Anti Union Campaign Tips - Win With Your Supervisors

This is the fifth part in a five-part series of posts on tips for winning a union avoidance campaign. This key covers how to win with your supervisors in your anti union campaign.

Can you remember the first key in my eBook on the keys to winning your union election? It is that winning your election is not your key concern - fixing your organization is.

Obviously you must win the election. There are several approaches to doing that. But if you look at the election as a symptom of an organization that is suffering, you already know your best hope for success: your front-line supervisors.

The truth is that all the videos or consulting advice in the world only gets you so far. These are excellent vehicles for delivering the facts about unions to voters. This will get you well on your way to an election victory. This information will create mistrust of the union. However, it will not create trust in management.

The trust issue is a tricky one. Employees know that when the dust settles and the election is over, it will just be them and their supervisors once again. So it is vitally important that supervisors be given a critical role in the campaign.

Supervisors should not only be armed with flyers and negative information about unions. They must communicate strongly management's position on unions. More important, they must communicate clearly and effectively why they personally prefer working directly with employees - and why they hope to continue to do that in the future.

You should look at your union election as an opportunity to improve the skills and abilities of your supervisors. They will have more opportunities to communicate with employees during the course of this election campaign than any other time in their career. It is a great proving ground for supervisors, and a great way to develop skills that can be used later to manage all sorts of tough issues.

If you look at the campaign as a development opportunity for your leadership group you will not only significantly improve your chances of winning your election campaign, but also dramatically improe your supervisor group after the election. At the end of the vote this group will be ready and equipped with the skills necessary to handle the tough task of transforming your labor relations environment after the election.

That is the end of the 5 tips. I hope you've enjoyed them. Please let me know what you think. I really enjoy hearing from readers like you. Best of luck with your election campaign. If you follow the tips outlined in my eBook and this blog series you are already well on your way to an election victory!

Employee Survey Tip 7

Tip 7: Action Planning: 3 Things You Need To Know

This is the step that separates employee relations leaders from the rest of the pack: action planning.

There are 3 things you need to know to do an excellent job of action planning. Here they are:

1. Identify your "low-hanging fruit" action items. These are the issues and projects that are the least difficult but will have the biggest impact on your employee relations environment. This is the best place to start so you can get some easy wins and build momentum.

2. Get employees involved any chance you can. There are some projects that are probably best accomplished without employee involvement. However, most of the time look for opportunities to get employees involved in your projects. This increases engagement and communicates better than any meeting that you are actually taking action on employee input.

3. Keep employees informed of your progress. Many of my clients are embarrassed to "brag" about their employee relations work, since they just look at it as good management. This is the wrong perspective. It is not bragging - it is completing the circle of the feedback loop. Employees must feel like they are an important part of the process - they should also have an opportunity to provide feedback on the solutions implemented (they may have additional suggestions for improvement).

If your action planning process includes these three components you will be successful. As you go your "low-hanging fruit" will be higher and higher on the tree and more difficult to fix. However, by then you and your employees will have plenty of experience working on employee relations improvements - and you will be well on your way to becoming an employee relations leader.

Next Time a Bonus Tip: How To Avoid Overspending on Your Survey

Union Avoidance Campaign Tips - Don't Spend All Your Time in the Mud

This is the fourth part in a six-part series of posts on tips for winning a union avoidance campaign. This key covers how to pick a spokesperson for your anti union campaign.

It is tempting. I know it is. But you must resist the temptation to respond to every attack or to make negative attacks. If you plan on winning your NLRB election, your mission: to stay out of the mud.

NLRB elections can get nasty. It is not uncommon for supporters on both sides to let emotions take over and to say or do things they regret later. Often these emotional moments become campaign issues or - worse - unfair labor practice charges.

You will face many moments during the next month where you will be faced with a rumor or piece of literature that the union is distributing that is false or twisted. Your initial reaction will be to respond quickly and publicly to the lie and to set the facts straight. This is not always the wrong reaction - but most of the time it is.

Here is the way to think about these issues. First, if you start reacting to every negative or inaccurate comment made by union supporters during your election campaign you will never get a chance to tell your story. You will always be reacting to theirs.

