No, you're not. But a growing number of people in the world will say that you are a jerk for sending that 9 pm email.

The reality is . . . it's complicated. Let's dig in.

You being a total machine and working to get things done isn't the issue. The issue is the perception that you're projecting your workhorse mentality onto others who report to you who can't match your speed, urgency, or general kick-ass vibe.

In today's world of empathy, mental health awareness, and work/life balance considerations, a growing population feels like you're part of the problem with your drive, ambition and . . .

. . . after-hours emails.  

A recent Wall Street Journal column cited a study of perceived urgency of after hours emails.  Here's what they found (link to full column here):

"We examined this question in a series of studies with a total of more than 4,000 working adults. We had participants take the perspective of either a sender or a receiver of a non-urgent work email sent outside work hours. We asked “senders” to indicate how quickly they expected a response and asked “receivers” to indicate how quickly they thought senders expected a response from them. We consistently found that receivers overestimated the need for a fast response—something we call the “email urgency bias.”

In both studies, we found that, on average, receivers assumed they needed to respond 36% faster to off-hours work emails than senders expected. What’s more, the receivers reported feeling more stressed by off-hours work emails than senders expected them to feel, and the stress associated with this unnecessary pressure resulted in lower subjective well-being.

Without question, when a work email comes in after hours, a lot of your direct reports are going to treat it with more urgency. As they should, if you're the boss. The best practice is laying some ground rules for what you expect when you send the after-hours email.

But before we dig into that, let's further define the players in this email game of after-hours communication. Below is my roster of the players involved.

There are Three Types of Managers When It Comes to Sending an After-Hours Email:

1--Fire away, let's get s**t done. You might or might not expect an answer to your after-hours email. But you'll be damned if you're going to worry about how people feel when you send late or weekend emails. By the way, I support you getting things done. Shine on, you crazy diamond. There's a reason you're in the seat you're in. The bottom line is if no one is sending after-hours emails, you probably don't have much of a company.  Don't shoot the messenger. It's true. "A" players aren't held captive by broad, over-arching calls for empathy. 

2--I'm not sending this now, it will be seen as anti-work/life balance. This manager has seen the light related to work-life balance and is not sending the message out when they think of it, making a note to send it out during normal business hours. Is this rationalization? Is this the most efficient path? I could argue that many of these messages would be delayed by getting busy. In addition, managers who can say they never send out after-hours emails probably aren't—wait for it—working after hours! I could also argue that managers who don't work at least some after hours and weekends are on average trailing from a total production/results perspective. Again, don't kill the messenger. All things being equal, a manager putting in fifty hours is going to outperform one who works only normal business hours. Hard facts from the salt mine.

3--I'm sending now but via Outlook's send later tool, so people think I'm cranking it out in the morning. Ah! The evolved manager related to after-hours emails. This manager says the following: "I'm here kicking ass after hours, but I'm aware that culturally, people are starting to be criticized for work/life balance signals with off- hours emails. I'm using 'send later' so people think my work day starts at 6:22 am." This manager works when they want to work and, if they don't need the response immediately, is winning the game of public opinion by timing messages to be more palatable. They're still crushing the team to get s**t done; they're just showing that they are evolved, even if they wonder why others don't work the way they do.

But let's not forget the employee side of this after-hours email exchange. You can talk about work/life balance all you want, but the reality appears below.

There are Three Types of Employees When It Comes to Email Management:

1--I respond within the hour to anything you send. Nights and Weekends included. You love them. Maybe they do need protected a bit. But damn, it's nice to know they're there.

2--I don't respond during nights and weekends, but I'm in control and you aren't disappointed by my timeliness of response. Cool. You still love #1 better, but you see this group and trust this group. We're good. Look forward to your response to the 9pm email in the morning.

3--I have trouble being responsive to email. It doesn't matter when it is sent, you'll rarely feel like you're a priority. The dirty secret to all the work/life balance world yelling about your after-hours emails is that even if you send all your emails at normal times, this segment still sucks at responsiveness. They're also probably the first ones to bitch about your work ethic and drive, and yes, your 9:31 pm email about the Sparkman account.  

Run through it, and your choices are clear. Keep doing what you're doing or adapt.

The Wall Street Journal article recommends making these disclaimers in your after-hours emails—I kid you not:

--“Even though I’m sending this email outside regular work hours, which fits my own work-life schedule best, I don’t expect a response outside of your own work hours.”

--“Note that you might receive this message outside of my office hours but that I have no expectation to receive a message outside of your office hours.”

--“Please know that I respect boundaries around personal time. If you receive an email from me during your personal time, please protect your time and wait to respond until you are working. It’s important that we all prioritize joy over email whenever possible.”   (KD note - !!!!!)

I honestly am fatigued by these messaging suggestions. The problem with these messages is that you're still the boss, and you need service on the things you need service on. 

I'd recommend the following options: 1) do nothing different and keep on rocking emails when you want, 2) adapt and use the "send later" option and still rock how you want to rock, or 3) make sure everyone on your team knows that you'll text or call them if you need an immediate reply to an after-hours email, which prevents you from the absurd messaging recommended above in every after-hours email.

If you're concerned about this, I'd recommend the "send later" option. It still says you're working harder than most and need people to be in range of your sense of urgency. I'd text people as needed without making the proclamation.

The bigger the company, the more you'll need the strategy in this area in years to come. Big companies follow broader society trends more responsively than smaller companies.

Your employees' feelings matter. But then, so do yours.

KD out.

-9:54 pm

Editor's Note: To keep the crazies away on both extremes, I present my status and views on vaccination below.

--Vaccination Status: Fully Vaccinated (Pfizer)
--View of Employer Mandates: Supportive that organizations should do what they think is best, especially in healthcare or high contact businesses
--Historic View of Broad Federal Mandates: Not Supportive
--Zodiac Sign: Scorpio (actually Taurus, but Scorpio sounds super credible)

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Now that we've got the housekeeping out of the way, let's break down one underreported aspect of the looming vaccine mandates by the federal government via OSHA.

Let's talk about remote workers.

It's interesting to me that thinking about remote workers hasn't gotten more attention since the potential of an OSHA vaccine mandate was announced by the Biden administration. After all, the number of hours worked remotely by the American workforce rose by 500 percent during the pandemic, and many of these workers remain 100 percent remote. 

First up, if you're late to the game and need to know why OSHA is being used for the proposed vaccine mandate, click this link to read up. OHSA's involved because it's the clearest path for the Biden administration to get the mandate done in a legally defensible way.

The bones of the vaccine mandate proposal are pretty simple for the private sector: all employees in companies with one hundred or more employees must be fully vaccinated or submit to weekly COVID tests.

But what about remote workers? If you have an employee who's been Zooming the hell out of her job since April 2020, and there's no sign that she's coming back into the office, what's the requirement for her? Does she need to be vaccinated or tested under the mandate?

The simple answer is that we don't know. The OSHA rule covering this hasn't been released and likely won't be for thirty to sixty days. So, until we get that rule/guidance, we don't know for sure.

But there are some good hooks from a legal perspective in the past week. Consider this from our friends at SHRM, who above all else LOVE A GOOD LEGAL UPDATE:

Editor's Note: This post was published before the proposed Vaccine Mandate for all private employers with more than 100 employees by the Biden Administration in September 2021.

