Return-to-office orders look like a way for elite, work-obsessed CEOs to grab power back from employees!

It’s a battle of headlines, none of which are grounded in reality. First of all, only 12% of employees work exclusively from home, so 47% of 12% is a measly 5.6%, and the survey actually found they would start looking for a new job, not up and quit.

But somehow, “5.6% of employees say they will start looking for a new job if they have to return to the office!” doesn’t get all those juicy hits that headline writers crave.

The article from the second headline does not support the headline at all. Yes, CEOs are generally more work-obsessed than the average person, which is how they got to be CEOs in the first place. You don’t get the top job at a blue-chip company by working 37.5 hours per week. Is it possible that this isn’t a power grab but a foundation in reality?

We know, for instance, that remote school was in large part a disaster. Children did not learn well, and test scores dropped. Plus, children preferred to be in school. Perhaps these “elite, work-obsessed CEOs” simply understand something that the average employee does not.

Related: The effects of ‘long remote’: how remote’s changed since 2020

But wait! Working from home can increase worker productivity by 77%!

OK, wait: the actual survey didn’t show that: it showed that 77% of people who worked from home reported being more productive.

How about the study that did an actual randomized control that found a 13% increase in productivity? Of course, that was one Chinese company, and the study took place over a nine-month period.

And, of course, other studies show that 2023 productivity is down, and those evil (ahem, elite work-obsessed) CEOs blame remote work.

There is no clear answer

All of this shows there is no way to make a blanket statement that remote work is good and in-person work is bad.

And what about hybrid work?

Related: The in-person vs. remote shuffle – what’s next? Hybrid!

As someone who has worked in person, remote, and hybrid, I strongly prefer hybrid. (I work from home exclusively, so I’m not saying that in hopes of getting to work from home a few days per week. Rather, I’d love to have an office to go to.)

What you have to do is right for your own business. And that will vary from company to company and perhaps even department to department. Here are some tips to help you figure out what works best for you.

Elon Musk got everyone’s knickers twisted when he demanded that Tesla employees return to the office.

He said:

“Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers.“

Elon to Tesla team: no more remote work pic.twitter.com/aSmZAAOm7G

— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) June 1, 2022

Tesla’s primary business is making cars. That means all the staff ultimately support the factory workers, who must be onsite.

If your business is retail, hospitality, healthcare, or manufacturing, consider your primary business when considering remote work. If the people ‘doing the work’ must come to work, you probably want your office staff to be there.

Yes, they probably can work remotely – just about anybody whose job involves sitting behind a computer can – but if your primary business is onsite, your people probably should be primarily on-site.

Otherwise, you end up with a two-tiered system. This can breed resentment among the people who do the hard work of meeting customer demands and building products.

Related: Balance remote with in-person for a more productive workforce

At a minimum, you should focus on ensuring that everyone (except people with valid medical needs) works in the office at least some of the time.

Suppose your primary business is software development, a think tank, or something where absolutely everyone in the company can work behind a computer. In that case, having a largely remote workforce is much more logical.

But with that remote workforce, make sure you have plenty of opportunities for communication with each other!

Do you hire a lot of entry-level workers?

Experienced professionals know how the business world “works.” They know that savvy business people understand what is going on in other departments and are more likely to work to build relationships across the company – even in a fully remote situation.

New grads? Forget it. They don’t know how things are supposed to work. They don’t know how to run a meeting. They don’t know what they are doing, let alone what other departments do. They need training and lots of it.

And, despite Gen Z being raised on internet culture, they won’t learn how to work as adults unless you train them.

And, of course, you can’t just have the Gen Zs come into the office while everyone else works remotely. That’s a Lord of the Flies philosophy that doesn’t play well outside an English class.

If you need to train people from the ground up, you need people in the office both to be trained and trainers.

Is what you’re doing now working for you?

Are you remote? Onsite? Hybrid? Is it working out for you? Can you hire? Are your employees productive? What’s your turnover like? Sometimes, we spend a lot of time fretting about what we should do without considering whether what we are doing actually works.

If everything is going well and employees are engaged and productive, keep doing it. You don’t need to listen to the crowds shouting one way or another – there’s no perfect way to run a business.

Don’t use remote/hybrid/in-person work as a ‘fix’

If what you’re doing is not working and everyone is miserable, allowing remote work won’t solve the misery of anything other than the commute and the need to take a half day off when the washing machine repairman is coming.

If you have bad managers, remote work won’t fix it. If you have bad managers, bringing everyone into the office won’t fix it.

Your business may run better if everyone is in the office, if everyone is hybrid, or if everyone is remote. But make sure bad managers are the actual issue before you act. You can’t fix lousy management by changing employee location.

Overall, no single solution applies to every business. The working world isn’t that simple. Ensure you focus on what works for your employees and your business, and never mind the rest of them.

The post WFH vs. RTO: what really works for your business appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And, of course, your hiring team is leaning on you to ensure the onboarding and orientation process goes absolutely perfectly.

But, there’s a but: Miriam is one of two dozen new hires starting that week because you’re scaling operations as a company. That puts you in a bit of a pickle. You just don’t have the bandwidth to ensure a smooth onboarding for Miriam and all her new colleagues – so you’re looking at potential problems in the future: Miriam gets thrown to the wolves in her first week on the job, gets disgruntled and frazzled, and starts tuning out pretty quickly afterwards.

Next? She turns to Glassdoor and starts looking again – and even gripes anonymously about the poor experience she had when she was initially pumped about her new job. And that goes for many of the other new hires as well.

Cue frustrated hiring managers, understaffed teams, and an overall stressful working environment for your existing employees who then hit burnout at a time when it could have been avoided.

How do you avoid all that? As an HR professional, you’re always searching for innovative ways to improve the onboarding process. With all the new technology out there, have you considered adding virtual reality to the mix?

Virtual onboarding

VR is no longer the stuff of science fiction and it hasn’t been for a long time. Also referred to as “immersion technology”, VR can be a real boon to your onboarding process. Think about it – rather than plunk Miriam in front of a laptop and telling her she needs to watch a series of videos, you’re putting her in a virtual working environment to get her familiarized with the job before she’s actually doing it.

Those interactive experiences help new hires like Miriam feel welcomed and better informed about the work they’re going to do for you.

The power of information retention

Those first few weeks for a new hire can be overwhelming. As a new hire, you can be bombarded with all kinds of information – you’re meeting new people, learning new systems and entering a new culture. You’ve having meetings one after the next, training with different teams, and reading up on numerous policies and best practices.

This can lead to information overload at a crucial time where you want to ensure new employees retain all that information if they’re going to succeed. That’s where VR can be useful. Immersive learning has been found to be more efficient in terms of memory retention – a University of Maryland study found that VR learners demonstrated an 8.8% higher recall accuracy compared to those using a two-dimensional platform.

Improved retention also means better job performance. A PwC study revealed that employees trained with VR were up to 275% more confident in applying learned skills, and were four times faster in completing training than those in the traditional classroom setting.

A holodeck for training purposes

Star Trek’s holodeck is a perfect example of how immersive technology can be used to train new hires – in Star Trek, it’s used as a safe environment for combat training and scientific simulation. The same thinking applies to VR’s capabilities to create realistic job simulations for your new employees.

And while Star Trek is science fiction, there are real-life examples of this. For instance, retail giant Walmart has embraced VR to train over one million employees across its stores.

Andy Trainor, Walmart’s Senior Director of Walmart U.S. Academies, is a fan of virtual onboarding. “The great thing about VR,” he says, “is its ability to make learning experiential. When you watch a module through the headset, your brain feels like you actually experienced a situation.”

You’ve probably heard about Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States. It’s an intense time for customer support representatives, especially newer, inexperienced ones. To counter the challenge, Walmart has a VR training scenario simulating that environment to prep new and existing employees ahead of time.

That controlled and risk-free environment helps employees practice customer service, problem-solving and safety procedures without fear of consequence, ultimately making them better at the job when the time comes.

Likewise, Farmers Insurance developed a VR training program for their claims adjusters. The program immerses trainees in a virtual environment simulating real-world situations, such as inspecting damaged properties.

This approach to training has enabled Farmers Insurance to accelerate the learning process, improve knowledge retention, and better prepare their claims adjusters for the challenges they’ll face on the job. By leveraging the capabilities of immersive learning solutions, your organization can also unlock the full potential of VR technology in onboarding and orientation.

Being the ‘new kid’ isn’t easy

Working is often collaborative. Consequently, it’s a priority for many hiring teams to build strong working relationships from the get-go.

But for the new hire like Miriam, being introduced to all those unfamiliar names and faces (and roles) can become overwhelming during an already stressful first few weeks on the job. Couple that with the drive to make a strong impression, and it can be a highly anxious time.

VR can address that even before the first day on the job. Immersing the new hire in a virtual working environment which includes ‘introductions’ to their new colleagues helps a new hire familiarize themselves ahead of time. Ice is broken, new connections are built, and new relationships start forming even before they physically arrive for work on the first day.

It’s a virtual solution

As an HR professional, incorporating VR tech into your onboarding and orientation processes can boost the new employee experience.

By offering immersive learning, realistic job simulators and connectivity boosters, you’re priming your new hires such as Miriam to hit the ground running more quickly. That’s more valuable especially in sectors where you’re onboarding in large batches or hiring for higher-stress working environments.

There’s just one caveat – don’t let VR do all the work. There are two balances to bear in mind: first, as with all technologies, you still should maintain the all-important human touch as you scale your tech stack. Second, keep your tech evolution in tandem with your organization’s specific needs and objectives. Don’t let one get ahead of the other.

With the right approach, virtual reality can transform the way you welcome and integrate new employees into your team, creating a more engaged, connected and confident workforce. Newly hired prodigies like Miriam will realize their full potential quicker than before – and your company will reap the benefits.

The post Use VR in onboarding and set your new hires for success appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Other companies did the same, presenting their employees with the opportunity to work offsite where they were able to and where it was possible. But ultimately, it wasn’t a standard at all – for most, it was either fully on site or, perhaps, one day at home every now and then and only with managerial approval.

Then something changed. In the turbulent early days of COVID-19, many organizations shifted to a fully remote model – which was labeled at that moment as a stopgap measure to begin with, and then a bold and new experiment going forward. Remote work was even described by some as something that was bound to happen sooner or later – and that the social impact of the virus (i.e. lockdowns and social distancing requirements) merely expedited it.

And then, we saw a rise in productivity and performance in the remote working environment. This comes as little surprise to those who have studied the relationship between productivity and employee engagement and remote work.

But as the pandemic dragged on, productivity started to falter. Mental health challenges also rose in remote work – and we’ve seen the rise of anxieties in this new survey. Asynchronous work also presented its own challenges – especially when it came to communication between teams.

What also rose to the surface are the challenges connected with on-location work. When we saw organizations start talking about a return to office as the pandemic loosened its grip on society, the pushback from employees was strong and defiant. Many didn’t like the idea.

Many workers – according to our Great Discontent survey report in 2021 – want to retain their flexibility in work. Why? Family commitments. Personal priorities. More time in the day. The list goes on.

In short: people just don’t want to go back to the way things were, and likewise, industries and businesses – which are irrevocably transformed – can’t envision a full return to the way things were. In other words, the cat’s out of the bag. The toothpaste’s out of the tube.

In the midst of all this, candidates have the upper hand with talent at a premium for employers. They’re not afraid to leverage that to their benefit – be that in terms of compensation or working environment.

So this forced a new agreement onto the world of work. The ‘agreement’, if we can call it that, seems to be a third road. A middle ground. That’s hybrid work.

Hybrid work, for all its definitions (i.e. two days in office and three days remote, office space availability for those who want it, etc.), is rising as one of the major new standards in this next world of work. Perhaps it’s the best of both work worlds. Whether that’s a temporary solution on the heels of other temporary solutions or whether that’s finally a new standard in the workplace after years of disruption – that’s yet to be determined.

Some do think this is the new status quo. One survey respondent told us: “I believe that the hybrid model is here to stay. The challenge will be to establish and develop greater empathy among remote employees.”

“I believe that the hybrid model is here to stay. The challenge will be to establish and develop greater empathy among remote employees.”

This speaks to the old axiom that for every retaliatory adjustment or new solution, fresh challenges and problems are going to reveal themselves.

This happened with in-office and on-location – a centuries-long standard – and happened again with the opposite extreme of distributed teams and remote working.

Now we have hybrid.

The more things change, the more things will change – that’s been our experience since the crazy early days of 2020. Is hybrid the next world of work, or is it just the next experiment or the next stage in the ongoing negotiation between employer and employee?

Honestly, it’ll be a bit of both.

The post The in-person vs. remote shuffle – what’s next? Hybrid! appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

So why would you want to do it? Look at the benefits:

• 35% said they wanted to access a wider talent pool
• 32% said they wanted to build a more diverse workforce
• 29% said they wanted to build a global workforce

Ultimately, the big attraction of borderless working is… attraction itself. Today’s workers like having the flexibility to work from anywhere. But this does mean fresh challenges – how do you get the attention of candidates in different locations and get them excited about working for you? Moreover, how do you evaluate their candidacy when you’re in one place and they’re in another?

Let’s go through the top tips one by one. And we also have a full e-guide where we go into greater depth on borderless hiring including actionable tips.

Decorate your shop window

Treat everything external facing as your “shop window” for the candidate – job ads, social media pages, careers pages. Consider where your workers live – Millennials and Gen Zers tend to be more active on social media than their older counterparts, and there are niche job boards both for industries (i.e. construction, tech workers, teachers) and in each individual location.

Engage your existing employees

Your current employees may be your top advocates and allies when it comes to attracting candidates to a new job. Not only can your talent pool increase by 10 times through employee referrals, but referred candidates move more quickly through the recruitment pipeline, and are more likely to stay longer in their new role.

Promote your social contributions

If your company is actively involved in the community or if you grant volunteer days, emphasize that in your recruitment marketing. Ditto for your diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts – that goes a long way in making an impression on a candidate.

Build and perfect your comp package

The nuances of borderless working also include being prepared when it comes to salaries and benefits. Do your homework there, and ensure that you have a diverse range of compensation packages to meet the needs of your increasingly diverse workforce.

Source those hard-to-find candidates

Sourcing is already a challenge in some sectors – and it becomes doubly so when you’re hiring in a different location from your own. Do your due research in each of those locations where you’re planning to be active – including localized and niche job boards, online communities, and even in-person gatherings and conferences.

Focus on potential, not experience

Experience is huge – but when you focus on identifying a candidate’s potential to be a star, you not only get talented applicants but also people you can grow and train to become the very best in their field. Look for the soft skills and intangibles both in their CV/resume and in your interviews with them.

Identify the passive candidates

Often, a candidate doesn’t know they want to work for you until you’ve convinced them that you’re a great next step in their career. Those are the passive candidates – the ones who are fine where they are, but are open to a conversation about a new job even if they’re not actively applying.

Structure your recruitment process

A well-planned, replicable hiring funnel is crucial to your success, especially when you’re working with hiring teams distributed across locations and doing your recruitment in yet another location altogether. You need to set clear expectations with your team, keep all information in one place, prepare for interviews beforehand, and utilize tech every step of the way.

Align your work culture

Perkbox’s survey of UK business leaders saw 42% reporting an increase in productivity due to improved DEI policies. But having a common goal and a unifying culture is still crucial. You want candidates who can be comfortable being themselves as employees but can also fit into your overall company ethos. Promote your company values in your brand and evaluate the candidate’s own values when recruiting.

Make it scalable

Establish a recruitment process that’s free of breakdowns if you scale your efforts There are numerous areas of hiring where you can optimize the process this way, including in screening, interviewing, assessments, compliance, and more.

Borderless hiring is here to stay

Borderless success is found in sync – be that between colleagues in your organization, or in strategies, policies and processes. When you’re running a business without borders, you want to keep those loose ends tied up.

Remote work has enabled organizations to find and retain talent all around the world, and this is a huge opportunity for you. It’s important to remember that a ‘business as usual’ approach isn’t going to work – throw out that old playbook and start establishing new rules of engagement.

That means a finely tuned talent attraction strategy, a seamless recruitment process,
and a resilient, agile system that can adapt quickly to the ever-changing business landscape.

Again, read our extensive guide on borderless working and hiring – which goes into greater depth on all of the above.

The post Workers sans frontiéres: Attracting talent beyond borders appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

They were right.

And now we have five business and HR experts sharing their tips and insights on best practices and outcomes in this area. Check out the video to see what they had to say!

Those experts are:

Rey Ramirez, management consultant at Thrive HR, which provides fractional CHRO and HR services to companies of every size.

Tony Jamous, CEO and founder of Oyster, a global employment platform that empowers companies to hire, pay, and care for team members wherever they are in the world.

