Employer Fail: WalMart collecting canned goods for WalMart Employees

As if it cannot be even worse with the Employer Image misere of Walmart, it gets even worse.
You may have seen it in the news already if not online, the grand food drive.

Walmart workers have set out storage containers for canned goods etc to be collected for COWORKERS and their families in need,not being able to provide for a holiday dinner. Now as this isn't a big pill to swallow already - it was a Walmart-union in Ohio that organized this collecting to take place. Let's get back to the problem though. There wouldn't be the need for all of this, IF Walmart cared for its workers enough to be out of need due to proper payment instead of ridiculously small paychecks for their associates.

It has been aired a googillion times how bad it is for Walmart employees. By on an average less the 25K p.a. even paying for the regular things such as the utility bill every month turns into an eat or be in the dark question. Sending their kids to college their like? Dream on, sugar!

Now though, whatcha know about this?:



(Mahalo to The Other 98% for this image)

Considering that the CEO of Costco is having a smaller salary than most executives and Costco had a total compensation package of about 4.8 million Dollars 2012, the salary of WalMart's CEO eyeballing $19+ MILLION p.a. in 2012 not only makes me wonder for how long WalMart employees are allowing their employer to continue to be that ugly of an employer. Yes Costco itself is smaller compared to the WalMart chain, but that doesn't mean it's lost its values and dignity as caring employer.

According to this article by Megan McArdle, WalMart won't ever be like CostCo as they would not dare to give up on costumers nor wide low-priced product range in order to increase payment for their employees. However, the short twitter feud between Ashton Kutcher and WalMart sure is worth watching, too.

That doesn't keep me from asking myself, when do even giants like WalMart understand that there are people with (family) lives working for paying to live by keeping the company running, and not for the next increase of the CEO's salary?! I find it disgusting to look at how modern economic slavery partially replaced the loyal an trust-filled bond between employer and employee which originally included a fiduciary- not a exploitation duty.

Considering a study showed that even the US government creates more low-waged jobs than WalMart shows where the priorities of the oh so highly praised world reigning US economy are.

What a shame. It is time to change and act right!

HR, wake up! - Rethink your application procedures

Translated from Ralf Junge's blog entry: "Personaler wacht auf! – Umdenken im Bewerbungsprozess"

It is well known, the German Economy and with it the German work force, suffers from a skills shortage. Living or working  in Germany, you might have noticed this already. The more I cannot understand why this fact and/or problem is no reason to wake up or becoming active.

Times when applicants stood in line to apply for a job are over. The competition for skilled workers is too grant for employers. Even applicants don't tremble for jobs much anymore. If it isn't that one, oh well, it is going to be the next one. After all, the application procedure is a two-sided thing in getting to know another.  Now you might say, ain't nothing new. But there are sill colleagues who work with the same methods and thinking as they did 10 years ago.

1920, Toronto: Women apply for waitress's jobs at the CNE. The job paid $1.25 per DAY!

It starts with the recruitment. Too often insignificant and weird job-ads with horrible stock-pics and no clear messages are published. And they wait, for most possible fitting candidated to apply. Usually not successful. Applicants don't want to watch trendy, fancy employer videos where employees dance and sing with a bright (fake) grin. The only thing they might win with "acting" like that would be the Golden Mangel Award.

Be yourself. You got enough to tell about yourself already - that is how companies come across real and believable. Be interested and show your applicants that while the application procedures also. When applications landed in the inbox, let them know they have reached you! In a personal interview, please don't let them rephrase their résumé all over again. You should know what they did already if you read the application. The worst, however, are the assumptions "read" out of the résumé being expressed through suggestive questions then. No, I certainly don't want to justify myself and feel like in a police questioning in an interview. Eventually, it is not about which impression I leave, but what impression the company representives leave on the candidate. If you haven't notice yet, most High Potentials have more than one door of job-opportunity open!

And after the interview, we don't want to hear nor read: "I was able to figure your image out. I will contact you then". You already know wether the interview went well or not and what feeling you have about that applicant fit in the team with the open position. How about you, yes you, the company representive, ask your candidate: "What do you think? Would you like us as your employer?" 

It is time to wake up!

Bought Employer Reputation - the value of Employer Seals

 Translation from Ralf Junge's blog entry: Erkaufte Employer Reputation – der Wert von Arbeitgebersiegeln

Have you noticed that the (official) Fair Company seal must be paid for in Germany, starting in August?

On request I was told that students were skeptical of so many companies carrying the seal. The selection of companies as well as the missing transparancy were criticized here, also. So they introduced a new quality control with which the opinion of the intern(s) of the particular company builds the basic step for granting the seal.

Till here it is absolutely acceptable. After all such process handling means a certain effort involved which is not always naturally nor understood. Not for nothing it is claimed to be a "seal of surplus value" . So I read  the rules of membership held under the title Media Data. 