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We're just going to shut everything down for two to three weeks, and we'll be good.

--Everyone, late March 2020

-----------------

In a pandemic, wouldn't it be cool to say, "I don't know?"

Masks, distancing, hybrid school, vaccines and more. The reasonable position on all of it is that most of it makes sense. But, if you become absolute about your position and your position turns out to be wrong, it kind of undermines your authority to be absolute moving forward. This is the problem with COVID hot takes eighteen months in.

Three weeks to flatten the curve.

Masks are effective. Wait, two masks might be better!

Say hello to leisure travel and eating out with freedom once you get the vaccine.

You can't get COVID once you get the vaccine.

Uhhhh. Like a lot of moderates, I'm stuck in the middle. I'm OK with how we've handled it to this point. Pandemics seem to be tricky (shocking!), and we've tried some stuff and have a vaccine. It makes sense. But we've been wrong enough on all the non-vaccine stuff that it's human nature that some people are going to be skeptical of the vaccine.

That's where you come in, HR Leader. Time to rally around the Covid vaccine.

What's that? You say you don't want to be involved? Good luck with that. Having no plan or point of view still means you have a position. With FDA approvals starting to roll out, you're going to be looked to for an opinion on how to maximize the percentage of your workforce that is vaccinated.

I'll stop here and offer up the reality. Different companies have different views on COVID and using incentives/mandates/penalties to get people vaccinated. If you are at a business that's not going to get involved with mandates/driving behavior, that's fine from my moderate point of view—you do you. This post is for HR and Talent leaders who have to help find the path to higher vaccination rates, because their business, leadership and/or boards make it a necessity.

Maximizing vaccine rates at your company is a game of incentives, threats and intrigue.  Especially in a tough labor market where it's hard to find people. In a morbid turn, the Delta variant probably makes it easier for you to take a stand related to vaccination.

That's why I'm here. To rank the Vaccine incentives/penalties—by harshness.

Here. We. Go. On to the rankings, from softest to hardest:

1--Incentives - You're so nice. Kind even. You're throwing out extra PTO days or $500 to get the vaccine. This is the least harsh of all the options. It's also the one least likely to move the needle, because you're likely just paying for someone to get the vaccine with more urgency than they would have anyway. They were likely to get it, and you gave them the final prod with a free Honey Baked Ham. Well played. Not likely to get you to 90% vaccinated, however.

2--Vaccine Mandates - I know what you're thinking. This isn't the harshest one? No, it isn't. If vaccinations are important to your organization, this is the one that signals where you're at. You can also talk about all the reasons why you're doing it: keeping people safe (really important for healthcare organizations), etc. There's nothing like clarity when you're trying to lead.

3--Medical Insurance Penalties/Surcharges - Delta Air Lines will impose a monthly $200 surcharge on unvaccinated employees enrolled in the company's health care plan, CEO Ed Bastian announced in a memo earlier in August. This is undoubtedly the harshest way to deal with employees when you want them to get vaccinated.

Why are additional premiums a dumb idea? Let's start with the broad strokes. If you want all your employees to be vaccinated, LEAD and go to vaccine mandates as your strategy. The whole, "it's going to cost you" strategy just leads to ill will, indecision, and creates a long trail of dissatisfaction in your organization. You're creating a class of people and asking others to look down on them. Just cut the cord, mandate the vaccine if that's what you want to do, and get ready to recruit.

If you need more of a reason than pure leadership to know why insurance penalties are a bad idea, let's so some math. I'm using the Georgia workforce for Delta Air Lines as an example:

Total Delta Employees in GA: 33,000

Estimate of count of non-vaccinated: 9,000

Annual cost of non-vaccinated insurance penalty per employee: $2,400

Total pool created annually by the penalty payments: $21.6 million

Cost per COVID hospitalization: $24,000

Number of Hospitalizations that would need to happen to use the entire pool: 900

I'd note here that Delta says their cost is north of $50,000 per COVID hospitalization. Clearly, they are self-insured and have access to the data, but all cites available show average hospitalization cost from $17K to $24K, so I used the higher number of those two.

To give you a sense of COVID hospitalization rates, Georgia has had 72,822 COVID hospitalizations since the start of COVID on a population north of ten million. If I plug in those numbers to the Delta population, it comes to a projection of roughly 237 hospitalizations (versus the 900 they've funded via the penalty) that could be expected over the same period. You could argue that the rate would be lower since we now live in a world with many vaccinated, but variants like Delta put that analysis at risk, so let's assume the run rate might be the same.

So the Delta program isn't looking to simply pay the costs of hospitalizations; they had to make the number much bigger to provide the penalty needed to move human behavior. Anyone who stays and pays that penalty is going to hate the company for the rest of their life. Gallup says employing people and making them hate you is a bad idea.

All of that to say the following. If you are at a business that's not going to push, that's fine from my moderate point of view—you do you.  

BUT, if you're going to push for vaccinations, incentives won't get you there. You can stop short of the vaccine mandate, but I'd argue things like the Delta COVID penalty are just going to create ill will. If you want people to be vaccinated, make the call and lead—and mandate the vaccine.

Good luck with the educational campaign. And fire up the recruiting engine regardless of your approach.

Leadership is hard.

Most people don't worry about having to do business introductions. I'd say that for 90% of the world, introducing someone to a person inside your network for the express purpose of mutual gain isn't a thing.

For 10% of us (myself included), the requests come on a weekly basis. It's a thing and it's full of peril, as the tweet below (email subscribers, click through if you don't see the tweet) from Valley investor Chris Sacca outlines:

If you ask for an introduction, once it’s been made, it is on you to follow up first.

If you make an introduction without double opt-in, it’s on you to come up with your last words before the firing squad.

— Chris Sacca 🇺🇸 (@sacca) July 26, 2021

Sacca's fired up about it and and as a top .01% target of unsolicited business introductions, he believes the following to be true:

All business introductions you make to me should have my permission before you proceed with the introduction (this is the double opt-in) reference.

Is that true and necessary?

Maybe. Maybe not. Two years ago, I remember hearing from a CHRO, who I would consider a tier 2 network contact of mine (close, but not vacationing together, LOL), that he hated when people made introductions without asking him. That gave me pause, and I started asking that person before I introduced people to him (average of one to two per year).

But just because Sacca and that CHRO think you should always ask doesn't make it true. Here's my rundown of whether permission should be requested and granted before I make an introduction to my network. You can think about your own network if you're a person who makes introductions as part of your normal business life:

--RULE #1 - Don't make sales intros for people you don't know well and aren't at least a tier 2 person in your network (see below).

--Intros to Tier 1 People - These are the closest people in your professional life. You naturally protect these people but also 100% know what's good for them. With that in mind, they get intros from me WITHOUT their approval. I get them and know them best. (this is 5-10 people in my life)

--Intros to Tier 2 People - This is the next circle of influence out. You're more than a casual acquaintance with these folks. Whether you need to ask permission probably depends on the value your introduction is providing to them. If they get as much or more from the introduction as the person being introduced, they get an intro WITHOUT an opt-in. But the value has to be that obvious. If not, getting opt-in is probably warranted. (this is probably 30-40 people in my life)

--We Interrupt This Lecture to Talk About the People Who Report To You and are otherwise in your span of control—see Tier 1. You know what the people who report to you and are in your organization 2-3 levels down need, right?  And you're the boss? Asking for permission seems to be a timid action that wastes your time and undermines your authority. #fireaway

--Everyone Else - Asking for permission seems to make sense, unless there's so much value to the introduction that it couldn't be called into question.

