WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO CREATE A \’CULTURE OF FAILURE\’?

In my last post, I discussed the importance of failure in company culture. In order for people to take risks and push the envelope, they need to have a certain level of comfort with defeat. In other words, you don\’t only need to walk before you run to succeed—you also need to be okay with stumbling every once in a while.

But what does this \”culture of failure\” look like, and how is it achieved? Embracing failure isn\’t about patting people on the back when they miss the mark—at its core, a culture of failure is about feedback that helps you make the mark next time. If you want to progress as an individual or as a company, you need to be willing to identify your weaknesses and maximize your strengths.

However, even the most self-aware people are limited in their ability to identify these strengths and weaknesses on their own. They need help—and, based on my experience, they want help. If you look at recent research on the millennial generation—which, in many ways, I believe strongly reflects the desires of every generation—you\’ll find that almost everything points back to the desire for growth and development, for continuous feedback. Most people are craving conversations that push them to the next level. The question is, how do you get there?

Build Structured Communication

Creating a culture of failure comes down to communication—communication between employees and managers, between managers and VPs, between VPs and the C-suite. As director of talent management at Cornerstone, I\’ve focused a lot of my time and energy on fostering the type of communication that leads to a company and workforce not only open to risk-taking, but prone to it.

At Cornerstone, we train managers to provide their employees with \”stretch projects.\” The key to these projects\’ success, however, doesn\’t lie in giving the assignment—it lies in the conversations that occur before and afterwards. Prior to the project, the manager asks the employee, \”What\’s your likelihood for success? What\’s your expected failure rate? What are your obstacles?\” After the project, the manager debriefs with the employee to identify successes and failures on both ends: \”What were the unforeseen obstacles? Was the task as clearly communicated as possible? Were the challenges identified individual blocks, or systemic blocks? And if they were systemic blocks, who should have gotten on your side?\”

Teach People to Ask For Feedback

With structured communication, employees will begin to feel more comfortable taking on stretch assignments. First, because they know the goal isn\’t success—it\’s growth. And second, because when they fail—and, usually, they are bound to \”fail\” in some sense—they will have a deep understanding of how to succeed the next time around.

The second benefit of structured communication—and another step toward fostering a workforce comfortable with failure—is that it will teach people to be comfortable with feedback. When most people ask for \”feedback\” today, I\’ve found that what they truly expect is congratulations. Why? It\’s not that they don\’t want to improve—it\’s just that they aren\’t used to hearing constructive criticism, and are therefore unsure of how to handle it.

Structured communication familiarizes both employees and managers with receiving and providing tough feedback. After a few stretch assignments, employees will learn to be their own best advocates and managers will learn how to truly coach their employees. Instead of asking, \”How did that go?\” employees will learn to ask, \”How could that have gone better?\” And instead of a nonchalant \”Good job!\” managers will be able to provide both congratulations and criticism.

Prioritize Growth

Last but not least, it\’s not enough to simply encourage employees and managers to communicate or discuss feedback. It needs to be a formal part of your culture, embodied by your values. Because as I\’ve learned during my career, there are two truths about culture: 1) Culture can be made and 2) Whether you consciously make it or not, culture will happen.

If you aren\’t mindful and strategic about integrating failure into your company culture—through formal communication, trainings and leadership by example—you won\’t realize the eventual success that comes from risk-taking. It is critical to prioritize manager feedback, employee reviews, and general stretch assignments. As a CLO or CHRO, you can beat the drum of \”failure is a good thing\” all you want—but unless you formalize this belief, and immerse your workforce from the start in a company that encourages feedback and growth, you won\’t see a true cultural shift.

An excuse I hear all too often is, \”I want to give feedback—it\’s just that I\’m too busy.\” The hard truth is that at the end of the day, your employees are the only thing you should always have time for. If you\’re too busy for them, then you\’re failing to invest in the future of your personal career, team and company. Like all good things, this is easier said than done—but as I\’ve learned throughout my career, your biggest failures will take you farther than any small success.

CAN YOU GET AWAY WITHOUT AN HR DEPARTMENT?

Human resources professionals manage your company\’s most important asset: your people. From regulations and compliance issues to hiring, developing and engaging employees, HR pros are the key to staying competitive in today\’s talent market.

But while the value of talent management is great, investing in a sole HR employee—let alone an entire department—can seem out of reach for many small businesses. The consequence? Some studies suggest that a lack of HR directly impacts business success—research from the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies during the first dot-com boom found that companies who invested in HR expertise first were the fastest to go public and the least likely to fail. But this doesn\’t necessarily mean you need HR on day one.

We talked to a handful of talent management professionals and small business owners to get their take on where HR should land on the totem pole of priorities for your small business.

Consistency, Compliance and Culture

\”They shouldn\’t wait,\” says Arlene Vernon, President of HRx, Inc., an HR consulting firm. \”Some businesses see it as an expense, rather than seeing the financial and operating benefits a skilled HR person can bring,\” Vernon says.

There are many laws, regulations and compliance issues HR handles. For example, once you reach 50 employees your company must offer the Family and Medical Leave Act, says Vernon. If you have 50 full-time equivalents, compliance with Affordable Care Act is required. Then there is the issue of employee conflict, performance reviews, salary negotiations, recruiting, interviewing, orientation, on-boarding and more. The list of duties HR handles is long.

