Guest Post by Nora Murphy, Aquire Workforce Planning Analyst

 Have you ever noticed that there seems to be a great deal of confusion on the basic terminology involved in workforce analytics?  What is a measure and how is it different from pure data?  Is an indicator equivalent to a metric?  And finally, how do these tie into analytics in the world of human capital?

We have all heard these terms being used interchangeably.  While the differences between them can seem negligible, you have to apply the terminology appropriately if you want to confidently engage in discussions related to any organizational activity.

So, how does data become an integral part of analytics?  Below is a brief discussion on understanding its progress.

A measure is no more than data that is collected with no specific reason or purpose.  For example, the number of terminations in January 2011 is an example of a measure.  How do we know if 100 terminations a month is good or bad?  We don’t – a single measure has very little value without context.

Suppose we track terminations monthly over a five-year period between 2006 and 2011.  Now we have some perspective and can see, perhaps, that our terminations have been creeping up.  We are looking to capture a specific quality to the data.  Whenever we measure something with the goal of gauging some quantifiable component of a company’s performance, whether it is revenues or terminations, we are talking about a metric. 

Let’s take this one step further.  Now we are examining the five-year trend of terminations which gives us a basic understanding of the relationship between our monthly numbers.  However, the fact that terminations have been trending up does not give us the complete picture of how well (or not well) the organization is doing with respect to attrition.  Do we know, for example, if the increase is attributable to the growth in our employee count due to our recent expansion efforts?  Or are members of our staff leaving because they are unhappy with management?  Measuring terminations against a baseline such as the average number of employees or budgeted terminations gives us significantly more context.  Termination rates and actual vs. budgeted terminations are both indicators.  They are metrics that act as guides to help assess the performance of a certain aspect of organizational activities – in this case, attrition.  Additionally, employee turnover can become a Key Performance Indicator if it reflects organizational goals and has been selected as a key metric to measure progress toward those goals.  

And tying it all together – analytics.  Workforce analytics transforms all the above – measures, metrics and KPIs – into a relevant storyline.  It is the process by which we identify what story is developing and then explain the plot by looking at trends, patterns, outliers, and possible relationships in the data, breaking it down and turning it into insight in order to make human capital decisions that impact business results.  

So…what is your story?

Qualifiers such as the following may be needed

• Full time vs. Part-time headcount
• Full-Time Equivalency (where a fraction is assigned to the head counted based on the percentage of a work week typically assigned as this person’s work responsibility)
• Contractor vs. Employee
• Seasonal vs. Permanent
• Exempt vs. Non-Exempt
• Salaried vs. Hourly
• Active vs. On-leave

There are more qualifiers and even these simplified descriptors often need further qualifiers.  Hear within lies the challenges with coming up with a headcount report.  If you don’t have strong definitions, then it depends on who you ask and what their investment is in the number of people working for your company or within your “four walls”.  If you ask someone doing payroll about headcount, they are likely to look at the number of checks they are cutting and give you the number.  Yet if you have furloughed employees or people on disability, checks may be paused for those employees, so you don’t have the full employed number from the payroll person.  If you ask the building/equipment facilities management, their headcount may include contractors but not permanently telecommuting employees.

So that gives us step 1…

Step 1:  Agree on the definitions of headcount and its qualifiers

Step 2:  Determine where you can appropriately obtain the count and detail of who fits each of these qualifiers.

Step 3:  Test said systems to assure their data is accurate

Step 4:  Publish these definitions and source data systems of record to ALL parties that need or think they need these numbers to do their job.

Repeat Step 3 and 4 often!

By making the definitions public and broadly  accepted, future reports will see an increase in accuracy, meeting the needs of the requesting party.  Without proper headcount data, reporting and agreed upon assumptions, most other data analysis of your workforce is likely to be flawed.  It may only be off a little bit, but based on our experience it is often a large enough margin of error that you don’t want to be staking your job or decisions about other’s jobs upon faulty data.