You know, like introducing them to Chris Sacca.

See what I did there?

BTW, this is all based on the authority you hold in your domain. If you're a baller, you're going to ask permission less than the average person. Do you think Chris Sacca is asking for double opt-in when he makes introductions?

KD out.

Hiring Recruiters is Hard - This Makes it Easier

When it comes to Talent Acquisition, there's one thing that can sneak up on TA and HR leaders - hiring recruiters for your own team. As good as you are at serving the needs of the businesses you support, having a strategy to land the best recruiting talent can be challenging.

I've always used an assessment layer when we hire recruiters at our firm, so this Kinetix Labs paper, The Assessment Profile of a High-Performing Recruiter, outlines everything we've learned about using an assessment to hire the best recruiters and prevent false positive hires. Download this paper and you'll get the following:

• Eight Assessment dimensions to evaluate recruiters 
• Ranges you need in each dimension to predict performance
• Notes on the best way to read an assessment and get to a go/no-go decision

False positives when you hire suck. "False Positives" is the fancy way to say, "Damn, I missed again." While there's no silver bullet, adding an assessment layer can help.

Hit this link to download. Enjoy!

"You don't know me, son!"

--David Goggins

I'll start with a shout out to the benefits of tracking my s**t everywhere on the web. I don't mind it. I like when Google knows, based on the time of day, where I'm going and tells me how long it's going take to get there. I'm fine with the running shoe recommendations and more I get from Instagram. Helpful. 

Track me all day long, because I live an honest life. You're going to be freaking bored if you track me for dirt. 

But don't judge me.

You know who's in the business of tracking AND judging? Microsoft Office.

Google and Instagram don't tell you that you could be a better person. Microsoft does, and it should bother you as an individual, and if it doesn't, you might want to put on your strategy hat and think about the judging and influencing that's going on across your organization. You know—the leadership thing.

WHY I'M TALKING ABOUT MICROSOFT ACTING LIKE MY PARENT

Last week, I was just minding my own business and got an email from the MS Office Suite from a toolset called "My Analytics."  The email was titled "My Analytics/Well-being Edition" and was sent at 1:27 am.  I'll let you soak for a second on that combination. 

The email sent by the MS Office 365 engine proceeded to give a reading on my state of well-being.  

Ready for my stats? Remember, I didn't opt into this, it just came to me as an individual employee.  Here's what MS Office thinks about my work habits related to their expertise in "well-being."

1--MS Office is not impressed with my commitment to excellence/world domination/crushing it.

In this case, well-being is defined as not allowing yourself to be interrupted after hours, which means outside the normal office hours you set up in Outlook. Apparently, I'm one step away from working in the Nike/Phone factory in China when it comes to well-being, given the fact that I've had two Quiet days protected from disruption. 

What Microsoft doesn't measure: how I define work-life balance. It doesn't show when I'm not working during the day, instead showing that as "focus" time. If you call looking at NBA trade rumors as focus time, you're 100% correct. I kid—the point is that this indicates I am outside of some PhD's "boundaries for clean living" but does nothing to show that I work hard during the day.

2--MS Office is also concerned about my health when I'm online in some fashion "past midnight."

At least one to two times a week I wake up in the middle of the night, and I know me—I'm up for ninety minutes at least. Sometimes I grab the phone and scroll. Sue me.

Here's an idea: if you are going to lecture me about looking passively at my email at 2 am, maybe you shouldn't send me your wellbeing email at 1:27 am. Just saying.

3-- MS Office would like to admonish me for being too responsive to email.

MS Office thinks reading 75% of emails is obsessive. That's just me kicking some ass, Redmond. I'm guessing while I hear this, feedback on the well-being front doesn't flow to people who are awful at email. You know, something like, "you have ninety unread emails that are more than a week old. Your employment may be in danger."  That's a well-being note for sure, and one that some people need to hear. Who's going to give them that message? I doubt that it's Microsoft.

4--While MS Office is quick to judge my hours, it only reports on the number of emails I receive and send; it has no opinions on this topic.

OK! I send 160 emails a week! Is that a lot compared to my peers? Are people taking action on my emails? I read 1,000 emails a week. Am I responding to the right ones? MS Office doesn't have input for me here. Too bad, lost opportunity.

WHAT'S THE POINT? I THOUGHT YOU'D NEVER ASK.

The point is this: this is less about you and me as individuals and more about the messages flowing in your organization. If you're not aware of the messaging that "MyAnalytics" might be sending to your team, you might want to consider the following realities/impact of this type of reporting (that you didn't ask for):

1--This type of well-being reporting is one-way and doesn't have context. If you give a lot of great flexibility for people to figure out how they want to get it done, the standard version of how MS Outlook won't cut it. They could be doing their own thing during the day (approved by you as long as the work gets done), and that will show up as "focus" time. Translation: your org will be framed with the negative (hey, buckaroo, why are you looking at email at 9pm), with no credit given for the positive (I don't micro manage my people's hours).

2--The standard MyAnalytics Package aims to reduce responsiveness under a cloak of "focus time." You reply to emails with a lot of urgency? Hey, you might want to lay off providing great responsiveness. The problem, of course, is that MyAnalytics won't take on the other side of giving feedback. It won't tell someone they should be worried about further employment because they suck at responsiveness. 

3--Performance isn't considered. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. High performers everywhere work harder than average performers 99% of the time. While MyAnalytics makes broad recommendations to cover well-being, a braver tool would not only cover well-being but would give some line of sight for where you fall in these measurements in your company, which makes the guidance culture-specific. That guidance would go something like this: "Hey Kris, you're answering 75% of your email within 30 minutes, the average at your company is 150 minutes. Why don't you still do great things in this area but only check email once an hour? The benefits of doing this are ___________. Plus, consider this: only 13% of people you respond to that quickly look at your email within 150 minutes."

I like the idea of well-being tools. But well-being doesn't exist in a vacuum. It has to be placed in a package with performance, organizational culture, and great recommendations based on data that compares you with others in your company.

Think about those things, Microsoft. And maybe stop sending me wellness emails at 1:27am—if you're going to preach to me about reading emails past working hours.

KD out.

Post-Covid. Summer of 2021. The tour you wish you didn't have a ticket for.

You thought the market would be employer driven coming off of 14% unemployment. You (we) were wrong.

Here we are. The recruiters, the HR pros, the talent leaders. At our best, we like to think about candidate experience and, at times, even take action to make it better. If the internet has taught us one thing, it's that it's probably too easy to apply for a job you're not qualified for via technology. That means hundreds of applications—way too many to treat people with any modicum of respect.

So from a candidate experience perspective, the entry level action item is, "I told everyone who didn't get the job they applied for where they stood." To do anything else is a form of ghosting.

I gotta be fair to my recruiting and HR brothers and sisters. If people are applying for a hundred jobs a day through Indeed Easy Apply, I'm not sure they should expect that courtesy. 