\”Statistics regarding HR staff to employee fluctuate by industry, but the standard is approximately one person in HR for every 100 employees,\” Vernon says. \”However, when companies reach 50-75 employees, it\’s typical that the first HR person is added.\” While a company can outsource parts of HR to make operations easier (such as benefits and retirement administration) and hire consultants for handbooks, compensation analysis and recruiting, at a certain point companies need a central person to ensure consistency, compliance and support your organization\’s culture.

\”If you\’re at the questioning point of whether to add HR or stay [with the] status quo, most likely you already have the need,\” Vernon says.

Focus on the Long Term

If you do \”get away\” without an HR department, what exactly are you getting away with? That\’s the question HR Business Partner at Sandia National Laboratories and consultant Max Dubroff, SHRM-SCP, posed. If your answer relates to saving money, he says, you\’re thinking too short term.

He offered one of his clients as an example. The leadership thought it was doing fine after more than 12 years of success and growth to more than 350 people, but a new operations leader saw a missed opportunity and brought in the company\’s first HR professional. She lowered turnover from more than 200 percent annually to 92 percent and cut avoidable costs in unemployment and workers compensation by more than 70 percent over nine years. This enabled the company to grow in many ways, including tripling the size of the company and adding new lines of business.

People Are Your Most Important Asset

If you believe people are your most important asset, you better have someone in charge of your human capital, says Kim Shepherd, CEO of Decision Toolbox, an outsourced recruitment solutions provider. She sees HR as necessary for companies with 500 to 3,000 employees.

\”If your firm is poised for rapid growth, it\’s a good idea to welcome HR to the senior table,\” says Shepherd, who has more than 20 years of experience and is a recognized global thought leader in the industry. \”There has been plenty of proof that an \’A player\’ has a strong ROI. Whether you outsource or insource, spend some money on this function.\”

For companies below 500 employees, Shepherd suggests outsourcing the HR function, noting that there are plenty of seasoned professionals for hire on a part-time basis. HR plays a role on two sides of the fence—compliance and the talent lifecycle. But companies can look internally to help with the more culture and development-focused HR functions if they don\’t have staff in place.

WHAT I\’VE LEARNED ABOUT EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT TRAINING

Success in the new world of work is less defined by checking boxes, and more defined by thinking outside of them.

This shift has inevitably impacted the way we see management: In the industrial economy, management was defined quite literally—managers oversaw employees clocking in and out, completing tasks and adhering to safety regulations. In the knowledge economy, however, the role of management is more nuanced. Managers are not only responsible for overseeing work, but also crafting team culture, teaching hard and soft skills, and helping individual employees flourish.

The bottom line: Modern management is a hard job, and as Steve Dolan, a consultant at 2020 Talent Management, writes, even the most talented employees struggle with it. The solution? If you want great managers (and, subsequently, more engaged employees), you need to invest in teaching great management skills. I recently kicked off a five-month, intensive global management training at Cornerstone, and wanted to share my takeaways thus far on designing a program for real impact.

1) Create Room for Different Perspectives

Management is a multifaceted role. By selecting participants with diverse experiences—whether it\’s across levels, departments, offices, countries or all of the above—you\’ll be able to better prepare people for the multiple personalities and situations they\’ll encounter as managers.

At Cornerstone, our training program includes people from the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Singapore, India and more, and the participants include both new and veteran managers. The rich tapestry of experience and perspective they bring to the table is invaluable; in addition to providing a global understanding, the diverse group gives people an opportunity to collaborate with people they wouldn\’t traditionally encounter.

But as we learned in the first few months, you can\’t just bring a group of people together—literally or virtually—and expect magic. You can create a community, but that doesn\’t mean you\’ve created community. Make sure participants have plenty of opportunities to interact with each other—as a whole and in small groups—and, as a moderator, offer up your own vulnerabilities and problems as a manager in order to make the program a safe space for discussion.

2) Consider Scalability

For a long time, we had two main management trainings at Cornerstone: one for brand new managers and one for experienced managers. Both were two-day, in-person trainings, and went well: They were relatively simple to execute and participants enjoyed them. The problem? The programs were far from scalable.

In our latest program, scalability was a huge influence. The pilot program has two \”cohorts\” of 14 people each, but as a company of 1,600 employees, we asked ourselves, \”How can we eventually expand this to anyone who wants to take it?\” The answer was designing the program to be almost entirely online. The new program consists of e-learning courses, TED Talks, an interactive online community, reading assignments and a 45-minute virtual seminar once a month. The only in-person contact is a one-on-one with me three times over the course of the program (which can still be done virtually for international managers).

Additionally, an online program provides more flexibility—we are able to adjust the program prior for each cohort to ensure it\’s relevant.

3) Think Long-Term

Training is often thought of as something to check off the on-boarding list, but in the case of management training, it needs to be ongoing to have the most impact. In part, that\’s why we decided to take the long-term approach to our program, designing it like a college course. Every month, we have a theme: 1) back to the basics, 2) time management, 3) situational leadership and feedback, 4) communication and 5) engagement and motivation.

