Victorio Milian, HRExaminer.com Editorial Advisory Board Contributor

BIG DATA

Big Data is (broadly) the concept of organizations harnessing massive data sets to achieve competitive advantage in the marketplace. Due to a number of interrelated factors (computing power becoming cheaper, more items gathering and transmitting data,  companies looking to exploit this potential service), it’s a subject of interest for many. Proponents discuss the possibility of data being used to identify candidates for hard to fill roles, to quantify and optimize the Human Resources profession, and to provide consumers with goods and services more in-line with their needs. (Here is a Big Data overview from an earlier HR Examiner post that’s worth reading.)

All of these objectives make sense. For businesses, any tool or practice that allows people to work smarter (and earn a profit) is welcome. For many organizations, large repositories of potentially useful data already exist. Any system of record that a company utilizes (such as its payroll system or HRIS) contains data that may be mined. The capacity and disciplinary processes needed to implement Big Data concepts (such as data collecting, quality control, reporting, and analysis) may also already exist. This means that an organization may just need a shift in strategy and tactics (as opposed to investments in resources, human and otherwise) in order to put Big Data practices in play.

But instead of providing an explicit roadmap by which you can exploit Big Data concepts, I want to discuss strategic blind spots to avoid. With that, I want to talk first about hip-hop.

HIP-HOP

Hip-hop is a popular American music genre, with many artists and companies consistently earning significant profits off of the music. What many may not know is that in its early years, hip-hop was unpopular amongst mainstream listeners. In addition, most major labels didn’t have artists on their rosters, believing them to be unmarketable. This includes acts such as (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees) Run-D.M.C., now recognized as one of the greatest musical acts in American history, as well as the first hip-hop artists to have their video played on MTV.

A story tells of Russell Simmons, co-founder of the pioneering hip-hop record label Def Jam, trying to convince an executive team from Adidas to sign Run-D.M.C. to a sneaker contract. He brought them to a club where they were performing. Run then told the crowd to “take their Adidas off and wave them in the air!” The vast majority of the kids in attendance did so, as the group were well known to wear them. They got the contract and Run-D.M.C. became the first non-athletes to sign an exclusive sneaker deal, valued at $1.5 million.

Now on to zombies…

ZOMBIES

World War Z is a book written by Max Brooks. It’s fashioned in the style of a United Nations report, where the protagonist interviews key figures as zombies are eliminating humanity. While the subject can be dismissed as unrealistic, if you substitute the word “avian flu” (or any number of other potential epidemics) for “zombie,” then you’ll see why this book is a fun, yet anxiety causing, read.

During one interview, the protagonist talks to an Israeli intelligence officer named Jurgen Warmbrunn. Jurgen discusses how the state of Israel avoided being overrun by zombies, where others (including the United States) did not.

He states:

“In October of 1973, when the Arab sneak attack almost drove us into the Mediterranean, we had all the intelligence in front of us, all the warning signs, and we had simply “dropped the ball.” From 1973 onward, if nine intelligence analysts came to the same conclusion, it was the duty of the tenth to disagree (emphasis mine).”

In essence, the Israeli intelligence community emphasized the need for skepticism in the face of consensus. Even when the data seems to unanimously point to a certain conclusion, you must dig deeper to confirm that it’s valid. In the case of World War Z, this skepticism allows the Israeli government to take appropriate steps to save its citizens.

BLIND SPOTS

In my hip-hop example, having vast organizational resources and capabilities did nothing for record executives when it came to identifying hip-hop’s marketability. The art form’s perception at the time (urban youth music) hid the opportunity for labels to get their foot in the door early, allowing companies like Def Jam (and pioneers such as Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin) to claim early market share. In World War Z, zombies are a metaphor for how groups can be incapable of recognizing and adjusting to threats, in spite of the vast wealth of intelligence available.

In both cases, blind spots were at work.

Organizational strategies regarding the application of Big Data can allow for better decision making. However, it cannot substitute for the ability to see opportunities beyond itself. Big Data is not a substitute for quality analysis.

On its own, Big Data won’t sell your product or service. And it won’t save you from zombies.

The important thing to understand is that HR is not in a position to make the determination as to whether someone is depressed, or whether the depression is potentially protected as a disability.

One in four adults in the US suffers from some form of mental illness, mostly depression and anxiety disorders. 11% of Americans take an antidepressant. Chances are, someone you work with is depressed.

The cost of depression in lost productivity and health care has been estimated at $83 billion per year. Depression is the primary cause of suicide. More people kill themselves in the US than die in car wrecks.

Yet, depression often is not diagnosed or treated. Men are especially hesitant to get treatment because they perceive it as a sign of weakness.

Employees would rather quit than have the stigma of taking leave for mental illness. (David Mowry has written an excellent essay on attorneys and mental illness in House Rules: A Time Out.)

Many self-medicate with alcohol and other drugs, which just compounds the problem.

So it’s likely that you are dealing with depressed employees at work. It may even be the boss.

Is Depression Covered Under the ADA?

Depression can be a disability covered by the ADA that requries reasonable accommodation, but not always. It must be a mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity.

