Geeks, Geezers, and Googlization Show

Can your company culture survive when your workforce works remotely? Is it possible to create that spur-of-the-moment water-cooler or passing-in-the-hallway moments on Zoom?  “Where do you work” took on a whole new meaning and importance beginning March 2020. Prior to that, people went to work and the hybrid work model was almost taboo. Today where, when, and how people work is evolving on an hour-to-hour basis.  Organizations and businesses of all types and sizes are being forced to create the post-pandemic workplace on-the-fly. What do owners and executives need to consider? What remote work lessons did we learn over the last 18 months? How should managers personalize employee health and safety concerns? For answers, Farissa Know, founder and CEO of RLM Media, joins us for this Geeks Geezers Googlization episode. Farissa embraced the hybrid work model for her large team of employees and will share lessons she learned and offer tips for CEOs and owners who are in the midst of reimagining their workplace. Farissa Knox is the Founder and CEO of RLM Media, a holding company and advertising agency dedicated to expanding how advertisers look at and talk to today's “actual” consumer; the Founder and Creative Director of WhatRUWearing Productions, the production house behind the reality series, PRGirl (streaming on Plex and Amazon Prime Video) showing the professional and personal lives of ladies running the worlds of fashion, beauty and lifestyle Public Relations; the Author of Love, Sex and Friendship: In No Particular Order, her memoir describing her journey around career, love, self-discovery, and dating during her mid 20’s in New York City; and a wife and a mother.

Trust is deteriorating all around us. We have lost trust in our government, military, police, public health officials, business leaders, and even neighbors and family members. And who hasn’t done something to break trust? To make sense of what’s happened to trust, we’re excited to welcome Dr. Yoram Solomon to this episode of Geeks Geezers Googlization. Yoram will explain why trust is not what most of us think it is and shares a few of his 8 laws of trust. You don’t want to miss his tips on how to build trust in a team, what you can do to be more trusted, and even regain the trust we lost. And as a bonus, we took a detour and explored the relationship between Yoram's other passion - innovation - and trust. Dr. Yoram Solomon is the founder of the Innovation Culture Institute, Author of The Book of Trust, the book series Can I Trust You?, and host of The Trust Show solo podcast. Published a total of 15 books and more than 300 articles on Trust, Innovation Culture, and Entrepreneurship. Holds a Ph.D. in organization and management, an MBA, a law degree and an engineering degree. Adjunct professor of entrepreneurship. Former executive, elected official, pilot, and member of the Israeli 35th airborne brigade.

No job candidate should be left behind. In a labor market when overall jobs are up 96% compared to pre-pandemic norms and job openings significantly exceed available workers, no company can afford to lose a candidate due to a friction-filled FCDD*up candidate experience. But in just a few weeks (October 2021) Google in its Google for Jobs search engine is going to throw another wrench into your recruitment and hiring efforts when it shines its massive spotlight on the job seeker apply experience. JobSync CEO Alex Murphy joins Geeks Geezers Googlization today to explain how this will impact your candidate traffic, what changes you must make, and who will win and lose the race for talent as the latest Google for Jobs update rolls out.  (*Frustrating-Confusing-Disappointing-Distracting) New to Google for Jobs? Check out this free online course. Alex Murphy is CEO and co-founder of JobSync, the Workflow Automation Platform for Talent Acquisition. Alex has successfully started, grown and turned companies around in and out of the Talent Acquisition space. Alex’s experiences in TA include launching and running Job.com, and scaling Traffic, User Acquisition and running Business Development for Beyond. Alex is very active in the local DC entrepreneurial community as an Investor, Advisor and Mentor. Free Resources: Are your Career Site, Job Posting, and Application mobile-ready? Click here. Is your Career Site, Job Posting, and Application fast enough? Click here.

Recruiting and retention woes are wreaking havoc on businesses as a result of the collision of the Perfect Labor Storm and the Great Resignation. One reason why may be due to the “largest unheard conversation in history!” For starters, 68 million conversations happened in the last year around the candidate experience. To put that in perspective, that’s 2.5 X more than the 2020 Olympics! So why aren't employers listening? What do you need to do to pump the brakes on unfilled jobs and quit rates going through the roof? During this episode, we’re going to take a deep dive with Employment Brand and Candidate Experience evangelist Tracey Parsons (Worqdrive) on the disconnect between job seekers and employers, the rising importance of recruitment marketing, candidate experience, and employment brand. Tracey doesn’t just hype ideas or toot her own horn. She brings the data to back up her recruiting solutions.  If you are struggling to access, hire, or retain talent, click to listen now.

This episode is a masterclass on what your company must do to recruit and retain Gen Z in a Tik-Tok World. Gen Z is the newest cohort to join the working ranks. Knowing how to attract Generation Z employees starts with understanding who they are and their job search habits. Meeting them on their own terms could be the difference between filling open jobs quickly and prolonged vacancies and high quit rates. What must your company do to recruit and retain Gen Z? That is the question we asked two incredible Gen Zs - Danielle Farage and Rosa Beltran. what’s important to them, what’s not, and what turns them off? What do they want out of a job and employer? How important are a company’s culture and employment brand? How do they use social media and which channels do they prefer? Should you be using Tik Tok to recruit? You surely don’t want to miss this episode! Part of our conversation focused on the importance of the employment brand. Check out this free webinar to learn more, hosted by Ira S Wolfe with special guest Al Cini.