The benefit of a long-term program is that it offers training in practice: Participants can apply the lessons in real-time. For example, one participant had two talented people on their team applying for one job opportunity. The manager shared that she used the skills from our training to communicate to the employee why they didn\’t get the job in a way that made them feel empowered and inspired to keep improving. The length of the program also provides more opportunity for participants to be “player-coaches.\” Every month, we select a small group of participants to be discussion leaders, bringing their experience, research and thoughts to the group.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that even managers needs management, and mentors need mentorship: Every employee has a myriad of goals, tasks and behaviors—no matter their seniority. Investing in a thoughtful, integrative management training program will bring out the best in your mid- and upper-level employees, which in turn will bring out the best in your company.

WHY SMALL BUSINESSES ARE OUTSOURCING HR

For eight years, Mickey Swortzel, founder of vehicle control systems start-up New Eagle, watched her employees\’ health-plan costs steadily increase. Then, in 2016, she made the decision to outsource her one-person HR department to ADP, one of the largest companies in the quickly growing market of Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs).

This is not an uncommon story among businesses today. In the last few years, the outsourced HR industry has taken off, bringing in an estimated $165 billion annually and nearly 85 percent of all firms—not just small businesses—now turn to an outside organization for at least some of their HR functions.

What\’s the motivation behind this growing trend?

More Affordable Benefits

For Mickey, like many others, the primary reason behind making the switch to a PEO was to lower healthcare plan costs and the ability to offer employees benefits that were previously unaffordable. \”My number-one reason for outsourcing was to reduce the cost of our health plans, and joining with a PEO allowed better group rates,\” Swortzel says. And the switch paid off: The prices of family plans were cut in half at her company and her employees now save an average of $5,000 annually.

\”Outsourcing gave us benefits that I couldn\’t afford—or even obtain at any cost—on my own,\” she says. By giving her small businesses the opportunity to access ADP\’s Fortune 500-level benefits, she also made the company more competitive when trying to recruit top talent amid a field of much larger competitors.

Sharing Legal Liability for Compliance

The increasingly complex regulatory environment that small businesses have to navigate makes it nearly impossible for a small HR team to stay up to date with compliance issues like the Affordable Care Act, worker\’s compensation, workplace discrimination and much more. HR outsourcing firms often shoulder some or all of the legal liability for maintaining that compliance.

\”There are things companies have to do because it\’s the law,\” says Deanna Arnold, president of Employers Advantage HR Company in North Carolina. \”And small business owners have so many things they need to focus on that when issues come up, they can find themselves unintentionally in trouble. By establishing compliance we protect these companies.\”

\”Between the complexities of payroll, hiring, administration and organizing huge companies, it\’s often better to shift some of the responsibilities to others who are more focused and more qualified,\” explains Pierre Tremblay, HR director for Dupray, a Montreal-based company that sells steam cleaners and irons internationally.

Changing Perceptions and Evolving Services

Of course, outsourcing isn\’t right for all companies. Arnold recommends that once companies have 50 or more employees, they should start bringing some HR functions in-house. The downsides of HR outsourcing are most evident in areas like employee engagement or recruiting, where in-house HR people are in a better position to develop the culture, and reflect the values, of the company.

For Swortzel, the decision to outsource one of her core business functions was a tough one to make. \”I\’m in peer groups of other executives, and they were shocked that I was thinking of using a PEO,\” she says. \”It scared me too. I thought they would tell me how to run my business, who I could hire and fire.\”

Arnold says this is a common misconception about modern HR outsourcing. While outsourcing won\’t necessarily provide the same amount of culture or engagement support as in-house HR, most firms try to embed themselves with the clients as much as possible: \”We actually partner with the employer and employees to create work environments where they thrive.\”

Continuing to foster the human side of HR is vital to the success of both the business and HR as a whole. An important part of the service Arnold\’s company provides is offering her clients\’ employees a friendly face to speak with when they have questions or concerns. \”I have a team of five HR business partners who actually work on-site in some clients\’ offices for a set number of days or hours per week,\” she explains. \”We fully integrate into that organization, and even when we\’re not there, we\’re always reachable if they get injured or have an issue.\”

Swortzel says her experience was the opposite of what she had feared. \”It has been a true partnership. They\’re not interested in running my business, they want us to be successful,\” she says.

WHAT I\’VE LEARNED ABOUT EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT TRAINING

Success in the new world of work is less defined by checking boxes, and more defined by thinking outside of them.

1) Create Room for Different Perspectives

2) Consider Scalability

Additionally, an online program provides more flexibility—we are able to adjust the program prior for each cohort to ensure it\’s relevant.

3) Think Long-Term

WHAT I\’VE LEARNED ABOUT EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT TRAINING

Success in the new world of work is less defined by checking boxes, and more defined by thinking outside of them.

1) Create Room for Different Perspectives

2) Consider Scalability

Additionally, an online program provides more flexibility—we are able to adjust the program prior for each cohort to ensure it\’s relevant.

3) Think Long-Term

3 QUESTIONS SMALL BUSINESSES SHOULD ASK BEFORE INVESTING IN HR TECH

When we talk about talent strategy, we\’re talking about a responsibility full of moving parts. HR professionals are tasked with finding talent to match a business\’ momentum, which means they are constantly scaling programs up and down, looking back while thinking ahead, and keeping a close eye on the culture and morale of an organization.

