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HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
I would adore it if you could work from anywhere. I would. I think that would be amazing, But that's not the law. And my job is to help protect companies from these huge legal things. And like you said, it's not just the employee that takes the risk, it's the employer that takes the risk.
Suzanne Lucas:And people think it's no big deal.
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, president of Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. And this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. Please follow rate and review Good Morning HR wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or at good morning hr.com.
Mike Coffey:This is the last episode of the month, which is the one we set aside to discuss recent HR news items. This month's a little different though because my guest is also the author of the news items on our agenda. Suzanne Lucas is also known as the evil HR lady. After a career in corporate HR, Suzanne now advises people and companies on human resources best practices. She also writes about people, leadership and management at evilhrlady.org and for a variety of other online media sites.
Mike Coffey:She also runs the evil HR lady Facebook group, which I highly recommend. You'll do a lot of eyeball rolling sometimes at some of the discussions there, but it it is a good healthy group of HR professionals who are trying to help each other out. So welcome back to Good Morning HR, Suzanne.
Suzanne Lucas:Thank you for having me. It's always fun to be here.
Mike Coffey:So one of your articles on Inc. Website this month was called it's time to make hush trips a fireable offense. And as soon as I just saw the headline, I said I know what that's about and I know what the comments are gonna sound like. Right? And so it caused quite a kerfuffle.
Mike Coffey:A lady on TikTok took you to task in a way that you can only do if you're an influencer on TikTok. But rather than just to let it degenerate into online name calling, the whole, you know, social media mud wrestling, you engage directly and really professionally with her with, you know, and I've I've got to hand it to you. You you organized a conversation around it, and, I mean, it was definitely a TKO, at the end of the day. But why don't you talk about first what what you talked about and what are hush trips, and what was your, your take on them?
Suzanne Lucas:Well, hush trips are when you are working remotely and your boss thinks you're working from home and you are someplace else. And to to be fair, it's not a huge deal for a lot of jobs if you're going somewhere for a week or whatever that's within the country, but it can become a huge deal. And, especially if you're traveling outside of the United States, especially if you are going for more than just a couple of days. And there are huge legal implications with that. And people don't actually like that at all.
Suzanne Lucas:And it's very funny to me. I don't know. Maybe funny isn't the right word. Tragic, maybe, is that people don't understand that just because they want something to be some way, doesn't mean that it is. And and all of these regulations around where you can work and, and all of the things with workers' comp and and and taxes and work permits, all of that are real.
Suzanne Lucas:Right. They're they're absolutely real.
Mike Coffey:And, you know, I've had plenty of since 2020 especially, I've had plenty of clients who've called me and said, I need some advice. I just got a claim from the state of Colorado, and we don't have any operations there. But one of my employees moved there, we laid them off, and they filed Colorado and now Colorado's knocking on my door, with penalties and back taxes and all kinds of responsibilities. And I mean there are all kinds of things that happen. You've got and and we covered this with Catherine Clifton, back in gosh 2021 probably on on this podcast for 2022 talking about all those things, corporate registrations in some states and workers comp and withholding some you know, Texas doesn't have a state income tax.
Mike Coffey:We don't have state withholding. But if you're a Texas employer and you've got somebody working in another state, you may well have those responsibilities. And And so the thing is is, you know, musicians and actors and other traveling performers, they've been dealing with this for years. I've I've got friends who are professional musicians and when they go out of state, even for 1 gig, they often have to, you know, they've got they've got systems set up through the unions and things like that to help make sure that all gets taken care of, but they have to pay, you know, they pay taxes in those states. And so, you know, we love this idea of this whole, you know, this romantic idea of being the nomad employee.
Mike Coffey:And I work from anywhere, but you're creating a liability probably for yourself as employee and and, you know, possibly for your employer. 23 states have immediate tax obligations. So if you go spend a day in that state, you owe taxes to that state as the employee, and the employer may have responsibilities as well. And then a whole bunch of others have after some period of time or some amount of earning, you've got an obligation. So definitely a company.
Mike Coffey:All all you really said in your article was companies need to have a policy. And then like any other policy, if an employee violates the policy, you should take action. Right? And I mean, you know, and they're creating a, you know, potential liability for the company. So what happened after you published it?