Amy Zimmerman, Chief People Officer at Relay Payments, an end-to-end digital payment solution and mobile app for the supply chain and logistics industries.

Natasha Bowman, The Workplace Doctor and founder of The Bowman Foundation for Workplace Equity and Mental Wellness.

David Nour, CEO of The Nour Group and Relationship Economics® Advisor, author of Curve Benders.

The post Remote work: ‘There’s no going back on this’ appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Working from home is an excellent thing for many people. The time saved by being able to commute down the hall rather than an hour through metropolitan traffic is a life saver for many.

Working from home allows many people more time with their family, friends, pets, and hobbies. Those are great things! Not to mention the convenience of ordering everything on the internet and being home to collect the packages, thwarting the efforts of porch pirates everywhere.

Benefits of working remotely: UK workers get back an hour a day – and they like it

But what if it’s not sunshine and roses for everyone? What if working from home is actually bad for some people? Some researchers discovered some downsides that you should be aware of. To be perfectly clear, no study said this happened to everyone or that no one should work from home. But, it is clear that working from home isn’t the best thing for everyone.

Here are some of the problems researchers found and how you can help your employees succeed anyway.

Exhaustion

As you would expect, not having to commute decreased exhaustion, but according to one report, working from home led to “lower social support, lower feedback, and greater role ambiguity which increased exhaustion.”

Yikes.

While researchers conceded that this isn’t a reason to stop working from home, these are all problems that businesses can fix:

Lower social support

This is the hardest for a company to fix, as you can’t force people to leave their house and make friends! But you can make sure you encourage social interactions with your employees. It turns out you don’t want them constantly working for eight hours. They need a break.

Lower feedback

It’s easy for bosses to drop feedback here and there when you’re all in the same space. Sometimes, feedback only happens in formal, scheduled meetings when people don’t see each other. Or worse, bosses only convey negative feedback.

Managers need to understand the importance of feedback. Feedback should increase when people work from home, not decrease. Why? Because it’s harder to get feedback through non-verbal communication like you do when you’re in the office.

Greater role ambiguity

This is something managers can solve. Clear guidelines, clear boundaries, and clear feedback can clear this up. Managers need to update job descriptions regularly and communicate with their employees. Everyone works better when they know their responsibilities.

Eating more and exercising less

Many people have joked about gaining the Pandemic 15, but it turns out that was the exception, not the rule. According to a Harvard study, 39% of people gained weight during the pandemic, but most gained less than 12 pounds.

But the ability to graze during the day and limiting exercise to walking from the bedroom to the kitchen and back can profoundly impact your work-from-home employees. The good news from another study is most people don’t report an overall change in food intake – but for those that do, you can help.

Encourage people to keep regular hours

Work can blend into leisure time when you work from home, and sometimes people spend too much time in front of their computers. That can lead to less physical activity and fewer healthy balanced meals. If you can make it clear that employees can turn off their computers and put their phones on mute, it might help with their overall health.

Make sure your health insurance is great

If your business was an in-office business and now everyone is working from home, use that money you save by not renting office space to fund better health insurance. Make sure people get the help they need.

Provide food and exercise-based perks

The last thing you want to do is become the fat police, but if you can add a subsidy for a gym membership or a discount with a food company that delivers the ingredients for healthy meals, it can make a big difference.

Longer hours at work

When companies sent everyone home at the beginning of the pandemic, many feared employees would not actually work as much if they could be easily distracted by Netflix and laundry. Some companies installed tracking software so they could monitor their employees.

While there will always be people who slack off, some people work more and work a lot more. And because everything is in front of a screen, it can stress workers’ eyes and brains. There are no screen breaks for meetings because everyone is on Zoom and inexplicably waving at each other.

The boss needs to create boundaries

Maybe work is the big boss’s favorite thing, but if the boss emails, messages, and calls people at 9 pm, employees will feel obligated to answer. Constant contact means no downtime and no time to rest our brains and eyes. If bosses want to work crazy hours, they’ll burn out, but that’s their choice. Burning out employees is not an excellent long-term strategy.

Make sure employees have childcare

Schools and daycares are back in operation, so children should be in care while the employee works. While it can be fun to take breaks for the kids, if there isn’t someone else taking care of them, it can cause the workday to become disjointed, which means people end up feeling like they work all the time – even if they actually take multiple breaks during the day.

Working from home is great for many people, but don’t ignore the downsides! Keep on top of how your employees do and support them so they can succeed from their home offices.

The post WFH depression: why it happens and what you can do appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In our Great Discontent survey of 750 workers in the United States, we found that the ‘community’ of the workplace is very important to workers – more so than the externally facing aspects of a company such as their reputation and even their contribution to society at large.

Let’s take a deeper look at what the data shows us.

How important is workplace community?

When we asked what elements of an employer would attract respondents to a new opportunity, the number-one factor picked by respondents is their relationship with colleagues and teammates (37.1%) followed by overall company culture (34.7%).

Close behind are management and executive leadership (33.1%) and responsiveness to individual employees (31.3%).

At the bottom of that list are social / environmental / DEI engagement at just 13% and brand reputation at 16.4%. Respondents are even lukewarm when it comes to a company’s mission / vision / values (25.3%). Which may come as a bit of a surprise, considering the growth in social awareness and activism in recent years – one would think this would also translate into the workplace.

But there’s a potential explanation: the lower value placed on those more value-driven aspects of a business shows that people aren’t as attracted to those elements of a prospective employer as they are by their relationships with others in the workplace – be they colleagues or management.

“The workplace I’m in has a great foundation of workers; we all contribute and support each other and have nothing but encouraging words to say to each other.”

This makes sense, especially since respondents were asked to choose three from this list. It shows what they prioritize in an employer. People want to work well with others, and they want to work in a healthy company culture with capable leaders and managers. They like a healthy workplace community.

“Yes. Strong leaders have strong teams. Never start somewhere that’s already, or constantly in disarray. You can’t jump on a sinking ship to save them.”

How important is employee experience?

The same rings true when asking the question about what employees would like to see improved for a better employee experience in their current capacity, with some additional insights.

Management and executive leadership tops the list (38.7%) followed by responsiveness of a company to individual employees (37%). Again, the externally facing and brand-related elements rank at the bottom of what employers can do to better the working lives of their employees.

This indicates that it’s not just about relationships and workplace community – it’s also the sense of feeling like you’re an important part of the company as a whole. We all like to turn to our leaders for guidance and inspiration; it’s a common facet of human life.

And we like to be listened to; if our voices are heard, and in turn, acted on, that is a very powerful thing.

“I think a workplace should be transparent and the executives should interact with employees more and let them know what is going on instead of sending an email.”

The post Workplace community is more important than most in US appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Let’s dig in:

How important is workplace community?

When we asked what aspects about an employer would attract respondents to a new opportunity, the most popular attractor picked by respondents is their relationship with colleagues and teammates (47.3%) with overall company culture (34.7%) lagging behind in second.

Responsiveness of the company to individual employees is in third at 28.3%. Management and executive leadership, company mission / vision / values, brand reputation, and company transparency were more or less evenly represented down the list – except for one.

Lingering at the very bottom of the list is social / environmental / DEI engagement and action, with just 13.4% of respondents picking that as something that would attract them to a new employer.

The lower value placed on those more value-driven aspects of a business shows that workers will be more likely to move because of an opportunity for stronger relationships with others in the workplace, whether they’re colleagues or management. This doesn’t necessarily mean that social / environmental / DEI engagement and action are not valued – they’re just not what people will move for.

These selections also make sense because respondents were asked to choose only three from this list. It shows what they prioritize in an employer. It’s very important to workers in the UK that they work well with others – and to have a thriving, healthy workplace community.

How important is employee experience?

The same rings true when asking the question about what employees would like to see improved for a better employee experience in their current capacity, with some additional insights.

Again, relationships with other workers tops the list, with 31.8% of respondents picking that as one of the three areas for improvement at their current employer. Respondents also want to see better responsiveness of the company to individual needs (30.1%), and improved management and executive leadership (27.2%).

“Managers should do 1-to-1 with staff; staff can share more ideas and problems.”

Again, the externally facing and brand-related elements rank at the bottom of what employers can do to better the working lives of their employees – especially brand reputation (7%).

No one likes to work in a vacuum. People like to work with people, and they want that to be a good relationship. And we like to be listened to; if our voices are heard, and in turn, acted on, that makes for a very powerful and positive workplace community and overall employee experience.

“If an employer shows that employees are valued, rewarded for loyalty and good welfare is in place then employees will be attracted or stay.”

The post Workplace community is tops in the minds of UK workers appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

For instance, some jobs can be performed remotely but require fixed timelines, such as a customer support role during business hours or a position requiring synchronous collaboration with others such as in software engineering.

Other jobs can’t be performed remotely but can be carried out at any time, such as stocking positions which tend to be more deadline-intensive (do this by X day) rather than timeline-intensive (you’re working from X to Y hours), or a restaurant with multiple shifts that can be distributed to employees.

Flexible schedules can also mean one employee arriving at work at 10:30 a.m. and leaving at 6:30 p.m., with another starting at 5:30 in the morning in order to wrap things up shortly after lunch – again, all so long as the work gets done. Knowledge workers are especially familiar with this kind of schedule.

So the difference warrants separate questions for each. We’ve already shared insights on the value of remote work in the US workforce. And now we have findings for you on flexible work schedules in the eyes of our audience.

Are they doing it?

In contrast to the numbers of those working remotely, the majority of respondents (57.9%) are indeed working on flexible schedules.

While working remotely can blur the lines between home and work – and naturally make way for a more flexible schedule as a result – the fact that flexible schedules are more common indicates more of a paradigm shift beyond COVID-19 for flexible work hours than for remote work.

Can they do it?

Similarly to our questions on remote work, we wanted to understand what respondents thought about the real-life feasibility of flexible schedules in their own job. The results were striking, with 32.1% picking 5 (“completely”), and 19.4% picking 1 (“not at all”).

Combine the numbers and you have 57.1% picking 4 or 5 to say yes, their work can reasonably be performed on a flexible schedule, compared with 31.5% picking 1 or 2.

The message is clear: flexible schedules are more doable than remote work in the minds of our respondents (with just 37.8% picking 4 or 5 for remote). Maybe that means there’s some value in on-location work after all – more on that in the next chapter.

“Unfortunately, I work for a niche market in healthcare so my ability to up and move is difficult unless a job opportunity happens to arise. Being a medical provider also limits the flexibility of my work schedule.”

How important is it?

Again, flexible schedules showed a much stronger trend than remote work in terms of how important it is for respondents. More than a third (34.3%) picked 5 (“completely”), and nearly another quarter of respondents (23.9%) rated 4 out of 5.

Combined, that makes 58.2% clearly stating that the ability to work flexible schedules is important to some degree.

“I think it’s great to be able to work flexibly from home.”

And what makes it important?

It’s clear that flexible working schedules are doable, and they’re important to people. But why? We asked that too.

The most popular benefit is that “it’s easier to balance personal and professional priorities”, with 55.8% of respondents choosing that as one of their top three. “I find it less stressful” (44.4%) and “I’m more productive at specific times” (39.4%) are also popular benefits of flexible work schedules.

55.8% of US workers say the ease of integrating personal and professional priorities is a major benefit of having a flexible work schedule.

Common sources of stress for a fixed schedule could include needing to be at work on time, the guilt of leaving work early to pick up kids, and even feeling like they have to be productive at specific times during the day.

Regarding productivity, that ties into the third-most popular item on the list, which is “more productive at specific times in the day”. We are all different – some of us like to start work early in the day, others thrive in the mid-afternoon, others still like to burn the midnight oil because that’s when they’re most productive.

Whatever it may be, it’s clear that incorporating flexible working hours into your business is crucial to your future success. Learn more about how to do so here, and feel free to use our flexible work hours company policy template!

The post Flexible work hours: it’s important for 58% of US workers, survey finds appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Phil Flaxton, CEO of Work Wise, spoke his mind on this.

“There are many ways of avoiding the misery of commuting during the dark mornings and evenings, which millions of people endure as they struggle to get to and from work. These include implementing flexitime, staggered working hours and working from home,” says Phil.

“Clearly the government, public transport providers and employers must do more in order to address the major negative impact on the UK’s economy, lost productivity and the environment.”

With all this, we included flexible work in our new Great Discontent survey of UK workers.

We’ve already shared insights on the value of remote work in the UK. And now we have findings for you on flexible work schedules in the eyes of our audience.

Are they doing it?

As it happens, the majority of respondents (55.2%) are working on flexible schedules right now.

This isn’t too different from the percentage of respondents working in a remote or hybrid environment (54.6%). Obviously, there’s some (or a lot of) overlap, since those working remotely are likely to be also working on their own schedules, and vice versa.

Can they do it?

Similarly to our questions on remote work, we wanted to understand what respondents thought about the real-life feasibility of flexible schedules in their own job. The results were striking, with 29.6% picking 5 (“completely”), and 14.6% picking 1 (“not at all”).

Combine the numbers and you have a convincing 53.8% picking 4 or 5 to say yes, their work can reasonably be performed on a flexible schedule, compared with just 23.8% picking 1 or 2.

The message is clear: flexible schedules are very doable for a good portion of our respondents.

“More organizations need to apply a shift system so more persons can get jobs and workers are not overworked.”

How important is it?

Again, flexible schedules showed a much stronger trend than remote work in terms of how important it is for respondents. Nearly a third (32.9%) picked 5 (“completely”), and another quarter of respondents (24.8%) rated 4 out of 5 – that means 57.7% altogether.

On the flip side, only a combined 19% picked 1 (“not at all”) or 2, meaning flexible hours are very important to many of our respondents – and more important than remote work.

And what makes it important?

It’s clear that flexible working schedules are doable, and they’re important. But why? We asked that too.

The number-one benefit by and far is that “it’s easier to balance personal and professional priorities”, with 57.3% of respondents choosing that benefit as one of their top three. “I find it less stressful” (37.9%) and “I’m more productive at specific times” (36.5%) are also popular benefits.

Common sources of stress for a fixed schedule may include needing to be at work on time, the guilt of leaving work early to pick up kids, and even feeling like they have to be productive at specific periods during the day.

Regarding productivity, that ties into the third-most popular item on the list, which is “more productive at specific times in the day”. We are all different – some of us like to start work early in the day, others peak in the mid-afternoon, others still like to burn the midnight oil and work deep into the night.

Whatever the case may be, it’s clear that incorporating flexible working hours into your business is crucial to your future success. Learn more about how to do so here, and feel free to use our flexible work hours company policy template!

The post Flexible schedules a must for 57% of UK workers: Great Discontent survey appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And we have interesting findings for you on what the benefits of working remotely are, whether remote work is indeed happening, and how important it is to workers in the United States.

Remote work

Are they doing it?

We asked respondents if they’re currently working remotely or in a hybrid setup. More than half (55.6%) say they aren’t – but that still leaves a significant portion (44.4%) who are working remotely or in a hybrid arrangement.

While those numbers show that remote work is still a very common trend, it’s still a significant shift from the early days of the pandemic in 2020. The aforementioned New World of Work survey found that a staggering 94.9% (62.6% fully, 32.3% partially) of businesses moved to a remote environment as a result of the pandemic.

While the survey respondents are different this time – i.e. the employable population rather than employers themselves – the data still indicates a shift to some kind of normalcy.

But that’s not to say remote work isn’t still happening. It’s very much a reality. Let’s first look at the feasibility of it according to our respondents.

Can they do it?

So, can people work remotely, regardless of whether they want to or are able to? We asked respondents to rate their response on a scale of 1 to 5 (from “not at all” to “completely”). The responses are varied, with nearly one-third (31.8%) choosing 1 (“not at all”) and a quarter of responses picking 5 (“completely”).

If there’s anything definitive here, it’s that a good portion of respondents (31.6%) are clear that their job can’t be done in a remote environment. Reasons can vary – perhaps it’s the employee themselves and they feel unable to do so, or it’s a literal requirement of the job to be on location – for instance, jobs in the hospitality or manufacturing sectors.

How important is it?

We also asked how important working remotely is. What stood out is that respondents don’t consider remote work as important as flexible schedules.

When asked to choose from 1 to 5 the importance of remote or hybrid work, only 17.8% picked 5 – “completely” – whereas 26.1% picked 1 – “not at all”. Nearly a third (32.6%) of respondents picked 3 – suggesting no strong feelings either way.

Perhaps the remote work trend is more a pandemic-driven rather than paradigm shift, and now that people have settled into remote work, it’s not as important as they once felt.