For large companies, the challenge of doing \”talent strategy\” well is met by a task force of HR pros. But small businesses don\’t have such a luxury—instead of an entire team of specialists overseeing all of these moving parts, it\’s usually just one or two people handling everything from hiring to payroll to benefits.

Technology (whether it\’s an applicant tracking system or a learning management system) can be a saving grace for these small talent teams. But starting the HR tech journey is also quite daunting. After working in both small businesses and as part of a HR tech company that serves small businesses, I\’ve learned a few lessons about what SMBs need when it comes to talent management software.

From my experience, getting HR tech right as a small businesses—which means making sure the tool has a positive impact on your people—comes down to asking the right questions. Here are three things to think about before investing in a new product or tool.

1) Am I ready to invest in a \”non-revenue generating\” aspect of the business?

The question for small businesses in any investment often comes down to one major trade-off: time versus money. Yes, this applicant tracking system might speed up hiring — but will it be enough to offset the cost?

There\’s no precise formula to answer this question, but you can do a \”gut check.\” Look at the amount of time your team is investing in administrative tasks. Is this time taking away from more impactful parts of the business? What processes could be streamlined with technology? Perhaps you\’re spending half your day sorting through applications and resumes, when you could be engaging with candidates.

HR tech will give you a return. It may not be as immediately tangible as an investment in sales or marketing technology, but it will bring positive benefits to your business—bottom and top line. To answer the \”time versus money\” question, remember that time usually is money. You just need to be in a place where you can set money aside for technology that you know will save your team time—and allow them to be more strategic in the long run.

2) How fast is my company growing?

The next question to ask comes down to your talent trajectory. As companies start to grow, technology can support that growth. To determine what kind of tool and platform you need, think about the skill sets you have as an HR department and the skill sets you want to grow into. Think about your current company culture, how this culture will evolve and who is expected to \”manage\” this culture.

Tap your employees to help inspire ideas. For example, my current role at Cornerstone was created out of an employee engagement survey—seriously. People said they wanted learning and development. We were growing so quickly that leadership hadn\’t had the opportunity to take a step back, take a breath and realize how big the company was becoming.

HR tech can help you move forward and \”catch up\” at the same time. A static company of fifteen people probably doesn\’t need career pathing, but if you want to grow to thirty by the end of the year, you should have already started planning for how those fifteen people will grow alongside your business and who can fill shoes if someone departs.

3) Do I want to know what I might find out?

Last but not least, you need to be prepared for what HR technology will reveal. Analytics and reporting are an integrated part of nearly every talent management software product. Are you ready to not only handle the insights you\’ll gain, but take action on them?

If a brand new performance management system points to the inefficiencies in your review cycle, you\’ll have to be ready to address those challenges. Your team needs to know you\’re taking talent strategy seriously.

You can anticipate some of these tech-driven insights, of course. Read up on Bersin by Deloitte\’s latest reports, keep tabs on the best industry blogs (hint: ReWork), and attend meet-ups and conferences.

By answering these three questions, you\’ll be three steps ahead of your leadership team when it comes to presenting why you want to invest in HR technology and how it can impact your business.

WHY SMALL BUSINESSES NEED A NEW APPROACH TO LEARNING

Small businesses often see learning as a nice-to-have, not a must-have. Once you meet the bare minimum of compliance training, why would you waste precious resources and time on learning?

The answer is simple, but may be hard to hear. For small businesses, learning is critical to success: By teaching people to think proactively rather than reactively, a small workforce can grow and scale with a nimbleness and creativity that\’s harder for large organizations to implement. In other words, it\’s easier to pivot a small boat in a storm—but only if the crew can think on their feet.

Implementing learning in a small company presents unique benefits, but, of course, it comes with its own set of challenges. Small businesses often don\’t have the luxury of people (or even one person) solely dedicated to L&D. Instead, they need to find ways to integrate learning into the daily work that they do, and figure out how to build each other up.

Don\’t Limit Learning to Hard Skills

The first question to ask is \”What kind of learning will we offer?\” For most organizations, \”learning\” is still focused on teaching hard skills. This works for large companies who are in a position to hire people with a limited understanding of the job—maybe they have four out of the five skills needed to really get the job done. Large companies can set up intensive training programs and craft ongoing mentorship programs to help employees achieve the last skill.

When it comes to small businesses, though, most companies are looking for people who can already do the job in full force. When I owned a small snowboarding shop, we hired people who knew how to ride a snowboard, how to evaluate the performance of a snowboard, how to fit people, how to tune, etc. We didn\’t really need to teach hard skills—so why did we need training?

We needed soft skills. We needed to move from a mentality of \”this is what you need to know to do your job\” to \”this is what you need to learn in order to grow.\” If you think about learning programs as an opportunity to create a \”developmental mindset\” instead of tune a snowboard, then you\’re headed for success. By teaching our employees to manage people, ask smart questions and represent our brand, we encouraged everyone to bring new knowledge to the company. In the end, this mindset allowed us to grow and open a second shop seamlessly.

