Hiring for the Amazing Race

Okay.  I'll admit it.  I am an Amazing Race groupie!  What a thrilling, vicarious experience to be part of for a few weeks each year.  Racing around the world for a million dollars!  Being able to show your true colors on national TV and not needing to worry about being nice or even humane to be the big winner.  Someone is always complaining or whining or just acting, well, stupid!  And occasionally there is a voice of sanity, but even that voice eventually seems to have its darker moments. I'd like to think it's the money that drives them to distracting us with their behavior and keeps us from enjoying the countries and exotic places they race to.  But I wonder if all of this is calculated during casting and then contributed to by editing in an attempt to drive up the ratings?  That's where my money is!

How many times have we seen this in the work place?   Someone is hired because of a certain flair or interesting background that someone in a decision making position believes will enliven and infuse the company.  Or someone gets selected because he/she  knows how to play the Application Game.  While both of these types of hires would make for good TV, neither makes for a smart ROI for your business.

Hiring the right person is as full of challenges as the Amazing Race. Hiring practices that utilize a set of guidelines that include extensive checks and balances  prove to produce winning results.  Screening with the best available assessments, objective reference checks and interviews most often results in consistently good team members, leaders and ROI.  

Behavioral assessments that utilize validated benchmarks allow your company to better understand the person being considered in relationship to the position for which she/he is being considered.  The best assessment packages, like the one offered by Reliant, also provide attitude scores, which can indicate potential issues with company values, and include developmental reports that can help with on-boarding and identification of leadership ability.  When used a part of a thorough application process, assessment information like this will allow you to identify your best real world racers. 

Being able to consistently identify the strengths you need in the person you hire for a particular position allows you to make better hiring decisions.  Better hiring decisions mean less workplace drama.  For my money, it isn't the winning whiner that the casting director chose for the Amazing Race who should get the million dollar prize. It's the person who knows how to utilize the best available tools in the HR world's Amazing Race who should take home the cash. 

Thanks for reading!

Denny Meredith-Orr

COO, Reliant

Customer Service is at the Heart of Everything We Do!

Many people in the software and consulting world believe customer service is an after-market interaction with the client.  I would suggest that customer service begins with the first interaction anyone in your company has with a prospective client.  The seeds of your future relationship are planted with that first smile or handshake, with the first "Hello" or "Howdy".   Believing that customer service is part of these essential, early moments in your relationships is laying the groundwork for taking your client relationships to the partnership level. 

Memorable customer service is just that.  No matter when the call or email comes the reason it comes is always clear, someone needs help.  In Great companies, with the right people in the right seats, that call or email gets to someone who understands the often seemingly inverse relationship between how often a process is explained and how long that information is retained.   Or the person whose memory isn't clouded by how fruitless the efforts were the last time this person express interest in your solutions.  The person on the other end of the call or email will now in seconds if the decision to reach out was a good one.  Response time has a good deal to do with that, but so does the nature of the response.  Roger Staubach, former quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys said, "There are no traffic jams along the extra mile".  Responding with clear and concise information, coupled with extra doses of empathy and sincerity, will create the kind of loyalty that paves those extra miles.  Knowing that every interaction, by every member of your organization creates an impression, should be enough to guide the heartfelt nature of each opportunity.

Business decisions are often thought of as hard and tough. But more and more it seems that decisions regarding with whom business relationships are developed come down to something more than dollars and cents.  The biggest or most recognizable companies may not have the heart required to see where needs exists and how they can be met.  Listening and working together to find solutions from the first interaction through all that follow is the best and most enduring customer service plan you can implement.  With customer service at the heart of everything you do, people are happy,  everyone profits and everyone keeps moving forward! 