They aren’t even convinced that the ability to work remotely opens up new opportunities, with 28.8% picking 1 (“not at all”) and 16.9% picking 5 (“completely”). (Chart is not displayed.)

And what makes it important?

But sure, remote work has to be important in some ways. So, we asked what benefits can be gained from it. One understandably popular answer is that “it lowers pandemic health risks” (39.4%). Other top benefits are that it’s easier to integrate personal and professional lives (tops at 39.7%) and it’s cheaper than the alternative (36.8%).

Another major benefit is the extra hours in the day gained from not commuting (33.5%) – understandable, considering a US Census report showing the average American commute to be approaching half an hour each way, longer if in larger metro regions.

Meanwhile, “I have fewer distractions” (17.9%) and “I’m more productive” (20.1%) do not rank as highly. Since distraction is regularly cited as a major factor and inhibitor to productivity, we were surprised at this.

Likewise, the freedom to choose where to live is far down the list, with just 13.8% citing that as a major benefit of remote work – again, something we thought would rank higher.

So what does this indicate? Health during the pandemic aside, the holistic benefit of integrating work and home lives as a whole, combined with the tangible benefits of lower cost and more hours in a day are huge factors in why people like remote work.

39.7% of US workers say the ease of integrating personal and professional priorities is a major benefit of remote work

As emphasized by one respondent:

“Work/life balance is important for everyone at all levels. Work has become a part of my life vs. working to live. I get back 3 hours of my day but by not having to commute and I feel like my productivity has increased.”

The post Integrating work and home a top benefit of working remotely in US appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And we have interesting findings for you on what the benefits of working remotely are, whether remote work is indeed happening, and how important it is to workers in the UK.

And we have interesting findings for you, starting with a matter-of-fact comment from one respondent:

“Whilst financial recompense is an important factor in talent migration, I think other factors such as greater opportunities for agile working and flexible working are becoming increasingly important for career decisions.”

Remote work

Are they doing it?

We asked respondents if they’re currently working remotely or in a hybrid setup. The result was quite evenly split, with 54.6% saying they’re currently working remotely or in a hybrid setup, and the remaining 45.4% saying they aren’t.

While those numbers show that remote work is still common in the UK, it’s still a significant shift from the early days of the pandemic in 2020. The aforementioned New World of Work survey found that a staggering 94.9% of businesses – predominantly in the UK and the US – said they moved some or all operations to a remote environment as a result of the pandemic.

While the survey respondents are different this time – the employable population rather than employers themselves – the data still shows a shift back to some kind of normalcy in the UK, pandemic spikes notwithstanding.

But that’s not to say remote work isn’t still happening. It’s very much a reality – and even a new standard. Let’s look at what our respondents say about the feasibility of it.

Can they do it?

So, can people work remotely, regardless of whether they want to or whether they’re actually able to? We asked respondents to rate their response on a scale of 1 (“not at all”) to 5 (“completely”).

The responses are relatively polarized, with one quarter (25.3%) choosing 1 and nearly half (48.3%) picking 4 or 5.

If there’s anything definitive here, it’s that a good portion of respondents are clear that their job can’t be done in a remote environment (25.3%). Reasons can vary – perhaps it’s the employee themselves and that they feel unable to do so, or the job is literally required on location – for instance, jobs in the hospitality, food service, or manufacturing sectors.

As another respondent explains:

“Not everyone works in an office. Some of us have to swing off big steam valves. And you would be screwed if we didn’t because there’d be no electricity.”

How important is it?

We also asked respondents how important working remotely is. What impressed us is that respondents don’t consider remote work as important to them as flexible schedules – not that it isn’t important; it’s just not as strongly indicated.

When asked to choose from 1 to 5 the personal importance of remote or hybrid work, 42% picked 4 or 5, whereas 22.4% picked 1 – in other words, “not at all”.

The dominant choice for nearly a quarter (24%) of respondents is 3 – suggesting no strong feelings either way.

Perhaps the remote work trend is more a pandemic-driven rather than paradigm shift in the end, and now that people have become comfortable in remote work, they realize it’s not as important as they once felt.

“I enjoy working from home but would like to return to the office at least 1 day per week.”

Respondents aren’t even very convinced that the capability to work remotely opens up new opportunities for them, with 26% picking 1 (“not at all”) and 15.8% picking 5 (“completely”). A resounding 28.4% picked 3, again showing little alignment in either direction. (Chart is not displayed.)

And what makes it important?

Nevertheless, remote work has got to be important in one way or another. So, we asked what benefits are associated with it. The top answer is that “it lowers pandemic health risks” (41.5%), but other top benefits are that it’s easier to integrate personal and professional lives (also 41.5%) and it frees up time during the day (41.3%).

Freeing up time during the day is a pretty obvious benefit, considering that UK residents spend an average of 59 minutes per day on the commute to and from work – 79 minutes per day for Londoners – according to Work Wise UK.

Says Phil Flaxton, CEO of Work Wise:

“There are many ways of avoiding the misery of commuting during the dark mornings and evenings, which millions of people endure as they struggle to get to and from work. These include implementing flexitime, staggered working hours and working from home. … Clearly the government, public transport providers and employers must do more in order to address the major negative impact on the UK’s economy, lost productivity and the environment.”

Another major benefit of remote work is that it’s cheaper all around. The costs associated with commuting, parking fees, takeaway lunches, and other expenses can be mitigated and even eliminated when working remotely.

One respondent was pretty clear about their allegiance:

“Love working from home, less travel costs and stress and I can dress and eat as I want.”

Meanwhile, “I have fewer distractions” (17.6%) and “I’m more productive” (20.6%) do not rank as highly in the list of most popular benefits for those in the UK. Since distraction is regularly cited as a major factor and inhibitor to productivity, we’re surprised that these don’t rank as highly as we thought they would.

Likewise, the freedom to choose where to live is far down the list, with just 13.2% citing that as a major benefit of remote work. Again, we thought this would rank higher given the ability given by remote work to avoid the high costs of living in dense urban centres such as London where most jobs exist.

So what does this indicate? Health benefits aside, the holistic benefit of integrating work and home lives as a whole, combined with the tangible benefits of lower cost and more hours in a day are huge factors in why people like remote work.

The post Benefits of working remotely: UK workers get back an hour a day – and they like it appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But there’s a middle ground. The largest companies in the world use both outsourcing and directly managed offshore teams to support multiple parts of their business to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

For example, major industry players like JP Morgan, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and more have a significant amount of their workforce overseas.

Why? The global talent pool is remarkable and is fortuitously available to the United States businesses who, with more than 10 million open jobs across the United States, are currently facing a detrimental workforce shortage.

However, for many small and mid-sized business owners, building an offshore team has its own challenges. It’s not as simple as setting up their own offshore subsidiary or submitting a bid to Accenture to help them build an offshore team. The scale is just too small. Enter the virtual captive model, which allows small and medium size enterprises to build, train, and manage remote staff.

What is the Virtual Captive Model?

In the virtual captive outsourcing model, companies are given the opportunity to build their own team of offshore professionals of any size through a business process outsourcing vendor. The vendor handles the recruiting, HR, facilities, IT, and equipment while the organization controls the processes, metrics, and output.

Contrary to conventional thoughts, it’s a win-win. Companies are afforded the same control and visibility they have with a local employee when accessing the global talent pool.

Now that we’ve dispelled the bad outsourcing rumors, let’s define talent; specifically, as it applies to remote staff, introduce different opportunities for outsourcing, discuss training and managing an outsourced team, review the pros and cons, and determine if outsourcing is right for your organization.

How do you define talent?

As an HR professional, you’re well-versed in numerous ways to define talent, but for the sake of this article, let’s define it from the perspective of a company who successfully recruits and hires remote staff.

For instance, let’s define talent based on aptitude, attitude, and experience regardless of where they live.

There’s no need to discriminate between local and global talent. If you interview someone in the U.S. who is detail oriented, kind, intelligent, a critical thinker, and has slightly less experience than another candidate who is lazy and arrogant, who are you going to hire?

Probably the former.

The same applies when evaluating remote staff. A common scenario involves looking for specific experience levels rather than examining high-quality attributes that make a great employee. To take full advantage of remote staff, you must determine how you define talent locally and apply that same judgment to the global talent pool.

Now that we have defined talent, let’s dive into how you are deploying talent across the organization. In the Philippines, where Connext operates, we consistently find that it is straightforward to build a team that performs process-driven tasks such as accounting, medical billing, title and escrow, mortgage processing, underwriting, estimation, and so on.

How do you get started with outsourcing?

Our own experience with outsourcing shows that companies need to think differently about training and ramp up for a remote staff.

The first step should be to have well-defined and thought-out processes and to start with something simple and at a manageable scale. Over time, the company can then add complexities as the offshore team becomes more proficient and consider bringing on more advanced or complicated roles.

At the end of the day, companies that outsource want to see productivity growth across their organization, both offshore and local. To accomplish this, it needs to be done right and with the right partner. If outsourcing is something on your radar, start thinking about which roles and tasks could be potential candidates for an offshore team.

How do you overcome outsourcing challenges?

Accessing the global talent pool not only saves on staffing cost, but it also allows you to fill roles quickly and efficiently because of the expanded market.

More important than hiring an offshore employee, it’s critical to be able to manage and train them. Managing and training employees is hard enough locally and is even more challenging when done remotely. A trusted outsourcing partner can help with this but there is work to be done on both sides to ensure success.

When training a new employee, we usually suggest screen share training, or a manual walk through. For this to be successful it requires well-defined codified processes that can be easily taught. That’s a client responsibility.

On our end, we make sure the employee takes notes and creates a manual of their own to ensure maximum knowledge, retention, and learning.

We suggest 100% quality control on trained tasks in the beginning, and then ramp down as the employee becomes more confident and proficient. The cool part is that as clients expand their teams, oftentimes the first employee brought on becomes the trainer, and the team builds its own infrastructure for onboarding new talent.

How do you manage outsourced talent?

Now that your team is trained, let’s talk about managing a remote team because that has its own challenges. You can’t simply walk into an employee’s office to check in on what they’re doing or see them at their desk working until 5 p.m. So how do you know they are performing, and how do you fix performance issues? You measure, analyze, and measure once again.

Several examples of this are employee feedback surveys, key performance indicators, and specific performance metrics to help measure employee performance and provide feedback through employee incentives or performance improvement plans.

Three metrics that are great to start with are productivity, utilization, and quality. Productivity measures the number of widgets completed over a certain duration, utilization measures time spent on each task, and quality measures precision and accuracy for each task.

These three metrics provide great insight into the performance and behavior of remote employees. They allow managers to adjust work schedules, identify potential instances of overwork, re-adjust or balance tasks within the team, and examine other potential issues that could negatively impact the employee or the task.

How do you decide when to outsource?

Outsourcing can be an excellent way to fill open positions quickly, reduce cost structure, and create opportunities for productivity growth, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. Remote staff is significantly more cost-efficient than local talent (50-60% savings) but needs to fit into your business.

Excellent tasks or roles to start with include those in accounting, medical billing, customer service, payroll and HR support, underwriting, estimating, engineering, title and escrow or mortgage processing, architecture, and more. Virtually anything can be outsourced, from accounting and medical billing to systems engineering and virtual optometry. Yep, that’s right offshore virtual optometry.

So how do you decide if outsourcing is right for you? Outsourcing is used by some of the largest companies in the world to be more efficient and cost-effective, but it must be a good fit for your organization, and there must be a proper amount of buy-in for it to be successful.

(At Connext, we advise our clients to treat their offshore teams the same way they treat their local teams. People in different countries working hand in hand to achieve a common goal works very well.)

Additionally, if you are having issues hiring or retaining local staff to perform mundane, back-office processes, your business is a strong candidate for outsourcing, especially if you are looking for ways to reduce costs while building capacity for growth. If your employees are overworked and are having trouble keeping up with the day-to-day tasks, you may consider building an offshore team to support them.

Which type of outsourcing is right for you?

If you want control over your people and processes, visibility of metrics, and a customized solution that is tailored to your needs, select a vendor with a virtual captive model. If you’re not concerned as much about those things and would prefer your outsourced team be out of sight and out of mind, a traditional outsourcing approach may be right for you.

Taylor Goucher is CMO of Connext Global Solutions, which powers small and medium enterprises by helping build, train, and manage excellent remote teams.

The post Outsourcing your talent: when, how, and especially, why appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We’ve seen a volatile transition from one presidential administration to another. We’ve seen the increased awareness of issues in the form of Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, and other socially dynamic movements. We’re still navigating a terrifying virus.

And what’s happening among all this is that we’re experiencing an upheaval of the way we operate as a society – both at home and in the workplace.

What’s also happening – and something you’re likely noticing as an employer – is unprecedentedly high levels in job quit rates in the United States, coupled with equally striking levels in job openings. This graph from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) speaks volumes:

People in the United States aren’t merely changing jobs. They’re bowing out of the traditional workforce altogether. It signals a discontent unseen in our history.

“The Great Resignation” is no longer a prediction; it’s a current reality, and it’s evolved to a Great Discontent. It’s becoming more challenging to motivate people to stay in their jobs, and harder to attract candidates to new roles. Data from the Workable network confirms this as well.

We see this, and we want to help you – the employer – overcome this challenge. After all, you need your people.

So we surveyed 750 people in the US – some employed, some self-employed, some unemployed, all more or less employable – to understand the most important factors influencing their career priorities. And now, we have results.

We identified four major themes in the dataset:

Money still talks

Despite all the new workplace developments, salary, perks and benefits are still top of mind. People want – and need – more of it when working.

Flexy is sexy

Flexible work arrangements are important to many workers – and much more for women than men – but it’s not as high of a priority for their employers.

The power of connectivity

No matter the kind of work involved, people are at the heart of it all. When people feel connected to their colleagues and leadership, they’ll stay and they’ll thrive.

There’s no place like home

Integrating personal and professional lives is very important for people – it’s the top reason why those not working aren’t working and the top benefit of flexible work.

Major takeaways include the following:

• Want to attract people? Increase the salary, and build up the perks and benefits. 63.4% say it’s the reason why they’re looking for other opportunities, and 62.2% say salary, perks and benefits represent the top factor influencing their decision whether to accept a new job.
• Build strong teams with people who work well together. Relationships with colleagues is the number-one most attractive factor about a potential new employer (37.1%), and a major area for improvement at their current employer (31.3%).
• Make it worthwhile for your workers to stay. Seven out of 10 (70.7%) respondents say they are either actively or passively looking for work, and 54% started looking just in the last half year.
• Pay attention to your younger workers. More than two out of five (42.8%) of those aged 21-29 say they’re actively looking for a new job, compared with just one quarter (24.7%) of those aged 50-59.
• Establish remote work and especially flexible schedules as a permanent policy. Both are highly valued by workers, with 58.2% saying flexible schedules are important to them – particularly because it’s easier to integrate personal and professional lives.
• Keep an eye on the potential disconnect between you and your employees in the importance of flexible work. Nearly half think their employer will ultimately return to in-office (44.7%) and set schedules (46.8%).
• Support your employees’ home lives as well as their work lives – especially if they’re women. Females are more than twice as likely as males to cite family priorities as the reason why they’re not working (39.4% vs. 19.3%).

Read more: check out our in-depth analysis of what matters most to workers in the United States in a job. Or stay tuned for the next excerpt from our Great Discontent survey report for the US.

Interested in seeing what’s going on at the other side of the pond? Check out our UK version of the Great Discontent report in its entirety.

The post Great Discontent: It’s time to evolve your US talent attraction appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We’ve seen a volatile exit of the UK from the European Union in the form of Brexit, combined with a terrifying virus, both of which have shaken our society at the foundation – leading to economic and social upheaval at home and in the workplace.

What’s also happening – and something you’re likely noticing as an employer – is a mass talent exodus in the country, with one study by Workable partner Personio finding that four out of 10 UK employees will leave their job in the next six to 12 months.

This puts the onus on you, the employer, to take action, and quickly, says Personio CEO Hanno Renner:

“As businesses look to emerge from the crisis in a position of strength and turn the tide on the costs of a potential talent exodus, they now need to come up with a long-term people strategy. By prioritising their people and taking a more strategic approach to people management, employers can prevent an impending talent drain and drive their business performance as well as the wider economy.”

“The Great Resignation” is no longer a prediction. it’s a current reality, and it’s evolved to a Great Discontent. It’s becoming more challenging to motivate people to stay in their jobs, and harder to attract candidates to new roles. Data from the Workable network confirms this as well.

We see this, and we want to help you – the employer – overcome this challenge. After all, you need your people.

So we surveyed 500 people in the UK – some employed, some self-employed, some unemployed, all generally employable – to understand the most important factors influencing their career priorities. And now, we have results.