Short term or situational depression probably does not rise to the level of a disability. But a long-term or major depressive disorder will. For more information on when depression becomes a disability, see the EEOC Enforcement Guidance on the ADA and Psychiatric Disabilities.

If the person is also addicted to drugs or alcohol, the ADA can be triggered as well. Addiction to illegal drugs is not protected because, well, you can’t have a law that protects illegal behavior. But addiction to prescription drugs and alcohol can be covered. But even if the form of addiction is covered, the only “reasonable accommodation” an employer can make is time off for treatment. The employer doesn’t have to allow someone to drink at work, or come in late because she’s hungover.

Similarly, an accommodation for depression usually involves time off for treatment. It can also involve reduced hours, or responsibilities, or a change of position.

But it is very difficult to know when you are dealing with a depressed employee who needs help, instead of someone who doesn’t want to work there, or is just going through a rough couple weeks.

Is Depression Covered by FMLA?

Depression is a serious health condition that can qualify for Family Medical Leave. Again, it depends on the severity and the need for time off for therapy, medical appointments, or to adjust to medication.

Work with an employee’s physician or therapist to figure out what the employee needs. Then allow time off or intermittent leave.

The rules and procedures for ADA, FMLA, and the corresponding state versions differ. So always check all the procedures and requirements when dealing with leave related to a disability or serious medical condition.

What Does Depression Look Like?

Often someone who is depressed doesn’t even know it. Instead, they think they are coming down with something, or just can’t focus. Not everyone who is depressed goes to bed and doesn’t get out. Often depression shows up as anxiety or panic. Some of the symptoms listed by the Mayo Clinic include:

• Feelings of sadness or unhappiness
• Irritability or frustration, even over small matters
• Insomnia or excessive sleeping
• Changes in appetite — depression often causes decreased appetite and weight loss, but in some people it causes increased cravings for food and weight gain
• Indecisiveness, distractibility and decreased concentration
• Fatigue, tiredness and loss of energy — even small tasks may seem to require a lot of effort
• Feelings of worthlessness or guilt, fixating on past failures or blaming yourself when things aren’t going right
• Trouble thinking, concentrating, making decisions and remembering things
• Unexplained physical problems, such as back pain or headaches

Who doesn’t feel like that sometimes?

So basically, you are dealing with a problem that may require medical help and legal protection, but the symptoms are often confusing and contradictory, and the person may not even know she is depressed.

What to Do.

Look for changes in behavior and performance. When a good employee is suddenly missing deadlines or absent more, look further.

Ask the person if she is depressed. Suggest she see her doctor or a therapist to explore why she’s not feeling or doing well.

Give depressed employees time to get treatment.

Monitor their performance and hold employees accountable for their work within the recommendations of their doctor or therapist.

Maintain the employees’ confidentiality, and ask only for the information you need to comply with the leave policies or law.

The important thing to understand is that HR is not in a position to make the determination as to whether someone is depressed, or whether the depression is potentially protected as a disability. The employee and his therapist or physician are the ones who determine whether the condition is severe enough to require leave. Then HR and the legal department can make sure that the laws get followed.

But next time an employee is having problems at work, consider whether they need help for depression. You may save an employee. You may even save a life.

HRExaminer Radio is a weekly show devoted to Recruiting and Recruiting Technology airing live on Friday’s at 11AM Pacific

HRExaminer Radio

Episode: 19
Air Date: May 17, 2013
Guest: Linda Brenner

Linda Brenner started Designs on Talent, LLC and Skillsify, Inc. with the vision of helping organizations succeed by transforming the way they attract, deploy and retain people.

The firms are known for helping great companies like Chick-fil-A, Home Depot, Microsoft, Toys R Us, Turner Broadcasting, LinkedIn and TJX achieve higher levels of success through people. Linda’s practical, real- world approach, coupled with a bias for action and high quality results, is reflected throughout the Designs on Talent team.
She is currently consulting through her own company Havrilla LLC, as well as working with the incredible team at Recruiting Toolbox, where she focuses on all aspects of strategy, process, technology, and training as it relates to Recruiting, Sourcing, Talent Management and Development.She is co-founder of the Recruiter Chicks blog and is also now a regular contributor on the HRExaminer and Jobsite.com blogs.

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• Downloadable MP3 File HRExaminer Radio Linda Brenner Episode 19

This Week's Articles

Feature: Them Job Changes People change jobs less often than they used to. It’s a trend that’s been maturing for 30 years. Read Now »

Social Recruiting Is Dead “The promise of social recruiting was that it could scale. There’s no evidence that that has happened.” – John Sumser Read Now »

Data is Evidence Legal Editor Heather Bussing catalogs the online sources where lawyers, employers and other agents are tracking your digital footprints. Read Now »

Really, Big Data Isn’t Analytics Before, progress was just a matter of making the line move up and to the right. With big data, what matters is the ability to see patterns in the data. Read Now »

HRExaminer Radio: Episode #18: Chris Havrilla This show features Chris Havrilla who started out in Software Engineering and IT Consulting before finding her passion in Recruiting. Read Now »