Still, ghosting candidates is bad, and we'd like to avoid it.

Especially now that candidates HAVE THE NERVE TO START GHOSTING US.

It's true that in the post-COVID world, especially at the $20/hour, 40K and under range, candidates are increasingly ghosting good natured recruiters by not doing one of the following:

1) answering an initial note to talk,

2) showing up to phone screens,

3) showing up to live interviews with hiring managers, or

4) showing up to their first day of work.

It hurts, right? Every time a candidate ghosts us or a hiring manager, it's time to do what comes naturally, which is to blame COVID-period federal and state unemployment benefits for de-incentivizing millions of Americans from truly wanting to work. That reality means that those in the marketplace can act horribly as candidates, confident that another job is available the same day if they decide to pass on your scheduled call.

Getting ghosted by a candidate sucks.

But I'm here to tell you that they're actually doing you a favor, and your job when you recruit is to make someone who is inclined to ghost DO IT AS EARLY IN THE PROCESS AS POSSIBLE.

Why should that be the goal? Simple. Because the later they do it in the process, the more it hurts your business and your reputation as a recruiter.

With that in mind, I'm giving you the following 3 rules FOR PULLING THE GHOST OUT OF A CANDIDATE as soon as possible, if it exists inside them:

1--Give as many critical details that might make the candidate ghost you as early as possible.  Money, hours, and any other critical decision point should be shared with the candidate as early as you can. Don't assume just because you shared these details in a posting that they've actually read them (see note above about applying for 100 positions a day). If a candidate has the ability to ghost you, sharing details as well as hard facts is the best way to get them to do it early.

2--Make the candidate do some form of work to get to the next stage. What's up, automated calendar? If a candidate can't do something as simple as pick a time rather than you spoon feed them, they're probably a) not the candidate for you, or b) they were going to ghost you any way. Do some simple task for me, candidate. In later stages (but not too late!), taking the time to complete an assessment you have is a great way to see who's going to ghost you later and get it out of the way.

3--Challenge them to commit to showing up to the next step. Turns out, simply talking to candidates about showing up and how others have ghosted you is a great way to increase your show rate. It's behavioral science, if someone commits after you ask them for a specific commitment, they're much less like likely to blow you or your hiring manager off.

Let's say that four out of every ten candidates you interact with in this post-COVID environment has something in them that might lead to ghosting. You want to get that out of the way and DARE THEM TO GHOST YOU as early as possible. Remember, them applying and then never replying when you reach out is a form of ghosting. That's when you want it to happen, so get the party started right and give them the hard details in your first text/email and make them pick a time to talk to you rather than you serving them like a 100K waiter at the Four Seasons.

Ghosting by candidates is bad. Ghosting by candidates late is worse. 

Let's embrace early ghosting, then blame the government for this mess like we've always done (insert evil laugh).

The best candidates don't want a boss or a manager. They want a Career Agent.

A boss/manager of people who is a Career Agent is there to get the job done and get business results, but they'll accomplish something very important along the way. A career agent, as a manager of people, approaches every assignment to the team, every task, and all feedback through a simple lens related to the team member/employee in question.

What's in it for you to do what I'm asking you to do?

Think about that for a second.  Whether you're assigning work, talking about a project, or giving hard feedback for improvement, a boss who is also a career agent isn't simply telling you what to do. They're telling you WHY doing what they are encouraging you to do is good for you.

There's a big difference between normal bosses/managers of people and ones who are actively career agents.

That difference? The direct reports of Career Agents think their bosses actually give a shit about them. I'm not talking about empathy, which is a cheap word these days. I'm talking about advocacy.

Advocacy over empathy in a manager means this - "I care about how you feel, but I'm more interested in pushing you to see the game and absolutely crush it in your career, so you can thrive workwise, take care of your family, and feel great about who you are professionally."

Of course, not everyone is ready for Career Agent-type advocacy. Some just want their manager to leave them alone, to let them do the basics and not think about what's next, where they want to go, etc.

To the average employee, that sounds exhausting.

To the high performer with ambition, that sounds like the boss they want and need.

A funny thing happens with managers who are Career Agents for those who work for them. Word gets around, and they end up with stronger teams.

But if you're out there as a candidate, you have imperfect information on the potential future boss in front of you. If you have ambition, start with some or all of these 5 questions to figure out if your interviewer is going to be a true advocate for your career:

1--Are you considered one of the best in your company/location/business unit for developing people and seeing them promoted multiple times? (Spoiler alert: avoidance of the question isn't great. Neither is overconfidence, because the true manager as career agent knows how hard this status is to achieve. Following up with examples is fair to the interviewer with great confidence.)

2--How do you approach a direct report you feel has more to give, but you haven't seen the results yet? (Listen closely for the difference between getting the minimum out of non-performers versus developing performers.)

3--What's your approach to the grunt work that has to be done in any job vs. the activities that grow someone and prepare them for the next step in their career? (You want to hear that the manager always has their eye on getting you out of the weeds and helping you grow.)

4--Have you ever made a referral hire from a former direct report who now works at another company? Tell me more! (Testing the fact that they keep relationships warm when someone has the audacity to leave the company nest—average managers hate that.)

5--Who have you managed in your career that you now consider your peer? (Testing for a complete devotion to development and low ego related to hiring people who have the potential to be as good as or better than they are.)

If these questions sound like a lot to spring on someone who is interviewing you, you're 100% right. You'll hear things earlier in the interview process that tells you the manager in front of you is average, and they won't respond well to this line of questioning. It's up to you whether you want that job or not. Sometimes you have to feed the family and just get paid. I get it.

But if you're lucky enough to have options, and you want to be developed (regardless of career level), these questions are fair game. If you ask them and you get average or even slightly irritated answers, you know the deal. Stay where you are.

But if the potential manager in front of you perks up to the questions, is humble about what they are capable of, and engages, proceed and get as much as you can from the conversation. End the session with a request for referrals (current or otherwise) where people will talk about what it is like to work for them.

Find this person, and you've found your home related to who you want to work for.

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

Jessica Lee on LinkedIn

Tim Sackett on Linkedin

Kris Dunn on LinkedIn

The Tim Sackett Project

The HR Capitalist

Fistful of Talent

Boss Leadership Training Series

There's a lot of hate heading Facebook's way these days. But step away from the politics and the obvious corrosive, addictive drawbacks of social media, and you'll see a company that has fought like hell, got lucky at times and generally rallied the troops better than most around BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). See this post for more on the value of a good BHAG.

BHAGs at Facebook include the move from campus focus to the general public, the move to mobile first and more.  But let's talk about one BHAG that most of us have forgot about.

Let's talk about Google Plus (or Google+) and remember the threat and the response.

Google+ ------ Man, some kids don't even know what this was. Here's a definition of the social app launched by Google back in 2011:

Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus; sometimes called G+) was a social network owned and operated by Google. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other Google products like Gmail, Google Drive, Blogger and YouTube. The service, Google's fourth foray into social networking, experienced strong growth in its initial years, although usage statistics varied, depending on how the service was defined. 