Second, the counter-reaction is often worse than the initial affront. Managers tend to significantly over-estimate the impact of negative rumors or handouts on potential voters. Employees usually dismiss these sorts of communications from either side (they usually recognize "campaign spin" for what it is).

Sometimes the counter-reaction, thought up at a highly emotional time, even results in an unfair labor practice charge. This becomes costly and can even create a worse campaign issue.

Finally, it destroys your credibility and gets you "off message." Reacting to negative communications gets you down in the mud with the union. Instead of looking managerial and in control, you abdicate your leadership role for the street fight. Remember the ultimate goal: you need to convince employees that they can trust you more than the union. Slinging mud is not a great leadership trait.

This is not to say that you never say anything negative about unions - of course you do. However, it is best if you can keep your message mostly positive (this is why it is often a good idea to let videos or an outside consultant be the source of negative information about unions).

Focus on why you wish to continue working directly with your employees - talk about your future together. This allows you to take the high road, increase your credibility and gain trust. It will create a stark comparison with the union and make the choice on election day an easy one.

The Next Key: Win With Your Supervisors

Employee Satisfaction Survey Tip 6

This is where the rubber meets the road. Your entire employee survey process is useless if you don't do a great job communicating the results. In fact, your survey can turn into an employee relations problem if you do a bad job communicating survey results.

You can put together all the PowerPoint slides in the world but the key to your communication meetings is what you say. Here are my quick tips for a high-impact employee satisfaction survey communication meeting:

1. Get the Defense off the field. Explain both your positive areas and your challenges - be direct about negative information. Don't beat around the bush. And don't try to explain it away. Even if you don't understand the results make sure your questions do not pretend that the results are not valid.

2. Be curious and appreciative. Ask questions and request feedback and examples about any issues that came out of the survey. Look for details and ask for suggestions about how to improve. Show with your words and your actions that the survey process is only the beginning of a dialogue about how to make the workplace positive and engaging.

3. Answer questions honestly. Don't give into the urge to sugar-coat or tell people what they want to hear. Communicate authentically and with integrity. If you don't know an answer say you don't know. If you know the answer but are afraid it will be unpopular do the hard thing and communicate the unpopular truth. Make certain that the dialogue you have begun with your employees is truthful.

4. Make small commitments you will live up to. Don't promise to solve problems unless they are something you are certain you have the power to resolve right then. Instead it is better to resolve to further examine the issue (perhaps with the help of other employees) and then get back with employees about the progress on the issue. Most important - if you promise to report back to employees, do it.

These tips will help you effectively communicate your survey results.

Next Tip: Action Planning: 3 Things You Need To Know

Anti Union Campaign Tips - How to Pick a Spokesperson

This is the third part of a series of posts on tips for winning a union avoidance campaign. This key covers how to pick a spokesperson for your anti union campaign.

Two tactical decisions make the difference between winning and losing almost every union election. The first is the definition of your unit - this determines who is eligible to vote in your election and is primarily in control of the NLRB (although your attorney or consultant can definitely be a difference-maker here). The other decision is totally in your control: identifying your chief spokesperson.

Here are the 4 factors you should use in deciding who should be your chief spokesperson:

1. Credibility. Your chief spokesperson must be credible and trustworthy. Remember, the final voting decision is not whether a union is a good idea. It is who the employee most trusts with his or her future. Sometimes the local management can't pull this off - they may be blamed for a lot of the issues that led to the campaign. If so, you may need to bring in a spokesperson from the corporate office or an outside consultant.

2. Time. Depending on the size of your voting unit, your spokesperson is going to be conducting captive audience meetings virtually full-time during the course of your election campaign. While tools like video can lighten this load a bit, you still need to have someone there to answer questions and connect with voters. This is often a key stumbling point for larger companies.

3. Delivery. The spokesperson also needs to have a comfort level with the information being delivered. Stumbling around and looking dumb is not a great way to inspire confidence and can even lead to unfair labor practices. These days language issues can also be a barrier. Again, using video to deliver the technical stuff is a good option here - this leaves the spokesperson available to concentrate mainly on discussing the advantages of a direct relationship. Delivery challenges are also a primary motivation for considering a "persuader" consultant.