Cheers,

Lois

Just in time for baseball’s post-season, the film version of the book Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman, is due in theaters next month.  Moneyball is based on the true story of Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics and his attempt to use analytics to build a winning baseball team with limited resources.

If you are in HR, when you see the movie (and you will, it’s Brad Pitt), you won’t be able to get the comparisons to business world workforce planning and analytics out of your head.  Moneyball, written by Michael Lewis, articulates the challenges faced by Oakland Athletics GM, Billy Bean:

1. Through experimentation, find those factors that can be used to reliably predict success.
2. With this new ability to predict success, go recruit/procure/develop those success factors in the most affordable way possible.
3. Put the pieces together to form a winning team.

Aren’t these some of the same challenges we seek to solve in workforce planning and analytics?  Of course they are!

Save some money for your company by skipping that leadership development course and take your team out for a movie and popcorn.  What will they learn from Moneyball?

1. Challenge established thinking.  You can’t create a competitive advantage if you do things the same way everybody else does.
2. Use the scientific method to test what works best.  The time for gut-feel management has passed.
3. If you are successful, others will copy you.  But when you build your competitive advantage through people, it is much harder to copy.

I remember playing baseball as a kid and hearing teammates encourage a batter’s discretion by shouting “a walk is as good as a hit.”  Well, no kid thinks getting a walk is as good as a hit. Individual players have always been measured on their ability to hit the ball and reach base safely (batting average).  The point is that THE TEAM benefits as much from a walk as from a hit.  The result is a runner on first base, either way you accomplish it.  Billy Beane was one of the first to recognize and reward contributions to TEAM metrics above individual metrics in order to achieve team goals.

This is just another example of analytics changing the game.  Enjoy the movie!

Cheers,

Andrew Courtois

That’s not to say that qualified candidates won’t eventually have to provide that information, but why put every single applicant through that time-intensive process when most are going to be ruled out based on their resume anyway?

Here’s the deeper question, though – how did the federal government hiring process turn into such a convoluted, difficult process that a majority of the applicants hire coaches to get them through the process and pay to have KSA essays written?

Back on May 11, 2010, President Obama mandated improvements in the federal recruitment and hiring process, calling on “executive departments and agencies to overhaul the way they recruit and hire our civilian workforce.” From eliminating the essay questions during initial applications to posting vacancies in clear language, facilitating better communication with applicants and requiring that hiring managers be fully involved and accountable, the Presidential Memo laid out tactical and strategic steps to reform the existing process.

Just three months later, in August, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was abandoning a 10-month long attempt to use TalentLink to automate their hiring processes, saying that while there was nothing wrong with the software itself, it just wasn’t designed for the federal hiring process and the HR specialists had to spend too much time implementing workarounds to benefit from it.

So…a technology tool that eliminated the KSA questions, allowed DHS applicants to simply submit a resume, standardized vacancy announcements using plain language and facilitated better communication with applicants was deemed to be insufficient for fulfilling the mandate? Was it truly the software that was the stumbling block, or rather the mindset of the DHS human capital officers?

A new study by the Aberdeen Group backs up my long-held belief that automation of HR processes, done right, results in better performance of new hires and reduced time and cost to fill new positions. But according to DHS Chief Human Capital Officer Jeffrey Neal, “We have grown so reliant on technology for the hiring process in the government that it’s actually hampered our ability to get the right candidates.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m betting it’s not the technology they’ve grown reliant on, but ineffective processes that are driving bad technology. Think about that in relation to your own HR technology tools. Are they making your process easier? Or more effective? Or both? If not, is it the technology that needs to change… or your process?

Cheers,

Lois

When looking at companies with VERY flat organizations, some of the highest concentrations of flat, yet large companies appeared to be in India.  Many organizations, in their pitch for outsourcing business, have touted that there is no red-tape in their organizations, as there are no more than three layers of management in the entire organization.  This creates a bevy of issues in the workforce from lack of opportunity for high potentials to climb the management ranks to lack of appropriate supervision or guidance to assure quality.  If they do not have established communication with their employees, a manager can’t oversee the work of 60 – 80 employees, nor manage the workflow of issues between resource constraints.  WORKFORCE.COM alone has 8 articles in the last 5 years quoting 50% turnover being typical in India and other countries where operational efficiency desires have stripped out all middle management.  There are many reasons people jump to another employer. Feeling like a replaceable cog is right up there with a few cents more an hour in these markets.

