I’ve Recently Been Promoted. How Can I Gain the Respect of Older Team Members?

This is a typical problem that young and ambitious managers that have just been promoted face.  It’s completely normal that at some point in your manager career this happens – whether you like it or not. You’re either promoted from your old team or you have just been hired into a new one – no matter which is which, you will most often have someone in your team that is older than you are. You may be in the lucky situation where this person doesn’t want your job (is either satisfied with his current one or doesn’t feel strong enough to lead a team) or you may be constantly watching your back as this team member was your competitor during the assessment and is waiting for you to make a mistake just to prove to your managers that your promotion wasn’t such a great idea.

My advice comes to help you in the latter situation. So, what to do? Quit? Reject the promotion you’ve been working for such a long while? Absolutely NOT. If they promoted you, you must be good and you must deserve it, so be proud of it and act as a manager – make the team work together with you and deal with their frustrations in a diplomatic manner. If you run away, you will learn nothing out of this experience and the next time you apply for a new promotion, your current fears will overcome you once again. So, here’s what to do:

·         Involve the team members you fear most in your projects – make them feel more important than the rest of the team; seek their advice, ask for their opinion and even try to implement their suggestions if they are good; if not, explain to them why they are not – make them realize that in your position you have a larger picture and they will understand in the end;

·        Transform these older team members into change agents – meaning that you should explain your vision to them, make them improve it and embrace it, ask them to implement it into the team and reward them constantly (individually and publicly where necessary) for their success;

·         Delegate important tasks to these team members – again make them feel important and make them get a taste of what your job is like; this will make your job easier and also they will understand the challenges you face and will support you more than if you impose some actions on them; dictatorship most of the times ends in a “blood bath” – this sounds war like, but you get what I mean – they will try desperately to sabotage your every decision and your image as a manager;

·         Whenever  you get the chance, show them your knowledge – if you got the promotion, then it was for a reason – identify your strengths (your manager or the promoting committee can help) and try to make these visible to the team – whether you have great decision skills, you are a great organizer, you are stronger and don’t fear a direct talk with the client, whatever it is, make sure the team know your strengths;

·         Be open minded and admit your mistakes if you make any. Accept constructive criticism and thank those team members that discuss openly with you about mistakes, change and solutions.

Please feel free to add any new suggestions to my list from your experience. I am looking forward to your comments.

Take care,

Geo

Who Is Better in Human Resources? Men vs. Women…

Since there’s a timeless dispute between men and women concerning who is better at something, I decided to fuel it as well by asking the challenging question of “Who is a better HR person – men or women?”  Tough one…

Well, to be able to decide upon that, let’s see what a real HR person should be like:

• Should be sociable since work involves people every day;
• Must like working with people;
• Must be patient and understanding of others’ problems;
• Must be empathetic and must easily sense people’s feelings;
• Must see below the surface and by that I mean being able to read hidden body language, gestures, expressions below standard verbal language – people don’t always say what they mean – an HR person must be able to get that;
• Must be well organized since the volume of work is quite high in all areas of HR;
• Must be a good mediator quite often; since a lot of people have trouble communicating, HR must help them do that;
• Must be a good listener;
• Must be always ready to help;
• Must be a good diplomat – do the job even if you don’t like the people you work with;
• Must understand that inside the company, the employees are your clients and that clients’ needs come first – I really dislike this one, but it’s true unfortunately so you must deal with it; you know –client is king, client is always right and all that;

That’s more or less all there is to it. Foreign language skills or PC skills are useful, but not always top priority in this job. There are people who can help you with reporting or translations. Working with people is your main job.

And to make it more interesting, I would like to tell you about men and women from Alan Pease’s perspective. This is a fragment from one of my articles on www.lady-driver.com:

“Allan Peasein Why men don't listen and women can't read maps (very smart and funny video showing years of experience in the field - you can find it on YouTube):
Women:

• focus more on relationships and feelings rather than on facts; better social skills than men;
• can't point North;
• have a brain that is more complex;
• are multitasking - can perform more simultaneous non-related tasks because their brain has more connections;
• have poor sense of direction;
• can't read maps; have the tendency to rotate them to face the direction they are traveling;
• estimate distances poorly and need great exercise to improve; 
• have parking issues and speed and distance estimation problems;
• can use both hands simultaneously without much difficulty;
• sometimes have difficulties telling left hand from right hand;
• see better at short distances rather than long distances;
• have good peripheral eye sight ranging up to 60 degrees;
• can't look at information three-dimensionally - poor visual skills;
• prefer to park in a large space and walk rather than squeeze the car in small dangerous spots.”