4. Emotionally Stable. These meetings can get heated. It is not uncommon fcor the union to instruct supporters to "bait" the spokesperon into losing his cool - which can then be turned into another campaign issue. It is important that the chief spokesperson be able to keep his or her emotions in check and keep control of a meeting.

I always encourage clients to attempt to find someone on-site who is able to play the role of chief spokesperson. I think this gives the campaign the most credibility and ensures that the post-campaign transition will be smooth. However, if the 4 factors listed above cannot be met with an on-site spokesperson you should definitely consider help from outside the location, especially a campaign manager or "persuader" consultant.

Tomorrow's Key: Don't Spend All Your Time In The Mud

Employee Survey Tip 5

You have asked the questions. Your employees have answered. You have collected reams of data. How do you make sense of it all?

My advice is to follow the Pareto principle when it comes to employee survey reporting: focus on the 20% of the data that will deliver 80% of the impact.

Your reporting system must do 3 things. It should make the survey data understandable. It should provide good comparisons between groups of employees. And it should clearly identify action areas.

We report survey data 3 different ways to ensure each of these 3 areas are covered. First, we use tables to compare category scores across work groups. These tables let you quickly identify where one department or demographic group differs significantly from the rest of the group.

Second, we use charts and graphs to display information. These are easier for more visual learners to understand and are a good way to communicate data during employee meetings.

Finally we analyze the data to identify low-rated statements or category areas, along with reviewing any open-ended comments to see if those shed any additional light on the problem areas. This data is then reported back as action-items for company leaders.

That's how we do it. But if you are doing a survey yourself, you don't necessarily have to do such comprehensive reporting. The Pareto principle applies to survey reporting - 80% of the value of your reporting will come from about 20% of your effort. Here's the 20% to pay the most attention to.

Our employee satisfaction survey is 70-statements (plus any open-ended questions). However, those 70-statements are broken down into 10 categories. Most of the time these 10 categories are what I focus on, especially in a first survey situation.

Even here I use the 80/20 rule: you can really focus most of your reporting attention on the 3-low rated categories. I would only dig around in the details of these 3 areas in terms of action planning.

Don't get too bogged down on your reporting. On all but the smallest surveys you will have way more data than you can actually use. If you spend all your time working in all that detail you will lose sight of the most important part of the survey process - coming up with easy, practical actions to improve the employee relations environment of your company. Focus your reporting on that and you will be successful.


The Next Tip: High-Impact Survey Communication

Anti Union Campaign Tips - How Many Meetings?

Union avoidance isn't written about too regularly. This is the second in a series of tips I offer to companies facing a union organizing campaign. They cover 6 keys to winning an anti union campaign. This one covers the number of meetings to hold during your election campaign.

This couldn't be more simple: if you hope to win your NLRB election, you must conduct a minimum of 5 captive audience meetings.

Both union-sponsored research and our own vast experience conclude conclusively that the odds of a company victory increase with each captive audience meeeting held. Up to 5 meetings the effect of each meeting is dramatic. Even after the 5th meeting the chances of a company victory continue to improve, but at a much slower pace.

The captive audience meeting is management's most important weapon in a campaign. It gives the company the opportunity to tell its story. The company gets a chance to counter any union propoganda. Finally, it helps to reinforce the company's leadership position and gives companies leaders a chance to build trust and familiarity.

The challenge for most companies is what to say during those 5 meetings (that is why our video program is designed with 5 presenations) and how to keep the attention of employees during that period of time. As you plan your campaign calendar make certain that you plan at least 5 meetings and identify how you plan to keep employees engaged during those 5 presentaions. It literally means the difference between winning and losing a union election.

The Next Tip: Opposition Research

Employee Survey Tip 4

I'm about to tell you an unspoken secret among people who conduct employee surveys for a living - conducting an employee satisfaction survey on a shoestring budget isn't a bad option. These days a lot of companies can even get away with conducting a survey for free.

Today there are a lot of options for administering surveys - including many Internet surveys that cost nothing. It is tempting to conduct an employee satisfaction survey on the cheap. But should you? For some companies it is a good idea. The three keys to consider are: 1) What is the current employee relations environment like; 2) Is Internet administration a viable option; and 3) Do you have internal resources to handle the reporting?