Then we look at the flip side of the “Too Flat,” the “Too Tall” scenario. French organizations we looked at for structure are notorious for this. One organization had 5,000 employees and 29 pay grades.  This organization was rife with micro-management, because there was no differentiation between the layers of management.  There were rules that no one could jump more than 2 pay grades within 18 months so advancement was VERY slow for high potential employees.  The list of ailments went on, from the perspective of the American workforce model.  The organization executives felt they had a well-oiled machine with a great deal of established order.  The employee tenure was high, yet productivity per employee was plummeting.  This company had not had a new product release in over 5 years. It would appear that innovation had died.

I am not including all of the details, but I will summarize a few more points that make this important to Americans designing their organizations or hiring employees.  There are many lessons to be learned about the way organizations are designed and their impact upon the workforce, as a whole and as individuals.  But, few people in HR really get to impact the organizational design of their company.  What many people do have involvement in is hiring.  In these times our hiring pool is typically very diverse culturally and experience wise.  It could be very valuable to consider the type of organizational structure your prospective employee is accustom to.  Did they thrive or feel uncomfortable in a flat or a tall organization?  Why?  Does the structure of your company match or contradict the environment they have worked in?  Can they bring new perspective to the structure of your organization that could help you facilitate change where needed?  Diversity can be very valuable, if the diversity can help adaptation.

Cheers,

For the best-of-the-best and for some of the most heartwarming stories, here is an HR Carnival (a collection of blogs around the HR industry or by HR Professionals). This HR Carnival collection was created by Mike VanDervort at The Human Race Horses, and the reading is the best time you can have this week while still getting yourself thinking about many diverse yet timely and interesting human resource topics.

Just go to the HR Carnival of Global Giving.

You should also set your RSS reader to keep you up-to-date on posts from these great authors.

Cheers,
Lois

I read an amazing statistic on the web. “If everyone of the 126,685,145 people who voted in the presidential election, regardless of party affiliation, devoted just one day of service to their community, it would equal over a billion man hours in a highly concentrated timeframe. The scope of this kind of participation is unprecedented and could bring solutions to thousands of communities in need.”

What an incredible way to think about giving. I believe we can all contribute in many ways. Typically, I give time to my community in smaller increments of dedicated time. I like to contribute where I know I am actually using my expertise, as opposed to throwing brute force or hours at a problem. Would I have more impact if I put all of the hours together?

I have great inspirations in the area of donating, such as Dave Stone of First Rate Investment Systems, one of the most giving people I have ever met in this world. The evidence of his giving spirit can be read in one of his earlier First Rate newsletters. He not only gives himself but inspires his employees to give and congratulates their efforts.

Need help deciding what method best suits your company or you as an individual? The Volunteer Family site provides a framework to select what best fits your interests and capabilities. The SERVE.GOV site enables you to search for a volunteer opportunity, shares additional source links, as well as provides toolkits to get started with your volunteer program.

I applaud my friends, employees, family members, interns, and all who dedicate time to their community to help make it a better place. I challenge all of us to extend our hands just a little further to help wherever our hearts tells us we can. We should all give in the ways that are best suited to us. Giving of yourself can only lead to living a richer life. I will pledge to do more with my blessed life to help others do more with theirs.

Cheers,
Lois

For instance, I learn so much about HR issues from meeting with our customers, such as:

• creative ways to do a rapid succession plan
• unique and common prospectives to reorganizing staff for alignment with business strategies
• data integrity problems that can make you pull your hair out, if you can’t find a way to fix them (that’s where Aquire comes in)
• and so many other great discussions

Then there is my network of non-customers in the human resource space. Some are vendors to the HR profession and others are actual HR professionals. Some  are just really interesting people who are interested in other people. I use my travels, tradeshows, LinkedIn, and now Twitter, to meet, greet, learn from, and, hopefully, contribute to this wonderful network of professionals who make supporting the world’s employee base a better career.