We identified four major themes in the dataset:

Money still talks

Despite all the new workplace developments, salary, perks and benefits are still top of mind in a job. People want – and need – more of it when working.

Flexy is sexy

Flexible work arrangements are important to many workers – and especially more so for women – but it’s not as high of a priority for their employers.

The power of connectivity

No matter the kind of work involved, people are at the heart of it all. When people feel connected to their colleagues and leadership, they’ll stay and they’ll thrive.

There’s no place like home

Integrating personal and professional lives is very important for people – it’s the top reason why those not working aren’t working and the top benefit of flexible work.

Major takeaways include the following:

• Want to attract people? Increase the salary, and build up the perks and benefits. 70.1% of workers say that’s one of the top reasons why they’ll bolt to a new job.
• Build strong teams with people who work well together. Relationships with colleagues is the number-one most attractive factor about a potential new employer (47.3%), and also the top area in need of improvement at their current employer (31.8%).
• Make it worthwhile for your workers to stay. Three quarters of respondents (74.6%) say they are either actively or passively looking for work right now – and 56.6% started looking within the last half year.
• Pay attention to your younger working population. More than two out of five (41.7%) of those aged 21-29 are actively looking, compared with just 12.9% of those aged 50-59.
• Establish remote work and especially flexible schedules as a permanent policy. Both are highly valued by workers, with 53.8% saying flexible schedules are important to them – particularly because it’s easier to integrate personal and professional lives.
• Mind that disconnect between you and your employees in the importance of flexible work. Nearly half think their employer will ultimately return to in-office (44.7%) and fixed schedules (46.8%).
• Support your employees’ home lives as well as their work lives – especially if they’re women. Females are more than six times as likely as males to cite family priorities as the reason why they’re not working (41.7% vs. 6.7%).

Read more – check out our in-depth analysis of what matters most to workers in the UK in a job. Or stay tuned until next week for the next excerpt from our Great Discontent survey report for the UK.

Interested in seeing what’s going on at the other side of the pond? Check out our US version of the Great Discontent report in its entirety.

The post Evolve your UK talent attraction and survive the Great Discontent appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But we’re also seeing many companies planning to return to an in-office setup – in that same survey, 52.8% of US and 44.7% of UK workers say their companies probably will return to the office when things return to “normal”. And HqO has already done that, back in the spring of 2021.

We joined Chris for a chat about HqO’s own RTO strategy, and we’ve pulled together the main takeaways from that conversation.

Remote work is not be-all and end-all

Despite remote work being one of the top-touted paradigm shifts for 71% of businesses in our 2020 New World of Work report, Chris says that isn’t a universal sentiment among companies or even workers. He suggests that the work-from-home phenomenon may just be an experiment that ultimately proved the value of in-office work in the end.

“There’s a lot of evidence behind work from home being increasingly challenging and not sustainable,” says Chris. He shares two statistics to back this up:

In Oct. 2020, Google found that their engineers produced 30% less code during the pandemic.

Colliers International released a survey of office professionals in early 2020 stating that 23% of respondents say their productivity had declined when working remotely.

He calls those numbers “mind boggling”.

The impact of remote work on trust

“I think most people are productive, don’t get me wrong,” Chris says. But, he does see the need – and appetite – for a shift back to in-office work.

For example, trust in the employee base took a big hit in the remote-work world.

“I’d love for someone to defend the idea that trust and empathy have not been shattered [when] working remote,” Chris says, “especially when all your interactions are either over Google Meet or Zoom or Microsoft Teams.”

And while trusting your employees is essential to success in a remote-work environment, Chris does take a pragmatic approach about the realities of remote work for a business that needs its employees to be available when needed.

“I’ve heard of stories … for some hybrid or remote employees where they’re talking about their colleagues on social media, going to the beach in the summertime, taking half of the workday to golf, heading to bars and restaurants in the early afternoon, all this happening before the workday ends.”

And that can actually hurt the overall morale in a company’s workforce.

“You’re seeing all that empathy and trust just be completely ripped apart. And I think you’ll hear more of those scenarios entering 2022.”

And even a hybrid solution isn’t the perfect solution.

“What’s going to happen when your boss wants to be in the office three to four times a week. Your team is on board with that, but maybe you’ve moved or maybe you’re just not comfortable. And you want to go in one to two days a week. What happens there? I think that’s going to be something that a lot of companies need to think about.”

The impact of remote work on mental health

The trend towards remote work has made it difficult for some companies who want or need their employees to return to on-site work.

Consider the worker backlash Apple experienced when shifting operations back to the office – although the Delta variant meant a delay in their RTO strategy, Apple still plans to return in January 2022.

And there are legit arguments for a return to office. Remote work can lead to burnout, if a June 2020 survey from Monster.com is any indication. That survey found that 69% of workers who were working from home during the pandemic experienced burnout, up 35% from early May 2020.

Of course, there are different factors at play here – the struggle to separate work responsibilities from home responsibilities and working at home with children, for instance. Plus, throughout 2020, there was a lack of options for personal leisure such as attending sporting events, going on trips or eating out, and other pursuits as societies locked down; which of course made life difficult for millions.

The power of camaraderie

While Chris acknowledges that remote and hybrid work are here to stay and there’s always going to be a place for it, there’s one significant common denominator that he’s learned from his role at HqO: the power of connectivity and teamwork between workers when they’re in the same physical space.

“These employees thrive in an office culture,” he explains. “It’s a no-brainer. The energy is so contagious. That’s fueled by probably our let’s-go rallying cry and our values as well. It’s something that we hit on just about every single day here. So that stands for learning excellence, truth, speed, goodness, and ownership.

“You get to be part of that office banter. And I think you saw that a little bit coming in and our employees and being loud a little bit. I think that’s more effective, face-to-face if that’s your manager or somebody that’s underneath you, one of your team, and just be part of that experience.”

Again, the Great Discontent worker survey backs this up – 37.1% of US workers and 47.3% of UK workers both pointed to relationships with colleagues as one of the most important factors that would attract them to a new role.

There’s room for both

HqO isn’t alone in that thinking, Chris adds. There are other companies moving back to the office as well. Unlike Apple’s experience, Chris emphasizes that there’s a lot of support for HqO’s own RTO strategy, as they added two floors to their office space during a time of aggressive growth.

“I’ve actually been really pleasantly surprised with the number of people [interested]. My team engages with that and are desperate to be back in office. … I think that the thing that people miss the most are the people in the office themselves. Bottom line, that’s never going to change.”

While the priority placed on remote work options continues to be high for many potential candidates, Chris finds that there’s no shortage of applicants who specifically want to return to the way things were.

In fact, Chris says that when the expectation was set in March of this year that HqO was going to have an office-first culture, people didn’t leave. In fact, they stayed engaged. If pandemic safety was a concern for an employee, Chris emphasizes that the doors are open for a conversation about that.

Flex work is the way to go

Plus, he adds, office-first doesn’t mean being in the office five days a week. Rather, it’s about worker flexibility – which needs to be given no matter what.

“There’s going to be some things that come up. If it’s a doctor’s appointment or the unplanned parts of life – stay home, do your work. I’d probably take it a step further and say, ‘Hey, if you know, you’re super busy and you just have that heads down work to do,’ you can take that day to stay home and actually do it. Cut back that commute time, whatever it is, and go back into the office the next day.”

There’s also flexibility in terms of work schedules – again highlighted in our Great Discontent worker survey as a significantly higher priority than remote work. That’s the reality at HqO as well.

“There’s some days that, maybe you want to come in a little bit early, so you can take off at four or maybe you’re coming in at 9:30, 10 o’clock depending on what you do and you’re leaving the office at 6, 6:30 at night.

“So there’s that degree of flexibility, but I’d say the core hours, where it’s just what everybody’s here, is that nine to five block.”

The Great Resignation and its impact

Chris is pragmatic about the reality that remote work certainly has its appeal and that the great talent shuffle is very real. He acknowledges Texas A&M professor Anthony Klotz’ prediction of the Great Resignation and that the transition to a post-pandemic workplace means many workers will prefer to leave their jobs than go back to the way things were.

However, he adds, there’s a new problem for companies who want to remain remote. He shares a story about one HqO partner in Boston about how that company’s employees are regularly being poached by companies in San Francisco, New York, Austin and Seattle.

“So now,” Chris says, “you have Boston companies that have shifted to remote that are now competing with other cities, which is just like, ‘Man, how much more complicated can this get’?”

RTO is a big differentiator

So, for in-office companies like HqO, there’s an opportunity in the unique employee value proposition of in-office work. The in-office strategy is actually a specific attractor for some talent, says Chris. He adds that HqO’s hiring teams are actively looking to recruit people who do want to work in the office.

“I’m listening for people that want to be challenged and make that significant connection there,” Chris explains about HqO’s own hiring strategy, emphasizing the importance of being proactive and innovative in recruitment marketing.

“I think, if we’re going to go out there and we’re going to attract some of these folks that want to be an office, we have to direct message folks,” Chris says.

“Again, so many people are hiring right now. You need to give your company a chance to stand out, really spark that curiosity from somebody.”

The post Return to office has huge benefits, says one talent director appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• 44% of employees now have serious concerns about their physical, mental, and social health
• 80% of employees believe their employers have a responsibility to address their health and wellbeing, especially during COVID-19 – up from 73% pre-pandemic

Another study from the beginning of 2021 charted a 50% rise in depression and a 60% drop in focus among all ages in the workplace.

More recently, ​​a new survey of 2,800 workers from global staffing firm Robert Half showed more than four in 10 employees (44%) say they are more burned out on the job today compared to a year ago. This is up from 34% in a similar 2020 poll.

And overall, nearly half of American workers have been suffering from mental health issues since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

When you don’t support employee mental health

Based on these numbers alone, it’s clear why employee mental health is top of mind for companies as they try to acclimate to a totally new work world that, for most companies, will include some remote work. What happens, then, when companies don’t pay attention to employee mental health? What are the tangible repercussions of employee burnout?

A recent Gallup study on employee burnout shows that employees who say they very often or always experience burnout at work are:

• 63% more likely to take a sick day
• 23% more likely to visit the emergency room
• 2.6x as likely to be actively seeking a different job
• 13% less confident in their performance

Burnout and depression also overlap, which means ignoring employee burnout in your organization can lead to even more complex mental health challenges – not to mention the major impact it can have on overall productivity.

4 tips to support mental health remotely

1. Take a collective pause
2. Address meeting fatigue
3. Let employees self-direct their mental wellness
4. The four-day workweek

What can companies do about all of this? First, recognize that being supportive of your employees’ mental health is not just about burnout prevention, but fostering a supportive workplace that addresses your employees’ wellness needs no matter where they are.

To do that, here are four effective approaches companies around the world are taking to care for employees’ mental health:

1. Take a collective pause

Prior to the pandemic, 55% of American workers didn’t use up all of their paid vacation time – and even when they did, they often took their work with them. One of the main reasons employees typically hesitate to take time off is because they struggle to find the “right” time and worry their boss will judge them.

It’s only gotten worse after the pandemic. As a result of long-term remote work, employees are logging in more hours and facing bigger workloads, meanwhile putting off vacation because there’s nowhere to go and they feel like they can’t justify it.

Give them a break

A remedy for that, which more and more companies are starting to turn to after more than a year and a half at home, is company-wide days off for mental health.

LinkedIn made headlines in giving its 15,900 full-time employees a paid week off in April to help them combat burnout and encourage them to unplug and recharge. Hubspot and Hootsuite recently did the same. And if a week feels too long, companies including SAP, Cisco, Google, and Thomson Reuters opted for a company-wide mental health day.

What’s powerful about this tactic is that it shows that your company cares enough about employees’ health to dedicate a period of rest specifically for that purpose, even if that means losing those hours of productivity.

The benefits go beyond those actual days off as well. Because your company is the one proactively initiating the time off, it removes the added stress that individual employees feel when working up the effort and energy to ask for any amount of time off themselves. Also, the fact that everyone is out of office at the same time means employees don’t have to feel like they’re leaving their work to someone else – something that 41% of employees feel guilty about when taking PTO.

2. Address meeting fatigue

The average employee attends 62 meetings per month, which adds up to about a fifth of their work hours in meetings. Not only are they getting less of their work done, but – in an age of Zoom calls and remote work – this amounts to an additional energy drain. This leads to lack of motivation, lack of control, and lack of satisfaction from their work achievements; all signs and symptoms of mental health burnout.

One answer for mitigating this mentally taxing meeting fatigue is to institute no-meeting days. Ideally, offer it on the same day every week so employees can enjoy it regularly.

Banish meetings regularly

While companies who implement no-meeting days most often go for a “No-Meeting Monday”, like Uber implemented twice throughout the summer, it can be done on any day. Asana has “No Meeting Wednesdays” and Wilderness has “Deep Work Wednesdays (DWW).”

This simple shift in meeting expectations for all employees, for just one day per week, allows everyone to maintain their focus, concentration, and productivity, rather than having exhausting video calls constantly interrupting and derailing their workflow.

3. Let employees self-direct their mental wellness

Most companies recognize that offering some vacation days doesn’t, on its own, alleviate burnout and so they look to other ways to offer meaningful mental wellness support to their employees. The most popular programs that have filled this need include virtual wellness classes, subscriptions to mental health apps like Headspace and Calm, and online therapy sessions from select providers.

What’s great about these options, for employers at least, is that it “checks the box” of mental wellness support and employees from anywhere can benefit from them. With remote work potentially lasting for another two years, that’s certainly a huge plus. But what isn’t ideal is that it’s also just a catch-all solution – these don’t cover the wide spectrum of individual mental wellness needs employees have, as everyone’s own mental health journey is personal and unique.

Give your employees the power

That’s where empowering your employees to self-direct their mental wellness might be the perfect answer, which is what many companies make possible by offering a wellness stipend.

With a wellness stipend, employees from any place, background, and mental condition can choose what mental health support personally means to them, and in turn the company covers the expense through reimbursement. As the employer, you decide how much the stipend is, what it covers, and how often to renew the benefit – on a per-employee basis, you’ll often find companies offering anywhere from $25-$100 per month, or $200-$1,000 quarterly or yearly.

A wellness stipend allows your employees to go beyond the mediation app or therapist you selected and instead invest in something that actually suits their own mental health needs. Depending on what your company designates as an eligible expense, this can include:

• Sessions with a therapist or counselor (not restricted to any specific providers)
• Subscription to a fitness app of their choosing
• Weight loss membership plan
• Prescription medication
• Health monitoring devices
• Vacation expenses
• Yoga gear or classes
• Hiking gear
• Meal delivery
• Home cleaning services
• Backup childcare

Letting employees personalize their own mental health support with a stipend also happens to align with creating a better and more inclusive employee experience – something that’s key to surviving the Great Resignation and becoming a company that others admire.

Some of the most successful companies today offer wellness stipends. Both Basecamp and Salesforce offer their employees $100 per month to support their wellness, and companies like Facebook, Zoom and Webflow also offer their own wellness reimbursement programs.

4. The four-day workweek

While doing things like giving employees more time off and reducing their overall meeting load are great practices to support employees’ mental health, those strategies represent a small drop in comparison to the 90,000 hours the average person will spend at work in their lifetimes. They feel even less impactful when the working environment employees return to feels like a never-ending cycle of long hours and too much work.

Related: Learn from a company that implemented an alternating four-day workweek for a three-month trial period – and what the results were. 

That’s what the four-day workweek addresses – reducing employee stress and promoting work-life balance by making life less about work. It’s a concept that came about well before the pandemic, with some countries giving it a test run back in 2018. It’s now picking up increased interest as employee mental health concerns continue to grow and remote work encourages us all to rethink old workplace traditions.

Alleviate the pressure

The idea is that with an additional day off every week, employees now get more time to regularly cultivate and care for their home and personal lives, where they previously struggled to squeeze into their daily routines or neglected altogether. When the home front is regularly maintained, employees are less stressed, more focused, and able to accomplish as much work (or more) in four days as they do in five.

Consider Parkinson’s Law, an old adage about personal productivity that “work will expand to fill the time allotted for its completion.” In other words, a quick task will take longer to complete because there’s ‘more time’ to complete it. This means that reducing the workweek to 32 hours wouldn’t actually mean less work output in a week’s time, but rather, employees are given a narrower frame of time within which to organize their work more efficiently.

The four-day workweek today is more than just a test concept and has become a legitimate option for companies, and countries, who want to make a significant improvement in employee mental health. It’s the norm in Iceland, after their experiments throughout 2015-2019 were overwhelmingly successful by improving employee well-being and productivity. In early 2020 Finland contemplated moving to a four-day workweek, and more recently this year, countries like Canada, Spain and Japan have warmed to the idea too. Most recently, Scotland joined the experiment in early September.