Teach Soft Skills

How do you create this \”developmental mindset\”? The first step is to improve communication skills between leadership, managers and employees—and this comes down to two major things: crucial conversations and feedback.

Crucial conversations are discussions in which the results are high-stakes, opinions vary and emotions run strong. Small businesses are ripe with crucial conversations because every decision holds a lot of weight when you\’re a lean operation. By training employees on how to handle crucial conversations, in both listening and speaking, you can ensure that every discussion is civil and productive. Certification programs are affordable, and can even be done online.

The next critical soft skill is about communicating feedback. It\’s not just giving feedback that matters, but how you give feedback. I think of feedback as a three-skill system: giving feedback, receiving feedback and asking for feedback. Feedback starts with setting the right expectations, and giving ownership to the employee: What do they think is going well? What can improve? From there, the manager should respond and expand, and the two can develop a plan together.

Have One-on-Ones

When it comes to putting crucial conversations and feedback skills into practice, implementing an ongoing one-on-one program is critical.

It\’s important to understand the difference between a team meeting and a one-on-one meeting. Team meetings are a data dump: Usually leadership leads the meeting and makes a few announcements, and employees chime in on what they\’re working on and what needs to be done. One-on-one meetings are reflective: The employee should lead the meeting and discuss his goals, concerns and achievements, and the manager should answer with her solutions and feedback.

There are two major benefits to one-on-ones. First, managers receive more in-depth updates about the company\’s operations. As a leader in a small business, it\’s hard to keep on top of everything. And second, they also receive an incredible coaching opportunity.

In the end, learning in a small business is about communication and transparency. If you can teach employees to be their best advocates, and teach managers to be mentors, then you have a strong future ahead of you.e

TED TALK TUESDAY | WHY YOU SHOULD DARE TO DISAGREE

This post is part of our monthly TED Talk Tuesday series, spotlighting can\’t-miss TED Talks and their key takeaways. You can learn more about our partnership with TED here.

According to Margaret Heffernan, it\’s only human to want to avoid disagreement and conflict. But the blogger, former CEO and television producer encourages you to do just the opposite in her two books. Heffernan challenges readers to push against their comfort zones for the sake of sparking important conversations and inciting positive change.

In her TED Talk, Heffernan discusses why inviting objection into our work can be a game changer. While we are biologically drawn to people who think like us, Heffernan questions the value of surrounding ourselves with liked-minded peers.

Watch the video below and read on for three key takeaways from her talk.

\”It\’s a fantastic model of collaboration — thinking partners who aren\’t echo chambers.\”

Collaborators who challenge us and find the flaws in our methodology are crucial to doing good work. These are the working relationships that allow us and our work to grow and strengthen, but all too often we seek out people who we know will agree with us.

Organizations are even worse culprits of \”group think\” than individuals. When is the last time you were recruiting for a role, and actively sought out candidates who might not \”fit the mold\” of the job they were applying for? Bringing diversity of thought into an organization is the first step to creating a company culture where people are comfortable speaking up when they have a new different idea or see a flaw in an existing system or product.

\”We have to be prepared to change our minds.\”

Part of seeking out opposition is being open to accepting it. Growth stems from listening to conflicting viewpoints and the flaws that they may highlight in our own arguments.

The biggest catastrophes that we\’ve witnessed rarely come from information that is secret or hidden, Heffernan explains. In situations that go horribly wrong, we often have already been told the information we needed to to stop the problem, but we remained what she calls \”willfully blind\” to it all because we don\’t want to create conflict.

\”Open information is fantastic, open networks are essential.\”

Our common fear of conflict also impacts speaking up in the workplace when something is wrong.

\”In surveys of European and American executives, fully 85 percent of them acknowledge that they had issues or concerns at work that they were afraid to raise,\” Heffernan cites. People who have worked to find the best talent for their organizations will have difficulty engaging or retaining them if they don\’t question suspicious issues.

Creating an open network of communication that welcomes opposition makes for a functional and efficient work environment. Heffernan explains that this all takes practice to develop these skills—access to information alone isn\’t enough, it needs to be shared, accepted and discussed.

TED TALK TUESDAY| THE POWER OF BIG DATA

This post is part of our monthly TED Talk Tuesday series, spotlighting can\’t-miss TED Talks and their key takeaways. You can learn more about our partnership with TED here.

The more data, the better. That\’s according to Kenneth Cukier, data analyst for The Economist and co-author of the award-winning book, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform how We Live, Work and Think.

In his TED Talk, \”Big Data Is Better Data,\” Cukier explains that more data doesn\’t simply allow us to see more of what\’s in front of us, it also allows us to observe our environment in new ways. He argues that big data is our hope for the future—the tool we\’ll use to solve some of the world\’s biggest challenges, because we\’re fundamentally able to do things we simply couldn\’t with smaller data sets, such as machine learning.

Watch the video below and read on for three key takeaways from his talk.

\”Data has gone from a stock to a flow, from something that is stationary and static to something that is fluid and dynamic.\”

The term \”big data\” is now ubiquitous, almost to the point where you\’re probably tired of hearing about it. But Cukier emphasizes that it\’s important to understand why we call it big data, and why the \”big\” part is important. A lot of it comes down to how we store and access data in general. In the past, data lived in clunky physical objects like a stone tablet, or file boxes in the basement of a government building. Today, pages and pages of data can be condensed and transported using a single thumb drive.