Some are not relevant, but I preferred to include all just for you to understand women better and look for Alan’s video.

Now, coming back, since there aren’t so many men in the field, women must be better, right? In all the companies I have worked for, I had only 2 men colleagues in HR out of around 20. Also, I have never been at a workshop or conference where there were more than 10% HR men. Well?

Women must be better since they have better communication and social skills. This however doesn’t mean that man should completely stay out. A lot of HR men are very good at what they do. But women rule in HR as men rule in jobs like air traffic controller, pilot or aerospace engineer. 

Just to make it fun, I have placed a small survey on the left of the article. Please reply with your opinion concerning this debate. Who do you think is better in HR? Men or women?

July 8th: Survey is closed - please find results below:

 

Thanks and take care,

Geo

Have You Heard of “Fast Food Hiring”? I’m Not Talking About Burgers…

I have recently came across this funny new term and decided to share it. At first it seemed funny but after a deeper analysis it seemed to me that this is not that funny especially considering the fact that it happens to recruiters more than it should – during my 10 years of experience in recruitment and selection, I have to admit that around 20% of the positions that I was supposed to fill were done through “fast food hiring”. This is a lot considering the consequences.

What is “Fast Food Hiring”? Thinking about fast food, it’s easy to understand what “fast food hiring” is. When you feel really, really hungry, you grab the bite that is closest to you, no matter the damages to your health – you accept what you can get fast and cheap, no matter how much time you get to fight later with the extra weight, heart problems and stomach ache. In a company, your managers ask you to fill a position very fast, under stress, with high pressure allowing you to accept any candidate that meets as many requirements as possible considering the short time available. What happens then? You find out after a while that the candidate is not that great, that he has some hidden issue you didn’t investigate enough. Of course, exceptions are possible – you may be lucky to find someone great, but in most cases insufficient testing and investigation leads to inappropriate hiring. 

Pluses and Minuses of “fast food hiring”:

·         Pluses:

o   Position gets filled very fast, operations can move on;

o   Your task as a recruiter is done, you can get back to your other tasks;

o   Even if the new employee doesn’t meet all requirements, at least the team has a new colleague who can start taking a few of their tasks – as many as he can and as efficiently as a new employee can;

To be honest, that’s more or less all I could think of; no matter how hard I tried to find more.

·         Minuses:

o   Most of the time the new employee doesn’t meet all requirements and he needs additional training and additional time from the manager of the team and colleagues to become functional;

o   Since he will learn slower, the team will be able to function at full capacity after a longer time;

o   New employee may prove not motivated enough and may leave the team sooner than expected, the position becoming available again; this means a new recruitment process, new trainings, more time and money wasted;

o   Insufficient testing and interviewing may lead to hidden flaws that could be really serious: an employee with insufficient knowledge, with personality issues and problems to integrate within the team, a criminal record, medical problems, unexpected disciplinary matters, you name it;

o   Tensions may appear within the team when the old team members are introduced to someone new that should help them but instead is difficult to handle, to train, that lacks knowledge and needs too much time invested to become functional;

o   The manager may lose the team’s respect and support when they see what new member he has decided to hire – I know it’s tough and not nice, but people are cruel to others when their own time and money are affected – they may need to stay overtime to help the new guy do his work and they may not appreciate it, blaming the manager for the situation;

o   On the long term, the company loses money due to extensive training and time needed by the new employee to become fully efficient – and even more if he decides to leave after discovering that the job is not suitable for him; this happens often with “fast food hiring”;

Why does “fast food hiring” become necessary sometimes? Considering these reasons may help managers avoid them:

o   Fast, unplanned increase in operations which leads to a certain number of positions being open over night;

o   New contracts being signed fast without proper communication between HR and Sales; HR doesn’t find out on time about new positions and contractual terms force them to fill the positions fast;

o    Unexpected attrition/turnover – key members of the team decide to leave unexpectedly and they need to be replaced fast – this can be sometimes foreseen and avoided by proper communication between managers and the team members;

o   Poor communication between HR and Operations who know about people leaving or increase in number of team members, but don’t start working together on time to fill the positions – either Operations don’t tell soon enough or HR don’t communicate recruitment time frames or don’t start recruitment on time;

o   Positions difficult to fill – rare requirements that are not always available on the market like special languages or technical skills – when deadline gets closer, manager may be forced to accept anything due to time constraints;

o   Improper Induction training for new hires or improper communication of contract details – the new employee may find out details he may not like after getting hired and may decide to leave on the spot (legal specifications allowing that most of the times), the position becoming available sooner than expected and needing a new candidate no matter what;

How to avoid “fast food hiring” – considering the minuses mentioned above, I support the idea that this type of hiring must be avoided as much as possible. It must remain an exception not a rule in hiring techniques:

o   Planning, planning, planning – don’t leave things to chance, plan ahead all the resources you may need as a manager;

o   Good communication between HR and hiring manager – always decide together what is there to be done in order to always have the best resources on time;

o   Proper Induction training and proper communication of contract terms for all new hires;

o   Proper market research in order to make sure that resources are available within a certain area – if they are not and still they need to be hired, training must be considered.