Suzanne Lucas:Well, as predicted, people didn't like it. The the article went semi viral. I got about 200,000 hits, which is pretty darn good for a business article. Most of mine do not get 200,000 hits. And a lot of the feedback bribing me.
Suzanne Lucas:Nobody bribes me. Someone was bribing me. Nobody bribes me. If I'm gonna be accused of it, I might as well commit the crime. Right?
Suzanne Lucas:Nobody bribes me. And very little recognition that I was actually right. And and, actually, that was the funny thing of the the woman who who did the TikTok, her name is Robin l Garrett, that we had a we had a, I guess, like, a a webinar with her to discuss this. You can you can watch it on hrlearns.com if you want to go back and watch it. I'm gonna include that link in the
Mike Coffey:in the show notes, everybody, so you can go watch that webinar too.
Suzanne Lucas:Amazing. You know, she starts at her TikTok by saying, you know, this is propaganda. It's so terrible, blah blah blah, but there's one thing that she gets right and that this is legal. And I'm like, that's the whole point of it. It's I mean, if I had to pick a political affiliation, the closest thing that I would align with is libertarian.
Suzanne Lucas:Like, I would That's
Mike Coffey:why we get along. Adore it.
Suzanne Lucas:I would adore it if you could work from anywhere. I would. I think that would be amazing, but that's not the law. And my job is to help protect companies from these huge legal things. And like you said, it's not just the employee that takes the risk, it's the employer that takes the risk.
Suzanne Lucas:And people think it's no big deal. And I, I'm an American and I sit here in Switzerland. I'm legal to work here. I'm legal to work in the US. I've all my ducks are in a row, but I run an expat board.
Suzanne Lucas:And the questions we get all the time from people are like, oh, I wanna move to Switzerland. I work remotely, so it's no big deal. And I always burst through little bubbles, and I'm like, no. You can't. Switzerland doesn't have a visa for that.
Suzanne Lucas:There are countries with freelance visas, but, again, you have to be a freelancer. You can't be an employee of your company. Does your boss know, oh, my boss says I can work from anywhere. No. Your boss does not say that.
Suzanne Lucas:Your boss actually maybe your your direct manager said that, but they don't mean it because they don't think you're stupid enough to pack up and move to another country. They mean you can work in Kentucky or you can work in Louisiana because your company is already registered there. They don't mean you can pack up and move to Switzerland. You can pack up and move to to Bali or whatever. They don't mean that because those countries, they don't want you there.
Mike Coffey:Right. International you know, there's there are places where the US there are internationally countries that we have, you know, double taxation agreements where if they tax you, we'll give you a tax credit when you report your income here and but a lot of them require some sort of registration when you get there. I have a friend who's a professional trainer and consultant in the sales area, and she had a client in Canada who she'd been working with cross border for a long time. They invited her up for to speak to their employees. She didn't think much about it, got stopped at the, you know at the border and while you're coming in, oh, I've got this lovely client here.
Mike Coffey:I get to go do spend some time with their team, and I'm so excited. No. And they kicked her out of Canada, and she got and and, and and it was a long process to get even readmitted so she could even get back ever to Canada. Right. And so, and so if you do that to your employer, yeah, your employer is gonna be ticked off.
Mike Coffey:And I think there are a lot of employers who are even clueless about that. I mean, a lot of small to medium sized employers don't even have even considered it still even 4 years after we all, you know, have started experimenting with this remote stuff. But, you know, we told all our employees you can work anywhere in Texas. It's a big state. But, I you know I've I lost 2 employees when we went remote because they had you know reasons to move out of state and they thought yeah I can do that and I said no sorry you can't because I'm not going to register in California to become a California employer for sure or in a in another case, Oklahoma, which is right next door.
Mike Coffey:You know, the only reason Texas doesn't fall in the Gulf of Mexico is because Oklahoma sucks so hard. But the the reality is is we, that's for my producer, Rob, who's at Texas AM. I'm usually ragging on the Aggies. So, but, you know, I'm not gonna become a multistate employer for just one employee, and most employers don't wanna do that. So, you know, I thought the thing thing was interesting when I saw that Robin Garrett's TikTok, I kinda looked her up to see what the story is, and really she's not an HR person.