Five Links: The New New The NEW New: We’re in another one of those ‘everything you know is wrong’ vortices. Read Now »

Events and More

• HRExaminer Radio : Industry News and Commentary with guests. Fridays at 11am pacific (2pm EDT):
  • Today's Show May 17, 2013: Linda Brenner
• The Frontier Project: Re imagining the Future of HR (Omaha, May 20-21) “Wanted: Innovators, creators, culture hackers, workplace revolutionaries and leaders who can no longer stand idly by as talent is squandered.”
• iRecruit Expo (Amsterdam, June 20-21) The premier European Recruiting event. Sumser session on day two
• Social Recruiting Strategies Conference (Chicago, July 23-25) Sumser Keynote
• The HR Technology Conference (Las Vegas, Oct. 7-9, 2013) The HR Tech Industry’s town hall with Bill Kutik and cohost Steve Boese
• HRTech Europe (Amsterdam, Oct 24-25)

The NEW New: We’re in another one of those ‘everything you know is wrong’ vortices.

In spite of conventional wisdom, people are switching jobs less, being aggressively auctioned while they wait and subjected to media manipulation of the highest order.

• Why aren’t Americans moving anymore? Here’s a new theory.
  In the early 1990s, 3 percent of Americans moved across state lines each year. Today, the rate is half that. The new therory is that Americans are switching jobs less often than they used to. If true, the theory un-does a decade or so of arm waving about shorter work cycles and gen Y behavior. Here’s the Federal Reserve paper that defines the new theory.
• Behind The Banner
  This astonishing litte snippet of video shows what happens in the 125 miliseconds between the time you click on a link and an ad is delivered to you. There’s an entire high speed auction process. Take a moment and watch this.
• Great Expectations: Probability Through Problems
  There’s no question that your workforce needs more statistics education. The University of Cambridge offers these resources for teaching probability. They focus on problems and solutions rather than dry recitations of theory. Someone in your company (hopefully in the L&D group) is wrestling with the notion of making stats more relevant and easier to digest. Send them this link.
• Social Media May Be Finally Dying But the BS Around It Isn’t
  “While it’s true that PSY experienced a tremendous amount of success on YouTube, it is not accurate to depict that success as something that happened organically and can be replicated by you, which is what a lot of the social media marketers remaking themselves into “viral marketing” and “real time marketing” experts claim. “
• How the Voice Manipulates Social Media
  Turns out that social media success is a big company game with something other than organic luck at the heart of it.

Events and More

• HRExaminer Radio : Industry News and Commentary with guests. Fridays at 11am pacific (2pm EDT):
  - May 17: Linda Brenner
• The Frontier Project: Re imagining the Future of HR (Omaha, May 20-21) “Wanted: Innovators, creators, culture hackers, workplace revolutionaries and leaders who can no longer stand idly by as talent is squandered.”
• iRecruit Expo (Amsterdam, June 20-21) The premier European Recruiting event. Sumser session on day two
• Social Recruiting Strategies Conference (Chicago, July 23-25) Sumser Keynote
• The HR Technology Conference (Las Vegas, Oct. 7-9, 2013) The HR Tech Industry’s town hall with Bill Kutik and cohost Steve Boese
• HRTech Europe (Amsterdam, Oct 24-25)

The smoke and mirrors about retention is beginning to lift. A new study provides examples of how new approaches to data and open minds discover hidden, important truths…

It turns out that it’s not true.

Most of us understood (at some level) that the average was really deceptive. As middle skilled jobs have been hollowed out, the workforce  polarized into low skilled and high skilled ghettos. Either a job has generic skills (retail and service) or they are complex (STEM). Average tenure in the high skilled segment is increasing. The service end is stable from a tenure perspective. But the number of service jobs is growing.

Average tenure drops if that scenario is true. But, it means that more people have jobs where tenure is shorter and jobs require lower skill level. The change in the average is caused by the jobs and not the attitudes of the people. The change in average tenure essentially reflects downward mobility. But it doesn’t mean that people are staying in their jobs for less time.

This week, the Federal Reserve published a paper which suggests that the number of times a person changes jobs is declining. The paper, Declining Migration within the US: the Role of the Labour Market, is a complex analysis of a range of scenarios in an effort to understand why US workforce mobility has plummeted.

In the 90s, 3.5% of the workforce moved for work every year. Today that number is around 1.5%. The number has been declining for 30 years.

The paper presents a painstaking proof of the idea that mobility is in decline because people change jobs much less frequently than they used to. The basic idea is that the wage differentials between states have disappeared and that opportunity is available ‘at home’.

In a longer piece, we’ll tackle the unasked question, is the ‘guild city phenomenon’ at the heart of this issue.

At any rate, the smoke and mirrors about retention is beginning to lift. The study is a clear example of the way that new approaches to data and open minds about questions can discover hidden, important truths.

I wonder how long it will be before the conventional wisdom shifts in this direction. People change jobs less often than they used to. It’s a trend that’s been maturing for 30 years.

Whodathunkit?