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Happy New Year! January 2012 Newsletter |
Randisi &
Associates, Inc. Helping
Employers Protect Clients, Workforce and Reputation Through Employment
Screening, Drug Testing & Skills/Behavioral Assessments |
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January
3, 2012 |
100 West Road, Suite 300 Towson MD 21204 410.494.0232 or Toll Free: 888.494.4050 Email: jim@preemploymentscreen.com |
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Quotes That Inspire "Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right.” Marian Wright Edelman Quotes That Make You Think “"Finish each day and be done
with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have
crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall
begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old
nonsense." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Common Employer Mistake in Employment Screening -Thinking We Can Not Prove a Negative There is much indirect evidence for
showing the positive effects of conducting employment screening and drug
testing e.g. reduction in personnel turnover rates, increased productivity,
better morale, better safety record, lower rates of accidents, etc. Rarely are we able to specifically
point at how not hiring a particular individual saved a firm from a loss.
This puts us in the position of trying to "prove a negative". Proving a negative is usually
virtually impossible to do, till now. Recently, an article published in The
Daily Collegian, a newspaper associated with the Pennsylvania State
University reports how Juniata College did not hire Jerry Sandusky because
Mr. Sandusky failed a background check in June 2010. This was more than a
year earlier than the now widely reported numerous allegations of sexual
misconduct against Mr. Sandusky. By implementing a properly structured
employment screening program, Juniata College avoided hiring an individual.
This individual would have, at the least, exposed them to significant loss of
resources in responding to the resulting publicity given evident indications
of potentially dangerous behavior. And, at most, the individual may have
continued potentially dangerous behavior while in their employ, thus exposing
them to even higher loss of resources. www.collegian.psu.edu/ 101 Ways to have a Great Day at Work by Stephanie Goddad
Davidson “Rise early,
Work late, Strike Oil.” – J. Paul Getty Give twice as much today as you
normally do. Really go the extra mile. Instead of focusing on how much you
have to do, or how little your get paid for it, give it all you’ve got for
today. |
This
free eNewsletter contains news and ideas to help you in your business life
and is brought to you by Randisi & Associates, Inc. If you wish to unsubscribe at any time,
please reply to this message with Unsubscribe in the subject line. This month we highlight
articles that save you money, get all your employees working in the same
direction and sharpen your listening skills as follows:
Information in this
newsletter is not intended as legal advice. Please consult legal counsel
before taking any actions. I hope you find this month's newsletter
beneficial. Jim Randisi 410.494.0232 How Moneyball Measures Up as an HR Approach. Summary of an article dated 11/1/2011 By Eric Krell “We cannot manage what we do
not measure” echoes through many business functions and disciplines thanks to
breakthroughs in data analytics, behavioral economics and the new “science”
of decision-making. So it’s no wonder that the notion of applying the
metrics-heavy recruiting technique that Billy Beane, general manager (GM) of
the Oakland Athletics (the Oakland A’s), used to succeed in the movie
“Moneyball” has piqued the interest of some analytics-centric HR professionals.
Tim Sackett, SPHR, executive
vice president at HRU Technical Resources, a Michigan-based IT and engineering
contract staffing firm states “What Beane did with the Oakland A’s was to
truly throw out the old ways in favor of looking at the ‘scientific data’—the
metrics—that make up the best ballplayers. We have this same opportunity with
our employees.” Rethinking Recruiting The book that the movie was
based on, also called Moneyball, was published in 2003 and written by Michael
Lewis and serves as a seminal work on the value of rethinking conventional
wisdom regarding what, and how, we measure. In the movie “Moneyball,”
Beane is forced to rethink how he scouts and hires baseball players because
his small-market team cannot afford to outspend much wealthier teams such as
the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. Instead, Beane and his assistant
apply measurement techniques collected from the financial realm to unearth
baseball players that other teams have undervalued. “Perhaps there is a way to select employees
based on new, carefully honed criteria that can elevate corporate
performance: better productivity and at a lower cost,” wrote two Australian
business professors in the academic paper, “Can Financial Derivatives Inform
HRM [HR management]?: Lessons from Moneyball.” More companies are looking
for these criteria. “HR is ripe for a similar evolution,” agreed Ravin
Jesuthasan, a Chicago-based Towers Watson managing director and the author of
the book Transformative HR: How Great Organizations Use Evidence-Based Change
to Drive Sustainable Advantage (Wiley, 2011). “We are starting to see many