One of the truly amazing networks I’ve encountered and am largely expanding into, is the world of human resource bloggers. One particular blog isn’t really a single blog, it’s called “Carnival of HR.” Every few weeks this roving blog entry, comprised of a collaboration of links to some of the best, brightest, and most entertaining bloggers in the industry, is posted by a different industry blogger – thus sharing the web traffic love. Some entrants are in every Carnival and others come in and out. You have GOT to meet these people.

Check out this week’s Carnival of HR hosted by Inflexion Point, the blog page for Inflexion Advisors, and coordinated by the HR Minion (aka Shauna Moerke). I didn’t get an entry into this carnival, but I occasionally drop by, too. You can also check out the accompanying  Blogrolls, a list of other recommended bloggers posted on a blogger’s site. (I now have one on my blog – and will be enhancing it soon with more great resources.)

We can learn so much from each other and be entertained as well. By the way, if you are not reading blogs yet, or are not LinkedIn or connecting with Twitter, you are really missing something, and it just might bite you one day. Because, oh, the people you’ll meet…

Cheers,
Lois

In his book, Outliers, The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell provides a great deal of evidence that the best (if not only) way to master something is to dedicate approximately 10,000 hours to it. For perspective, that is 1,250, 8 hour days. An “outlier” is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience; in this instance, people who have achieved over and above what is expected. Gladwell’s examples include chess masters, the Beatles, golfers, Mozart, and others. He stresses through many examples that a combination of people, circumstances, and tenacity of practice is what leads to greatness, not just innate talents. According to Gladwell, outliers are the beneficiaries of many helping hands.

Excellence takes time. One of the encouraging points of Outliers is that you can reach excellence in most things if you can persist in the right dedicated practice of your art, whatever it might be. Be purposeful about how you spend your time. If your goals involve mastering a set of skills, make sure your daily routine allows you to dedicate consistent time toward developing the habits and skills you need to achieve your goals.

P.S. Anyone who is a mentor, teacher, parent, leader, coach, or a life learner will enjoy this book. If we can’t all be outliers, we can certainly contribute to the development an outlier.

Cheers,
Lois

I was greatly rewarded when my customers and people of the HR Technology community came up to me during the conference and repeatedly said things like:

• I love your employees.
• They are so great.
• They are very helpful.
• They obviously like their jobs because they do them well and take care of us.

It happened so many times. I was beaming with pride.

I thank my employees for being so wonderful to the community and I thank the community for acknowledging them.

Cheers,
Lois

Steve says, “A blog exchange is a simple idea where two bloggers are paired up with each other and each submits a “guest post” to their partner’s blog, hopefully done in more or less the style and using the “normal” subject matter of the host blog. So each blogger gets a chance to stretch a bit, potentially writing about something new, and perhaps altering their style a bit, and hopefully most of all having some fun.”

I have been paired with an HR Professional, Trish McFarlane, The HR Ringleader  http://hrringleader.wordpress.com/. I’m excited about this new adventure, and will soon contribute a blog entry for Trish’s blog and she will write one for this blog. Stay tuned for Trish’s input – something a little different for my readers. Have you considered a blog exchange for your network of bloggers?

Cheers,
Lois

As CEO of a small company, I know that building and nurturing mutual trust at all levels of our organization creates an atmosphere of dedication and spirit that not only gets us through the ups and downs of the economy, but is also perceived and appreciated by customers and prospects. The larger a company gets – or is – the harder it is to effectively maintain that trust balance.

Although not mentioned in that article, I think another reason is that smaller businesses are more agile. Our release cycles can adapt to the market – as well as to innovation and customer needs – more readily than big organizations and without sacrificing quality. Our customer service support reps can work with customers in multiple ways without transferring them around a labyrinth of support tiers. Our developers have the ability to test and innovate within an incredibly supportive team.