Google+ was introduced in June 2011. Features included the ability to post photos and status updates to the stream or interest-based communities, group different types of relationships (rather than simply "friends") into Circles, a multi-person instant messaging, text and video chat called Hangouts, events, location tagging, and the ability to edit and upload photos to private cloud-based albums.

Google+ was shut down for business and personal use on April 2, 2019. Google+ continued to be available as "Google+ for G Suite".

Google+ was perceived as a huge threat inside Facebook when it launched. After all, many of us live our lives through the Google Suite, so it makes sense that a social network that liquified that usage was going to pop in a big way.

At Facebook, the launch of Google+ was scene as a declaration of war. The company had a large sign in its Bay Area HQ that simply said "LOCKDOWN." It was rarely used. The sign was lit up upon the launch of Google+ and it was an all hands on deck moment.

Mark Zukerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, wasn't a great public speaker. But he took the mic during the all hands meeting that followed shortly after the LOCKDOWN sign was lit up. Here's how the scene was described in the book Chaos Monkeys:

"Rounding off another beaded string of platitudes, he changed gears and erupted with a burst of rhetoric referencing one of the ancient classics he had studied at Harvard and before. “You know, one of my favorite Roman orators ended every speech with the phrase Carthago delenda est. ‘Carthage must be destroyed.’ For some reason I think of that now.” He paused as a wave of laughter tore through the crowd.

The aforementioned orator was Cato the Elder, a noted Roman senator and inveigher against the Carthaginians, who clamored for the destruction of Rome’s great challenger in what became the Third Punic War. Reputedly, he ended every speech with that phrase, no matter the topic.

Carthago delenda est. Carthage must be destroyed!"

There's nothing more BHAG than a big ass sign that's the size of a family sedan that says "LOCKDOWN" and your CEO pointing at a competitor and saying, "Carthage Must Be Destroyed."  The internal PR team also went into BHAG mode as evidenced by another passage in Chaos Monkeys:

The Facebook Analog Research Laboratory jumped into action and produced a poster with CARTHAGO DELENDA EST splashed in imperative bold type beneath a stylized Roman centurion’s helmet. This was Facebook’s ministry of propaganda, and it was originally started with no official permission or budget, in an unused warehouse space. In many ways, it was the finest exemplar of Facebook values: irreverent yet bracing in its martial qualities.

The Carthago posters went up immediately all over the campus and were stolen almost as fast. It was announced that the cafés would be open over the weekends, and a proposal was seriously floated to have the shuttles from Palo Alto and San Francisco run on the weekends, too. This would make Facebook a fully seven-days-a-week company; by whatever means, employees were expected to be in and on duty. In what was perceived as a kindly concession to the few employees with families, it was also announced that families were welcome to visit on weekends and eat in the cafés, allowing the children to at least see Daddy (and, yes, it was mostly Daddy) on weekend afternoons. 

And if you're skeptical of the value of a true BHAG moment like LOCKDOWN AND "Carthage Must Be Destroyed," that's cool. Just know it matters when the survival of your company is at question. The final passage I'll share from Chaos Monkeys talks about the difference in moods at Google versus Facebook:

Facebook was not f**king around. This was total war.

I decided to do some reconnaissance. En route to work one Sunday morning, I skipped the Palo Alto exit on the 101 and got off in Mountain View instead. Down Shoreline I went and into the sprawling Google campus. The multicolored Google logo was everywhere, and clunky Google-colored bikes littered the courtyards. I had visited friends here before and knew where to find the engineering buildings. I made my way there and contemplated the parking lot.

It was empty. Completely empty.

Interesting.

I got back on the 101 North and drove to Facebook.

At the California Avenue building, I had to hunt for a parking spot. The lot was full.

Was there any question who would come out on top?

In a time of crisis, BHAGs matter.

Do you believe that COVID-related unemployment benefits are preventing people from rejoining the workforce? This became a hot topic when the April 2021 Jobs Report showed one of the biggest misses on record—meaning the actual number of jobs the American economy was expected to add fell dramatically short of the expectation.

Like everything these days, it's been politicized. The GOP is out in force claiming people have been de-incentivized to work because of COVID unemployment. Joe Biden made a rare appearance to defend unemployment benefits policy, citing “There’s been a lot of discussion since Friday’s report that people are being paid to stay home rather than go to work," Biden said. “We don’t see much evidence of that.”

Uh, ok. 

There's only two pieces of data that matter, and they're facts, not opinions. 1) Employers can't find the people they need, and 2) Potential employees that remain among the unemployed aren't taking jobs.

So let's get out of the opinion game and look at the numbers, and think about how a modern TA/Recruiting department deals with a sudden rush of openings. I've been through that game many times (as many of you have) and know the following to be true.

Let's start with the facts in the April 2021 jobs report:

--Total Open Jobs in America: 7,000,000+

--Total Number of Jobs Economists Expected to Fill out of that number: 1,000,000

--Actual number of Open Jobs that got filled: 266,000

--Performance vs Expectation: 26.6%

Feels like an F at best. Maybe there's a curve we're not aware of.

But that analysis is just low hanging fruit. Many of you are already aware of these numbers. So let's add some value by thinking about how a modern TA/Recruiting Department tackles a big rush of open jobs.

Many of you have seen your companies experience something similar to this. It goes a little something like this:

1--Your company was doing NO HIRING, THEN THEY OPENED UP 4-6 MONTHS WORTH OF POSITIONS.

You've been there, right? I feel you, friend.

So when that happens to a normal TA/Recruiting function, how do they react?

2--The normal TA/Recruiting Department goes into battle mode with the order to get a big chunk of the jobs filled each month. But remember that normal TA shops are designed to knock out a normal amount—not a peak amount—of positions every 60 days. 

3--Let's say you're dealing with that six month backlog and your TA/Recruiting Team is running at 150% capacity—hero time in the recruiting function. How long does that mean it takes your TA/recruiting team, running hot, to work through a 4-6 month backlog that pretty much got opened all at one time?  Well, it's not 60 days, because the company wouldn't let them hire up to get ready. At the end of the day, great/hero/epic TA/Recruiting performance works through this COVID-like backlog in 3-5 months, depending on staffing levels.  It's just math related to resources they have vs what the business threw on them. Nobody's to blame, but everyone's involved in the solution. Patience is required.

4--That means that a TA team dealing with a COVID-related backlog is operating at SUPERHERO levels if they are dispatching 1/3 of that backlog a month and doing very well at 1/4 of the backlog dispatched per month. That means it takes them a quarter or more simply to get back to normal, and that assumes the position volume dump gets back to normal. Show them some love at these levels.

Got it? Cool.

Now, let's compare that valid expectation of a crisis mode TA/Recruiting function kicking ass with what the economy just delivered:

--The Post-COVID dump of open positions: 7,000,000 (This is the economy acting like starved hiring managers.)

--The economists' expectation of what would get filled, aka the monthly target: 1,000,000 (at this rate, the backlog gets taken care of after 7 months, so seems like a low expectation, but we'll count it as reasonable based on the whole economy, what I laid out above, and the fact many are desperate for candidates.)

--What the market delivered: 266,000!

--Time to remove the backlog in TA/Recruiting terms at that pace: 26.3 months. W.T.F.

Yeah, that's a problem. To say nothing of the fact that the economy is not going to stop opening jobs—kind of like your hiring managers.