I was taken aback bout this matter here for the first time. At the end of the data a nice paragraph declared as "costs of membership" with two different Fair Company packages is stated - combinations with seal of data bank booking and seal of (job-)ad booking for €750 or €1,200. 

Oh yea, since so many companies bought the seal but didn't book anything, the seal now is also supposed to push the ad sales for career portal of the Handelsblatt, a German newspaper. Of course all in front of the background of a new quality management process being introduced anew. With this kind of jumble the seal certainly has a weird flavor . Yet, it isn't the only employer certification or - seal involving costs as these. 

I ask myself a couple of questions here: Is the Employer Reputation purchasable? What is such seal worth then? How credible and valid are such audit procedures? Do career starters actually know and use these seals for orientation for choice of employer? 

Considering the last question especially, I stumbled upon several companies publically displaying such seals but never explaining anything themselves nor linking them to the explanation by the seal's public site. Basically making this whole thing redundant!

My request to you hereby is: Ask your applicants and new colleagues, if they actually know the seal or are influenced by it.

RJ

Creative ways in Recruiting and Personnel Marketing

Translated from Ralf Junge's blog entry: Kreative Wege im Recruiting und Personalmarketing

The shortage for skilled talents is sharpening up. It definitely is not enough to just publish a job-ad online or offline nor presenting yourself at job fairs or to brace oneself with certificates, waiting for the right applicants to to come. It is not going to happen! Other companies with more innovative strategies will be much faster.

More and more companies have their recruiting values within the networks of their employees. With incentives of high bonuses employees are helt motivated to support the Recruiting in search of skilled talents in shape of employees' friends, associates and family members. In the June edition of brandeins Magazine, which I mentioned in my last post also, it read the company Eventbrite costs its recruiting employees incentives up to $2.500. The firms keep counterbidding themeselves in the so called war for talent. 

But money is not everything. Recruiting also is about catching eyes. Here we can learn a lot from the advitising sector which spice up their activities in Recruiting and Personnel Marketing with all kinds of creative ideas. By now, even here, in the pretty and colorful world of Ad and Media the war for talented minds. Here Agencies focus on much attention of their target group as well as the Surprise-Effect. With means such as the "Guerilla-Recruiting". 

One of the most famous example in Germany is probably the case of "Pizza Digitale"  by Scholz & Friends Hamburg. With a QR-Code on Pizzas (Yes, on real edible Pizzas) Digital Talents were searched for. With each order of Pizza by an agency the customer had one Pizza Digitale delivered additionally.  

With another creative idea  - the trojan portfolio - the Agency Jung von Matt was looking for the best Art Directors. Multiple Photographers were sent off to other ad-agencies to (under cover) apply with their portfolio. On one of the work sample the job-ad was (hidden) displayed. 

Besides such Recruiting activities, firms use plenty means to style up their job-place. Yes, job- Place. Massages, kicker-tables, sport activities or snack and coffee machines - all actions are about attracting new and retaining employees. (Kind of) Giving them the feeling to be proud to work at their company. 

The conventional means will not work for much long though. Now, creative and innovative ways are demanded. The young academics want to be wooed for and convinced about haven chosen the best employer. I'm excited to see the what ways and means for more attention companies chose in future. 

RJ

Employer Dialogues online: Welcome to the Conversation - or Babble - Society

Translated from Jannis Tsalikis' blog entry: Arbeitgeberdialoge im Web: Willkommen in der Konversations- oder Laber-Gesellschaft?

Communication today means Conversation. Those in HR avoiding such will encounter problems in Personnel Recruiting. Especially, because these and the coming new generations demand an instant feedback on their questions and applications. These rather new demands on employers ask for a radical rethinking. Human Resourcer and and Recruiter will have to be approachable and, also, answer! They are the face and voice of the company in terms of Staffing and Staffing-to-be. The (now) classic way via E-Mail or via XING, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter - Answers are expected. Companies will have to adjust to these wishes and necessarily provide the addressable representatives for its career page. This is not easy, since there are many colleagues in the personnel department who are not coming into question for this very matter. BUT, it could look as nice as Otto Group has displayed and actually does it, as you find below.

It says "We are glad to be there for you!". These tendencies is clear, and, reversible. Some companies are one step ahead. Those offer the option of a Chat right on their career site. With the example, Telekom (gloabally better known as T-mobile), we can see how this works. Homepage of the career site, bottom right corner, it says: "Chat with Telekom Career!"

With one "click!" a Chat-Window opens. Yet, the dialogue followed is rather disappointing. You will not get any insider-information from the HR Department, but a navigation help to the career site at best. A dialogue kind of looks like this: 

Jannis: Hello, Mr Welter,
Stefan: Godd Day Jannis
Stefan: What can I do for you?
Jannis: I wanted to know, if I can apply simply with a PDF or if it is always via Data-Mask only... and 
Jannis: if you have any vacant positions in the HR field  for a Professional as me. 
Jannis: (I work and live in Berlin)
Stefan: under the following Link you can find all vacant position at Deutsche Telekom. 