Now I’m not saying that trust and agility are exclusive to small businesses. I work with many large companies that have both qualities in abundance. And not all small businesses are built on trust, integrity and respect. But certain characteristics of many small businesses – such as being privately held, built on integrity, customer-oriented, and directly in control of products and services – naturally foster trust and agility.

Right now, we know our customers need our support and help more than ever. They are the HR departments dealing with Reductions in Force, broken succession plans, and the integration of merged workforces. They are over-worked and over-stressed and often working with heavy hearts in this environment. I’m glad we’re in a position to help them and I hope we never get too big or too comfortable to stop.

*Why Small Businesses Will Win in This Economy, Peter Bregman, Harvard Business Review.

Cheers,
Lois

I personally pursued the GPHR (Global Professional in HR) certification last year for several reasons. I wanted to:

• Delve deeper into areas of global human resources.
• Motivate myself to meet a deadline to achieve the first level of education, i.e. the TEST.
• Prove that I could do it.

The test was hard; but I passed it the first time (for those of you who have not taken these types of tests, that is an accomplishment). I absolutely loved it!

I am proud of my certification. GPHR certification:

• Validated my knowledge.
• Taught me many new things.
• Allowed me to create a frame of reference when talking to other global professionals in HR.
• Allowed me to connect with others who are also certified, because I know there are similarities enough in our world that we should know each other just because we have the same certification.

I encourage you to pursue industry certification – so look into the new certification by IHRIM. You can ask for more information through certification@ihrim.org.  It’s good for you!

Cheers,
Lois

You, too, can hire interns and utilize their skills. You can use the program as a testing ground for future employment. If you can convert an exceptional intern into a full time employee after graduation, there is usually great return for both the business and the new employee.

I see a resurgence in many organizations for interns and new college graduate recruiting. Since new grads are less expensive and don’t have all of the baggage that accompanies other careered employees, they are valuable assets to consider for many positions.

One of the best things we have found about interns is that they learn faster than any other employee sector, so  recruiting them fits with a lot of corporate strategies.

I find interns inspiring and valuable. I recommend you explore this option in your workforce.

Cheers,
Lois

As companies plan for their workforce to retire over the next 5, 8, or 10 years, they must rely on the sharing of knowledge between their employees. As technology, the markets, customers, and techniques change so quickly, the ability to learn and adapt is very valuable.

So, the advice tip is keep learning and showing off your ability to learn. This can be illustrated through certifications you must study for and earn, new projects that may be out of your comfort zone, or standard  business practice, hobbies involving continual learning, etc. Maintain a hunger for taking on new tasks and learning new things. It will be noticed.

Shari, an Aquire customer, mentioned that she was very impressed with an applicant who learned as much as he could about chess in order to play a customer coming to town for product training. The customer is a tournament chess player, and the applicant wanted to give him a good, challenging game. He dove into it, took lessons and played extensively on a computer version. The customer was so impressed that this person had learned the game in such detail he wrote a letter of recommendation for this person about his ability to learn and grasp complex subjects. (The guy got the job with Shari.)
Keep learning – it makes you more interesting and much more marketable for moving into or up through the organization chart.

Cheers,
Lois

Our stars program is very simple. When an employee wants to give a visible thank you to an employee, they submit a “Star Award” to the Star Coordinator, explaining how the individual went out of their way to help, or they produced exemplary work. There are a lot of stars flying around this place. Last month some teammates did an amazing job on a workforce planning RFP (Request for Proposal). The sales rep for whom they managed it sent them each Stars. Another employee created some beautiful custom succession planning org charts for a customer that looked great in their proof of concept for their CEO. The client manager gave that product support person a Star. Another employee found thousands of dollars in savings for the company. Their manager gave them a Gold Star, and the Executive Team saw the recognition and gave them a bonus.