THE BOTTOM LINE IS THIS: Policy matters. We talk all the time about whether to add sign-on bonuses and other features to make our hiring more successful. But you can't have incentives (COVID-based unemployment benefits) that go against people reentering the work marketplace and expect better results.

The situation will improve. States are already moving to eliminate their COVID-related unemployment benefits, and the federal benefit runs out in September.

But, this is for sure: if the policy and the folks who ran it were a TA/Recruiting department leader, they'd be under the gun to make sure April's performance level didn't happen again.

KD out.

If you're like me, 2020 and 2021 has felt rough in a lot of ways. But I'm incredibly blessed - I had a job, my company survived and my family is healthy. Check, check  and check.

But in a world with so much political and social unrest, it's easy for all of us to feel disrupted in some way. For me, all the change going on around us made me less confident to speak to many of the hard business+talent truths I have learned in my career.  Example - I was hesitant to put my thoughts down on the recent Union Vote at the Amazon Distribution Center (Bessemer, Alabama) because pro-business thoughts aren't super welcome in the cancel culture we live in.

I wrote the post (you can find it here), but I expressed my reservations of being cancelled, shamed or—God forbid—being called a Republican.

The hesitation that so many people feel toward having real conversations got me thinking - what I really needed to do was to create a mission statement of how I view HR/Recruiting/Talent that addresses the times and communicates what I believe.  I needed to do that more for me than anyone else. So I did it. I kept it short and note this is a living breathing document I'll update and fine tune moving forward.

Here's my personal mission statement for who I am and what I believe HR/Recruiting/Talent should be about in 2021:

I believe every employee deserves an opportunity to earn a great living based on their performance. They deserve a safe environment that respects all people and provides maximum opportunity to all, regardless of race, gender, orientation and any other identifier.

Of course, I'll get emails that say this isn't good enough on a variety of levels in 2021. That's OK. I'm not writing war and peace here, or even a 35-page document similar to the one that got Jerry Maquire fired (read the whole thing from Jerry here).  What's needed for me is a lightweight mission statement to keep me grounded and focused on what the most important things are in the world of HR/Recruiting/Talent in 2021 and beyond, which also allows me to call BS on things that make no sense (spoiler, there's a lot of that these days).

Let's break that simple statement shown above (in green) down a bit so I can tell you what's in my heart:

1--It all starts with performance wherever you are in life. The world is a hard place, and different people have different talents, different work ethic, etc. Someone less talented needs to work harder, and many do and absolutely crush it. Some are naturally talented and skate by without putting in the hours. Put on your helmet and get ready to compete, because this world is tough. Effort, focus and not being a victim matters.  

2--There are crazy talented people from every walk of life - every race, gender, orientation, country and any other identifier you want to name. I know this because I've worked for them and been fortunate enough to have them on my teams during my career - from all walks of life. I want to recruit them all BTW, not because of any identifier, but because they are great at what they do. High performer and achiever is a segment that is not limited by tag, identifier, identity politics, employment law, etc.  It is a DNA strand that elevates above the conversations we're having today.

3--The world works hard to try and lure high performers back to the pack. There's a bunch of quotes I could give you here. Whether it's a political conversation about how the business community mistreats labor, a co-worker pissed at you because you're killing it and they can't/wont, or Ricky Bobby's dad in Talledega Nights encouraging students to go fast, it's noted that the world around you wants you to be average.  See #1 and #2.  

4--Safety in the world - inside and outside of work - should be a given.  You should be safe in the workplace and not have to deal with bullshit, whether it's dealing with COVID, personal safety or just not getting tied up with non-work related conversations that make you feel at-risk because you're not in the cool clique, etc. I want people to feel safe outside of work as well, but that's a complicated post that transcends the scope of this work mission statement. Let's just say I'm open to all conversations and feel there's a clear path forward for safety for all - but I'm not drinking anyone's kool-aid. The path is complicated.

5 - Every employee and candidate deserves an environment/experience that provides maximum opportunity to all, regardless of race, gender, orientation and any other identifier.  Couple of things here - I'm no expert in what's required to put all on equal footing as they grow up and matriculate in our imperfect world (yes, that means outside the USA as well), so I'll leave that to the experts - I'm open to a lot of things. But when it comes to the workplace/workforce, I'm open and engaged to force conversations that need to happen to provide maximum opportunity to all.  I believe a proactive approach is needed to get to where we need to be, but note I'll never be a proponent of messaging that seeks to divide us instead of bringing us together. To accomplish both is part art and part science, and we need everyone in the tent to get to where we need to be.

That's it. Note I'll be updating this and I'll try to show a log below on what I add or take out in the future.

Edit Log:

First Created: 4.29.21
No Edits to date.

There's a million things to think about in a Post-Covid world.  Here's one you don't think about but you might as well get ahead of, especially if your team is going to exist in some type of hybrid existence:

THE NEW NORMAL WILL FEATURE PEOPLE TRYING TO HOLD TEAM MEETINGS WITH HALF THE TEAM LIVE IN THE OFFICE AND HALF ON ZOOM/TEAMS.

AND IT'S GOING TO SUCK.

Think about it. Before we accepted cameras on as the norm during COVID, you generally didn't try and hold a team meeting with half or more of the people live and half on Zoom.

Why not? Because it's impossible for the people who aren't live to have the same experience and rights as those live in the room. If you're not in the room, you are a second class citizen, and it's the way it has to be. Please listen, and we'll throw it to you for your stage banter when you're ready.

The Zoom/Teams rush during COVID changed those expectations. Since most, if not all were remote, we turned on the cameras and everyone was treated equal.

When we go back to the offices, many of us will try and keep the remote team on video, and it's going to be awful.

When half or more of your team is live and in the office for a meeting, you can't make the Zoom people equal. They can't see the room, read body language and know when they can informally interject and organically participate. But man, will they try. The people who are live can't do the same with the Zoomers,

The answer is simple and the new rules should be clear:

If half or over half of your team is live, you require the remote folks to call in (no video) and run their participation in the live meeting like it's 2019. They'll thank you for it.

If a number of people live is less than half (especially if it approaches only 25-33% live and in the room) you hold the entire meeting on Zoom or Teams. The 3 of 10 people in the office join from their personal office via Teams. You'll have a better meeting.

Some of you will try to do the live/Zoom mix with half or more of the people in the conference room on one camera. It will be an epic failure.  

Will you understand how awful it is?  That's a whole other question.

(email subscribers click through for Gary V video on this topic below)

Admit it – you loved the Netflix Culture deck back in the day, right? The simplicity, the great ideas, the black and white slides. But you don’t have enough time to spend on presentation decks. You have other stuff to do.

That’s why I created the Steal These Slides series!  Hit this link to get the first deck!

Every time we do a roadmap, a tool kit, or a whitepaper at Kinetix, we're going to create a simple deck for you to use in any way you see fit, delivered in the black and white spirit of the Netflix Culture Deck.

No Kinetix logo (after the title slide, just delete that one), but plenty of Kinetix thoughts. Start with our deck, add your own thoughts, delete what you don’t like or need, add art and presto! You’ve got a great deck to help you be the talent expert you are.