Your employees need your support

As the workplace continues to shift in the coming months (and years, even) in the face of remote and hybrid work, your employees will be the ones bearing the brunt of the stress and uncertainty. This will do a number on their mental health no matter how resilient they are.

By actively listening for and alleviating the biggest stressors in your employees’ lives, you can get ahead of the potential problems of burnout and mental health, and distinguish yourself as a supportive, progressive employer that people will want to work for. That will be a powerful attractor in these times when employers are struggling to find ideal candidates.

The post How to take care of your remote employees’ mental health appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

During the pandemic, many CEOs and business leaders had to prioritize business continuity and manage the workplace at the same time – all while envisioning what the future of work might look like. When things go wild in the business world, CEOs inevitably fall into the spotlight and their leadership instincts kick into action.

In this episode, our friend over at BambooHR, Tyler King, sits down with the CEOs of Workable, CV Library & Resume Library, and Codility to get their insights on the future of remote work.

The post Podcast episode #13: CEOs on the Future of Remote Work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

A Microsoft study from earlier this year found that 41% of the global workforce are considering leaving their employer this year, and those intentions are becoming a reality already.

The number of workers who quit their jobs in the month of April alone was the highest it’s ever been since this metric started being recorded about 20 years ago; nearly 4 million people quit, pushing the quits rate to 2.7% of those employed.

Hence the terminology: The Great Resignation, coined and foretold by a Texas A&M professor in May 2021.

So what can employers do, now that this massive talent migration is fully underway?

The first step is to change old ways of thinking: your biggest obstacle is not a shortage of talent, but a widespread shift in job candidates’ motivations. You need to evolve your employer brand using new employee value proposition examples.

Talent shortage vs. evolving candidate motivations

Even before the pandemic, the concept of a “talent shortage” has largely gotten the blame for why it’s so difficult to hire skilled workers. This is still true; a recent global study showed that nearly seven in 10 (69%) of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring.

But that’s not the full picture.

Yes, there is some level of talent shortage, but candidates have also evolved in what they expect from a job. Many don’t want to simply “go back to normal” and have decided they’d rather pursue something else. So, companies hiring in this labor market aren’t just competing against each other, they’re also competing against:

• early retirement
• the gig economy
• self-run businesses
• unemployment benefits
• a search for a new environment
• prioritization of a flexible schedule to be with loved ones

How should companies use this information?

Well, if your company wants to attract candidates in this labor market, you should be thinking about how you can directly address these new candidate motivations. Although salary, perks and benefits understandably are top of mind for candidates, there are many ways where you can further evolve your employer brand.

That’s especially when your budget doesn’t allow for higher salaries or you have difficulty competing with Amazon, Google, or any other competitive employer for talent.

What that all boils down to is evolving your employee value proposition (EVP) so that working at your company actually contributes to – rather than competes with – the life they’re trying to make for themselves.

These four employee value proposition examples can help you evolve your employer brand so that working at your company is attractive to today’s talent:

1. Offer true work flexibility – in location and schedule

The ultimate dream for most employees is to work anywhere they want and whenever they want, doing work that offers fulfillment and growth. What’s ideal about this type of setup is it gives employees the autonomy and freedom they want and need in their day-to-day lives, while also being able to do work that feels purposeful. This is part of the employee value proposition at companies who are already or have shifted to remote-first.

However, for a great number of employers, this isn’t a desirable or feasible option. They’re not willing to let go of the very real benefits that regular in-person, in-office work brings to culture, collaboration, and unity around a common purpose for the whole organization.

If your company is decidedly not going to go fully remote, here are some ways to get as close to that level of flexibility as possible. This will make a world of difference in helping you attract (and keep) the talent you need.

• Offer employees the option to work from home at least a few days of the week
• Let employees choose what days of the week they’d work remotely vs. in the office
• Allow employees to shift their daily work hours around to when they prefer (e.g. starting and ending early)

2. Have a mission that goes beyond ‘the work’

Younger workers have always paid attention to what a company stands for as they look for a job and that interest has become even more pronounced, especially in these recent years of social and political unrest.

What these candidates are really striving for is to find work that means something and stands for something. This means company values that go beyond making a profit. These could include:

• backing BLM/LGBTQ movements
• establishing environmental equity
• building up societies
• supporting mental health and wellness

The list goes on. Candidates today are driven towards employers who have a clearly defined vision and values that are actually lived and felt among current team members.

Remember, though, that you can’t just pick a popular cause and slap that on all of your recruiting materials as your new mission. That isn’t genuine and candidates will see right through that. What you can and should do is talk to your current employees and do some internal introspection and brainstorming as a team as to how the work that you do helps make the world better.

Aside from your actual day-to-day work, you could also introduce:

• paid volunteer days
• charitable donations and company matching
• team fundraising events.

Workable’s mission and vision are a great example of an employee value proposition: the entire organization is driven toward helping great companies and great talent find each other. It’s a very people-driven concept and it attracts candidates who love the idea of supporting it.

3. Foster genuine employee connections

While talent today overwhelmingly prefers remote work over going back to the office five days a week – and many big-name companies feel the same – there’s one aspect about office life that’s still important to them: connecting with other members of their team in a meaningful way.

Just think of all of the different ways employees connect with each other organically throughout a work day when in the same physical workspace:

• seeing each other daily face-to-face
• catching up over a snack or drink break
• real-time in-person meetings
• lunch-time banter
• mini-celebrations in the desk aisles

And so many other impromptu moments. In this shift to remote work, that’s what employees today are missing.

Even though “employee events” isn’t on their job search list, companies who prioritize employee connection in their company culture (especially while remote) will attract more talent than those who don’t.

For example, some companies fly everyone together into a really cool location once a year and call it their annual kickoff or team retreat – including Workable. Many also hold regular all-day events for things like team bonding, new hire orientation, and strategy sessions.

Making time for employee connection in these ways is huge for building morale, and people have something exciting to look forward to doing together. It’s one of the most powerful employee value proposition examples you can implement at your company.

4. Offer programs to support work-life integration

If your company is letting go of some or all of your office spaces in favor of remote or hybrid work, you haven’t actually eliminated the office – you’ve simply shifted “the office” into employees’ homes. The name of the game is then no longer about employees’ work-life balance, but work-life integration.

Learn how SmartBug CEO Ryan Malone manages work-life integration at his company – which has been fully remote since its inception in the late 2000s.

Knowing that this is the new way, supporting your employees’ work-life integration will be a huge differentiator for retaining and attracting talent today. To do that, it’s all about helping employees create a fluid and healthy environment where both their personal life and work life can co-exist and not constantly compete for their attention.

It also means addressing the additional financial burden many employees are taking on due to working from their own homes, such as caregiving costs, internet bills, and paying for technology to help their time management.

Here are some programs you’ll see most commonly these days among companies who prioritize healthy work-life integration:

• one-time or recurring home office stipends to cover all equipment needs
• subsidized food delivery or monthly flexible meal stipends
• monthly cellphone and technology reimbursement for ongoing tech needs
• wellness apps or a monthly flexible wellness stipend
• backup childcare, caregiving support, and general family stipends that support all types of families

Get ready: evolve your EVP

Even though signs of the Great Resignation, or the “turnover tsunami”, was identified way back in February, none of us could have known how massive the impact would actually be.

These four employee value proposition examples are just to get you started. It’s ultimately up to you as an employer to show how quickly you can move and how nimble you can be in addressing this evolving talent market – by also evolving yourself and what you’re really offering your people.

The post 4 employee value proposition examples to survive the Great Resignation appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What is workforce planning?
• What is involved in workforce planning?
• How to create a workforce plan

What is workforce planning?

Workforce planning is the people side of planning, but some businesses skip it, thinking that people will just appear when needed. Workforce planning aligns core business goals with people strategy. It makes no sense to plan on a new product launch next year without thinking about R&D, supply chain, and sales staff.

Workforce planning is the tool you use to ensure that alignment.

What is involved in workforce planning?

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) identifies the critical points of workforce planning as follows.

1. Reduce labor costs in favor of workforce deployment and flexibility
2. Identify and respond to changing customer needs
3. Identify relevant strategies for focused people development
4. Target inefficiencies
5. Improve employee retention
6. Improve productivity and quality outputs
7. Improve employees’ work-life balance
8. Make recommendations to deliver strategic value through talent

This article will break down these points and how they apply to your business.

1. Reduce labor costs in favor of workforce deployment and flexibility

Labor is often the highest cost for businesses outside of manufacturing. Some estimates put labor costs at 60% and even 70% of expenses. With these costs, planning to reduce costs while increasing flexibility is critical to continued success.

This isn’t advocating for low-balling employees or providing rotten benefits for employees. It’s about getting the right people in the correct positions. An engaged, competent, happy employee will cost less than an unhappy, unqualified employee. Remember, turnover is expensive as well.

2. Identify and respond to changing customer needs

The classic case study of a company that didn’t respond to customer needs is Kodak. As the king of film, Kodak had digital technology early but decided to focus on film, thinking digital was a fad. It wasn’t, and the company struggled for survival, dropping from a peak of 145,000 employees to 5,000 as of August 2020.

Human resources departments need to be a bit of a fortune-teller to accurately predict workforce needs. Because SHRM doesn’t issue crystal balls, HR needs to work closely with each department to help predict needs and create plans for meeting these. Open communication between HR and each department is critical.

3. Identify relevant strategies for focused people development

The very premise of workforce planning is that business changes, and because business changes, people need to change. Figuring out talent gaps and plans to fill those gaps is a core function of workforce planning.

People development needs to happen before the need exists. Remember, you can go out and search for the “unicorn” candidate to fill a need immediately, but it’s often more manageable if you plan and develop an employee to take care of that specialty skill gap – if you do it right. This can mean training classes, graduate programs, or stretch assignments.

4. Target inefficiencies

If you’ve ever heard “we’ve always done it that way” as an explanation, then you know that the business has inefficiencies that can be rooted out. Good HR will ask; “What should we stop doing?” as well as “What should we do?”. You can find inefficiencies in all areas of the business.

5. Improve employee retention

Turnover is expensive – not only does it take time and money to find, interview, and onboard a new employee, training them can take months. Good HR focuses on retaining employees who have potential. (You shouldn’t retain just to retain – if someone is a toxic employee, giving them more technical skills won’t eliminate their toxicity.) Creating career paths within the company can be an excellent workforce planning tool to aid employee retention.

6. Improve productivity and quality outputs

While managers need to figure out how to improve productivity and quality, HR can provide support. For instance, are there policies and procedures that can increase productivity and quality? What support do employees get for reaching their goals? When HR takes a look at the workforce, they can spot problems that decrease productivity. For instance, an employee who bullies their coworkers can destroy productivity in a department.

HR needs to plan to find, coach, or remove such employees, as well as helping managers find better ways to do things.

7. Improve employees’ work-life balance

Employees are at the center of workforce planning – without employees, all plans are worthless. You can increase your productivity by requiring everyone to work 80-hour weeks, but your turnover will shoot through the roof, and your quality will collapse.

Through making sure that employees have sufficient downtime and are supported at work, your workforce will be a lot more stable.

8. Make recommendations to deliver strategic value through talent

Sometimes managers can undervalue employees – they think if they can get someone cheaper, they should. But, good workforce planning demonstrates that you pay for top skills. While we use the word talent often in HR, you really should think about it in terms of skills. What skills do these employees have that can make a difference in your business?

Remember that treating employees right is a lot easier than trying to squeeze value out of people who are exhausted and burnt out.

How to create a workforce plan

This is more than just figuring out who you need to hire. There are many ways to approach this, but here are four critical elements that will make your workforce planning a success.

1. Understand the company’s mission and goals

Workforce planning doesn’t exist in a vacuum – it needs to support the company’s goals. Are you looking to expand across North America? Well, that’s quite different from a company that is content operating out of a single location.

The company’s mission matters as well. What’s the most important thing to the CEO, shareholders, employees, and customers? Make sure you have that answered before you move to step two.

2. Conduct a present gap analysis

This is a systematic method of understanding the gaps in the organization. What is missing? While workforce planning focuses on the people side of the business, keep in mind that a gap analysis looks at all business areas, not just skills and talent.

People aren’t at their best unless they have the equipment, training, and support they need. This is looking at the situation now. Remember all the points above – you need to look for improvement in all these areas.

3. Project for the future

This involves speaking with company leadership and involving every unit in the business. You’re looking for where the growth will be and where the workforce will shrink. You want to determine what skills the company will need in the coming years, not just now.

4. Conduct a future gap analysis

Knowing what you do about the current employment situation and the business’s goals and projected path, put together what the workforce will need and look at your gaps:

• What do you need to reach these goals?
• Do you need more employees?
• What type of training will your current staff need?
• Can you conduct this training in-house, or do you need people to receive formal training or even degrees?
• Do you have a formal employee training and development company policy in place?

Make sure you look at external trends as well. In 2019, no one would have guessed the massive shift toward remote work, but now, you’d be remiss not to consider where the workforce will be in the future. Will employees continue to work remotely or will they expect to? If so, is your company prepared to support people in other states? Or do you want to limit hiring to your local area, regardless of where they work?

Of course, there are many more things that you can do to plan for your workforce’s future, but these will get you a solid foundation. And, one last note: remember to be flexible. Plans change, and your workforce planning documents need to flex as the world changes as well.

The post What is workforce planning, and why is it important? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this episode, we’re bringing you a very special guest, Josh Bersin. Josh is an analyst, author, educator, and thought leader focusing on the global talent market and the challenges and trends impacting business workforces around the world.

If there was one person with access to enough data to predict the future of the TA industry, it would have to be Josh. His team learned a lot over the past year as they studied the impact of the pandemic HR, Talent Acquisition and business as a whole. You might want to get your notepad ready, this is going to answer a lot of your questions on what the future holds. 

Episode transcript:

Josh Bersin:
Thank you, Carolyn. Welcome everybody. I guess, talking about the future is always interesting, but I’m going to talk about the present too. And the word that I found interesting today, I got up very early and went for a walk is effervescence. So we’re entering an effervescent time. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting there, and I’ll explain what I mean by that in a minute. And it really goes back to a little bit of history. The pandemic was not the only thing that’s been going on in the business world of HR and recruiting. It’s really been a really a 12-year cycle starting from the 2008 financial crisis, which right now it’s kind of hard to remember it, but it was pretty bad.

Josh Bersin:
And since then, there’s been a … this is almost a straight line. This is the stock market. But there’s been a pretty steady evolution of digital transformation, political change, income inequality and job change. Re-skilling up-skilling new job models, new job architectures, new organization models, a focus on the environment, the global climate issues, diversity inclusion equity, Black Lives Matter. I mean, it’s been a ton of stuff. And for those of you that are HR professionals, leaders, recruiters, you’ve been sort of swimming in this sea of change and the pandemic just came along for the ride.

Josh Bersin:
And the pandemic really just accelerated every one of those issues and added well-being and resilience and mental health to that. Now well-being was going on anyway. And if you remember right before the pandemic, the unemployment rate was around 3.8%. You were probably finding it harder and harder to hire people. And companies were trying to starting to realize they needed to hire internally because they couldn’t hire externally. And we’re going right back to that place again. In fact, an interesting piece of research I was just communicating this morning with Glint. If you look at employee happiness in December of 2020, which was just two months ago versus December of 2019, which was before the pandemic, if any of you can remember that I can vaguely remember it. It is actually gone up. Employees are happier.

Josh Bersin:
And the reason is we’ve actually made work a lot better. We’ve done a lot of things in the leadership of companies and the technology of companies and the flexibility of companies to make work easier for people to deal with the pandemic. And it was probably badly needed anyway, we just didn’t have something to kind of shoot us in the arm and force us to do it.

Josh Bersin:
And of course, the other thing that’s going on for you as recruiters is every company is changing its business. When the pandemic started, I read a sort of an interesting thought leadership piece from a guy about low touch businesses. And I thought it was kind of a silly idea, but sure enough, that’s what happened. We all learned how to sell and deliver and serve and create products and services, whether be in retail or transportation or even entertainment that are delivered in low touch ways.

Josh Bersin:
And so we’ve gone through massive amounts of business transformation over the last year, much faster than people ever thought was possible. I think the economy’s going to be coming, really going to be roaring come sort of the middle of this year until the later part of this year. And that’s because companies have adapted very, very well. Now, the people, part of it has been harder. Everything that’s happened in business to make the company more competitive has impacted the people agenda. And when I show you a little bit more about that, you’ll see what I mean by that. But that’s really the way to get a sense of what’s happening in the year ahead.

