have money but you also have to have tangible movement”. 

16:30 - Starbucks’ employees were told that they could not wear apparel supporting BLM to work. They received backlash because Starbucks’ allows their employees to wear Pride-related uniforms in the month of June. They have pivoted since their original decision. Jlee praises them for pivoting and listening to their employees and what they want. 

20:00 - Tim thinks that Starbucks’ and other companies that enforce uniforms should standardize their uniforms and not allow anything other than a standard option since it is easier to manage and can raise many issues. He says that you can support diversity and other causes and keep a plain uniform. 

22:00 - “Print the shirts” -KD

23:30 - Time for this week’s special guest! Jonathan Zoob from Fountain has joined Tim for the second half of this week’s episode to talk about hourly hiring. 

25:00 - Tim and Zoob talk about their bucket list to sit courtside at a NBA game. They’re both Golden State Warriors fans!

27:00 - Back to business talk. Tim discusses hearing about pre-pandemic struggles to hire hourly workers and he asks Zoob what is going to change about hiring hourly workers. 

30:00 - Tim asks Zoob why companies should use different systems for hourly workers. 

32:30 - Are new hiring practices for hourly workers causing companies to lose the traditional experience of finding the best candidate? Zoob discusses how his company’s work allows non-HR professionals to find more and better candidates. 

34:30 - Tim brings up issues about hiring to create a diverse workforce and how training hiring leaders may not be enough. Zoob discusses how often those doing hiring won’t get diversity and bias training. 

36:00 - What do Fountain’s clients see getting better when using the Fountain system? Zoob says their time to hire decreases significantly. 

37:15 - Tim asks Zoob how fast time to hire should be and Zoob answers that companies must engage candidates in the application process to really get them to stay interested. 

39:00 - Last question of the day: will mass hiring start to happen without interviewing in the coming years?

40:20 - Find Jonathan at fountain.com for a demo or on LinkedIn! 

Resources:

Jessica Lee on LinkedIn

Tim Sackett on Linkedin

Kris Dunn on LinkedIn

HRU Tech

The Tim Sackett Project

The HR Capitalist

Fistful of Talent

Kinetix

Boss Leadership Training Series