The Stars show up in their personnel file, as well as an icon on the corporate organizational chart. Each month the employee who was awarded the most stars is recognized at the monthly luncheon. Everyone who gets a star is given a gasoline gift card. The annual winner of the most stars also receives recognition and a gift at the annual meeting. Gifts have ranged from a day at a spa to tickets to a Cowboys football game. So, even though there are very minor expenses associated with the recognition, in general the program is free. The reward for the employee is often priceless. It is a magnifier for the verbal thank you they get when they deliver something to a co-worker. It can be amazingly effective.

Recognition is important; recognition from your peers is really encouraging and very much appreciated. I would like to hear about programs for Peer Recognition that you utilize and how you have made it visible.

Cheers,
Lois

Intellectually, I understand #6, but struggle with passing on that advice the most. As an adamant believer in the protection of copyright, I beg of you to read and share the link with others, but respect Dan’s intellectual property by not using it without his permission.

Scary Times Success Manual (TM)

1. Forget about yourself, focus on others.
   Uncertainty can drive people into themselves, making them feel isolated and helpless. The best strategy here is to go in the opposite direction, expanding your connection with others – focusing on helping them transform their negatives into positives. The more you contribute in this fashion, the less you will need to worry about your own situation. You will become a source of confidence for everyone else.
2. Forget about your commodity, focus on your relationships.
   In uncertain times, people become frightened about the viability of their “commodities” – the things they sell and the jobs they hold. A more strategic response here is to disregard your own commodity and focus on deepening the power and possibility of all your relationships – with family, friends, team members, suppliers, clients, customers, and prospects. Every time you strengthen a relationship, the viability of your commodity will increase. A strategic response is to take advantage of every resource that is immediately available in order to achieve as many small results and make as much daily progress as possible.
3. Forget about the sale, focus on creating value.
   Most people don’t like being sold at the best of times. When the future is less certain, they turn off, hang up, and slam shut. But what people want at all times is value creation – that is, solutions that help them eliminate their dangers, capture their opportunities, and reinforce their strengths. When you focus on providing these three solutions, the sales will naturally follow.
4. Forget about your losses, focus on your opportunities.
   Things you had and may have taken for granted sometimes disappear. Some people never get over this. They keep trying to replay their old games. A better strategy is to start an entirely new game – using new ideas, new energies, new tools, and new resources. As the world changes, opportunities suddenly become available to achieve far more than you ever did in the past.
5. Forget about your difficulties, focus on your progress.
   Because of some changes, things may not be as easy as they once were. New difficulties can either defeat you or reveal new strengths. Your body’s muscles always get stronger from working against resistance. The same is true for the “muscles” in your mind, your spirit, and your character. Treat this whole period of challenge as a time when you can make your greatest progress as a human being.
6. Forget about the “future,” focus on today.
   The “future” is an abstraction. It doesn’t exist except as an idea. The only future that has any reality is the one that you continually create for yourself through each day’s contributions, achievements, and results. This is an excellent time to ignore all those experts who never saw the present circumstances coming. Focus on what you can do over the course of each 24 hours, and you’ll be the only expert on the future you’ll ever need.
7. Forget about who you were, focus on who you can be.
   Many people define themselves by external circumstances. When these abruptly or unexpectedly change, they don’t know who they are, so they keep trying to be who they used to be. From now on, take your cues from the inside – from your dreams, ideals, values, and operating principles. These need never change, regardless of the circumstances. Take advantage of external confusion to become self-directed, self-managed, and self-motivated.
8. Forget about events, focus on your responses.
   When things are going well, many people think they are actually in control of events. That’s why they feel so defeated and depressed when things turn bad. They think they’ve lost some fundamental ability. The most consistently successful people in the world know they can’t control events – but continually work toward greater control over their creative responses to events. Any period when things are uncertain is an excellent time to focus all of your attention and energies on being creatively responsive to all of the unpredictable events that lie ahead.
9. Forget about what’s missing, focus on what’s available.
   When things change for the worse, many desirable resources are inevitably missing – including information, knowledge, tools, systems, personnel, and capabilities. These deficiencies can paralyze many people, who believe they can’t make decisions and take action. A strategic response is to take advantage of every resource that is immediately available in order to achieve as many small results and make as much daily progress as possible. Work with every resource and opportunity at hand, and your confidence will continually grow.
10. Forget about your complaints, focus on your gratitude.
    When times get tough, everyone has to make a fundamental decision: to complain or to be grateful. In an environment where negative sentiment is rampant, the consequences of this decision are much greater. Complaining only attracts negative thoughts and people. Gratitude, on the other hand, creates the opportunity for the best thinking, actions, and results to emerge. Focus on everything that you are grateful for, communicate this, and open yourself each day to the best possible consequences.

