The "You Rock" Award

A few years ago I worked at a small Staffing Company with only about 15 employees (not counting contractors). If you have worked in staffing, you know that the pace is unbelievably fast, highly competitive and just plain crazy. Time and numbers equal money, so the staffing team usually works a lot of hours and is very flexible to respond to any customer needs. The ultimate measure of success is your number of placements, regardless of the amount of work that is put into it.

The GM and I wanted to recognize exceptional performance, but especially the stuff that does not always translate into a hire. We needed a name. Since we were (and still are) cool and fun, we created the hip and fun "You Rock" award. Next we needed an award - a rock in this case. I was up for the challenge and went outside of our office complex to find a big rock. The decorative rocks in the complex landscape were too big or small. So I went down the easement to get a good one. (Picture this, sunshine. Blue skies. Slight breeze and a 5"2' professional in a suit sans heels climbing down an easement to get the perfect rock. Nice, huh.) The perfect rock actually ended up having green mossy stuff on the bottom from the water in the easement. Not a problem. We put it in the dishwasher and ran it. The rock did not clean up, even in the pots and pan cycle, and by now all of the employees noticed this big rock in the dishwasher.

We dug around the professional landscape until we found a more suitable rock, and wrote "You Rock" on it. We established the "rules": the rock is passed out each week during the team meeting by the person who held it last. That person identified someone who went above and beyond and recognized them by passing along the awesome rock. Looking back, it was kind of lame, but still a great idea.

Fast forward to yesterday. Unexpectedly, a manager at my new company surprised our HR team a "You Rock" award for going above and beyond during a very stressful time in our business. Just like my rock, it is home made and kind of lame (it's a big yellow happy face on a stand). But, I cannot tell you how much it made my day. It's peer recognition of busting your butt every day and doing what is right, fair and best for the business. This is everything that I ever wanted the "You Rock" award to be and more. Thanks for recognizing great HR!

Turnover and Temporary Employees

I started a new job in January. For the first time, I am working with temporary employees and the agencies who support them. I have met many temporary agency sales pros, worked as a recruiting manager on the consulting side (close to a temp agency), and worked WITH temps, but I have never been on the HR side of temporary staffing until now. It's a very interesting change from a talent management perspective. First, there is a unique business need that requires temporary employee - contract or project work. You have a specific need skilled (or maybe unskilled) workers for a specific period of time. These individuals are at work and being productive to meet the contract requirements - delivery date, quality, etc... So they need to know as much as you can give them BEFORE they walk into the door and the clock starts ticking. You cannot waste valuable, billable work time dealing with issues that should have been communicated during the preemployment process. They need to know as much as they can about the actual job that they will be doing BEFORE they arrive in order to avoid retraining replacements who do not enjoy or do not have the skills to meet the job requirements.

Limiting temporary employee turnover is critical to the success of a project, so what can you do about it? I was introduced to a cool way to reduce turnover of temporary employees through a Job Simulation Center at StaffMark. Job Simulations have been talked about on ERE for years, but I only know of a few progressive companies, including one that I used to work at, that actually use them. The StaffMark team in Fairfield, OH has developed a job simulation program for a few of their clients to help identify temporary employees who are not interested in a particular job or do not have the skills to do the job. A candidate performs the job required of someone who worked in a warehouse, or a pie making plant, or a glass plant. They developed simple assessments that measure time, skills and quality in manufacturing positions. They make an appointment and require candidates to arrive at the office at a particular time, which is another requirement of most temporary positions. They give the candidate feedback about their simulation and allow the candidate to withdraw from the process with no penalty before the clock - and money- start rolling. For full disclosure, I am not, nor have I ever been a customer of Staffmark. I am an advocate of telling a candidate the good, the bad and the ugly about a position (push, pull, push) and I am sending a big Sunday Shout Out to the Staffmark Simulation Center for working with employers to allowing the candidate to experience the job to reduce turnover.