Mike Coffey:She's her whole career is marketing, and she's so good at marketing. I mean, you know, she's got a giant TikTok following and all of this, and she's got a program for which is, you know, focused on leadership skills for young, you know, young professionals and doing it, which is honorable work. She's got a book called happy at work, which that's a whole another episode. We could do a episode about this, this whole happiness at work movement that's really blown up in the last couple of years. You still gotta make money.
Mike Coffey:You've still gotta follow the laws. You still gotta do a lot of the things. I mean, you can be happy at work, have a great culture, great environment. But somebody in the books just focus in in those talks, just focus on that part of engagement and not actually engagement to actually accomplish the point of the whole company. And so she's got all this, and I thought, well, you know, it's interesting.
Mike Coffey:Then it kind of blew up, and and then you did the really honorable thing. I thought it invited her onto that, that HR learns platform to have the that that conversation between you and she. And like I said, I think there was a technical knockout. I mean, she acknowledges at the beginning of her her TikTok, oh, yeah. This is what the law is, but it's kinda one of those things where as long as nobody catches us or nobody's everybody's happy with it, and there's that happy word, it's not a problem, and and it's probably true.
Mike Coffey:Right up to the point that somebody's not happy or something happens, and then then the employer's left holding the bag.
Suzanne Lucas:Exactly. And that's the thing is that is that it works fine until it doesn't. And and as you said, until someone's not happy. Like, when you have someone who who moves to another state doesn't mention because, you know, you've said you can only work in Texas. Well, it's not like Mike is showing up to my house.
Suzanne Lucas:So how does he know that I'm not in and then and then you get injured and or you get laid off or whatever, and you're filing for unemployment from the wrong state. And then there's suddenly all sorts of rules. And and, you know, you mentioned California. I would rather stick pins in my eyes than practice HR in California.
Mike Coffey:It's not New York City for that matter. Right.
Suzanne Lucas:Or New York City. There are so many specific rules there. And and maybe I would like it because I do like a challenge, but there's no way that Texas law that you're following matches up with California law, and you're the the one in big trouble. California is never ever ever going to say, oh, well, that's all on the on the employee's head. You didn't know about it.
Suzanne Lucas:They will come after you, and that's just that's just how it is. Someone shared on the evil nature lady Facebook group that they had an employee who had who was overseas somewhere and had an accident while working, tripped over something, something that you're like, oh, that'll never happen. But it happens, and their workers' comp carrier wouldn't cover it and the guy's health insurance wouldn't cover it because they're like, you were at work. That's workers' comp. And workers' comp wouldn't cover it because they didn't have coverage in that company.
Suzanne Lucas:And they got sued and the company had to pay out over $1,000,000. Like, that is a serious thing. And for, you know, for a small business, that is absolute bankruptcy. If if you sued me for a $1,000,000, well, that would be the end of my business. Right.
Suzanne Lucas:Like, I it just it would be the end of my business. I don't have a $1,000,000 in in insurance coverage. I should probably up my insurance coverage now that I think about it because I don't have a $1,000,000. But, now I'm concerned as to what my levels are. I need to check.
Suzanne Lucas:Anyway, I'll do that later. But, yeah, it would it would bankrupt me. It would bankrupt a lot of small businesses.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. It would hurt and and just it just create a giant hassle. Even if it wasn't a $1,000,000 judgment, just having to deal with suddenly whether I unintentionally and through no fault of my own as an employer, I now have obligations to this other state or, you know, God forbid, this other country. And then you've got things like GDPR and, you know, the data privacy rules and stuff. And so what that what kind of data are we sending over to you, you know, Europe or in the UK or EU or UK or, you know, I've got a son in Norway who are you know, who's who works legally there.
Mike Coffey:But working, you know, you've got you're sending data back and you maybe have privacy, just it may not be even stuff that you're concerned about as your company privacy data, but just transferring the data back over, talking about just basic details about a customer in the EU. GDPR may be implicated. So you've got all these things and so just there's a reason that you wanna have a plan as an employer if you're gonna do this, and then you want your employees to stick with it.