Our first set of slides in this series is How to Ramp Your Recruiting in a Post-COVID World. If you need the bigger white paper this deck is based on for background, click here to download. Otherwise, just click the button below and you'll be taken to the page with the slides.

Hit this link to get the first deck!

Keep being awesome. 

I’ll start this post with what should be obvious. Twitter’s not the real world, and neither is today’s version of the news. There are extremes on both sides of the news industry and what you read is likely to be more Op/Ed than true reporting. It takes real work to find true reporting these days.

A related issue is the unwillingness of normal people to share their thoughts and beliefs on any news topic of relevance in the world for fear of one side—generally the left these days—looking to shame the source for any thought not believed to be progressive enough.

It starts with dialog on race (hard topic coming off of 2020) but has spread like wildfire to other areas.

Simply put, the world needs all of us to be vocal when we can add value.

Which brings me to the topic of this post.

For months now, we’ve heard about organized labor (known as unions to the layperson) bringing justice and representation to Amazon workers at an Amazon Distribution Facility in Bessemer (Birmingham), AL. (In the case of the Amazon vote, the union in question was the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which I’ll simply refer to as the “union” from this point forward.)

 Last week, employees at that Amazon Distribution Facility voted “no” to that union representing them. 

But they didn’t just say “no”. Based on the numbers and the circumstances, the employees actually said, “HELL NO” (all caps to express the sentiment).

What’s been represented by the mainstream media over the past 4-5 months related to this union campaign is very different than the outcome. Due to that, I wanted to share some things that I want my HR, Recruiting, Talent and Business leader friends, who haven’t had much experience with organized labor, to know about the Amazon union drive in Bessemer/Birmingham and about organizing activity in general.

Before we get it into it, let me say this: every employee deserves an opportunity to earn a great living based on their performance. They deserve a safe environment that respects all people and provides maximum opportunity to all, regardless of race, gender, orientation and any other identifier.

If a union is the best option for a group of employees (because the company has failed), so be it. 

But a union wasn’t the best option for workers at the Amazon DC in Bessemer, AL, regardless of the pounding on the topic that happened from politicians and the media.

Let’s dig in and understand why something we were told was great (employees saying “yes” to a union at Amazon) was met with such strong opposition by an incredibly diverse set of Amazon employees in the Birmingham area. 

Buckle up, friends—this is a long one but an important one.

HERE ARE THE 10 THINGS I WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT THE UNION ORGANIZING PROCESS AT AMAZON (BESSEMER DISTIRUBTION CENTER):

1—Let’s start with the basic of how union organizing works, shall we?

The process of organizing generally works like this: a limited number of employees at any company are dissatisfied and reach out to a union organization wondering about representation. A process is followed, and if there’s enough interest, an election is held asking employees at the location/unit inside the company if they want the union to represent them.

If employees vote no, things remain as is. If the employees vote yes (simple majority is all that is needed), collective bargaining (negotiation) starts between the company and the union to create an agreement on all employment stipulations. There are 100 more things experts could tell you about this process, but let’s keep this high-level to make sure you’ve got the base.

Got it? Great.

2—The Union Organizing process at the Amazon DC had a lot of friends on the left, including POTUS, most mainstream media, Hollywood and more. 

Most of the people listed above assumed what they wanted to happen (employees vote “yes” to bring in the union) would happen based on the narrative they were building. It didn’t.

Article after article has covered the Amazon union vote as a watershed moment for workers, the left, and for organized labor. Most coverage cited hard working conditions in an Amazon DC as being unfair to workers. Is that true? You’ll have to dig in to the results to understand what the workers thought. But the media coverage was unrelenting over the past couple of months and was easily a 90/10 split—90% of articles talking in glowing terms about the union movement, etc. and only 10% actually doing reporting.

To increase the pressure, the POTUS was active, making the following statement.

"Today and over the next few days and weeks workers in Alabama - and all across America - are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace. This is vitally important - a vitally important choice," he said.

"There should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda. No supervisor should confront employees about their preferences."

More to come on that statement, because, as it turns out, unions and the employees who are pro-union have all the opportunity in the world to do exactly what Biden is talking about—pressure and coerce employees—as part of the process. We never hear about that.

And, of course, others weighed in. Bernie Sanders came to Birmingham (Bessemer is in the Birmingham, AL metro) to show solidarity with the workers and apply pressure. Entertainment stars piped in with their support, and some even came to Birmingham to support the union.

3—It’s probably warranted to talk a bit more about the organizing process that a union follows to get to an employee vote to give you more context.

I told you earlier that a union organizing process starts with a limited number of employees at any company being dissatisfied and reaching out to a union organization to ask about representation. Let’s keep adding to those notes.

My experience—and I hold it to be true—is that it’s never the high performers in any company who initiate inquiries about unions. High performers are almost always comfortable with a meritocracy and aren’t open to paying a % of their compensation in union dues. To be fair though, inquiries about unions can begin from departments inside companies with horrific managers. In addition, companies with high performance quotas like Amazon can sometimes incite some normal to high performers to consider union representation as well.

Once the call comes into the union, meetings are held away from work between that small group of employees and union organizers to discuss the issues. If the union sees opportunity, they will seek to invite more people to meetings to continue the evaluation process.

Once the union decides the opportunity is strong enough to warrant the additional effort, something called authorization cards are introduced, which ask employees to sign saying that they are interested in the union representing them. In order for a union to have enough cards to present to the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) and get a union election inside the company, they have to have at least 30% of employees within the “unit” in question sign the card.

4—Most unions want 50-70% of employees to sign authorization cards before presenting to the NLRB, because they understand many of the cards will be signed under duress and employees will flip back to the company side.

Here’s how asking for a card works in many circumstances. A pro-union employee will approach their colleagues and friends, give a little elevator speech about the unfairness on the company side and ask the person in front of them to sign the card as a signal that “you’re with us/me.”

At that point, the person being solicited has a choice: they can sign the card or not. As you might expect, many sign the card to avoid conflict with the pro-union person in front of them. Sounds awesome, right? When Joe Biden said workers should be able to make their decision about union representation without interference from the company, he fails to mention this form of coercion on the union side. That’s really weak.

5—The reason most organizing campaigns never get to a vote is because employees who don’t care for union representation get wind of the secret card signings going on and report it to the company in question.

Names for these employees reporting the presence of cards in the workplace range from “fink” to “hero” depending on your side of this. But once it’s reported that there are authorization cards in the workplace, most companies ramp up their training on what unions are and begin other union avoidance activities. More to follow on this in a bit.

6—Let’s talk about the result at this point.  The union got absolutely crushed in this thing. CRUSHED.

A union needs a simple majority of voting employees in order to win an election and earn the right to represent the employees unit. 50% plus one vote.

If you believed the media reports in the two months leading up to the Amazon DC union election, you either thought it was going to be a close election or it was a foregone conclusion the union would win.

The union got absolutely CRUSHED in this election by Amazon employees in the Bessemer DC.

Here are the results:

• Total eligible voters – 5,876
• Voided ballots – 76
• Number of votes cast for the Union (RWDSU) – 738
• Number of votes cast against Union – 1798
• Number of challenged ballots – 505 (roughly 300 challenged by Amazon, 200 by the union)
• Number of employees not casting a ballot – 2,759

Amazon’s statement on the vote pointed out that only 16% of employees at the Bessemer DC voted “yes” to the union. Amazon also correctly positioned the result: it wasn’t a win for Amazon (although it was); it was an overwhelming decision made by real employees with real jobs—and probably very few active Twitter accounts.