Cukier refers to this ease of storing more data as its \”liquidity.\” We literally have access to bigger amounts of data in smaller forms, which means it\’s easier for people like human resources professionals to analyze trends, identify inefficiencies and correct them.

\”You have more information. You can do things that you couldn\’t do before. \”

Now that we have access to all this data, what can we do with it? The answer is just about anything. For HR teams, the way we can apply big data to artificial intelligence and machine learning is especially relevant.

The more data computers collect, the smarter and smarter they get. As computers learn more, they\’ll become more efficient at accomplishing redundant tasks, like payroll. Automating time-consuming processes, like payroll, not only eliminates human error, but also allows HR pros to focus their time on more strategic tasks.

\”Big data and algorithms are going to challenge white-collar, professional knowledge work in the 21st century in the same way that factory automation and the assembly line challenged blue-collar labor in the 20th century.\”

Cukier is no doubt an advocate for big data, but he also understands the downside. In theory, a computer that collects data and learns to do simple tasks better than humans makes life and work easier. However, it\’s also true that automation will make some roles obsolete—which is something the field of HR needs to prepare for in particular. How can HR professionals shape the future of their respective companies\’ industries to account for automation?

Cukier emphasizes that we need to remember big data is a tool. \”We\’re going to need to be careful and take big data and adjust it for our needs, our very human needs,\” he says. \”We have to be the master of this technology, not its servant.\”

EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MANAGING PEOPLE I LEARNED AS A MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER

When I walked into an office for my first-ever corporate job, I was already 25 years into the workforce. For my entire career, my “office” had been a classroom. Now, after more than two decades as an educator, I was dubbed “director of learning” at an international company — and, truth be told, I had no idea what to expect.

At the time, because I’d never worked in a corporate environment, I didn’t realize quite how high a “director” was in an organization. I was the head of an entire department. I had a team of six direct reports, 30 indirect field-based training managers and an international franchise community. I was in charge of helping them lead their teams. And I had zero management experience.

Thankfully, my career in education had prepared me for management more than I knew. My first team meeting immediately reminded me of a first day at school, and it didn’t take long before I began to notice other parallels between managing a middle school classroom and managing a team of employees.

When it came to delegating, team-building or giving feedback, my reference points were the same guiding lights I used as a teacher: Understand personalities and build effective processes for all personalities to succeed. Now, as a senior director of corporate learning, I still rely on those middle school lessons when it comes to managing my department.

Here are some of the lessons I learned.

Understand Employees as Individuals

When the rubber hits the road, managers are really just people managers. As a teacher, I always invested time in getting to know what made my students tick and how I could motivate them to not only pursue their natural interests, but also succeed in areas they were less than thrilled about. I tried to instill a growth mindset in my students, considering every moment as an opportunity to improve and further define the intersection of their interests and skills. Now, I take a similar approach when it comes to managing my team and helping them plan their career paths.

This person-first approach isn’t just for niceties — it can benefit your company when it comes to retention and engagement. A study by my company, Cornerstone OnDemand, found that nearly 90 percent of American employees would consider a lateral career move with no financial incentive if it meant finding satisfaction and fulfillment in their careers. But employers often have “career ladder” blinders on: Only 32 percent of respondents said their employers encourage working in different departments.

Instead, managers should embrace personalized career mobility by talking to team members and trying to align their skills with their interests. This might be as simple as creating a custom title. A study published in Academy of Management Journal found that 85 percent of employees said a new title helped them cope with the emotional exhaustion of their job.

Build a Supportive (and Flexible) Environment

Recognizing employees (or students) as individuals isn’t enough; you also need to understand how the individuals operate as a group and individually within that group. As a teacher, my role was to make sure everyone felt seen and heard in their own way.

This started with a seemingly simply choice: a seating chart. If you have the class clown sitting next to the quietest kid in class, the latter likely won’t speak up. If you think the same principle doesn’t apply in the workplace, think again: A report from Cornerstone and Harvard Business School found that placing the right type of workers in close proximity to each other generated up to a 15 percent increase in organizational performance.

At a higher level, making people feel heard requires creating an environment where it’s okay to be wrong. I believe a lot of our work habits are established in middle school, and our consistent fear of raising our hand with the wrong idea is one of the most pervasive ones. As a teacher, I always encouraged my students to guess even if they weren’t sure of the answer, and always asked to hear their explanation rather than shutting them down on the spot.

I use the same discussion method in team meetings and management trainings, and it actually helps everyone remember the “right” response. In fact, according to Bersin by Deloitte, learners retain only five percent of what they hear and 10 percent of what they read, but they remember more than 50 percent of what they learn through discussion and interaction.

By creating an environment not only conducive to individual growth but positive collaboration, you’re creating a true learning culture. And I firmly believe, from both my years in the classroom and in an office, that’s the key to successful management.

I’ll leave you with two questions: Do you have the best interest of your people at heart? And, more important, are you empowering them to get to where they need to be?

If the answer is yes and yes, you’re well on your way to a bright future.

3 LESSONS ON EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION FROM MY DAYS AS A SCHOOL TEACHER

This article was originally published under Jeff Miller’s column “The Science of Workplace Motivation” on Inc.com.