Early in May, the Workforce Investment Disclosure Act was introduced in Congress. Also referred to as Human Capital Management Disclosure, it will require public companies to disclose information about their workforce management policies. If the act is passed, these companies will need to include specific HR metrics in their public filing. What does this mean for your business? Many claim this act will be a game-changer and finally make companies to walk-the-talk when it comes to touting “people are our most important asset.” To help cut through all the noise, we reached out to Jeff Higgins, Founder and CEO of Human Capital Management Institute (HCMI). Jeff advised Rep. Cindy Axne and Sen. Mark Warner on this legislation. Jeff discussed: What your need to know about human capital disclosure requirements What prompted the SEC to mandate human capital disclosure requirements What this trend has to do with the recent push for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) The consequences for businesses that fail to properly report human capital metrics or don’t report at all During our second segment, Jennifer McClure, CEO of DisruptHR, introduced the Geeks Geezers Googlization audience to DisruptHR and updated us to its post-pandemic future. GGG host is a past presenter on the DisruptHR stage. Watch his appearance here.

Engagedly recently announced the “Top 100 HR Influencers of 2021” and Geeks Geezers Googlization host Ira S Wolfe was one of them! During the show, Wolfe interviews Engagedly’s President and Co-Founder, Srikant Chellappa, to discuss the origins of the the Top 100 Influencers List, how the honorees are selected, trends over the last 5 years, and how the 2021 list differed from prior years. This annual list recognizes Human Resources and People Services disruptors and leaders from across all domains who are making tremendous strides in innovation, growth, and technology to impact the people practice. Chellappa explained the intention behind this recognition: “Honor the champions of people practice. The last year has challenged people leaders like never before, with a rapid transition to remote work environments while maintaining a positive culture." This year’s honorees are special as they led us through these challenging times and we thank them for their leadership.” In addition to Wolfe, other honorees included notable HR leaders such as Adam Grant, Angela Duckworth, and Josh Bersin.

The quit rate of U.S. employees is at a record-breaking pace. In June 2021 alone, nearly 1 million workers left their jobs. This couldn’t come at a worse time with job openings reaching record highs and labor participation rates falling to WWII levels. Employee Turnover expert Dick Finnegan sums up this new work reality in two words: doom loop. The HR doom loop occurs when new employees don’t show up, ghost the employer, or quickly quit restarting the repeating churn of recruit, hire, quit, recruit, hire, quit. Finnegan has a solution that helps companies increase retention and cut turnover by 30 percent. On this week’s Geeks Geezers Googlization. Finnegan will reveal his “secret employee retention sauce” and share the 5 questions he asks every employee. Finnegan is the author of SHRM’s best-selling book, “The Power of Stay Interviews” and will be a speaker at the 2021 SHRM Annual Conference.

In March 2020, the physical workplace went dark for millions of businesses including a company called Puzzle Break. The multi-million dollar business went to $0 in one day. His entire business depended on teams of people going to his physical locations. So he asked “how can we create a similar experience when people can’t leave their house?” Millions of workers and employers were scrambling to figure out the same thing: how to make remote work work! Zoom just wasn’t cutting it for many organizations and “team-building events are terrible. They are just the least events you can have….if you get people to really want to be there, you’ve already won.” In order to save his business (and help others save theirs),  Puzzle Break CEO Nate Martin, “the Founding Father of Escape Rooms,” designed and developed a virtual experience that took off. He has helped teams from Microsoft, Starbucks, and Deloitte. He‘s had the two top revenue days in the history of his company and is growing at a rocketship pace. Join us on this episode of Geeks Geezers Googlization when Nate Martin, @GuyfromTomorrow, shares how he helps inject fun into work, build strong remote teams, create a virtual environment that connects people, and excites employees to show up to work every day.

Where have all the workers gone? That is the question nearly every employer is asking. So I invited Futurist David Houle to tell us! Houle believes the 2020s will be the most disruptive and transformative decade in history. Never-normal will be the norm and our perception of reality will be challenged. Making sense of life’s unpredictable, fast-changing, and often incompatible events will make keeping up with the “shift” difficult. Millions of people are at risk of being left behind in what Houle describes as a “Decade of Cognitive Dissonance” (which also just happens to be the title of his newest book.) In the book, Houle suggests that we need to adopt the mindset “be like water" and why the metaphor "light at the end of the tunnel" is a dangerous one. Tune in to find out why living with cognitive dissonance will be our normal, and why COVID19 was just training wheels for the decade ahead.  In the 2nd segment, host Ira S Wolfe continues the conversation about adaptability and introduces 3 new webinars: July 23: Taming the Turnover Tsunami, Local Talent Pipelines. Noon EDT. Watch Here. July 29: Grow and Thrive in an FCDDup World. 1:00 PM EDT. Watch Here. August 12: Your Playbook for Recruiting in the Age of Googlization. 1:00 PM EDT. Watch Here.