First, what is your employee relations environment like today? If things are relatively stable, a free or small-fee Internet survey is a great option. There won't be much mistrust among employee and there will be much more leeway given for administration problems.

If the employee relations environment is strained or uncertain, it is much better to use a more robust and independent survey method. We find this to be especially true after a union avoidance campaign or other anti union effort. This will guarantee anonymity for mistrustful employees and ensure that survey administration goes off without a hitch.

Second, is Internet administration an option? If you can conduct the survey over the Internet there are many free or nearly free options (I talked about these in tip 2). If not, you are limited to having on-site staff administer the survey and input the data - this really creates problems with anonymity and also diverts resources away from other projects.

Third, you should evaluate the cost-benefit of devoting company resources to survey tabulation and reporting. This is a time-consuming task, especially for someone who doesn't do it for their day job. Mistakes are a near certainty and most survey companies have automated tabulation to avoid such errors. In addition you lose a lot of time on the "learning curve" that could be devoted to other issues.

On the other hand, if you have underutilized staff (these projects can be good assignments for college interns) then an in-house survey may be a good option.

The bottom line is that if the employee relations environment is sticky you should never try to conduct a survey in-house - there is very little upside (especially as survey costs continue to come down) and plenty of risk. If things are going well and you have in-house resources to devote to survey administration and reporting, an Internet survey can be a very economical option.

The Next Tip: Survey Reporting Made Easy

Employee Satisfaction Survey Tip 3

How would you feel if you gave a party and nobody came? After you've designed a set of great employee survey statements and have your delivery method set up it is critical to do a good job of rolling out the survey. Otherwise your response rate will be poor, your results will be less valid and - most problematic - your positive employee relations intervention could turn out being a negative. Not good.

The main reason these problems happen is lack of planning. The worst thing you can do is go up to someone who has never heard a word about the survey during the middle of a busy work day and say (doing your best Bill Lumbergh impression from the movie "Office Space"), "Hey, what's happening? I know you have 700 things to get done before 5 but I really need you to take 30 minutes and fill out this survey. Could you take care of that for me? Thanks."

Here's a quick quiz. This person is: a) Going to rush through the survey and not take it seriously; b) Likely to answer survey questions negatively; c) Going to complain to everyone in his or her department about how unorganized the company management is; d) Just blow you off and not complete the survey; or e) All of the above.

If you can't figure out the right answer, turn in your keys and get a job doing something that doesn't require working with other people.

The good news is that all this is completely under your control. Each company is different and your rollout will depend on how things work in your organization, but it at a minimum should include the following: 1) A message from company leadership announcing the employee satisfaction survey and explaining why we are engaging in the process; 2) A second communication from a direct leader reiterating the reason for the survey and explaining the administration details (like where and when the employee will be filling out the survey); 3) Another reminder from the immediate supervisor earlier on the actual day of administration; and 4) A make-up session for people who for whatever reason aren't able to participate at their originally scheduled time.

If your administration process covers these 4 bases your survey will get off to a solid start. You can expect good participation and valid feedback. If not, you could end up with the worst possible outcome: low turnout by aggravated employees who provide overly negative feedback out of frustration.

Take the time to ensure a good, positive rollout of your survey. This alone is a great start to improving your organization's employee relations environment - even before the first survey is completed.

Tomorrow's Tip: When To Fly Solo - Or Not

Can I Fire Joe (or Jane)?

One of the most common questions I get from clients is "Can I fire Joe (or Jane)?" The answer is always, "Yes." However, the real question they are asking is, "Can I fire Joe (or Jane) without getting sued?" That is a different story. Here are 3 tips for and effective firing process.

1. Don't fall back on "at-will" as your savior. Most employers justify laziness in this area by saying, "we're an at-will state - I can fire anybody whenever I want." That is just not how the world works. Even in an at-will state there are still illegal reasons to terminate an employee - and that is where these things get sticky. You still should be able to prove that your termination decision was for a legitimate business reason, even in an at-will state. For more information on at-will check out my employment at will information sheet (these information sheets are available for free to anyone who signs up for my free Open Source HR Department)

2. Document your performance issues. Before something becomes a serious enough problem to consider termination, you should have been discussing the problem with the employee. At the point you think it may become a termination issue, begin to document your discussions. These write-ups should be given to (and signed by) the employee. At a minimum they should state the performance expectation, the behavior that needs to change and the fact that additional problems will lead to further discipline, up to and including termination.