Suzanne Lucas:Absolutely. And this is why I was so harsh saying this should be a fireable offense because it's it's like they say with parking tickets that a parking ticket is simply the high cost of renting that space.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Suzanne Lucas:And so if you're wealthy, a a a $50 parking ticket is is worth it for you. I'm I'm gonna park right here versus and which is why, you know, it's that same kind of concept. So if I'm not gonna be fired, then the worst thing that'll happen is my boss will be like, Suzanne, don't you ever do that again, and I'll go, okay. I'm sorry.
Mike Coffey:And then you'll do it next time next time you won't take a trip.
Suzanne Lucas:Yeah. And and I'll get a ride out.
Mike Coffey:Right. That's Well.
Suzanne Lucas:No. This is like this is serious, serious business. And, you know, as I said, I would love it if you could work everywhere, but I do want to throw a caution in with that. Is that the more you try to convince your boss that you can work from anywhere, the more your boss is going to believe you. And we already see this.
Suzanne Lucas:The Wall Street Journal had an article a few weeks ago about how a lot of American companies are outsourcing to the UK. Salaries are considerably lower in the UK than in a lot of US areas and they speak English. So, you know, if you can convince me that time zones don't matter and I can be just as productive, well, then your boss might start to believe you. And and why should I pay you your expensive American salary when I can hire someone else for a lot cheaper elsewhere? And and we're seeing that, and then people are upset about that.
Suzanne Lucas:How dare you outsource? Well, how dare you spend all this time and effort trying to convince your boss it doesn't matter where you are?
Mike Coffey:Exactly. And, you know, if you want people in the same time zone, there there are Mexico based PEOs that hire college graduate English speakers who you can, you know, just basically you you're engaging with the PEO just like you would any other PEO, and they're leasing that employee back to you. You're they're handling all the tax obligations and everything, and they work, you know, for somewhat you know, their labor market doesn't cost nearly what the US does. And so Right. And so we've gotta figure you know, we gotta remember that.
Mike Coffey:Well, I think you, we'll include all the links to the article and the TikTok and, the webinar on in in the show notes. I think, I think you handled it, very gracefully, evil HR lady. So I I was really well done.
Suzanne Lucas:Thank you. I do believe in dialogue.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. Oh, I think yeah. And I think we need a lot more of that, and I think that's a good thing about one of the things I really love about the evil HR lady Facebook group is you and the other administrators make people play nice. Yes. And sometimes that human instinct to dogpile somebody who ask a question that you think is a dumb question and and, some and and some, you know, some folks just have that tendency to wanna jump on and and put people in their place or something.
Mike Coffey:Y'all always clean you know, you you cut those those things short pretty quick, and and, it it's a pretty respectful group. So it's reflective of that. Yeah.
Suzanne Lucas:We work really hard at that. And what people don't know behind the scenes, the the mod team, we discuss a ton of stuff. And, also, we have wildly different views.
Mike Coffey:Oh, yeah. I can tell that too.
Suzanne Lucas:Yeah. A lot of things, but we respect each other, and we allow you to have different views. I don't care what your opinion is, but you're gonna be nice about it.
Mike Coffey:And let's take a quick break. Good morning, HR is brought to you by Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. For many employers, any review of a candidate's social media profile is taboo. That is a privacy line they are simply unwilling to cross. But within the confines of Title 7 and other anti discrimination laws, a candidate's off duty conduct, including how they conduct themselves on social media, may be relevant.
Mike Coffey:For example, if the employee engages in illegal or negligent conduct on the job that might have been predictable and therefore preventable had the employer simply reviewed the publicly available information about them on the Internet, the plaintiff's lawyers will certainly be using that information in a negligent hiring suit. For some positions, threatening, coercive, or bigoted online behavior may be a legitimate concern. In other instances, references to personal drug use or criminal behavior may be relevant. Imperative helps clients conduct necessary online due diligence while building guardrails around the process to ensure that irrelevant or potentially discriminatory information isn't provided to decision makers. You can learn more about the many ways imperative helps our clients make well informed decisions about the people they involve in their business at imperativeinfo.com.