progressive organizations apply analytics in the recruitment and management
of talent.” Using the Insights HR professionals, consultants
and academics point to several ways in which HR managers can use “Moneyball”
insights to strengthen their function’s performance, including the following: Get analytically literate In the book The Future of
Human Resource Management: 64 Thought Leaders Explore the Critical HR Issues
of Today and Tomorrow (Wiley, 2005), Mark Huselid and Brian Becker exhorted
HR professionals to develop a “competency to recognize the appropriate
measures, and the appropriate analysis, for the strategic questions
confronting them.” This does not require an advanced degree in statistics,
according to Huselid and Becker. But
it is about senior executives understanding the analytics [as Lewis writes in
his book] ‘well enough to use their conclusions.’ ” Question tradition When you ask yourself, “Why
do we do this?” and the answer is either “That’s the way we’ve always done
it” or “That’s what everybody else does,” you have a potential “Moneyball”
situation, said Thomas Timmerman, SPHR, professor of business management at
Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville. In his academic paper on
the application of “Moneyball” insights to HR, Timmerman cites research
showing that “experience becomes a weaker (and less valuable) predictor of
performance over time, but cognitive ability becomes a stronger (and more
valuable) predictor of performance over time.” Cultivate analytical understanding Pre-employment screening and
testing—a common form of HR analytics—is highly advanced and continues to
improve. “If you aren’t using this screening religiously, you are missing out
on making better hires for your organization,” said Sackett. Eric Krell is a freelance writer
based in Austin, Texas. Who
Will Stay and Who Will Go? Summary of an article dated 12/1/2011 By Kathryn Tyle This year, Burcham Hills
Retirement Community in East Lansing, Mich., began conducting stay interviews
for nurses after 30 days of employment and annually for veteran employees.
The results? Turnover decreased among veteran nurses by 72 percent. Every new
hire has stayed for at least six months. While many HR professionals
are familiar with exit interviews—interviews where an employee who has
terminated employment discusses what led to the departure—stay interviews are
not as common. Stay interviews target existing employees and focus on finding
out what makes them stay with the company. Stay interviews are designed
to help managers have a better handle on what uniquely motivates each of
their employees. The idea is for managers to use that information to increase
the employees' engagement, help employees with their career development and,
ultimately, retain them for the organization," says Beth N. Carvin,
chief executive officer of Nobscot Corp., an HR technology provider in
Colorado Springs, Colo. Digging Deeper "Do not confuse stay
interviews with exit interviews," Carvin warns. “In reality, she says,
the two are used for different purposes. Unlike exit interviews, which
are typically conducted by someone in HR, stay interviews should be conducted
by managers. "Stay interviews are about the individual, to help manage
them better. Exit interviews are about the organization, to help improve the
company for everyone," Carvin explains. Why not just field an
employee engagement survey? The results of engagement surveys are anonymous,
whereas stay interviews are one-on-one, segmented by population, more
detailed and more like a conversation than a multiple-choice quiz. Data from
a stay interview with a top performer is more valuable than general data from
a generic group of employees. Now Is the Time 38 percent of employees are
actively seeking a new job according to Globoforce's latest WorkForce Mood
Tracker survey report, released in September. "Stay interviews help a
manager uncover what makes the job 'sticky' for each individual Jack Wilkie, chief marketing
officer and senior vice president of development for NOVO 1, a customer
contact center in Fort Worth, Texas, agrees. "While most companies interview exiting employees to understand why
they are leaving, we think it is more important to ask current employees who
are still contributing to our company why they stay," he says. Using
stay interviews helped NOVO 1 reduce turnover by 20 percent. The Logistics Stay interviews don't need to
be conducted for all employees, Habelow says. "I'm interested in what
makes my top performers stay to ensure I put my money where I'm having the
biggest return on investment. Letting employees know why
they have been chosen for stay interviews can be a recognition tool, experts
say. Training Managers & Ask the Right Questions To train managers on how to
conduct stay interviews, HR professionals should cover active listening
skills, guide managers to ask probing questions and provide managers with
opportunities for role-playing. In an effective stay interview, managers ask
standard, structured questions in a casual manner with a conversational tone.
Managers and HR professionals need to act on the findings.
While stay interviews can't
ensure that star employees never move on, they can help determine the factors
that are important to the best employees.
Kathryn Tyle, a former HR
generalist and trainer, is a freelance writer in Wixom, Mich. |
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