Let My People Stay (Not Go)
“Life inside a startup — especially a high-growth startup — is inherently chaotic. For many, it can feel like a race against time along a track whose ground is always shifting.
The challenges are especially acute for human resources leaders. Budgets are limited, but demands are huge. You’re under constant pressure to help professionalize the company, deploy new benefits, establish a compensation framework, and create incentive plans, employee engagement programs, and diversity initiatives. Yet all those imperatives take a back seat to your top three priorities: hire, hire, hire.” — source
Hi everyone! I’m using a quote as a story opener again, and this time around — unlike my previous article which went about the practical benefits of medieval tales for tech businesses — I’m going to step away from the metaphors as far as I possibly can, and … switch to some good old straight talk (as well as suggest re-visiting Small Talks and Hidden Killers).
The reason is: just as with the steam that had been building up as an impetus for Dreaming Into 2020, I’ve grown utterly exhausted and extremely tired, as in, physically tired from watching how people treat things related to hiring, retention, attrition, and employee engagement at tech organizations. *and I’m not using fun giphies today, because we’re in to some straight talk* The feeling that I get is… we’re invaded by an army of pink bunnies, who are oblivious to everything, except to beating their own drums, tirelessly, and with no purpose, until their battery gets discharged *sorry, still couldn’t resist a metaphor*.
Some of the bunnies beat the drum of hiring. The opening quote for this story pretty much reflects their agenda, and — since this world lives by the “quantify” directive (see Quantify Or Wordify?) — they swear by metrics. Like, there’s a metric for closed job openings, and if you hit a certain target, you can consider yourself a good bunny. Oh, but there’s a metric for turnover as well, and they somehow measure the ratio of those who leave vs. the newcomers, and then hire again, and then watch them leave, and on, and on.
In straight talk, HR professionals are not bunnies, but since they’re formally in charge of “human resources”, everyone regards them as the ones who are supposed to keep the treadmill on and beat the drum of hiring, engaging, etc. etc. (see the opening paragraph). And, what happens next? Since tech is currently wearing the tiara of The Royal Hypeness ©, there are too many candidates, and too many job openings, and too many unskilled professionals (or juniors). The sheer quantity of the candidates and openings to process might be too overwhelming for humans, so… they gleefully turn to AI and to algorithms, in an assumption that those will attend to their agenda. Here’s what happens next, quote:
“A friend of mine has been trying to hire a new employee for her department in a medium-sized org. After advertising several times with few applicants, and a couple of rounds of interviews, the new employee is less than great. Then she discovered there were other applicants…Among them was someone she knows personally, who has a spot-on CV, loads of experience, lives locally and would be the perfect person for the job. So she goes to HR to ask why that application was never sent through to her dept. The answer — she didn’t score well.Score well on what?
It turns out the HR dept adopted screening software that asks a bunch of random questions that applicants must answer quickly, the results of which determine a suitability score. Only those deemed suitable are sent through to the department for interview.” — source
… oops. And, you can check out the rest of the story here. It was posted as a Twitter thread and generated an enormous amount of feedback which basically gets down to “oh my f..ng gawd, this is what happened to me, or to someone I know!” The thread also includes responses from HR folks whose argument is backed by the reasons outlined above: too many applications to process for a human. And, since job applicants know that they operate in the hype-field, and with no other incentive to apply to this company but only to make a shot into the air, they don’t bother much. Or, they do not care, or do not have enough skills to come up with the CV that would let a qualified human professional determine if this job applicant would indeed be a good candidate (we’re not talking here about the catastrophic situation when the attrition/turnover rate gets exorbitant, and the HR would hire anyone with more or less matching skills). The hype has also increased the pool of aspiring HR-practitioners, and there are too many junior HR’s in the industry as well *and I’m sure some stats and figures are available somewhere, but why would we need the stats if, as insiders, we know too well what’s being cooked in our kitchen?*
For those of you who swear by the word “science”, here’s a link to a recent research, and, unfortunately, this research is written in a cautious manner, so as not to disrupt the idols that have become the tyrants of humanity, while their original role was supposed to be the one of a servant. You do know what I’m alluding to, don’t you?
Here’s the bottomline: hiring and on-boarding juniors, training/coaching them, and then letting them hop to another employer once they catch up on certain skills — just because there are too many jobs available in tech — is an exercise in futility. It only takes someone in charge to sit down quietly and calculate what efforts add up to what, and how, and why, and what costs what, and where the investment ultimately goes. The answer? The honest answer would be: in training the juniors. In fact, if we zoom out far enough, we might adjust our eyesight to a perspective which would let us see how the whole gigantic bubble of tech, and tech capital, VC or non-VC, feeds and feeds itself by training juniors who migrate from one org to another in search for a better breeding ground, similarly to what birds or other sentient creatures do. On the other hand, the pastures are lavishly green for the juniors who take advantage of the “hype” quality of time , because they enjoy the opportunities that wouldn’t be so easily available, if the hype weren’t there. Pragmatism is the king.
… and the pink bunnies will only run until there’s nowhere to plug their batteries to charge, if you know what I mean. Speaking in strategic, or maybe even in military terms, we indeed operate in a very challenging terrain, and here’s a story from a mid-sized tech business who’s come up with some sensible practices to adjust to the ever-present turnover.
Actually, there’s another option available, for those who are willing to explore the other possibilities, aside from training juniors. However, I wonder if this option is available as easily as one might assume. I’m talking about “an employer brand”, and the trick is… there’s no way to fake it, or to sugarcoat the reality. Or, to shove the pile of concerns under the rug.
“One of the big drivers of ballooning employee turnover? Marketing an employer brand that doesn’t match the reality of working at your company. When employees feel betrayed, they don’t tend to stick around.” — source
Again, looking at the numbers, one can invest all they want into HR and PR initiatives, and hit the metrics, and the targets, and what not, but if the culture, or “the climate”, at the company does not match the rosy picture, this investment and effort ultimately goes into feeding the communal tech bubble, too. If you ask me, what single action would create a firm foundation of an attractive employer brand? Keep in mind, we’re wagering whether our effort is best spent as pink bunnies who die once the source of energy is taken away from them, or if it’s used to set up a charging station which would run on an a never-ending eco fuel. The answer is: leadership. The ones who hold the steering wheel, and keep things going on all levels, by creating an emotional and infrastructural backdrop for a vibrant organization merely by the light of their personality, as well as by their skills. The ones that we call “the keepers”. From what I’ve seen, no matter the hype, nor perks, nor salaries, if a business is run by the leaders who walk the talk and create the aura of trust, comfort, camaraderie and good work — people stick with such companies.
Are you able to tap into your memory and recall some such organizations? … and that’s where I’ll leave you for now :)
P.S. The headline for this article is inspired by Louis Armstrong’s et al performance of a classic gospel piece :)
Related:
Small Talks and Hidden Killers
The Hire Haywire, or Who Hires How
To Glass Cliff Walkers With Love
How Technical Debt Trumps Chief Culture Officers
Further reading:
Talking May Not Be Communicating
In The Front Door, Out The Back: Attrition Challenges At High Growth Startups
Are hiring algorithms fair? They’re too opaque to tell, study finds
A small tech company tried it all to stop employee turnover. Only one thing worked (much recommended)