3. Consider a "last chance" agreement or a release for particularly sticky situations. Many times employers do a terrible job documenting poor performance. The majority of the time a bad performing employee's personnel file is indistinguishable from the top performer's file - that makes for a bad case for the company. In these situations you might consider a "last chance" agreement that fully outlines the prior problems and gives the employee one final chance to improve. You could also offer to pay the employee in exchange for signing a release of all claims. You definitely should get a labor/employment law expert involved at this point.

Union Avoidance - Opposition Research

Union avoidance isn't written about too regularly. This is the second in a series of tips I offer to companies facing a union organizing campaign. They cover 6 keys to winning an anti union campaign. This one covers covers opposition research for your election campaign.

Once you have your 5 meetings set, your next goal is to figure out what to say during those meetings. Here is where campaign research can really pay off.

There are 4 key pieces of information that I believe make the biggest impact in the elections I've run over the years:

1. LM-2 Forms - These are the union's financial statements, and they are packed with useful information to use in a campaign. In addition to the total receipts and disbursements during the year you can also find out how much officers and employees of the union are paid. If you dig carefully you are also likely to find some questionable expenditures. I give you the link to the DOL website where you can download the LM-2 form in my union avoidance eBook.

2. ULP Charges - ULP charges are the "smoking guns" that can really hurt a union. These are charges filed by union members against their union for failure to represent. These charges are often very harmful to the union because they illustrate vividly that the promises of representation aren't always delievered after the election. You can find these on the LRI Online databases.

3. Petition and Election Results information - You can also learn the petition and election informaiton about unions. This will tell you how many elections they've won (or lost) and, especially, whether they have been decertified (or voted out) by members in the past. If so, this is a powerful argument to use in the campaign - sometimes you can even find employees of this company who will assist in your election. This data is also available on LRI Online.

4. Labor contracts for this union - This can be a double-edged sword since sometimes the contract provides better conditions than employees currently enjoy. Either way it is great information to know because it gives you the ability to counter anticipated union claims with the facts. Where the current conditions are more favorable than in the contract this provides more great ammunition for the campaign. You can find the names and phone numbers of people who are represented by the union targeting you using our databases.

If you take the time to collect these items at the beginning of your election campaign you will be in an excellent position to discredit union claims and win your election.

The Next Tip: How to Pick a Spokesperson

Employee Survey Tip 2

When I first started doing satisfaction surveys over a decade ago there was one option when it came to employee survey administration: paper and pencil. If you wanted to get really fancy you could use "scan-tron" technology to speed up the data input, but for most small and mid-sized companies the investment didn't make sense.

Today Internet survey administration is not only a second option, but in many cases it is clearly the best option. If you use the Internet to administer your survey you can save a huge amount of money.

Not only are Internet surveys less expensive, but you can be dealing with your survey data the minute the last respondent completes the survey - paper-pencil surveys usually have at least a two-week lag before you can start working on the survey results.

That's the good news about Internet surveys. However, there are a couple of key considerations.

The first one is obvious: does your organization have the physical ability to administer surveys online? Many of my clients have a knee-jerk reaction to this question: no way. However, I have found that often with a little imagination it is pretty easy to administer online surveys in even in relatively low-tech manufacturing and health care facilities like nursing homes. All you really need is a couple of computers hooked up with Internet access in a reasonably quiet setting. Some clients even rent machines for a week or two for this purpose.

The second consideration is anonymity. We do a lot of surveys after anti union campaigns or in union avoidance situations where trust in the organization is low. People are less trusting of entering information into a computer than they are filling out a paper-pencil survey where they know they haven't included any identifying information. For this reason you must take extra care when administering the survey to reassure employees that nobody will be able to identify their answers.

There are many technical ways to handle this - the Internet survey tool I use has the ability to assign unique pass-codes to survey participants that are completely random. If you have a workforce where trust is not high, investing in this feature might be worthwhile.

Some people fear that using Internet surveys could mean fewer people participate in the survey. This is really a non-issue today.