It should be noted that almost half of the employees in the defined unit (in this case, that’s the entire distribution center) did not vote in the election. Not voting in this election is in all practical purposes a “No” vote.

The union and organized labor got crushed by this outcome.

7—Amazon was helped by expanding the number of voters in the election. This is called defining and expanding the “unit” in any union election.

Here’s another thing to know about the Amazon outcome. When unions get the initial call from a disgruntled employee, they only want work units that maximize their chances of winning an election. This reality means that unions want to keep scope small. Better to keep the group small and win an election than expand the size and lose is the practical thinking.

A common employer strategy is to expand the size of the group voting on whether to be represented by the union. It’s counterintuitive to think employers would want to put more people at risk of being organized, but the bigger the group, the harder it is for pro-union pockets to have influence.

The NLRB hears arguments on this topic and provides rulings on the appropriate scope of a unit for any organizing process/election. For the most part, common locations or work units are the most frequent rationale in expanding the size of the unit that will vote yes/no on whether they want to be represented by the union in question.

One of the things I’ve read in the media was that when the union presented the authorization cards to the NLRB, they assumed the size of the workforce was 1,500 workers. Amazon responded that it was 5,000+, which meant the union had to go out and get more cards to get to 30%. It’s never a good sign when the union in question isn’t aware of the employee count at a facility.

A lot of workers are going to sign the cards under the “you’re with us, right?” peer pressure. Let’s assume the union needed 1,800 cards (30% of 5,876) to get to 30% (after they incorrectly assumed the facility size was 1,500 employees). They ended up with 738 votes in the election. Ponder that. Then add the fact that this whole union vote was conducted over a two- month period via mail-in ballot.

That means that 1,800 employees signed a card when someone rolled up on them and asked them to, but only 58% of them (I added the 300 votes Amazon challenged to the 738 for this math) followed through and mailed in their ballot.

Let all that that sink in. Then think about the pressure the union side puts on an employee to get an authorization card signed based on those numbers. But sure, employers are the only problem in this equation. LOL.

8—It’s obvious that the employees at the Amazon DC voted in a way that suggests for many that working for Amazon is one of the best jobs they’ve had related to pay, benefits, etc.

Only 16% of employees at the Amazon Distribution Center in Bessemer voted “yes” to union representation. The other 84% voted “No” or couldn’t be bothered to vote in such an election.

Why did 84% vote “No” or abstain in supporting a union? There are multiple reasons for this. First up, employees voting “No” or abstaining from voting indicates that they didn’t believe union representation to be in their best interest. They voted for a direct relationship with their supervision and Amazon over union representation.

Another reason for the blowout win is that the jobs in question are pretty good jobs. Consider the following rundown from Yellowhammer:

“On top of Amazon’s $15 minimum wage, the company offers industry-leading benefits to full-time employees, which include comprehensive health care from day one, 401(k) with 50% match, up to 20 weeks paid parental leave and Amazon’s innovative Career Choice program, which pre-pays 95% of tuition for courses in high-demand fields. Since the program’s launch four years ago, more than 25,000 employees have pursued degrees in game design and visual communications, nursing, IT programming and radiology, just to name a few.”

Add base wages, OT, benefits and more, and you’re suddenly looking at a job worth 45-50K+ that grows over time. Amazon is already one of the best-paying jobs a non-skilled laborer can get in Alabama.

A diverse employee base at the Amazon Distribution Center trusted that more than they trusted the union in question.

9—After this result, the Biden administration and the media will push the narrative that employees were influenced in an unethical way by Amazon and will use that as a narrative to push through new laws and NLRB rules. Don’t believe it, remember “FOE”

Scan the news and you already see this: complaints about interference from Amazon in the union election process are widespread. For the uninitiated, the law and NLRB rules and regulations protect the employer’s right to be proactive in telling their side of the story to employees during a time period known as the “campaign period.”

During this period, employers can hold mandatory/captive meetings where they can share their thoughts on why voting “Yes” for union representation is a bad thing. Simply put, employers can provide “FOE” (Facts, Opinions and Experiences) but cannot engage in “TIPS” activity (Threaten, Interrogate, Pressure or Surveil).

The Biden administration will use the Amazon outcome as a proxy for why employers should be limited in telling their FOE-based perspectives and will attempt to change the law and NLRB rules and regulations as a result.

Don’t believe it? Remember that unions conduct their initial activities in secret and routinely use pro-union employees to pressure peers to sign authorization cards (no secret ballot in that!) that lead to elections.

Amazon said in a statement that “the union will say that Amazon won this election because we intimidated employees, but that’s not true.”

“Our employees heard far more anti-Amazon messages from the union, policymakers, and media outlets than they heard from us,” the company said. “And Amazon didn’t win — our employees made the choice to vote against joining a union.”

The union got blown out in this one. Companies should be able to tell their story on such an important topic before the employee base votes.

10—To really blow your mind, consider the fact that this election was held 100% by mail-in voting due to COVID. Let’s dig in on what opportunity that provides for a union attempting to organize.

My friends, consider this. NLRB-sanctioned union votes are generally held in similar fashion to pre-COVID federal and state elections. Employees go to a polling place run by the NLRB and vote in secret-ballot fashion. It’s on lockdown.

The union vote for the Amazon Distribution Center in Bessemer was held over a two-month period via mail-in voting. Let that sink in—a distribution center where the work is 100% on site (no remote employees) was allowed to do 100% mail-in voting for a union vote. Amazon protested this (rightfully so) and lost its challenge.

What does mail-in voting mean? It means the union in question had the opportunity (if they opted to or asked pro-union employees to act as proxies) to approach employees, ask them to complete their mail in votes (pro-union of course) and offer to drop the ballots in the mail for the employee. It basically offered the same opportunity for influence, pressure and more in the voting process that I described earlier when pro-union employees approach their peers for a signed authorization card in the stage before a vote.

Still, only 16% of employees voted for the union. Crazy.

THE BIG FINISH

I know about 100 people who know more than I do about unions, organizing efforts by unions and strategies to remain union-free on the company side.

But none of those people feel like they can share their expertise publicly. Why?

Because all of them fear being attacked by the digital mob.

That’s where we’re at in America in 2021. Good people with great knowledge and a perspective the world needs to hear won’t share their expertise on a variety of topics for fear of being cancelled, shamed or—God forbid—being called a Republican.

The Amazon union vote is a great reminder that the vast majority of America isn’t aligned with the extremes—on either the right or the left. They’re simply looking for opportunity that they didn’t have last year, and when someone treats them fairly—even if the work is really hard—most Americans are going to be very skeptical of someone telling them it’s a bad thing.

As for me, I’m going to try to be less fearful of the digital mob moving forward. I’m going to try and write and have conversations that respect how the vast majority of America thinks.

To the Amazon employees in the Bessemer Distribution Center: congratulations on the outcome that left no doubt on what the vast majority of you value, and thanks for the reminder that at the end of the day, we all need to be less afraid of speaking the truth on a day-to-day basis.