Uh, really?! I sure didn't know this. Does that kind of dialogue even make any sense? 

Maybe, it is because these kind of chats are handled by bigger Dialogue-Centres. But I am sure this will change and develope to a better and especially helpful level.
JT

The Five Most Important Things

Translated from Ralf Junge'es blog entry "Die fünf wichtigsten Dinge"

What if your company´s employées come to work each day with a bright smile and are embracing their job because it gives them the feeling of accomplishment and fulfills them? - Unrealistic! Yer, I thought so, too.

Lately I have looked more intensively into the subject of Corporate Culture and Leadership and I came upon this interesting book named  "The Big Five for Life" by John Strelecky. If you did read his book, you wouldn't find the intial question of mine less unrealistic as it appears. More likely it is a question of the Coporate Culture after all. 

Strelecky describes a leadership principle which aims to accomplish a balance between personal aims of Life and Job - these aims are the "Big Five". The idea goes back to having Safaris in Africa which are only titled successful when the five infamous animals of the wild were really seen - Lion, Leopard, Rhino, Elephant and Buffalo. As there are also the five most important things man has on his personal bucket list. The accomplishment of those are ones own benchmark for success and realization. The Big Five serve the compliance of the "Purpose for Existing (PE)" which every person and company should define in the first place. The better the employée's PE fits to the company's the higher the likelihood of a long and fulfilling employer-employée-relationship for both parties. 

For that matter a Corporate Culture has to develop in which well qualified people are hired who will have receive the freedom to figure out how to work successfully - again for both sides.

As written in the book, talented "people don't need somebody monitoring their behavior."  They don't work that well because they are monitored, but because they can identify themselves with their work and like their job.

When recruting new employées already, Human Resources Decider have keep an eye on the matter if the preferred candidate fits to the Corporate Culture, not if the candidate fits the profile of the vacant position in each detail. If employées find fulfillment and accomplishment in their Job, the risk of psychological diseases such as Burn-Out Syndrome is reduced and more energy and creativity is put in as effordt by the employée.

Nothing hinders a project more than a person who has the wrong job or is notoriously unhappy.   

„The Big Five for Life“  is a very interesting book which certainly contents some impulses and much food for thought in regard to the own Corporate Culture and ones own Leadership. It nudges to question a few things - the own way to work, leadership and certainly the own path to self-realization.

RJ

From Human Resources to Human Relations

Translated from Ralf Junge's blog entry: Von Human Resources zu Human Relations

From Human Resources to Human Relations – How will the work look like in the future? This subject was discussed in a debating at this last weeks annual re:publica in Berlin. Participants of this debate were Joachim Hasebrook, Teresa Bücker, Anke Domscheit-Berg, Stefan Sell and Sue Reindtke. At the evening the conclusion was:

Employers do not put any effort in it anymore, neglecting the relation to their employées. Those have defend themeselves and network in order to bind powers and force.

This statement preceded a discussion about the labor cultur in their companies and the changed working environment. Last named I would like to let float as thesis (opinions are welcomed):

• Employées have hardly any fun working.
• Assurances and securities such as permanent contracted jobs i.e. are gone.
• Workload being concentrated is increasing; more and more employées have to work more.
• Precarizing is increasing, meanwhile deap into the middle-class.

(Graffiti in Berlin. Translated: From the inside a rat race looks like a job ladder.)

As you can see, the radicalizing working conditions were the center of attention at this discussion. As main points of criteria the "Over time - Rat race"  and blindness of one owns situation were named. "You don't know anymore how it feels to relax".  Employer cannot expect his employées to discipline  themselves constantly in regard to working hours, workload, according to Anke Domscheit-Berg. Domscheit-Berg herself decided to be self-employed after having worked at Microsoft and McKinsey. 
Another point of criteria which I have talked about in my blog entry from May 1st, also, is the balance-thinking of companies. Too often numbers are being set as a higher priority rather over human capital.
Right on, Joachim Hasebrook, Professor für Human Capital Management from the Steinbeis Academy Berlin, asks when employer will change. The answer: "When the tail is burning", meaning when this attitute has a negative effect on the balance sheet. Sad, but true.

Panel member were sounding as if  a revolution of employées is going to stirr up, fighting against working conditions named - having the debate title as demand: From Human Resources to Human Relations.

Overall the debate did not give me much new insights or aspects since the precarious working conditions are well known. Unfortunately, no model for a better work in future was introduced, nor developed, although the title suggested such. Nevertheless I found it to be interesting that the criticism became louder and even reached the panels of re:publica. In my opinion this is the first sign indicating that employers WILL have to confront and solve these problems OF (and WITH) their employées in order to have both parties benefiting from a employer-employée relationship in the long run.  The redistribution of workload, the support and relief of overwrought co-workers, will become subject of importance - not only internally but also in regard to the reputation of the own Employer Brand obverse the external target groups.

