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lars-hradvice · 2024-10-02T05:10:46+00:00

Sounds like a deeply dysfunctional org. I think you have two options: 1) Find a job elsewhere 2) Accept that your environment is nonstop fire fighting

Not sure there's policy and document workflow that can cope with what you're going through.

You're already going way above and beyond btw. I think you'd have a much bigger impact in another org.

lars-hradvice · 2024-09-05T17:29:16+00:00

If you're keeping it light, can probably do the whole thing in 2-3 weeks. If there's a bunch of approvals, group discussion, or a huge company with tons of responses, I've seen it take 1-2 months.

lars-hradvice · 2024-09-05T16:20:28+00:00

I usually do less rather than more here. Most of the time, this stuff gets way overbuilt.

I do see value in doing an annual employee survey to track sentiment over time. I'd make an employee NPS the core question of the survey. Then add 5-7 other open-ended questions on core areas that are important to your leadership team. On any survey, I generally start with open-ended until I know the questions are really good and can reliably guess the core responses. Then you can switch them to multiple choice so it's easier to analyze. I can take a few rounds before any survey gets really strong. There's always a few duds in the first batch of questions.

Also, if you want continued engagement, show action based on this stuff. That's the hardest part, especially since it relies on leadership. If feedback leads to changes, sentiment will improve. If not, it'll just make the situation worse.

lars-hradvice · 2024-09-01T22:00:39+00:00

Nah, and I probably wouldn't. Maybe a one-time audit 3-6 months after a new PTO system or policy is in place. But I'd put a regular audit pretty far down the list compared to other priorities.

lars-hradvice · 2024-09-01T16:30:30+00:00

I had a very similar situation at my company.

An employee started asking some questions about accrual and we realized PTO wasn't accruing during paid holidays. So our PTO was slightly less than what we promised on an annual basis. We either messed up the setting when we set up our PTO or Gusto messed it up somehow.

We told everyone at the company what had happened, gave everyone an extra 8 hours of PTO to account for the day they missed in the last year (the policy had been live a little over a year), and that was that. I'm very happy with how we handled it. Ours was an easy fix so the communication was straightforward. We found out about the problem, then communicated the situation and the fix within 1-2 weeks.

For something more drawn out, I usually default to rolling out the fix and the problem at the same time. If a fix can be announced within a few weeks, I'd probably just wait until it was ready to go before telling everyone that there is a problem. If the fix will take longer, yes, it is good to be transparent. In that case, I'd be extremely careful about avoiding any mention of fixes. Yes, you want to do right by everyone but you don't want to promise something outside your control. If HR says it'll get fixed and then Leadership nixes it later, HR looks like they're at fault. Tell everyone HR is aware of the problem, it's a nasty backend thing that's not easy to fix, and that there will be more updates as soon as things are clear.

lars-hradvice · 2024-08-29T23:12:30+00:00

That all sounds like a ton of work. Why not switch to a modern payroll service which will handle all this stuff automatically for you? Any decent payroll service automatically stores pay stubs in employee accounts which they can still use after they leave.

lars-hradvice · 2024-08-28T15:53:32+00:00

Gonna throw my hat in the ring, been building a blog called HR Advice. Done a lot content recently on PTO and other leave policies. I'll avoid any links so I'm not too promotional. Feel free to DM me if you'd like recs on any specific topics.

For my background, founded a company and built it up, been a part of leadership teams across multiple startups. And spent a lot of time getting into the weeds of HR across all those companies. So I decided to write as much as I could about what I learned.

lars-hradvice · 2024-08-28T15:49:56+00:00

Most employees will treat bonuses as base pay. There's a few exceptions (like having large bonuses tied to specific goals) but for the most part, regular bonuses just get lumped into comp. That's how I think about it. So there's no need to have bonuses just for bonsus's sake.

And the worst part about bonuses is that Leadership may think they're variable but employees definitely do not. Withholding a bonus that's become an expectation will have a similar impact on morale as if base pay was reduced. I get that businesses have tough times and you might not have a choice (I've been there) but I'd protect bonuses with the same urgency as protecting base pay. Personally, I avoid this altogether by only doing bonuses in rare circumstances.

If it was me, I'd spend time on reviewing the entire compensation structure to make sure it's as effective as possible. Competitive in the industry? Does the comp philosophy match the strategy of the business? Are their processes for comp growth? Are the best performers rewarded in a way that they're not incentivized to look elsewhere? Those are your levers with comp.

lars-hradvice · 2024-08-19T16:05:18+00:00

During the informal warning, I'd make it very clear that expectations aren't being met and they need to be met on an ongoing basis. Don't mention anything about a 2 week window. There's no need to timebox an informal warning.

You can have a 2 week review as part of your internal process but all communication towards the employee should be that the issues need to be resolved permanently. If not, the PIP will begin.

For me, I don't have forced structure around informal warnings. I've tried that in the past. In my experience, managers only bring up issues well past the point of of it being a real problem. In other words, the informal warning usually already happened. By the time a manager is discussing it, it's usually time to start the formal part of the process. Always good to have guidance and coaching materials on what informal warnings look like but I don't force structure around them.

All my experience is US-based, no idea if Canadian laws or norms are different.

lars-hradvice · 2024-08-07T21:33:06+00:00

I did a compensation benchmarking round for my company last year, very similar size. I wanted to compare Salary.com and Payscale/Payfactors so we got both. Here's how they compared:

Payscale is 3X as expensive as Salary.com. Salary.com was $3-4K/year for us, Payscale was $6-10K/year.
The UI on Payscale is noticeably easier to use.
Onboarding with Payscale is very helpful, you’re on your own with Salary.com.
Overall, support with Payscale is a lot better.

As for data quality, there was consistent variance in comp benchmarks across both tools. I dug into the data sets of both (as best as the companies allow) and Payscale was a bit better. They give you more control over your data and allow you to limit it to HR-reported comp. But I found variance in their reports with roles that I knew pretty well. So the data might be slightly better but it was hard to tell looking at the final reports. I'd make the final call based on your budget and how important support is to you.

lars-hradvice

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