Josh Bersin:
Now, I spent a lot of time this year on Zoom, as many of you did. And we did a series of really hundreds of hours of interviews with companies. Every Friday, we have six or seven groups that meet together for an hour, and we talk about things that have been going on, and these are the things we’ve discussed. I won’t read these to you. But really a lot of focus on things that you might consider traditional HR things that have been essential to maintaining a sense of productivity and resilience and engagement with people.

Josh Bersin:
And that’s why I think employee happiness has gone up is employees are saying, “Well, look, the rest of my life is kind of crazy, but at least I’ve got my job. And I kind like the people I work with and my bosses and my managers and my leaders are being a little bit better and things are a little bit more flexible at work leading us to a really new world.” And I think 2021 and 2022 is going to be a continuation of what we’ve been doing, but with some very significant changes. Well-being, citizenship, sustainability growth, employee growth, internal mobility. These are going to stick with us. And for those of you that are in recruiting I would imagine if you worked for a reasonably good size company, you’re also looking at internal mobility as a part of recruiting.

Josh Bersin:
That is something we talked about for years, but it’s happened now. And we learned from the pandemic that we can move people around inside the company pretty quickly, and they adapt pretty fast. Human beings are very, very adaptable animals. So I think we’ve really gotten sort of a dose of really awakening that the workforce is a lot more resilient than we maybe ever thought. Now, in terms of the economy, this is just a piece of data to look at it. I noticed today that the unemployment numbers went up a little bit, but that said the number of jobs open in the United States as of January of this year, so this is about two weeks old, is 13% higher than it was a year ago.

Josh Bersin:
That’s not something you kind of read about in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but this is from Emsi. This is real data on real job openings. And you can see, there’s a lot of drivers needed. There’s nurses, supervisors, retail workers, software engineers, salespeople, customer service. I’ll show you some data on this. But we are absolutely moving into a service economy. I’ll show you the data on that, and that affects what you do as a recruiter. We’re obviously working remotely. I think most economists would agree with me that the future is not all remote it’s hybrid. Most of us will be coming to work occasionally or periodically, but not every single day. We’ll be commuting in more flexible ways.

Josh Bersin:
Companies are setting up satellite offices. There’s actually a massive movement in the public sector to build what are called 15 minutes cities. So you could have a city where every job is 15 minutes from where you live. That obviously requires companies to distribute their workers into smaller pods, but that’s all happening. So we’re actually going in a very positive direction there. We’ve obviously spent a year thinking about public health and also employee health and employee well-being. I’m going to talk to you about well-being in a minute.

Josh Bersin:
I first was introduced to well-being maybe 2015, 2016. And I thought it was a nice benefit but I didn’t think it was all that important. And I remember Google made a big splash with their mindfulness course. Maybe a decade ago, which was one of the most popular things in HR at the time to try to kind of focus on more of the internal part of work as human performance as opposed to the external part. Well, that went mainstream last year. CEO’s board rooms, CHROs have all been focused on mental, physical, financial, emotional health.

Josh Bersin:
And this is going to be part of the workforce going forward as is a different way of thinking about leadership. Leadership is probably the most red ocean competitive market in HR. There are thousands of books, hundreds of consultants, millions of models. Every consulting firm in HR has a leadership offering of some kind. And I’ve read a lot of them, not all of them. And they’ve been very respectful of all the research has been done in this area. What happened this year is we actually found that leadership is about psychology and human behavior.

Josh Bersin:
This is a list of what I call power skills that we identified right before the pandemic at a meeting, I was at a meeting of CHROs at UC Berkeley. And one of the speakers was the Head of the Greater Good Science Center, and they study happiness. So they’re psychologists. And they were going through these words, generosity, teamwork, followership, forgiveness, kindness, patience. And she was explaining to everybody why they create happiness and how they create happiness.

Josh Bersin:
And at the end of the presentation, I asked the CHROs, how many of you use these words in your leadership model, in your company mission statement, in your manifesto about performance or whatever it may be. And most of them said none. They just don’t. These are not the way we think about leadership. Well, now we do. We’ve learned now in this particular year, especially coming out of last year, that if we aren’t forgiving and kind, and flexible and empathetic, we’re not going to have a company. People aren’t going to come to work. They’re not going to be able to work. So this is a big change. And I think HR as a profession, as a function has become much, much more resilient.

Josh Bersin:
Now, when we get into the Q and A, I want to hear about your questions relative to recruiting because recruiting is a very complex area, but one of the things that’s happened in HR for the last 15 months is we’ve learned to distribute autonomy and distribute authority into the organization. We can’t sit around in headquarters and make all sorts of decisions that affect everybody perfectly. We don’t know. The virus is asymmetric and unpredictable as is everything else in business. And so we need to empower and enable HR people to operate locally, to do what they need to do.

Josh Bersin:
And relative to recruiting, that means that if you’re a recruiter and I know some of you are, you’re in a very important job. In some ways I’ve looked at all aspects of HR over the years, recruiting is the most important thing that happens in a company. If you don’t recruit the right people, forget everything else. You can’t just train people that are the wrong fit for your company, the wrong culture fit, the wrong skillset, the wrong background. So you guys in recruiting are a very, very important role and your ability to understand the organization and operate in an empowered way to find the right people is critical.

Josh Bersin:
I’ll tell you one quick story on recruiting. When I was doing some research on talent acquisition maybe six or seven years ago, I had talked to the head of recruiting at a large oil company. And I asked him just out of the blue, is there any one thing that you think is the most important characteristic of a high performer when you recruit them? Is it degree, experience, culture, age, personality, intelligence, what is it? He said, “It’s the recruiter.” I said, “Why, what are you talking about?” He said, “Great recruiters hire great people.” I thought, well, that’s actually a pretty good point.

Josh Bersin:
So you guys are really in a very important role. Now, if you want to look at the future for the year, let me give you some economic data and I think this will help you understand it. One of the most significant things that’s happened, and this is a little bit like the frog in the boiling water, where you don’t feel it, but it is happening, is we’re becoming a service economy. Now, there’s manufacturing and there’s software engineering and there’s hard skills. But really 80 to 85% of jobs are service jobs. The number of manufacturing jobs in the United States dropped 20% in the last two decades. Everything is getting automated.

Josh Bersin:
Now, even if you’re a clerk enters data, that job’s gone. The secretary jobs have gone away. I mean, there’s just lots and lots of examples of this. And what this means is that regardless of the industry or the company you are in, the human skills, the human capabilities to lead, empathize, care for people, sell are organized, inspire are basically all you have. I mean, that really is what your company is. Yes. You have intellectual property. Yes. You have software. Yes. You have a brand. Yes. You have products, all that. But those actually decay pretty quickly.

Josh Bersin:
If you’re in the software industry you got to be watching out, it’s a brutally competitive space. There’s somebody building something that competes with you all the time. So, so your human capabilities are really the core of most businesses today. By the way, if you look at the stock market, which is at an all-time high, 85 to 90% of the valuation of the United States stock market is intangible assets. It’s things you cannot find on the balance sheet. It’s not oil in the ground or cash or raw materials, its human things. It’s brand, it’s software, it’s customer relationships. And so if we take care of the people and we hire the right people, the company will perform better.

Josh Bersin:
Now, we also are in a situation where burnout is an all-time high, and this is from Glint. Their new report just came out today and it’s even higher. In the UK, 60% of workers are highly anxious, have high levels of anxiety. 40% have high levels of loneliness. So pandemic has stressed people and created a incredibly high, and it’s created a need for benefits. And interestingly enough year over year over year in the United States, I don’t know if this is true in every country, because in some countries there’s more public support of this stuff, but in the U.S. wages are going up a bit, but what’s really going a lot is benefits.

Josh Bersin:
Roughly 33% of wages in the United States are spent on vacation, health insurance, other things that have to do with making work easier for people. And that’s just a symptom of the fact that in a service economy, if the people aren’t healthy or productive, the company is not healthy or productive. Now, how do you actually sort of support that? I think there’s been many, many studies and lots and lots of academic research on this idea of employee engagement. And when I first stumbled across it we were doing some research on it and I hired somebody that had written a book on it. And she said to me, we don’t need to do research on it. I’ve already written the book on it.

Josh Bersin:
And there’s a lot of books on this and there’s a lot of models on it. And the theory behind it is that if we create a work environment that is engaging people perform at a higher rate. But I would suggest that actually we’re learning that the opposite is also true. And maybe a more important correlation is that when people can perform at a high rate, they become engaged. And that’s what this book is about. And there’s other studies that prove this, that when you ask people, “What did you like about your job today? When they come home from work?” The thing that they like the most is they got something done. They finished something. They helped somebody. They completed a project.

Josh Bersin:
And so, one of the things we’ve learned through the pandemic is that the problem is not just making people feel safe and included and friends and training and all that. It’s also making it easier for them to do their jobs. And there’s been a massive effort in HR under the guise of employee experience to make work more productive. We studied this last year and we did a study of the pandemic response and looked at the companies that were the most rapidly transforming companies during the pandemic. And found through a bunch of correlations, the 10 things that differentiate those companies, this is what they are.

Josh Bersin:
On the left, clearly health and safety, listening to the workforce, creating support for families because everybody’s family life was intertwined with their work life, reinforcing a sense of purpose. Purpose and mission really gives people inspiration and energy at work. And that’s why there’s so many companies working on their mission statement and their purpose and CEOs going online talking about why we’re here and why our company exists and the value we provide to society. Working in an agile way. Using technology in a more adaptable way. But you can look at number seven and number eight. The companies that survived the pandemic well were recruiting. And yes, there was a downturn. Yes, there was unemployment, but everybody was recruiting at the same time. They were recruiting part-time, contingent, people in new locations in call centers. And so these practices remain important even during economic downtime as the one we had.

Josh Bersin:
Now, the other thing that’s been going on in the last 12 to 18 months, and this will continue is a really new philosophy of leadership. Leadership, as I mentioned earlier, it’s a big topic and it tends to follow in fads. When I was first working in HR as an analyst and I used to go meet with companies, they would say to me, “Well, if you can just tell me how GE does this, we’d just like to copy how they do it.” And GE pioneered the idea of a corporate university, the forest ranking model. Many things about the rugged individual nature of careers in GE were copied by other companies.

Josh Bersin:
Well, I mean, Jack Welch died last year. Jeff Immelt, several books have been written about him that haven’t been super positive. GE is a fallen company. Nobody’s copying them at the moment. They’ll come back I’m sure, but there’ve been other models. And I think what happened is a few other paradigms changed. One of the big paradigms of leadership that I think is important was Google. When Google came up with the idea of 20% time, which many of you maybe don’t remember, this idea that we’re going to let employees take Fridays and do what they want to do, wild wacky idea, whoever would have thought of that? Well, look how successful that company has become.

Josh Bersin:
The idea that Starbucks would give training and healthcare to hourly workers was a radical idea. No one was doing that. If you worked in a coffee shop, you certainly didn’t get benefits and you probably would never get tuition reimbursement. Well, Starbucks did that and sure enough, they took off. So these ideas are pioneered by different people. And we’re in an era now where empathy is really the key. Empathy, growth citizenship and fairness and equity. And equity is a big deal. And also pay, fair pay. I’ve been watching the pay and the wage data and the economy for a long time. And it’s been very frustrating to me to see this divergence between the highly skilled people and the under skilled people in the United States. It’s actually a crisis if you look at the data.

Josh Bersin:
But that’s changing now. We now know from studies that I’ve done in other companies that fair pay is a high performing practice in business. Raising the wages of lower skilled workers actually pays off. There are studies that have showed that in retail where margins are very thin when you pay people more, you get more profit because they spend more time taking care of customers and taking care of the retail locations and creating service experiences that allow people to buy more things.

Josh Bersin:
So this is also part of the new world is, rethinking a lot of the core disciplines in HR around this human centered, business service oriented economy. I won’t walk you through this slide. We’re in the middle of publishing a piece on this. But one way to think about the next year or two is shifting from a business centered view of your company, where it’s all about the business strategy and the business goals and the business metrics and the business results to the human side of that. And the sort of the statement that I’ve made for many companies from my experience as a researcher is that, virtually every business problem you have is a people problem under the covers. Where our revenue is low, our profits are low, we have an error, we lost an account, we lost a client, we’re not making enough money, there’s always people problems underneath it. So this has been kind of an exciting year from that standpoint because we’ve been able to talk about the people side of business as really part of survival.

Josh Bersin:
Now, the other thing that’s part of dynamics of organizations in HR, and this affects you in recruiting a lot is the emergence of companies as a marketplace. In the traditional organization of a company, going back to the 17, 1800s actually goes back to slavery by the way. The organizations are modeled after slave plantations. I don’t want to shock you, but that’s actually where it started. The railroads, the manufacturers, they were hierarchies. There was management and there was labor. And managers told the labor what to do, and the labor did it, and then the managers manage them.

Josh Bersin:
Well, that’s just not the way companies work anymore. We’re all managing and labor at the same time. Some of us are designated managers, but we’re doing things also. And so the company needs to be more dynamic and what’s really changed is company after company, after company are simplifying their job architectures, simplifying their job descriptions and making them a little less specific so that we can accommodate the changing roles that people have. I’ll show you a chart on this in a few minutes, it kind of gets into more details.

Josh Bersin:
But when it really turns companies into is an internal talent marketplace. And in a talent marketplace, you as a recruiter are recruiting inside as well as outside. And you can do this now with software. I mean, there’s tools, talent marketplace tools. I don’t know if Workable does this. It probably does where we can be recruiting people for a whole bunch of jobs that are open and we can say, “Well, here’s a bunch of people inside the company that are potentially eligible for this. Here’s a bunch of people outside the company. Lets kind of do a combination of both. And the people inside the company if we move them, then other people have the opportunity to take their roles.” That’s really going mainstream.

Josh Bersin:
We did research on this in 2005, I think. And we found that it was very, very rare and unusual for people to do a lot of internal mobility. In fact, 65% of the companies we surveyed back in 2018 told us that it was easier to find a job outside the company than it was to find a job inside the company, which is kind of an absurd state of the world, but that’s changing. And so we’re in a world now where there’s lots of opportunities to move people inside the company. There’s lots of tools for this, and this is becoming central to the year ahead. And I think for those of you that are in recruiting or talent management, thinking about internal mobility and industrial icing it, and really embracing it is a really important discipline for the future, especially as the job market gets very, very competitive again.

Josh Bersin:
Now, the next big theme I want to talk a couple of minutes about is employee experience. Employee experience is sort of a buzz word that crawled out of HR and landed in IT, but what it’s really about is thinking through the entire experience at work. And one of the ways to make sense of it is just go back to Maslow’s hierarchy. Just as in your regular life, your job is just like this pyramid. If you don’t feel safe, you’re not going to think about anything else. And after you feel safe, then you think about belonging and esteem and then accomplishment and goals and self-actualization.

Josh Bersin:
And if you look on the right, everything we do in work is somehow mapped to this. The history of employee experience goes back to industrial engineering. In industrial engineering in the 1900s, people started to study Frederick Taylor in particular time and motion studies of employees. And we looked at physical things like how much weight they were carrying and how far apart things were in the factory and so forth, just figure out how to optimize work.

Josh Bersin:
Then, in the 1930s, actually it was Freud and Carl Young, who first looked at the psychology of work and said, “Oh, you know there’s some emotional things going on at work too. So maybe if we take care of people’s emotional state, we might improve productivity also.” And we started doing surveys and we entered a world of engagement surveys, climate surveys, annual surveys. Then of course, somewhere in the early 2000, roughly 2007, 2008, we all got mobile phones and there was Yelp and there was Glassdoor. We said, “Oh, maybe we should survey people more often. Maybe we should get some more frequent feedback from people.” And all of this explosion of interest in pulse surveys grew.

Josh Bersin:
And now in a world where basically it’s a design problem. How do we design the systems and jobs in the company so that they’re easy. And so they’re more obtainable by people. And so we in HR have been bolted up to work with IT, work with facilities, and think about not just job design, but work design. And in fact, this is one of the things we’re working on in our Academy, there’s a whole program on this. And so the problem has become a little bit more complicated. We have the issues on the left, sort of the Maslow’s hierarchy issues of, do I have the right skills? Do I get along with my team? Am I on the right? Do I have the right tools and so forth?

Josh Bersin:
And then all of the stakeholders at the bottom, and what’s really going on in EX is this is becoming a corporate issue. It’s not an HR problem anymore. And so it’s now reached really the entire range of employee experience. We’re going to be publishing a big study on this in Q2 with all sorts of case studies. It’s a really important part of HR. And I think for you in the HR function, or as a recruiter, this is a major theme in companies. And a big part of it is listening and feedback. We did a lot of surveys and studies that last year about the pandemic. We looked at DEI. We did a really interesting study on DEI called Elevating Equity. We did one on the pandemic response, did several others.