Mike Coffey:If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of Good Morning HR has been preapproved for 1 half hour of recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information, visit good morning hr.com and click on research credits, then select episode 150 and enter the keyword kerfuffle. That's kerfufle. And if you're looking for even more recertification credit, check out the webinars page@comperativeinfo.com. And now back to my conversation with Suzanne Lucas, the evil HR lady.
Mike Coffey:So now that you and I cross swords a little bit, you had an article in Inc. Called do reference checks really matter. And so Graham Duncan who basically, he's an investor and he runs a multifamily office wealth management for crazy rich people where almost every hire is just very high risk for them and they tend to have small staffs. They don't have giant, staffs generally and we work with a lot of those you know we work with really risk averse clients a lot and we work with a lot of family offices. But he did gave an interview where he, he basically said that you can find out more about a person by asking someone else than by asking the candidate.
Mike Coffey:And then you wrote that this tells me he assumes that candidates lie and that references tell the truth. This is a pretty ridiculous assumption. While some candidates may lie about their skills, some hiring managers may also lie about the job. It's a perfect match. And I think there's probably some hyperbole here.
Mike Coffey:If he's hiring mainline to staff admin support position, he's not doing this. But he talks about doing 45 minute reference interviews, really digging deep. And in in full honesty, for some of our clients, we do something similar to that. If the person can give us that much time, it's not always the case that they will or can, but I think there is a balance, and you touch on it, you approach it, but you quoted somebody who has said I think, that you never get a bad reference and that's just simply that we get it. We get bad references and we get honest accurate bad references from time to time, And I know other employers too.
Mike Coffey:So so tell me what your beef is with, reference checks.
Suzanne Lucas:Well, I think it's very important that we understand that the the guy who said this, as as you said, he does family His website was generational wealth management for a select group of families.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Suzanne Lucas:So that is very, very different than I'm an asphalt company and I'm gonna spread asphalt on your driveway. Right? That's it's a very, very, very different thing. And and for him, and I said this in the article, I'm sure this works for him. The the problem is in in in talking about it and the guy who posted it on LinkedIn doesn't mention what this guy does.
Suzanne Lucas:It just is like, here is this advice for everybody. I can guarantee that generational wealth management has a teeny teeny tiny tiny tiny group of people that do this. And and they all know each other and there's gonna be that. And you're not getting into that field. No one's gonna hire me to do that because I don't have any connections, and I don't have any familial wealth management.
Suzanne Lucas:But, if someone would like to give me wealth
Mike Coffey:Yeah. You could practice. Right? Yeah.
Suzanne Lucas:I could practice it. I think that would be a growth experience for me. So my problem, I'm not opposed to references in general. I'm opposed to a 45 minute reference. And and I'll tell you right now, if somebody called me to ask for a reference for somebody and they're like, I wanna talk to you for 45 minutes, I would be like, no.
Suzanne Lucas:And I would also be texting the person right at that moment who I was giving the reference for saying, run. Run from this. These people are psychotic. But I don't also have anybody that's worked for me that's gonna be working for a small familial wealth management either. So the first problem is is is for the most part, you're not gonna get people to talk for 45 minutes.
Suzanne Lucas:The other thing is a lot of companies have policies that prohibit managers from giving references at all. HR will verify titles, start and end dates, Used to be more on the salary side. A lot of kind a lot of states now have real rules around salary that they don't wanna do that. Some people will say, was it a voluntary term or involuntary? Some will say, is there rehireable or not?
Suzanne Lucas:But but that's all you're getting from some companies. Now, managers, as you know, will disregard company policies a lot. But this is one of the things that drives me nuts and I've heard recruiters say this all the time. If they don't give you a reference, then it it means that they were a bad employee. No.
Suzanne Lucas:It doesn't. It means that the manager is following the rules.
Mike Coffey:Right. Yeah. That and that's for sure. We always even on unemployment verification, if it's you know, we're we're going talking straight to payroll or the HR department or whomever, We always have a series of questions that we have. Was there ever any reason to question their integrity or honesty?