That’s all for now. Any thoughts you may have on the matter or any of your own experiences you may like to share, please feel free to comment.

Take care,

Geo

Why Won’t Your Company Give You More Money? Your HR Knows But Can’t Always Tell

One all of the most important concerns for all employees is money. Let’s face it – that’s why you are working, right? The number of people that have other income sources and work only for the pleasure of it is very low. Most of us work for the money: to support our families, to buy a house, a car, to buy nice stuff, to go on vacations, to prove our social status, to feel important…

I am also sure that you must have tried at least once to get some more money at some point in your career – and you did this by going to discuss with your manager, by quitting your job and by getting a new one or by applying for a promotion. A lot of times you have been told NO when you asked for more money. Ever wondered why?  I’m sure you have… the reasons are multiple, but I will deal here with those that have proven background. So, let’s begin…

1.       Huge social taxes that companies pay to the state. Besides your base salary (out of which you pay some income taxes), the company is overwhelmed by other taxes on salaries as well. Sometimes, just for you to get 1 USD or 1 Euro, or whatever, your company needs to pay 2 more to the state. This is overwhelming and sometimes companies pay money to the employees on the black payroll just to avoid those taxes. It’s not nice because those taxes go to the Retirement Office, to the Health Office or to Unemployment Fund for unemployed people, but sometimes companies have to in order to survive.  Here are some examples of taxes paid in Europe: UK and France – 26% (it means that for each 100 pounds or Euros in the employee’s contract, the company pays 26 more to the state), Germany and Austria – 30%, Italy – 32%, Norway – 36%, Denmark – 41%, Belgium – 43%; all these are huge amounts for a company to handle;

2.       Global Company Policy to lower costs – it’s no longer surprising to anybody that companies exist for profit – not for charity, not to make employees happy, not to make the world a better place – profit is king. So, don’t be surprised when a huge corporation announces that it closes a 2000-employees plant in Western Europe to move it to India. Imagine you work in France, you have asked for a salary raise but they just won’t give it to you? Still wondering why? Well, think that employees in India accept salaries 10 times lower than yours and are happy. Don’t be surprised if in a year your job will be transferred there. Eastern Europe and India and now hot locations due to the low level of salaries that people accept. Sometimes, it goes even further. Renault – Dacia in Romania has unofficially started thinking about moving their plant to Morocco because Romanian workers have asked for more money and costs in Morocco are even lower than Romania – workers in Romania earn around 300 Euro/month. Guys in France, what do you say? 300 Euro started to be considered too high for the company to be profitable. Sad, isn’t it? But let’s face it – the group doesn’t care about any of you in France, Romania or Morocco. They just strive for profit. If Mars will turn more profitable, they will find a way to move there;

3.       Global Company Policy to lower the number of older employees – this is sad and disturbing but it happens. I must admit that this measure is currently closer to me than you may think – this is the target of our HR department for this year. The idea is to accept a certain rate of attrition/turnover just because this means older, more experience employees with higher salaries will be replaced by young people that are just learning and who obviously earn less. Nobody cares that all these people need to be recruited and trained. It’s not the job of VPs or top management – it’s the job of local HR and local managers and as long as profit and money keep coming, which VP do you think cares? If they are on their yacht somewhere in the Caribbean, they don’t care. Do you get it now why you are not receiving more money? Keep asking and asking and you will be welcome to leave. They will replace you with someone who accepts less money.

4.       Top managers get annual bonuses as percentage of company savings – this is disturbing but true. I have faced it in one of my former companies where management used to cut a lot of the sales guys’ bonuses just to make annual savings higher. Everything in the company was very carefully monitored – even office supplies. This is a fact and it happens around you more than you think. And since your manager may get a higher bonus if he saves more, do you think he’s motivated to give you a pay raise? Stop dreaming…

So, guys, sorry about this bitter article – this is just a dose of reality for those who still dream of a pink corporate world. Wake up! It doesn’t exist. Nobody (except those who work around you - your colleagues, your direct manager sometimes, your local HR) cares. You are just a small gear in the corporate mechanism that produces profit. You are replaceable if you break down…

Be back soon hopefully with a more optimistic article.

Take care,

Geo