Denny Meredith-Orr
COO, Reliant

Selecting a Software Vendor: Tips from “Pretty Woman”

A business associate of mine recently began a search for a new payroll vendor.  He identified six well-known companies and requested information from each.  One of the six responded, “I am sorry sir.  Our sales team has a list of companies we want to pursue as customers, and your company is not on it.  We are unable to help you at this time”.  As he told me this story, I couldn’t help but think how he must feel like Vivian (Julia Roberts) in the famous shopping scene from “Pretty Woman”. For those unfamiliar, Vivian, an LA prostitute, enters a Hollywood boutique to purchase new clothes for herself at the request (and funding) of her most recent client. Unfortunately, Vivian still looks the part of her profession when she enters the boutique and immediately draws negative attention from the store’s management. The boutique’s pious salesperson looks down her nose at Vivian and says, “I’m sure we don’t have anything for you,” and all but pushes Vivian out the door. Vivian returns to the boutique with her wealthy client, Edward (Richard Gere) and is given a radically different shopping experience. Vivian becomes a VERY special customer deserving of “serious sucking up”.  What follows is a bit of movie magic pulled from many women’s shopping fantasies.  Julia is wined and wooed by the store manager for a shopping experience of a lifetime.  What a difference it makes when your business is strongly desired!

Maybe the example is extreme, but there is a bit of truth to it. Most business managers agree that “80% of a (software vendor’s) business stems from 20% of its customers.” So, which customers are likely to receive a vendor’s best service? The customers that drive the vast majority of the company’s bottom line? Or the ones that individually contribute comparatively little? Unfortunately, it’s nearly always the former. And when given new business opportunities from customers in the lower-contributing “80%” category, many vendors decide to set aside any notion of service standards. They accept the new business and simply reduce the special treatment that would otherwise go to a more profitable customer. You might recognize this “special treatment” as responsiveness, or flexibility in processes.

So how can you apply this story to software vendor selection?

First, realize that technology must be appropriately implemented in order to be useful. Continuous technological advancements have allowed successive generations of software solutions to offer new features we never even knew we needed!  But often these technological advances are light years ahead of an organization’s ability to incorporate the advances and adopt new practices. So lesson one is look for a vendor that will not just sell you a product, but will help you determine what your company can effectively adopt and successfully use.

Second, consider that 80% of the companies in the market can probably fulfill most – if not all – of your desired specifications, and will likely meet all of your “must have” requirements.  So lesson two is find out who wants your business.  With one vendor, you could easily be just another customer…easily replaced. With another vendor, you could be one of the valued 20% producing 80% of their business. 

In today’s resource-strapped marketplace, vendor flexibility and responsiveness are becoming precious commodities.  Promises of superior customer service are in no short supply, but few companies are getting it right 100% of the time. As customers, we all want to fell valued and special.  Matching the size of your business need to a vendor who will be excited about having your business will help ensure you get the extra-special service you deserve.  Who knows, you might even get the roses and limo as a bonus!

Amy Barnes 
Director of Business Development 

Modernizing the Exit Interview: What are the Options?

Exit procedures are increasingly among the processes that companies are choosing to outsource and standardize, with outsourcing usually being the proposed change that receives the quickest buy-in from leaders and employees alike.  

More than anything else, putting the responsibility for data collection and reporting on the shoulders of a 3^rd party promises far better confidentiality for a departing employee. Decreasing the fear of burning bridges or stirring up trouble for remaining employees, outsourced data collection methods demonstrate to a departing employee that his or her company is truly committed to confidentiality; internal interview processes simply don’t demonstrate that same commitment – no matter how distant an interviewer may be from a departing employee’s role in the company. 

Standardizing, on the other hand, can imply a number of possible changes to a company’s exit protocol, and is more likely to invite mixed reactions. The less radical of these changes includes automating how an employee is contacted about participating in exit procedures. By integrating with a company’s HRIS, an automated exit process can instantly invite departing employees to schedule an exit interview or survey immediately after the employee is tagged by the system as a voluntary termination. This automation alone can save substantial amount of HR time (which would otherwise be spent tracking down and scheduling departing employees). So it’s generally an easy change to swallow.

But more substantial process changes – such as those that standardize the actual data collection method and content for the exit process –are often met with resistance. And this is when a careful examination of a company’s goals (and budget) for exit procedures need take place.