Virtually everyone has a computer at home (and we're not talking about Ph.D. computer programming here - if you can buy something on eBay you can fill out a survey online). I have found that participation rates on Internet surveys - even in manufacturing and trucking firms - are actually better than most pencil-paper surveys I administer.

My bottom line: if you can administer your way around trust issues, definitely use Internet administration (my tool of choice you can find below). The cost and usability advantages are just overwhelming, especially in larger organizations.

The Next Tip: Survey "Rollout"

Union Avoidance - Keys to Winning Your Union Election

Union avoidance isn't written about too regularly. This is the first in a series of tips I offer to companies facing a union organizing campaign. They cover 5 keys (actually 6 if you count this one) to winning an anti union campaign.

The first key is to stop the cardsigning. If your company has not received an NLRB petition yet, this one tip will save your company 6 figures or more. Meet with your employees and tell them why you prefer to work with them directly; ask them to get all the facts about unions before they sign a union authorization card.

A union organizer will not file a petition without a significant majority of your employees signed up (usually around 65% - yes, 65% - and if you already have a petition you need to come to grips with the fact that at least this many of your employees have signed a card no matter what you or your supervisors believe). If you don't have a petition yet there is likely only one thing holding the union back - they don't quite have the 65%.

Union organizers will tell you (well, probably not you, but they have told me) that the first 30-40% of the cards are almost always easy to get. Many times they get those at their very first meeting. But getting over a majority - and especially getting up to that magic 65% number - is much more difficult. Here you are going outside of the true believers and reaching out to people who are undecided about the issue. These folks aren't committed and usually only sign up due to ambivalence, persuasuion, confusion or pressure.

Many times the undecided folks just don't have enough information. It is critical that they hear from the company about its position on unions. It is also a good idea for them to learn about some of the tactics unions use to get cards signed, and the legal ramifications of signing a union card.

What if the union has already filed a petition? It sometimes is still a good idea to talk about union cards. Many times the union will continue to seek cards even after they've filed a petition. And sometimes employees who see that they were coerced into signing cards will ask for them back - which pours cold water on the organizing campaign.

The Next Tip: How Many Meetings You Should Hold

Employee Satisfaction Survey Tip 1

The way you design and word statements often means the difference between success and failure on an employee satisfaction survey. A key point for success is to only ask questions about things you can actually observe.

Asking questions about things you can observe is important for two reasons. First, it gives you a way to do a quick and dirty validity check on survey accuracy - you can independently verify results if they are observable. For example, if I ask a statement about pay raises being delivered on time, this is something I can observe independent of the survey results. If the answers don't jive with the reality then you need to dig hard to find out why.

Second, asking about things you can observe means that you'll be able to take action on the survey results. If you ask about people's motives (for example, asking whether your leader can "think outside the box" isn't really observable). Instead you might ask whether the leader "quickly responds to new information."

If you ask about things you can observe it gives you very actionable data. Leaders are much less likely to dispute the survey results and it gives you a valuable place to start your action planning.

You will notice that even on my sample survey questions that not all statements fit this rule. I think it is a good practice to include a handful of less actionable statements (for example, "morale here is high") to get a general temperature of a work unit. These are especially useful in year-to-year comparison, when you should have taken a lot of action to improve the "observable" areas.

My Next Tip: Internet or Paper-Pencil - How to Decide

Kawasaki Layoff Tips

Last week I posted some layoff tips and today I happened across a post on Guy Kawasaki's blog on the same subject. It is a terrific list (my 3 tips are there, but he adds a lot of other ideas around severance packages, when to do the layoff and the like). I basically agree with Guy's suggestions, although I don't think it is a good idea to layoff or terminate people on a Friday afternoon - I am in the camp that early in the week is better, so employees can get started immediately on their next move. Overall a really excellent post.

Tips for New Consultants

I got a call this week from someone looking for some advice about going into the consulting business. Here are 3 tips I offered for new consultants.

1. Don't be a generalist - find a niche. You want to become the "obvious expert" in your practice area. The best way to stand out is to pick a niche area (this could be in an industry, a subject area, geography or any other "split" where you can stand out). People want to talk to experts. You are much more likely to be seen as one if you limit your writing, marketing and focus to a small area. This does not mean that your niche is the only place you work (for example, my niche is union avoidance and employee relations consulting for companies who either have a union or recently won a union election, but I of course do work for other companies). However, your niche is where you get noticed and introduced to most companies.