Twenty-five years ago, I stepped into my first classroom in South Central Los Angeles. The school was known as one of the worst schools in Los Angeles Unified School District at the time, but I was up for the challenge—eager and ready to make a positive impact on my middle school students. Of course, as I soon realized, teaching is not a one-way street. As much as I helped shape the course of my students\’ lives, they shaped the course of mine.

I taught for nearly eight years in LA, followed by a few years at a community college in Santa Monica and an associate professorship at Cal State. Eventually, I started my own business to help struggling urban schools. But then the financial crisis of 2008 hit, and I was faced with a harsh reality: Schools simply didn\’t have the funds to hire me anymore.

As an expert in education, I was at a loss. When a friend recommended a job in corporate learning and development, I applied thinking it might just be a temporary break from my \”real\” career path. But it wasn\’t long before I realized just how much the classroom had prepared me for the corporate world. My employees’ need for guidance, support, and encouragement was not so different from my middle schoolers. In fact, when it comes to helping people fulfill their potential, there’s a lot the corporate world could learn from the classroom.

Focus on Learning, Not Teaching

When it comes to professional development, people at companies are very similar to students at school. Now, before you take offense, hear me out. Think back to your company’s last training session. Were your employees excited to go? If I had to guess, I\’d say they were probably as psyched about management training as you were about algebra homework in seventh grade.

If you want to excite someone about what you\’re sharing, you need to switch the mentality from \”teaching\” to \”learning.\” It\’s a minor word difference, but it has massive implications.

Talent development is about thinking bottom-up, instead of top-down. When I was a teacher, I always tried to find a way to tie the curriculum to my students\’ lives. If they were interested in music, I would find great musicians to tie into our history class. As a company leader, get to know a little bit about your employees outside of work. Listen to them and figure out what challenges they enjoy, or topics they relish. If you come to them with an opportunity to expand their skillset while exploring their interests, instead of a requirement to attend a mandatory management training, you\’ll have a much more engaged audience.

Encourage Failing Forward

I believe a lot of our work habits are established in middle school. The most common habit I\’ve observed? Our consistent fear of being wrong.

Think back to your school days: Who raised their hand in class? The student who had the right answer. You didn\’t want to raise your hand only to be corrected on the spot and then shown up by your neighbor.

Today, employees perpetuate the same behavior. If you ask, \”Does that make sense?\” and the rest of the team nods, the one or two people who are lost aren\’t likely to speak up. This fear of being wrong prevents employees from exploring why they didn\’t have the right answer, and therefore often prevents them from taking risks and stretching themselves.

Company leaders should focus their energy on fostering a culture that sees failure not as a disaster, but as a growth opportunity. By encouraging people to raise their hands, ask questions, share ideas and eventually land on an answer, you\’ll combat the fear of being wrong and actually encourage more innovation in your company. Employees should know that the goal isn\’t always success—it\’s growth.

Ask \”How Are You?\” and Mean It

When I was a middle school teacher, I gave an important exam every Friday. And every week, I told my students that if I passed them in the hallway and I asked, \”How are you?\” and they simply said \”Fine,\” I would dock 10 minutes off of their exam time.

Now, these were sixth graders — 10 minutes weren\’t going to ruin their educational careers, but it was enough to encourage them to open up. If they were having a bad day, I wanted to stop and talk to them for a few minutes to figure out what was happening. Once they realized they were actually being listened to — that someone cared about their answers — they shared things that were both disturbingly and wonderfully impressive. These small hallway conversations built trust on a personal level, which translated to trust in the classroom.

At work, a similar cause-and-effect applies: If a manager asks, \”How are you?\” the answer shouldn\’t always be \”Things are fine, I have everything under control.\” Sometimes the answer is, \”Actually I\’m struggling with this issue. Do you have any advice?\” But this level of trust doesn’t always happen organically. It’s important for managers to establish enough trust with an employee that they feel comfortable opening up and asking for help. At the end of the day, encouraging people to do their best work — whether it\’s in the classroom or the corporation — starts with trust.

BOOKMARKED: HR EXPERT SUZANNE LUCAS ANSWERS YOUR BURNING QUESTIONS

Editor\’s Note: This post is the first in our \”Bookmarked\” series, where we ask some of our favorite HR experts, analysts and business professionals to answer questions about their career, life and aspirations for the future. Be sure to bookmark it for next month!

Suzanne Lucas, also known as The Evil HR Lady after her wildly popular blog, is a bit of a legend in the HR space. After spending a decade in corporate HR where she hired, fired and managed the numbers, she moved on to become a full time writer and HR consultant focused on helping people have great careers, be better managers and sort through all of the questions and nuance that come with managing people. Her work has appeared in Inc. The New York Times and our very own ReWork, along with many other places.

DEAR REWORKER: SHOULD I RISK LOSING MY EMPLOYEE\’S TRUST BY REPORTING HARASSMENT TO HR?

Dear ReWorker,

If an employee reports harassment to their manager, is it the responsibility of the manager to report it to HR? What should if the employee doesn\’t want the complaint to go to HR, and the manager doesn\’t want to lose the employee\’s trust? And, what should a manager do if the employee describes the situation, but doesn\’t provides the name of the alleged harasser? Does a manager need to take any steps if an employee goes directly to HR and claims they don\’t want an investigation?