If an organization ultimately wants the ability to document and act upon trends, the questions that are posed to departing employees must be consistent and the responses that are elicited must be appropriately categorized. While this is easily achieved for some questions by providing pre-set response options (e.g., yes/no; agree/disagree, etc.), it is more difficult for open-ended questions. 

So what options exist for companies wanting to outsource their exit process and act upon information that can only be posed to employees in an open-ended format?

A first option is employ a third party to administer standardized, open-ended interview questions in an online survey. For example, Reliant’s survey program clients are given the option to receive qualitative reports of the responses to open-ended survey items, summarizing responses by themes. Depending upon the nature of the question (and so, the variety of responses) themes that persist year over year can then be make into standardized response options, further enhancing reporting capabilities.

A second option is to employ a third party to administer an online survey that includes both open-ended and closed questions (with standardized response options; e.g., a Likert agreement scale; strongly agree to strongly disagree). Using this combination of questions in an online survey allows for probing – such that individuals who respond to a particular closed-ended question in a specific way can be prompted to then answer a standardized open-ended question.  Because individuals are branched into standardized questions, their responses can be coded and examined for trend data over time. 

A third option is of course to engage a third party to administer open-ended questions in real-time interviews either online or over the phone.  Those conducting the interviews are often trained in interview procedures and can dig deeper into individual responses by offering unique probing questions. However, the risk of this method is that while it allows for probing questions, and so can provide a potentially richer set of information, responses that are provided to unique probes cannot be compared. Thus, trend information will only be captured by those items that have fairly consistent responses between departing employees, which to some extent negates the value of probing in the first place.

So, as is the case with most important decisions, choosing which option to go with ultimately boils down to what is trying to be accomplished by outsourcing your exit process, and how much you’re willing to spend in the name of that accomplishment. If the primary goal is to examine changes in responses over time, you need to consider options that allow you to compare responses in some meaningful way. But if the primary goal is to elicit detailed information on potentially highly unique reasons for why employees leave your organization, then you’ll want to look into options that best facilitate probing during live interviews.  

Reliant Primary Data Center Migration.

From our CIO James Nelson;

Later today, Reliant will migrate its primary data center to a new data center in Michigan.

Our team has been preparing for the migration to minimize the inconvenience to our users, but we will have to extend the time of our normal maintenance window.

The target window for the migration is February 15th 9 PM to 6 AM February 16th CST.  Our applications will mostly likely be back online hours before 6 AM.

Reliant's applications have been hosted in our main data center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, since 2002.  The major reason for choosing Tulsa as the location of the primary data center in 2002 was its the location of our corporate headquarters.  

Until now Reliant has purchased and maintained it's own server hardware.  With the maturity of Infrastructure As A Service providers Reliant can now obtain the hardware it needs directly from the data center.  

Here is a snapshot of the typical server configuration we will utilize in the new data center.

Web Servers

• Dual Intel Xeon E5-2620 V2 Processors
• 48GB RAM
• SAS 15K RPM RAID 10 Storage
• Gigabit connections to the public network
• Gigabit connections to the private network

Data Servers

• Dual Intel Xeon E5-2620 V2 Processors
• 64GB RAM
• SSD RAID 10 Storage
• Gigabit connections to the private network

This will allow us to bring additional servers on line in hours as needed v.s. ordering servers and waiting several weeks for them to be built, tested and delivered.  

If you have any questions about the migration please let us know at support@reliantlive.com

About James:

James is the chief architect for Reliant’s Strategic Talent Management (STM) Suite of software products.

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He has worked as an applications developer and IT consultant for a variety of organizations, leading the development of over 25 enterprise level applications involving technologies such as VB, MS SQL Server, MS Access, HTML, ASP, XML, and .NET.

Setting Your Organization to be Left out in the Cold

From our Director of Consulting services, Dr. Katie Packell

The conversations happened decades ago and they still go on today. Especially right now, with flu shot reminders and winter forecasts popping up. Somewhere in the world, someone is telling their spouse, or child, or colleague, “bundle up – you’ll catch a cold!” 