Mike Coffey:Did they ever act in a threatening or coercive manner? All these kind of questions and 80% of the time employers refuse to answer the, you know, previous employers and that's fine because I now have documented that I asked that question though. So that Right. If this employee turns out to be a knucklehead and somebody's injured or there's a theft or a loss and we're in litigation now with a customer or a member of the public or whomever, and they say, well, they did this at the previous employer as well and they try to hit me with a negligent hiring suit, I can go back and say well look I asked these questions. You know I as the employer had you know we asked these questions and the previous employer refused to answer so we did our due diligence and so you know even if you and I see it it had the comment on the evil HR Facebook group a lot that people say they don't even check references they don't even do employment verifications and it just kind of makes my head go crazy because verify even if you only verify dates we see more people lying about actual employment someplace that whether they even work there or not or their dates of employment significantly lying about them and titles.
Mike Coffey:We see that more than we see people lying about their criminal history. And so and and the gospel according to coffee, rule number 1 is if they lied to you coming in the door, it's not reasonable to expect your behavior to change after you hire them.
Suzanne Lucas:Absolutely.
Mike Coffey:And so if somebody, if they fudged their title to make it look like they were a higher level or had other experience or they added 6 months to their termination date to kind of cover that gap and implement, they just lied to you. And, so definitely doing the verifications of and asking those questions. And there's value for certain roles, when you're talking about technical competencies. I'm a competencies first person anyway. I think you should do everything you can in the application and interview process to measure competencies, before, you know, you even get to where you're doing references.
Mike Coffey:And and I think we should you know, I'm big on moving away from the long standing credentials that we've used forever like college degrees and things like that. What have you what have you done in the last 5 years that's really relevant? What if, you know, show me what you've grown, where you've grown, where what what skills you can demonstrate to me right now. I think we're gonna move more and more as a society towards that because that computer science degree you got 10 years ago is probably not as relevant if you haven't been using it for the last 10 years.
Suzanne Lucas:I absolutely agree. And I think about, like, my degrees. I have a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in political science. I haven't touched political science since I graduated in 1998. On paper, you know, I have this master's degree in this area.
Suzanne Lucas:I don't have a degree in human resources. But what am I an expert in? You know, so, I always say it's ridiculous that we consider the years between 18 and 22 to be the most important thing in your entire life. Right? I I have no regrets for going to college.
Suzanne Lucas:Graduate school, a little bit of regrets, but, there was a really great burrito place, so it kinda balanced out.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. We had we had a great Popeye's fried chicken right around the corner from us in college. And Yeah. It covers a multitude of sand.
Suzanne Lucas:Steve, there's there's some there's some very, very good things about higher education. But, yeah, that type of thing, though, I agree with you. I fully agree on background checks, and I tried to distinguish did I try to distinguish from that article? I write so many articles. Between a background check, I did little air quotes for those of you listening, and a reference check.
Suzanne Lucas:Because background checks, I absolutely, a 100% think you should do that. Did you work for this company? Do you have the degrees that you say you do? Do you the the job title thing is is always funny to me because companies go through this, especially in HR. They'll they'll come up with these stupid, stupid, stupid titles.
Suzanne Lucas:For a while, my title was you ready for it? Functional lead HR transition.
Mike Coffey:Okay. What
Suzanne Lucas:Tell me what I did.
Mike Coffey:Who who knows? Right? Yeah. I was once Yeah.
Suzanne Lucas:Like, it was stupid title. And then somebody realized it was stupid and it got changed to labor and employment law consultant.
Mike Coffey:Oh, wow.
Suzanne Lucas:Which that that gives you a different thing. I did the same job.
Mike Coffey:Right. And probably It
Suzanne Lucas:was just
Mike Coffey:a different Yeah. And yeah. It's I was, once HR process, process and reporting management. And, right. And so how does that translate to what another organization cause you know, call it it, you know, it does.
Mike Coffey:So that's why that's why the competencies are really important and you're talking about what you did and and that's why I think references are good at when you can talk to that previous manager if only you're verifying what the applicants made claims about but what they did. I mean because we've talked to previous managers, supervisors who said, you know, and said, oh, this this person told us that they were on this. They led this committee that saved all this, you know, and improved this process and saved all this money. And then the manager comes back and says, they were an intern. And if they were even in those meetings they were taking notes and so this person had you know clearly expanded their their role and scope of authority.
Suzanne Lucas:Right.