Josh Bersin:
And what came out of all of these studies, where we ask companies to tell us about all the things they’re doing in HR is the number one performance process is listening, hearing what’s on people’s minds because we don’t know what’s going on. The virus itself is unpredictable. Economic changes, social changes, regulatory changes, workforce changes, last year were very hard to predict. And so we need to listen to people and let them tell us, so open meetings, surveys, lots and lots of crowdsourcing activities. These are really part of the EX2.0

Josh Bersin:
And so the EX market has become a market of continuous listening. And in many ways you could have predicted this because this is what we do with customers. I mean, you don’t survey the customers once every 10 years. You try to serve the customers maybe every quarter, if you can, or you ask the salespeople, what are people saying about our products? Or why are they returning them? Or why are they not buying them? We need that data, and we needed an HR too.

Josh Bersin:
Now, one of the other things that’s risen to the top of the agenda this year is diversity and inclusion. Now, and I’m going to show you just a little bit of our research on this in a minute. We’ve studied this, I’ve studied this multiple times in the last decade. And one of the things we’ve found is that when you look at HR and all of the things we do from recruiting to onboarding, to pay to career, to performance management and on and on, and on the companies that are the highest performing companies, don’t just do it. They do it in an inclusive way. They have unbiased data-driven standards and practices, and they hold themselves accountable to being inclusive.

Josh Bersin:
Study after study has shown, I won’t go through the data, you can read about it on our website or through the report. That companies who are more inclusive perform higher. By the way, if you look at the engagement data from last year and this year from Glint and Qualtrics, the two biggest surveys of employee engagement, the number one driver of employee engagement is belonging. I feel that I belong at work. I feel comfortable with my team. I feel like people listen to me, that’s really about inclusion.

Josh Bersin:
And what we learned in the elevating equity research, which is available now, it’s free on our website if you just poke around, you’ll be able to download it, is that there are five things that you have to do to create an inclusive culture. You have to listen to people. You have to really strengthen HR capabilities. By the way, most HR people do not feel comfortable with diversity and inclusion practices. You need to make sure senior leadership are committed to a diverse and inclusive business, not just an HR program or a bunch of HR practices. You need to measure it and you need to hold yourself accountable.

Josh Bersin:
And I just read an article this morning, right before I got on the webinar about McDonald’s publicly not only disclosing the diversity metrics, but holding their leaders accountable for diversity with their pay. That is what it takes, because this is a business strategy, not an HR strategy. In fact, one of the ways to think about diversity and inclusion and equity for the year ahead is to look at what’s going on in the Biden administration. The Biden administration, they didn’t just create a program about equity in the United States. They basically said everything we do is about equity. How we deal the transportation infrastructure. How we deal with unemployment. How we deal with healthcare, How we do deal with the vaccines. Everything has to be done in an inclusive way. And we have to look for underrepresented or under privileged people or undereducated people in an equal way to everybody else. And that’s really what’s going on in companies. And this is going to be a massive theme continuing through the next year.

Josh Bersin:
Another part of the employee experience and engagement is psychological safety. And let me just take a minute on this. This is not a new topic. It actually comes from Amy Edmondson from Harvard. It’s a book that’s a couple of years old, but it’s very relevant right now. She’s studied healthcare providers and help healthcare teams and found that the teams that had the highest patient outcomes in her studies had the most number of problems. And what she basically found that, doesn’t make any sense. She said, “Well, why would they have more problems?” And when she got under the covers, which she realized, they didn’t have more problems, but they talked about the problems. They expose the problems. They discuss them. They had a high degree of psychological safety. Psychological safety means you can speak up and people will listen.

Josh Bersin:
And as you can see from this chart, if you kind of think about the four quadrants, companies operate in different quadrants here. We have a client who’s in the upper left quadrant where they actually do not have a psychologically safe environment. Everybody is very nice, but you’re not allowed to speak up. And they’re really trying to change that because they have to move faster and they’re evolving into the cloud and some other things. So this is part of 2021 too, is not just creating a great diversity inclusion program, but making sure that you have a culture where people can speak up and you can get the information you need to make decisions more quickly.

Josh Bersin:
As far as well-being, the really inevitable trend in well-being is away from health towards performance. There’s a lot of research on this and lots of vendors and offerings and services and various things you can buy for well-being, but the way to think about it, it’s not just lavishing people more and more benefits. I mean, everybody sort of likes that for a while and you can buy people exercise machines, and so forth. It doesn’t make as much difference as you may think. What really matters is things that help people do their jobs in a more productive ways. Because I showed you earlier. Most people, the reason they enjoy work is they enjoy the work and they enjoy the people at work. And if they can’t get their job done because they’re tired or somebody is getting up in the middle of the night sending them emails, or they don’t have the right skills, they’re not happy.

Josh Bersin:
And so the well-being agenda is moving from one of cost reduction and insurance costs, which is where it started to focus on total performance. And that’s a really positive thing to me for business. And it’s going beyond that. It’s really also reaching into the ideas of citizenship and volunteerism and taking care of society. Now, if you look at the data on people under the age of 35, most younger workers are very aware of the social issues we have. They’re very aware of the DEI and inclusion issues and citizenship and environmental and climate change issues. And they want to be a part of the solution. And so part of well-being at work is also giving people an opportunity to give back, giving people an opportunity to participate in local community events. And so there’s a sort of evolving growth of the well-being strategy and companies to cover all those topics.

Josh Bersin:
Learning continues to be massive. This is one of the biggest investment areas of HR. Every year, there’s more research on why we have to do more re-skilling up-skilling. It’s not as complicated as it sounds. I think the first point I want to make is that, the consumption of learning is high. It continues to go up. Last year, most companies told me they consumed far more learning than they ever anticipated, and people are happier and more productive and more successful when they’re learning. And the way I interpret that is human beings are learning animals. From the minute you’re born and you learn to eat and speak and walk and everything else that happens in your life, you’re learning, and that’s the way our brains are wired. And when you’re not learning, you’re unhappy.

Josh Bersin:
So think about learning as much more than a training problem. It’s really part of your entire employee experience. And the learning industry is very, very complex and messy, and it goes through phases, just like everything else. And we’re in a phase now where we’ve got learning content everywhere. We’ve got learning content on our phones and on YouTube and in our corporate systems and people are offering videos all the time. And there’s podcasts and articles and books.

Josh Bersin:
And so what we’re really trying to do in the learning industry is move learning into the flow of work. Microsoft introduced a learning app in Teams, that’s going to help with that. The learning experience platforms are all designed for this. And so, one of the strategies that you really have to think about, and this is not easy in a big company is simplifying the learning experience and using technology to make it easier to find what you need.

Josh Bersin:
And what’s going on under the covers is major, major evolution of learning technology, where a lot of the tools in the learning industry are looking at skills that a person needs or appears to have, and then recommending learning based on those skills. I won’t spend a lot of time on this chart. But what we’re really finding and doing a lot of work on this is that, you as an HR person or an HR team need to decide what the critical business capabilities are for your company, especially if you’re doing recruiting, and from them, determine what skills you want to develop or source in people.

Josh Bersin:
And you get to decide what the business capabilities are. In fact, in HR, we are introducing our capability model in HR and you can actually go through it and assess yourself against it if you join our Academy. And you’ll see that they’re actually business capabilities. And so this is a really interesting, fascinating growing area of HR and very, very important. And it isn’t just technical skills by the way. If you look at the demand for skills among CEOs, CEOs want human skills. They want power skills, they want skills and the ability to prioritize, to lead, to work in a team, to be flexible, adaptable. Learning agility is a skill, ethics, integrity. These are the things that people really want.

Josh Bersin:
And these are the skills that create growth in wages. If you look at the history of wages by different job categories, the jobs that have increased in demand and increased in wages are not engineering jobs per se. I mean, if you’re in the right engineering discipline, you’ve been doing fine. But really it’s what we call high social high math or high social low math management, leadership, project leadership, and people that can do both. People that have technical skills and good human skills.

Josh Bersin:
And it’s even more true amongst younger workers. If you look at this chart, it is a little bit confusing, but young people are on the right, older people on the left. And what it’s showing is that younger workers are even more interested in the human behavioral skills’ development at work because they learn a lot about technology and software and tools in school. So this isn’t just a problem of digital skilling. It’s really a problem of power skilling.

Josh Bersin:
Okay. HR tech is a big part of this. Let me see how we’re doing on time here. I got three more minutes and then we’ll open up to questions. The HR tech market is really hot at the moment. Companies are going public. Valuations are very high. And the reason it’s so hot is we’re really moving to a new era, an era of tech that really does a char in the flow of work. And Workable as a tool like this that makes a recruiter or a candidate or an employee or a hiring manager’s job easier.

Josh Bersin:
This has been a big change. HR technology is very complex under the covers. It takes years to build these systems and they were originally designed as forms, automation systems for HR managers to type things into. Now, they’re really look more like chatbots and mobile apps and much, much different. Companies have spent a lot of time and will continue to spend a lot of time on HR tech. And more and more of the energy in the HR tech space is going into this red area, which I call the employee experience layer, making the systems easier to use, making them more intelligent, allowing you to interact with them on a chatbot or by voice, or more recommendations from the system on what you want to do.

Josh Bersin:
Nobody has time to go poke around in Workday and find the right screen to enter your vacation. If you could just talk to the system and say, “Enter my vacation,” boom done. Let’s go back to work and finish what we were doing. So anyway, that’s what’s been going on in HR tech. Let me finish up and just talk about the HR profession in a few minutes. And then we’ll open up to questions, going to only give you guys some time.

Josh Bersin:
The final thing I want to just touch on is you and us as an HR profession. The reason I started our Academy couple of years ago is that I really believe what’s happened in HR is we’ve become a center of innovation. Everything in the area of talent and recruiting and learning and development and pay is changing. And you can’t just kind of go to a course and learn how to do it, and then do it. You need to learn the basics of it and then learn how other companies are doing it and learn about what’s unique inside your company and the culture and business strategies inside your company, and then design something.

Josh Bersin:
So a lot of what’s been going on in HR is re-skilling of us. And I think about you and us as HR people like engineers, we need to be what we call full stack professionals. We need to understand the domains of HR. We need to understand how to be good consultants. We need to understand the business and the industry and the competitive drivers in our company. We didn’t understand technology and data. And we need to understand how to be leaders, how to interact with leaders and how to develop leaders. And that’s a lot.

Josh Bersin:
And one of the things that our research found in the last two years is that the companies that invest more in HR capabilities are the higher performing companies. Because in a world where most of the jobs are service jobs and I told you the biggest criteria for great recruiting is the recruiter, not the technology per se, nothing against Workable, but you have to have a good recruiter to go with it. Those are higher performing companies. And so my sort of final recommendation is invest in yourself, take a little bit of time to make sure that you as an HR professional are keeping current on what’s going on in the economy, in your company, in the profession and the domain and the tools, and of course in society.

Josh Bersin:
And I think if there’s anything I’ve learned as an analyst over the years, you in some ways are a representation of the societal pressures on your employees for your company. That’s really what HR does. That’s why HR is such an important profession and becoming even more important in the year ahead. So anyway, that’s a little bit about what’s going on. There’s many, many things to talk about. But Carolyn, should I open it up to questions? Are you still there?

Carolyn:
Oh, here. Yeah, let’s do it. I have a unprecedented amount of questions and even more wonderful feedback on this presentation. Everybody is very thankful. And to answer the question of the hour, yes, we will share out the recording of this presentation as well as a few of our top takeaways after this webinar. So don’t worry, I know it’s a ton of information, but you’ll be able to share it with your team, look back.

Carolyn:
And before I hop into these questions, I do just want to give everybody the opportunity to let us know if you want to learn more about Workable. So I will just launch a quick poll right now. And for any of you who aren’t super familiar with Workable, we are a recruitment tool. And we’ve been spending this past year really investing in some of the most important tools to help you reach your goals and accomplish a lot of the things that Josh was talking about.

Carolyn:
So wonderful careers pages, branded careers pages, video interviews. We do have a tool where you can hire your internal talent and approach it as an internal marketplace. So yeah, just a lot of cool stuff that we’d love to show you. So feel free to answer that now. And I see we have a lot of customers who are giving us great feedback. Thank you so much. Love to see that.

Carolyn:
And while everybody is responding, I will just go ahead and start you off Josh. So like I said, we have a ton of questions. I’m sorry if we don’t get to all of you, if we don’t, we’ll do our best to answer a lot of these questions with upcoming blogs. We’ll definitely be talking about a lot of things that are in this presentation. But the first one is really interesting to me, and it’s a pretty broad question. But do you see any key differences between the UK and U.S. with respect to the future of HR and recruitment, just because we have a ton of customers in both of these areas, so?

Josh Bersin:
I don’t know that the world is that different. I think the economic climate in different cities in the UK is different than it is in different cities in the U.S. But I think the workforce dynamics are very similar and the level of technology adoption is very similar. So I’m not aware of anything huge, it’s different. I talk to a lot of companies in Europe and I think we’re all going through a lot of the same issues, so sorry, I can’t make it.

Carolyn:
We’re basically seeing the same thing over here. The biggest priorities it’s just across the board where it’s a small world. Okay. Moving on. So Lucy said she would love to hear your thoughts on AI and machine learning, moving into the recruiting space. Where is it helpful and where does it make sense to still have that human centered approach?

Josh Bersin:
Well, I mean, you guys in recruiting are just like everybody else, you’re getting augmented, you’re not getting replaced. There’s probably three huge areas. Sourcing. So most of these platforms like Workable can find candidates more quickly and better qualified candidates for on high-level issues. The second is screening, chatbots and intelligent screening tools can quickly weed out people that are just the wrong fit and they can self-select. And the third is in the area of assessment, which is massive. And there’s quite a few questions in here about, assessing skills.

Josh Bersin:
It’s kind of a black art to assess skills, Good recruiters have ways of figuring out what people are actually capable of doing through looking at their job experience and talking to references. But there’s also some pretty significant AI driven tools, including video interviews that allow you to get much more intelligence about people’s true capabilities. They’re never going to be perfect, but they’re getting smarter all the time.

Josh Bersin:
So those are the three areas that are big. And this all started with just simple word matching, does this resume match this job description? And what percentage of the words look like they’re similar, so maybe this person’s worth talking to? So it’s come a long way. And I think what it’s doing is it’s making your job as a recruiter, even more human, selling, communicating, listening, understanding, talking to people are really more of what you’re going to be spending your time on as opposed to scheduling interviews and get doing all sorts of screening questions on people that the system can do for you.

Carolyn:
Awesome. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And going into the next question. So we had a lot of chatter going on in the chat box around employee experience, and it’s just like this huge overarching subject that bleeds into DEI and wellness. So we had a few questions come in, asking who is responsible for driving employee engagement? Is it the employer, the C-suite, HR, hiring managers?

Josh Bersin:
Well, it depends on the size of the company. If you’re a big company, there’s probably a team of people working on this, including IT and HR and facilities. If you’re a small company … if you’re a medium size company, you might have somebody in charge of employee surveys and employee communications. And that person is probably sitting on a ton of data about who’s saying what about what, and probably pulling their hair out, trying to communicate that data to the people that need to have it.

Josh Bersin:
And if you’re a smaller company it’s really, the head of HR really needs to be out there talking to managers, talking to employees, looking at data and getting a sense of what are the problems we’re having. But ultimately it’s the business person’s problem, the CEO’s problem. If people feel unsafe, if the jobs are difficult, if they’re not getting enough training, if the management is not giving them enough support, HR can only do so much.

Josh Bersin:
The CEO has to care about that. And in a company where human value is one of the most important things you have. It’s also the CEO’s job. So I would encourage you as an HR person to talk to the CEO about it and make sure you guys are all on the same page as to where you want to spend money on time on it. And it isn’t just piling on more benefits and piling on more perks, that’s not really what this is about anymore.

Carolyn:
Awesome. We have a ton of more questions that are coming in. So I’m trying to sift through to make sure I answered the most commonly asked ones. But I think an interesting one is going back to internal mobility. What are some of the obstacles you usually see at these companies that aren’t really doing it right. And how can you overcome those and really make the most of your talent pool?

Josh Bersin:
The biggest obstacle to internal mobility is often management or awards. Am I going to be penalized for letting one of my employees leave my team? And is it going to make me underperform in my team? And am I going to suffer, in which case I’m going to make it hard for them to leave? Or am I rewarded for encouraging people to leave my team and work somewhere else inside the company? One of the CHROs I met with years ago used to say to me, she said, “I’d go to management development and I’d talked to leaders and I would say to them, you don’t own the people working for you. I do. You’re taking care of them so that I can move them to the next job. That’s your job, not to hoard people and create a team that’s really good and then don’t let anybody know about it because you don’t want them to steal it away.”