Unfortunately, while it’s thoughtful advice and has undoubtedly prevented more than a few children from shivering on the school playground, the advice is also flawed. Because you can bundle yourself up all you like – but catching a virus has nothing to do with how cold you are. It has to do with how careful you are about minimizing your exposure to viruses, which – in no small way – is dependent on how diligent you are about washing your hands. So where did the bundle-up advice come from? Most people tend to wash their hands less frequently when the temperature drops.

When it comes to preventing poor employee performance, it seems that many companies choose to take an approach that I would offer is akin to simply bundling up. Rather than analyzing their selection process – the root of all future employee performance – companies narrowly focus on ways to better train, develop, or incentivize their workers. They try to keep their workers up to date in their skills through training courses, they offer internal company career paths, they initiate recognition and rewards programs, and they invest in employee engagement initiatives. 

Certainly there is no harm in instituting any or all of these processes. In fact, when well crafted and executed, they can drive monumental positive change. Yet when it comes to optimizing employee performance, virtually all of the time and effort that a company spends on these post-hire initiatives is futile if it can’t be assumed that every worker hired is actually well-suited for their job. And when I say well-suited, I do not mean simply in terms of their work experience or skill set. I’m talking about the match between an individual’s personality – their values, preferences, and behavioral tendencies – and the nature of the job for which they’re applying. 

The arguments for including personality assessments in the hiring process are vast and well-substantiated by research. Foremost, meta-analyses have shown repeatedly that personality measures can predict job performance fairly well under certain conditions (e.g., Barrick & Mount, 1991; Hough, 1992; Salgado, 1997; Tett, Jackson, & Rothstein, 1991). Personality measures have also been shown to predict performance above and beyond cognitive ability tests, which are widely considered to be the single best predictors of performance. And perhaps even more importantly, personality assessments do not carry the same risk for adverse impact as cognitive ability tests. 

Further, unlike cognitive ability tests – which generally capture ‘maximal’ performance under timed conditions – personality assessments capture ‘typical’ on the job behavior, providing a more enduring measurement of an individual’s propensity to learn and develop. And there is strong evidence to suggest that organizations should be concerned with how well they’re tracking the learning and development of their workforce. Recent work by Development Dimensions International (DDI) found that only 32% of the 14,000 line executives and 18% of HR executives felt their organizations had a sufficient leadership pipeline to meet their future business needs. Half of the organizations recently surveyed by The Conference Board reported lacking the leadership talent needed to execute strategies. 

Ultimately, by considering the degree to which a particular applicant’s personality is well-suited for a job, organizations stack the deck in their own favor. They heighten the odds that the individuals they select will actually be motivated by their work and satisfied with their job – core attitudes that can drive an employee’s decision to remain with their employer.

Boiled down to a few points, well-validated personality assessments help improve organizations in three ways:

1. They facilitate better hiring decisions. Taking up relatively little time during the application process, personality measures provide more valid and reliable insight into how well the individual is likely to perform on the job than any hiring manager could possibly ascertain from a typical (unstructured) interview. Better matching of applicants to positions reduces the propensity for turnover – which ultimately means cost savings.
2. They improve the hiring process by objectifying applicant comparisons. By steering hiring managers to behaviorally-based interview questions that stem directly from an applicant’s results, assessments allow organizations to craft more efficient and useful interview procedures. Using behaviorally based interview questions to organize and standardize hiring procedures also provides a strong layer of protection against future legal action.
3. They improve new-hire productivity. With assessment results in-hand, organizations can identify a new-hire’s potential training or coaching needs before they set foot in the office – shortening the time it takes for a new hire to reach his or her potential in the company. Future leaders can be identified from day 1 – strengthening the leadership pipeline.

The winter season seems to inevitably be accompanied by two phenomena: individuals trying to steer clear of viruses and organizations trying to prepare themselves for the launch of important projects slated for the New Year. For those who avoid walking outside with wet hair for fear of catching a cold, I would suggest a quick Google search that includes the words cold, virus, and myths. (Note: you may also come to find out that a number of other behaviors you have done since childhood are actually pointless. So prepare yourself accordingly.) For organizations looking to reduce turnover, strengthen the legal defensibility of their hiring practice, or enhance their leadership pipeline, I would suggest a focused investigation into personality assessments.   