Mike Coffey:And but even there, you take that reference information and you go back and have a follow-up conversation with that applicant about it. I wouldn't ever suggest that an employer take some negative feedback from a previous employer without getting applicant's side. Now, hopefully, while you're doing the interview, you've asked questions about what were your challenges at this employer? You know, why you know, and and you're asking why they left and things like that. And and I think it's a fair question to say when we call this former supervisor.
Mike Coffey:And I think it's always important to tell them you're going to because it elicits more honesty from the applicant. If that applicant is it knows you're gonna call maybe they're not gonna be quite so prone to fudge and they'll be more honest about
Suzanne Lucas:Right.
Mike Coffey:Whatever the circumstances were, but ask them what they're gonna say and then and they may tell you look sometimes 2 people get to work together and they just can't come to an agreement on how things are done and for whatever reason 2 different personalities just don't work and this was the case and she was the boss and I was the employee in that circumstance and it was, you know, I'm the one who had to leave the organization in order to resolve that circumstance. If an employee tells me that and then I go talk to that former supervisor and that supervisor throws the employee under the bus and it's mostly personality stuff, I've got faith in the employee now right? I you know they were honest they were the professional ones and they're going to get some credence from me whereas this person who just throws the former employee without any you know now if they say like they were never on time if it's important in your organization to be at at their desk at a certain time every day, you need to have that conversation with them about that because that was a challenge here consistently And and maybe that's feedback I take back to that employee that applicant and have a, you know, frank conversation about, and document it so that when it comes around and and here they are in week 3 and they've been late 15 times, we you know, we've got some documentation that this was important and this is why we're talking about it.
Suzanne Lucas:Absolutely. I I I am a big fan of that kind of thing. I'm just not a big fan of the 45 minute reference check and of not recognizing that a lot of managers just won't
Mike Coffey:Do it. Yeah.
Suzanne Lucas:Do it. Yeah. They just won't. And they won't answer those basic those basic questions either. And I definitely don't want anybody holding that against the candidate.
Mike Coffey:Oh, for sure.
Suzanne Lucas:Yeah. It's And some people some people do. They do.
Mike Coffey:And and we were going to talk about your article on bias in AI and in recruiting, but we're out of time. So I'm gonna include a link to that article and also do a pitch. This is this is we're recording this pulling back the curtain on Monday, Memorial Day, and, for release on Thursday. This week, I'm speaking to the Texas Association of Community College HR Professionals Conference down in Galveston about AI and ethical issues around AI. And then next week
Suzanne Lucas:Oh, fun.
Mike Coffey:Dallas HR, and I, and forgive me, another panelist. We've got a 2 hour AI presentation, webinar at dallashr.org. You can register for that as well on AI. It's AI. I've got 15 topics I talk about, you know, when this when somebody asked me to speak, I give them this whole list.
Mike Coffey:All anybody's wanted to talk about for the last year is AI. I'm I'm I'm doing it over and over and over again. And the problem is I had to keep recreating the slides because it's changing so fast. And so
Suzanne Lucas:I know I do the same thing. I've given numerous keynotes on AI, and I always try to push my, improvisational comedy as a leadership tool keynote because it's awesome. It's an awesome keynote, and I have given that one multiple times as well, but I always have to talk them out of the AI, but I do AI more than anything else too.
Mike Coffey:That's what they wanna hear about. And it is. You need to read you need to read Suzanne's article because it is, it also where you can end up in a ditch real quick if you're not careful.
Suzanne Lucas:Absolutely.
Mike Coffey:Well, that is all the time we have. Thanks for joining me again, Suzanne.
Suzanne Lucas:Thank you for having me. It was delightful.
Mike Coffey:And thank you for listening. You can comment on this episode or search our previous episodes at goodmorninghr.com or on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. And don't forget to follow us wherever you get your podcast. Rob Upchurch is our technical producer, and you can reach him at Rob makes pods dot com. And thank you to Imperative's marketing coordinator, Mary Anne Hernandez, who keeps the trains running on time.
Mike Coffey:And I'm Mike Coffey. As always, don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to you personally or professionally. I'll see you next week, and until then, be well, do good, and keep your chin up.