TM & © 2005-2008. The Strategic Coach Inc. All rights reserved.

Cheers,
Lois

Steve is a brilliant farmer. He taught us about the science involved in farming. His farm is one of the largest family-owned organic farms in the state of Iowa. He’s an officer in multiple associations promoting organic farming, and has been doing this for 2 decades. I bet that’s longer than most of you have been buying organic food. He is fascinating and has improved our understanding of food, as well as the food chain. We now visit his farm at every trip to my Grandma’s. It’s the highlight of my son’s visit to climb on the hay bales and run crazy in the fields where I used to do the same thing as a kid.

I am so very thankful that we explored the family I have, and really dove into what they know. I have learned a great deal from many family members over time. We are different nationalities, practice different professions, and have MANY different life perspectives. I also have my fair share of interesting characters that could generate hours of water cooler stories. I accept them, and they often can be a great study in human nature.

Be thankful for your family, even the in-laws. If it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t have your significant other. Explore what your family is really interested in. Seek out the most interesting person you can find in the group. Learn something new. Change the subject a few times until you find something you can share. I bet you’ll be rewarded, at least in small ways and, I hope, in large ways.

Happy Thanksgiving,
Lois

At Aquire we use red objects outside our cube or office door to signal that we are really not to be disturbed. A red symbol is a stop sign and it means “don’t knock on my door or step into my cube.” It is used judiciously to be effective. We allow each employee to select their own red object. There is a red plush ladybug that hangs from a door handle that says “don’t bug me.” A red marble apple on the edge of a cube or a red silk flower placed in a vase all give a silent reminder that “now is not the time.” Some people have also started using laminated signs hung up with a red ribbon that state “Quiet Please, Web Ex In Session” which indicates a connection over the internet with customers.

It’s quick, it’s easy to understand. People don’t leave their red object out all the time – or their co-workers will be begin to ignore the symbol for that person. This practice has trained our employees that to get people to respect the symbol’s meaning, they must respect the symbol themselves. By letting each person have their own symbol, employees can work within their own personality and decor, too.

Cheers,
Lois

Debi coordinates our tradeshows and our advertising placements. At times she works with the booth at tradeshows and keeps everything running smoothly while managing to find time to schmooze the customers, too. She has pulled off some minor miracles in seasons where we have had dozens of shows on different continents. We know we will be well taken care of when we hit the road. Debi will always have the details planned for us.

Nancy is known as the Rock Star of our User Conference because she is the trainer delivering education on how to use our products. She does it with such a Texan flair and loveable style that all the facts and processes stay memorable and provide great value to the attendees. She’s a rock star in other ways, too. She has not only worked in our training department, but product support and sales, as well.

I have had the honor of traveling extensively with these ladies. The very best piece of artwork in my house was found on a shopping jaunt during a business trip with both of them. Nancy and Debi were there for my family as we lost family members, and we have been there with them, as they have lost theirs. We shared the joy of my son being born, and now they get asked to buy cub scout popcorn from him.

These ladies have helped shape the culture of Aquire and indoctrinated new employees to the things that matter in the way we do business. Things like, conduct business with the highest integrity, work as a team, innovate, be flexible, treat customers the way we want to be treated, and take care of each other.

I have the most wonderful employees in the world, and Debi and Nancy are two shining examples of that.

Thank you ladies!

Cheers,
Lois