2. Write, write, write. You should write a book in your niche (in today's world of self-publishing anyone who can speak into a digital recorder for a few hours can write a book - this becomes your "business card on steroids"). I don't really consider myself a great writer, but I have written 12 "books" (some of these are pamphlets and monographs, like my latest eBook on employee satisfaction surveys - although I do have a couple of books that weigh in at over 200 pages). Also write an eZine that goes out at least once a month (weekly is better - this is one of my challenge areas even now). Write press releases and articles for magazines in your niche area. Also consider starting a blog instead of a full-blown website (you can set it up yourself, and if you post a lot in your niche you will show up in search engines faster with a blog than you will with a website). Produce content. Give away great content until it hurts. This gets you known in your community.

3. Don't bill by the hour. I wish someone had taught me this when I was getting started - learned it from Alan Weiss' book Million Dollar Consulting (which you should be required to read 3 times before ever being allowed to consult). I am a lawyer and after leaving my law firm I just naturally started billing by the hour. It is a dumb way to charge for professional service. Bill by the project according to the value you deliver. There are several benefits, the least of which is that you will make a lot more money. An even more important benefit is that the process of clarifying the project goals and benefits to the client will significantly improve your interventions and clarify the value of your services in your client's mind. It's also the most ethical way to bill because it gets the incentives aligned properly. You get paid for what you deliver, instead of getting paid for how long it takes you to deliver it. Plus it sets you apart from other consultants (who still usually bill by the hour).

Union Avoidance eBook

I just published a new eBook called Union Avoidance: 5 Keys to Winning Your Union Election. It is mainly a discussion of how a company facing a union organizing election should go about deciding whether to hire a union avoidance consultant. It discusses 5 things I think are keys to winning. Each key is followed by a question to ask a prospective consultant with an explanation of what is a "good" answer and the kind of answer that raises a red flag. Finally I end with 2 questions most companies ask (as do most labor attorneys who approach us about consulting) that I think steer people down the wrong path.

What are you waiting for? Download the book.

Startups and the HR Function

I received an interview request recently about what new business owners need to know about HR, and when they should start thinking about and HR department. New and aspiring entrepreneurs often are concerned about how to manage HR issues, such as payroll tax, labor laws, benefits/retirement plans when they've reached a point where they need to start hiring employees. Here are 3 tips on how startups should handle HR issues.

1. First, for very small employers (under 10 employees) you don't really think in terms of "HR." You really are thinking more in terms of functions: payroll, hiring talent, paying taxes, etc. As a small business owner I personally think the best thing to do here is outsource as much of it as you can. Any good payroll service can handle all the payroll and tax issues. Keep the hiring in-house, but if you can outsource some of the on-boarding to your payroll service that is a good practice.

2. A lot of the big federal discrimination issues don't kick in until you are up to 15 employees (however, many state requirements kick in much earlier). From a legal compliance standpoint even the smallest employers must be up to speed on minimum wage and overtime rules (especially the independent contractor rules and white collar exemptions from overtime - these really can kill a small employer if done wrong).

A lot of firms assume that because they are small they don't have to worry about a union organizing campaign. This is not true at all. Most employers are surprised to learn that the average unit size in NLRB elections is around 25 employees. Many union elections occur in very small units (10 or fewer employees). Thus it is never too soon to start thinking about union avoidance.

A great place to start your union avoidance plan is to conduct an employee satisfaction survey at least once a year. Opinion surveys are a great way to get a handle on employee relations problems before they get out of control and to improve employee engagement and morale.

As you approach 15 employees it is a great idea to have a regular relationship with a labor/employment lawyer. For a firm this size you probably should consider a boutique firm that specializes in labor/employment law (do not use your general practitioner for these issues - a very common mistake).

3. Don't re-invent the wheel. Get some examples of what bigger companies in your area are doing and pick out the things you think apply to your business. I have a bunch of free resources and tools available in my "Open Source HR Department" where employer exchange things like policies, procedures and a lot of other tools.