In the 1930's already, scientific studies and statistics of firms indicated how changed working conditions imply on labor productivity and effectivity. Social group relations and a friendly leadership especially increase such. Taking care of interpersonal relations, the human relations, moved into focus. The Human Relation Movement accrued considering the working human as social being. Maybe we are awaiting a second ripple of this very movement.


RJ

AIDA in Personnel Marketing - Simple rules simply applied?!

Translated from Jannis Tsalikis' blog entry AIDA im Personalmarketing - Einfache Werber-Regeln, einfach mal anwenden?!

Every advertisor (should) have it running in his blood, the rules above all rules for advertising communication: the AIDA principle. Applying the bases of this principle should help developing a (at least halway) good communication mean. It is so simple and nice to apply to to almost anything - of course the in Personnel Marketing, also! Let's apply the rules to the Personnel Marketing. The four bases of AIDA would look like this:
 
Attention
The applicants awareness is attracted. The mean must somehwat surprise, stick out and be visible - it gotta catch an eye or two.

Interest
The applicant starts to be interested in the advertising employer at some point and in some way. The target group should be and feel addressed to.

Desire
Going one step further, the interest in working with the employer is awakened. The wish to get the job advertised is generated and strengthened, convincing the employer.

Action
The applicant applies for the very job finally. At the „Point of Application“ applicants are endorsed applying for the job.
 
Easy, isn't it?
 
We can test this systematic with this simple example following. 
Please look at this poster below and judge by applying the prior explained rules to this very job-ad.
 

Attention? Well, yes. I would say such a big poster is hardly not to be seen. The layout, too, with its uberdimensional exclamation mark and the great combination with the questionmarks. Erm, yeah. Very fine! *cough*

Interest? Does the target group feel addressed? Now, considering in Berlin-Wedding, a district of Berlin with quite a few Teenager, one of them will be attracted to a job-ad as such while walking through the mall out of great boredom. With a lot "good will" we can put a check in the box on Interest.

Desire? Is this statement convincing? Start an apprenticeship as Hair Dresser/ Barber so you won't be bored as the job-ad promises? And appreciation? Appreciation and approval (stated in the ad) with a job that under the TOP-10 of the most unpopular jobs? The convincing reasons to apply for are definitely missing. At least now, Personnel Marketing is failing much. Quite a pity! 

AIDA in Personnel Marketing? It isn't that hard to follow those advertising rules, is it?

Work-Life-Balance was yesterday - today we embrace Work-Life-Choice

Translated from Ralf Junge's blog entry: Work-Life-Balance war gestern – wir leben heute die Work-Life-Choice

Last week the Online Start-Up Twago announced the resignation of its founder and Managing Director, Gunnar Berning. (Twago is an online project tool bringing Companies and Freelancer together by offering posted projects and profiles of Freelancer.)  At this juncture the differing views of the Managing Board as well as the Investors regarding expansions have been the crucial reason for this decision. More interesting, and shocking also, I found the news about the lay-off of another twenty to thirty employées along Bernings leaving. Considering of Twago only having sixty employées in total this is a very drastic decision.

However, this is what a job at a Start-Up often entails. At least, here in Berlin, the founder city Germany´s, it is not something of rarity. Primarily a young firm represents itself as IN, dynamic and innovative. Self-realization, flat hierarchies, responsibilty and promotion prospects are embraced vocabularies in terms of Start-Up's. It is true, naturally. The authority given is inviting much. Certainly, one can take a lot of responsibility within a short time already. That is surely a great feature on the résumé, also.

Start-Ups, nevertheless, are forefeiting their good image. More often you can hear about harsh working conditions. But why is that? In contrast to bigger companies and combines working hours in Start-Ups are significantly higher which leads back to the shortage of resources, such as work force, as well as missing structures. It feels like working without a break when being employed at a Start-Up company. Yes, it brings great responsibility to be taken, yet, a private life is often something not to even think of having. There is no Work-Life-Balance. It is more likely a Work-Life-Choice. Salaries come substantially smaller than in big and established companies. 

You might ask, why would one work at a Start-Up then anyways?! Well, everybody applying and being hired at a Start-Up usually know exactly what they are engaging in, which is why it is called Work-Life-Choice in the first place. Thus a conscious decision pro such working conditions.

It is everything BUT a boring office job with structured daily schedules and detailed processes and structures to encounter. The real charme lays in being constantly confronted with challenges anew and having the chance to create and frame the firm actively. And this most often within a young team and a great corporate culture which is based on team spirit and a great potion of motivation.

RJ