About Dr. Packell:

Katie regularly provides research and analytic support for client projects, delivering evidence-based recommendations for business decisions.

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Katie Packell is a Consultant at Reliant. Working with clients in a variety of industries and job functions, she has designed and implemented job analyses, selection-based assessment systems, survey initiatives, and other talent management activities across a number of different organizational applications. Katie regularly provides research and analytic support for client projects, delivering evidence-based recommendations for clients’ business decisions. Katie currently manages relationships between Reliant and its clients to build and deliver solutions that meet each client’s unique business needs.

Katie received her B.A. from Rollins College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Tulsa, where she conducted research in the areas of work-family conflict, workplace emotional regulation, and organizational culture and climate assessment. She has published her work in such outlets as The Journal of Managerial Psychology and The Journal of Psychological Issues in Organizational Culture.

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Improve Hiring and Avoid Employment Litigation

     
 From our CEO, Dr. Chris Wright
    It’s time to take out the magnifying glass and take a hard look at your company’s hiring process.  Is your hiring process designed to select the highest quality candidates who have the greatest chance for success?  How vulnerable is your hiring process, and how likely is the process to be challenged?  

The costs of making poor hiring decisions are staggering.  The following statistics from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ACFE and FBI highlight this fact:

• Over 30% of all business failures are the result of negligent hiring.
• Embezzlement alone costs companies $4 billion a year.
• 7% of annual revenues are lost to fraud.
• 34% of resumes and 73% of job applications contain falsified or embellished information
• 34% of all employment verifications performed reveal exaggerated or fraudulent      information.
• 11% of all educational verifications performed contain falsifications.  
• 37.6% of surveyed college students admit to a history of criminal offenses 

    Similarly, the costs of employment litigation are significant.   If your hiring process is challenged, the typical employment litigation costs refer to expenses for filing and processing fees, depositions, witness fees, investigations, expert research, trial preparation and potentially damages and plaintiff legal fees.  According to a Business Week study, the average costs of an employment lawsuit are:

• $10,000 if the suit is settled
• $100,000 if it's resolved through summary judgment or other pre-trial ruling
• $175,000 if it goes to trial
• $250,000 if the trial is won by the plaintiff(s)
• $300,000 if the plaintiff victory survives appeal

    In my work with companies over the years, I have found that companies with a very structured selection process have a better chance of avoiding employment litigation and also end up hiring better people.   You have seen this diagram in one of my January blog’s, but I believe it is applicable for this discussion.  I would recommend the followings process and procedures for hiring.  

    The more objective your company’s hiring process is, the more successful it will be and also help you reduce the risk of litigation.  Many companies utilize assessments and behavioral interviews in order to gather as much information about a candidate as possible and to make sure that the same information is gathered for each candidate.    It is important, however, that companies be able to defend the “business necessity” of the tests, assessments or any other criteria they are using in the hiring and screening process.   In order for a test or assessment to demonstrate business necessity, the test or assessment must be job-related.   A great reference on the use of tests and assessments in the workplace is the EEOC guidelines for employment tests and selection procedures (http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/factemployment_procedures.html).

    Finally, the best advice I can give is to make sure your hiring process has been reviewed by both a qualified industrial/organizational psychologist and an employment attorney.   These experts will be able to provide practical advice for developing a great selection process and avoiding employment litigation.

About Dr. Wright:
Chris not only founded the company, but he helped design all of our Strategic Talent Management products and content.

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He has consulted many Fortune 1000 companies, government agencies, non-profit organizations and academic institutions in various capacities, including:

• Alignment of human capital and business strategies
• Organizational survey research
• Assessment and selection
• Performance management and learning management processes and applications

Chris is a frequent presenter, speaker and panelist at conferences such as the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Academy of Management, and Society for Human Resource Management. He has published articles in the Journal of Business and Psychology and the Journal of Applied Psychology. Chris also has served as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Psychology at the University of Tulsa.

He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of Tulsa.

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