Sincerely,

Reluctant to Report

___________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Reluctant,

When an employee comes to you with a complaint, the subject of the complaint is critical.

If your employee says, \”I can\’t stand working with James because he\’s always talking about Minecraft and it drives me insane! Can you do something about it? And please, don\’t tell him I said anything,\” then you can decide how to best handle the situation. You can tell your complaining employee to suck it up. Alternatively, you can go to James and say, \”Hey buddy, can you knock off the Minecraft talk?\” without mentioning who brought it up. Or you can ignore the complainer entirely. Easy peasy.

It\’s not a big deal because a Minecraft discussion, while annoying to some, has no legal ramifications.

But, if your employee comes to you about racist jokes or sexual comments made by a colleague, then you\’ve got a problem that you can\’t ignore. As a manager, you are now acting on behalf of your organization and once the company is aware of a problem, it has to act. If you ignore this or tell the person to suck it up, you are opening up the company to legal liability. Here\’s what you need to do to handle the harassment, while protecting the employee that reported it:

Follow Your Company\’s Procedures

Your company should have a spelled-out protocol for reporting illegal harassment complaints—follow it! Most likely, you\’re required to report the incident to your manager and/or the HR department. That\’s right, it\’s your responsibility to turn it over to HR, no matter what your employee requests.

Why can\’t you just handle it yourself? Because procedures need to be followed. This isn\’t just because your HR manager loves paperwork—it\’s because consistency is important when it comes to legal matters and ramifications. If you simply tell the accused to knock off his racist jokes and assume that the problem is taken care of, it seems like a decent solution until you find out that Sonja in another department was suspended for making racist jokes. Suddenly, you\’ve made the company susceptible to a gender discrimination lawsuit from Sonja, since her punishment was more strict than James\’ for the same offense.

Tell the Reporting Employee Why You Must Involve HR

This is the hard part, but you\’ll have to be honest with the employee that brought the harassment to your attention. Try a dialogue like this: \”Jane, I really appreciate you coming and telling me about this. We take sexual/racial/religious harassment very seriously. I know you want to keep this quiet, and I respect that. However, the company has to investigate your claims and solve the problem. I promise you that you will face no retaliation for coming forward, and we will do our best to protect your privacy.\”

Your employee may not like hearing that, and that\’s unfortunate. But, this is a situation where you can\’t respect an employee\’s request to do nothing.

The law and your company policies require action. When you report the problem to HR, make clear that you promised your employee that this would be handled in the most professional and confidential manner possible. That should be standard, but it never hurts to remind people.

Sincerely,

Your ReWorker

Suzanne Lucas, Evil HR Lady

DEAR REWORKER: SHOULD I RISK LOSING MY EMPLOYEE\’S TRUST BY REPORTING HARASSMENT TO HR?

Dear ReWorker,

Sincerely,

Reluctant to Report

___________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Reluctant,

When an employee comes to you with a complaint, the subject of the complaint is critical.

It\’s not a big deal because a Minecraft discussion, while annoying to some, has no legal ramifications.

Follow Your Company\’s Procedures

Tell the Reporting Employee Why You Must Involve HR

Your employee may not like hearing that, and that\’s unfortunate. But, this is a situation where you can\’t respect an employee\’s request to do nothing.

Sincerely,

Your ReWorker

Suzanne Lucas, Evil HR Lady

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Build Structured Communication

Teach People to Ask For Feedback

Prioritize Growth

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Consistency, Compliance and Culture

Focus on the Long Term

People Are Your Most Important Asset

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1) Create Room for Different Perspectives

2) Consider Scalability

3) Think Long-Term

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More Affordable Benefits

Sharing Legal Liability for Compliance

Changing Perceptions and Evolving Services

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1) Create Room for Different Perspectives

2) Consider Scalability

3) Think Long-Term

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1) Create Room for Different Perspectives

2) Consider Scalability

3) Think Long-Term

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1) Am I ready to invest in a \”non-revenue generating\” aspect of the business?

2) How fast is my company growing?

3) Do I want to know what I might find out?

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Don\’t Limit Learning to Hard Skills

Teach Soft Skills

Have One-on-Ones

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\”It\’s a fantastic model of collaboration — thinking partners who aren\’t echo chambers.\”

\”We have to be prepared to change our minds.\”

\”Open information is fantastic, open networks are essential.\”

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\”Data has gone from a stock to a flow, from something that is stationary and static to something that is fluid and dynamic.\”

\”You have more information. You can do things that you couldn\’t do before. \”

\”Big data and algorithms are going to challenge white-collar, professional knowledge work in the 21st century in the same way that factory automation and the assembly line challenged blue-collar labor in the 20th century.\”

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Understand Employees as Individuals

Build a Supportive (and Flexible) Environment

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Focus on Learning, Not Teaching

Encourage Failing Forward

Ask \”How Are You?\” and Mean It

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Follow Your Company\’s Procedures

Tell the Reporting Employee Why You Must Involve HR

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Follow Your Company\’s Procedures

Tell the Reporting Employee Why You Must Involve HR

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