Josh Bersin:
There are incentives sometimes that create that kind of behavior. That’s beginning to get changed, but that’s the number one. The number two is, how do we decide who’s eligible or potentially a good candidate for an internal position. Do we have a tool for that? Do we have a process for that? Is it random? Do we have a career pathing strategy where we automatically move people from marketing to sales and back. Is it culturally unheard of for people to move from IT to another job? I mean, a lot of companies tell me, Oh, we never moved people from so-and-so to such and such. Why not? I mean, it probably would be good if you did it, into and out of HR. Is it a good thing to take a job rotation in HR?

Josh Bersin:
Some companies would think about it as the death of your career. Oh my God, I have to go work in HR. Actually, that’s not true. Everybody. I know that’s coming into HR from a business job said, “Oh my God, this is a lot more complicated than I ever realized.” And vice versa for you guys to take a job in the business. So those are the things that tend to get in the way is breaking down those barriers.

Josh Bersin:
Ultimately, though, if you look at successful careers and there’s a lot of research on this, the most successful people in business have moved around a lot. They’ve tried a lot of things. They’ve sampled different careers and roles and they’ve learned from that. And given that people live into their 80s and 90s and 100s, you’ve got time to move around in your career. You don’t have to stay in one thing the whole time. So those are some of the tips.

Carolyn:
It’s a good answer. All right. We have just a few minutes left. I’ll see if we can get one more in. Going back to benefits, you spoke about benefits being something that’s trending upwards while pay isn’t necessarily which makes sense because we’re in need of maybe new and different benefits now that we’re working differently. What are some of those benefits that seem to be working that companies are adopting that maybe we can think about to improve our employee experience?

Josh Bersin:
Flexibility is huge. Giving people time off and flexible time to work in different locations or different time zones. Relatively flexible pay policies so people can kind of dial up and dial down different benefits depending on what they need. A lot of companies have hundreds of different benefits and nobody uses them. And so if I’m not using it, how come we’re paying for it. That’s one.

Josh Bersin:
Educational benefits are huge right now. Access to online learning programs and things that you’re buying for employees, let the kids have them, let their families have them. That’s a great benefit. I think these health and exercise and fitness and well-being programs are good. I’m not sure they’re as important as people think they are, but I think they’re kind of a branding and, and recruiting tool that people like.

Josh Bersin:
But if they don’t like the job, if I get a free Peloton subscription, but I hate my job that doesn’t make my job any better. So I wouldn’t over-rotate on that. And I think just fair pay, paying people fairly and giving them a sense of belonging goes a long, long way. You don’t have to overpay people. Some companies overpay people because it’s a very competitive company and they really kind of expect very, very high performing people to come. I think if the pay is fair and the environment is meaningful and inclusive, most people are very, very happy and they don’t expect lots and lots of other benefits.

Carolyn:
Yeah, well said. Well, that brings us basically to the top of the hour. I want to thank you again so much for all of this. Like I said before, the engagement and the questions are unprecedented for us. So for all of you who asked questions and didn’t get answers, please make sure you’re subscribe to our blog, we will do our absolute best to focus in on all of this. We already have a lot of great stuff in the plans. And then of course go follow Josh, he has a ton of wonderful content out there. But thank you all so much again for engaging with us today, for showing up. Any questions you have, reach out to us and we’ll be in touch.

Josh Bersin:
Thanks everybody.

The post Podcast episode #10: Step into the future with Josh Bersin appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Many of us in HR and Recruitment are in uncharted waters as we consider opening remote positions across borders. But some of us, like Tony Jamous, CEO at Oyster, have been hiring worldwide remote talent for years. So we’re asking him to share what he’s learned – and spoiler alert – there’s far more to a well-executed remote hiring strategy than meets the eye.

Episode transcript:

Carolyn (host):
Welcome Tony. Thank you for coming to the podcast. So to start us off, can you tell us a bit about your story, how you came to be CEO at Oyster.

Tony:
Yeah, sure. So first I start with what is Oyster? Oyster is a distributed talent enablement platform. We enable companies to tap into the global talent pool by removing the barriers to cross-border employment. And my story is very tightly linked to that. Essentially, I was born in Lebanon 40 years ago, and I had this amazing opportunity when I was 17 to leave my home country and go to France and study computer science. And that enabled me to be plugged into the Western world economy as we know it today. And I was able to grow and I started my first company 10 years ago called Nexmo. It was an API business for building communication applications. And that business grew rapidly to a hundred million of revenue in five years and is now public on the NASDAQ. But then when I left this business, I took some step back and I realized actually, what is really important for me is to reduce wealth inequalities in the world.

Tony:
And I was able to see that if you remove the barriers to cross-border employment and enable companies to really tap into the global talent pool, you can reduce brain drain, which is really one of the major impact of wealth distribution issues in the world. And to give you some background on that, so next month previous company was not fully distributed. But you employ people in 45 different countries. And we really struggled to do so, we had to set up entities, hire lawyers, accountant, benefit providers, you name it. We spent millions of dollars on building an employment infrastructure because we wanted to give people the chance to participate in success of our company. And we didn’t really succeed, we failed to provide them with great employment experience.

Tony:
So it was clear to me that if you build a software application as really pierces into the problem and make it a no brainer for companies to tap into the global talent pool, you can actually reduce brain drain and reduce wealth inequality as a result. So I wanted to do this and I started Oyster in January last year, one month before the world goes into lockdown. And yeah, what a great moment in history for enabling talent from around the world to participate in the global economy.

Carolyn (host):
Yeah. That timing is impeccable truly, it’s… There’s been a lot of bad that’s come out of the pandemic, but I think that it’s important, at least for me to focus on some of the silver linings, because there are a lot of silver linings. Before this call, you and I were chatting about the ability to leave the city and find nature, and that’s wonderful. But also just the change we’re seeing generally in remote work, I’ve seen that Workable, we’re starting to have that flexibility. And as you said, it does open opportunity to geographical areas in places that just didn’t have that opportunity before. So super excited to get into that.

Carolyn (host):
But starting off with some of the nitty gritty, back in March of last year, we hosted a webinar that we put together really quickly with TA professionals at remote companies. They were already remote and we had a ton of people attend, a ton of people asking questions and right off the bat, some of the biggest or most common questions we saw were, in the States how do we manage our nines? And be forced remote employees in States and other countries. How do we manage taxes? Local laws? Benefits? And so on. So in your position, how would you advise them?

Tony:
Yeah, my first tip here is really focus on what’s really important, which is finding the best talent no matter where they are. And worry later about these obstacles or these barriers that prevents you from hiring that talent. And that’s one of the reasons why Oyster exists by the way, is really to remove barriers so companies can really hire the best people no matter where they are. I mean, in my previous company, Nexmo, sometimes we spend six months to a year to be able to open an entity in a given country. Let’s say, take a complex country like China and what happens after six months when you’ve identified a talent and you want to hire them, they’re not going to sit and wait for you, you most probably going to lose that talent.

Tony:
So really there is, I would say a change in the talent acquisition function between in the past, it used to be focused in hiring in one country, usually around the office, the city where the company has an office. Now the new skills to acquire, is how you can hire globally and rely on maturing platforms such as Oyster to facilitate that and make sure that you remain compliant, your employee get a great experience and really focus on finding the best talent no matter where they are.

Carolyn (host):
Yeah, that’s a really good message because there are a lot of complexities surrounding just hiring outside of that zone. I mean, we’re so used to, here in Boston, we hire the Boston talent and that was the talent pool we dealt with. And it’s been a whole year of coming to terms with the fact that for many of us offices aren’t opening again, or if they do open it’s remote first. And it’s just having that space for some of the employees that were local to be here and it can really make or break a company when you start thinking about these other areas and these different talent pools. So it plays into so many different pieces. But something relatable for us here at Workable is, we’re pretty unique because we were founded in Greece and the majority of our employees are located in Greece.

Carolyn (host):
Now surrounding Athens, since people can move for a remote first company now. And there is incredible talent in Greece, and this is something I didn’t know before I started working for this company, very well-educated extremely smart people. Our product team is some of the best product engineers in the world. So it’s this untapped talent pool that has been absolutely incredible. And it’s the reason that Workable is such an amazing product to this day. We were built and founded in Greece. But what we’re seeing now is that we are the Google of Greece but now Google and Facebook, and some of these big tech platforms are starting to open their positions to talent in Greece. And from my perspective, it seems like some of these big forward thinking companies are the leaders here. So should more organizations that maybe aren’t these big conglomerates be thinking about opening in different countries? And if so, how do they go through that thought process?

Tony:
Yeah. So I think first it’s great news for Greece and the Greek people. And if you think about it, great talent is available anywhere in the world. And people go to top universities when they graduate from universities, they are full of energy, the world is their oyster, and then suddenly their first shock is when they get, especially in emerging economies, they get into the local economy and they interact with the local economy that might not be focused on their growth and development as other companies in other countries. Think about the tech industry and how much we focus on developing our people, because we believe the people are the key, the number one asset of the business.

Tony:
So if you’re married in Nigeria and you’re graduating from a top university in computer science in Nigeria, the best job you’re going to get is to work for a local bank and five years into the job, well you’re… You got plateau because there’s not enough opportunities in Nigeria and you’re a place injury of any of the 80% of the world economies. And then you have the same results. So what is important is to create… Really unlock that cycle and make sure that Mary in Nigeria can have access equally to job opportunities in Nigeria or elsewhere. And the challenge is to do so, I mean, there’s a number of challenges that companies have faced in the past [inaudible 00:17:02].

Tony:
So one of them is how do you know how big is the talent? How good is Mary in Nigeria and how can you assess her? There is a fear a of cultural differences. Maybe people in that country think differently than people in that country. There are administrative and legal and tax challenges that company have to go through to be able to employ Mary in Nigeria. So I think what’s happening now in the world is that there was a shift between being restricted to hiring in your local economy or your city to hiring globally. And there is increasingly these platforms that are overcoming that challenge so that you can provide a seamless experience to anyone anywhere in the world.

Tony:
Now if you think about it, I mean, if you were to say a startup in San Francisco or a startup in London, and you want to hire locally, what are the chances of the best talent to be in 20 miles radius from your office? It’s like 0.1%. So how can you explain statistically that this is a good strategy for talent acquisition, where over 99% of the great talent is elsewhere? So when companies… And smart companies are realizing that, every day we see new companies are adopting a global hiring. Our customer we serve, they have been very successful in growing their talent pool, leveraging that method. So essentially now smart companies are realizing that great talent can be found anywhere and they have to change and evolve the way they go about talent acquisition from being focused to one city, to being globally focused. [inaudible 00:19:02]-

Carolyn (host):
Thank you. That brings up a question that goes off of what you were just saying. How would you advise teams that maybe are in a position where they could create a business case for hiring remotely? How would you advise them to start? Are there statistics they should be thinking about? What is the big draw there?

Tony:
Yeah. So essentially it depends on what you’re looking for, right? So there are some [inaudible 00:19:35] roles that are… I would say they can be found anywhere. So think about sales, customer success, and in engineering, are talent that is readily available anywhere in the world for instance, like Oyster, our Salesforce is in 20 different countries. And there is some areas of the world that are more specialized in certain type of talents. There are certain hubs of engineering in the world, such as let’s say, Eastern Europe or Latin America that have higher degree of highly talented developers. And you can even drill down to a specific language. So for instance, you want to hire in Java and you hired in Ruby, there are certain pubs around the world that are available.

Tony:
What’s hard as well is especially if you’re a tech company let’s say, and you want to hire specific tech talent and not necessarily engineering, it’s maybe hard to find senior talent because in the last 30 years, the senior talent has been focused on the Western world. So it’s also important that you think about how you develop the younger talent that come from emerging economies and giving them the opportunity to grow with your company and with the opportunity, so we can start building the next generation of tech leaders from all over the world and not necessarily focused or centered around certain technology helps in the world, such as the Silicon Valley or London or China.

Carolyn (host):
Yeah. That’s a really good point. Do you have experience with what that looks like when it comes to developing remote talent? Because I imagine it’s a bit different, especially when, the way we think about developing talent. It’s sometimes internal, sometimes happens in the office, sometimes happens at in person events. Are there resources out there? Is there a good methodology to go through?

Tony:
So development… Yeah. I mean, definitely what I tell my customers is that you need to align your company success with your employee success. And specifically, as you think about a distributed talent force, they are not in the office. So how can you create in an environment where there’s equal opportunities regardless of where people are? And so for instance, there are certain training that you can up skill your talent force on remote work. We actually do that internally at Oyster, but we also open-source it for others in the world to benefit from. So you can teach your team how to behave, how to be productive, how to take care of themselves so that they don’t burn burnout. I mean, if you can think about it, remote work before the pandemic was a lifestyle decision for many people in the Western world, but it wasn’t really a choice for many people in emerging economies.

Tony:
Think about these contact center staff in India that used to work night shift to accommodate the US markets. I mean there’s something we don’t really talk about is really this lifestyle disparity when it comes to working from anywhere. So really as a leader of an organization, my recommendation is to create an environment and a culture that give everybody an equal opportunity, no matter where they are. And that go through the tools you use, discipline in using these tools, and go through where your leadership team is located. So if in order for you to succeed in the company, you have to be at the headquarter and you have to meet with the executive team over coffee, or what a group conversation is.

Tony:
If this is how you progressing your company, that might not be a good idea. You have to have a result driven culture first and foremost. And we’ve seen that companies that has this obsession with output rather than input, essentially we don’t care how much hours you put in to get the job done, as long as you have clear goals and you’re delivering on your goals, that goes a long way to create a culture where there’s high degree of trust in order for anybody anywhere they are to grow in and develop in your company.

Carolyn (host):
That’s a really good answer and brings us back to what you were talking about a few minutes ago with cultures across the world. And I’ve seen it at Workable. It’s been really cool just to work at a Greek company and peek into the Greek culture. And if anything, it’s been absolutely an incredible experience. But that might be, I think you mentioned that’s often a barrier in some cases for companies, when they’re thinking about hiring across the world is, what if I don’t understand that culture? What if they aren’t prepared for what my company can offer them? Is cultures clashing something that is a common issue you see? Or what does that look like?

Tony:
Well, and I’d like to… Before answering the question, maybe do you feel that Workable is a Greek culture, or is it a Workable culture?

Carolyn (host):
It is very much a Workable culture.

Tony:
Exactly. So what I always say is that company culture trumps country culture. And as we grew up, we grew up in one country and we started developing an idea of the other people in the other country that are different from us. But my experience having led two companies in the last 10, 12 years is that are people from all over the world. That company culture definitely trumps country culture. And how do you… But you have to manage it? It’s not like by default this is going to happen. So you need to really be clear about how do you create a strong company culture that actually is stronger than in local cultural specificities. And it’s hard to do, even before everybody being in a distributed environment, and specifically in a distributed environment is harder. And I’ve been thinking about that obviously, because I’m dealing company right now which has been over a year and few months in existence. And I’ve hired 95% of the people in the company I’ve never met.

Tony:
And so essentially, there’s this question of how can I create a strong culture? Is consuming me. So I had to research, what are the challenges of creating a strong culture in a distributed environment? And the first aspect of that is, leaders have to understand that the identity of people becomes the overlap between their work identity and their personal identity is stronger when they go to the office, which makes it harder for them to build that strong culture.

Tony:
And why it’s stronger when you were going through the office, because when we used to go to the office, you used to wake up in the morning, have a ritual to prepare yourself, commute, some people would commute for an hour, spend eight hours in the office and then commute back home. So our life was consumed by work. And then now, what we see, at least my experience, I’m looking to hear your experience Carolyn is, now my identity is work but it’s also family. I spend more time with my children, with my partner. It’s my community as well.

Tony:
Like the other day, I’m currently living in a small village here in France and my neighbor, Dana was on the other side of the village 200 meters away. He’s like an old dude, he can’t walk very well. And his chimney broke in the middle of the winter and he needed somebody to take him to the store, buy something to come and fix the chimney. So he called me at 2:00 PM in the afternoon, and I had 45 minutes gap in my schedule. So I was able to go and bring him to the store and build it. And I felt more connected to him. And so if I was in the office, I would have missed that opportunity to help him out. And so I feel much more connected to my local community. So that’s a good news for the world. And that’s a good news for people. Now it’s a creative challenge for leaders to create strong culture. So yeah. I mean, how has your experience now working from home? How have you… Do you feel a change in your identity?

Carolyn :
Totally, yeah. I love that you say that. I actually I’ve said before that I feel like I’ve had to mourn a piece of myself because there was a work identity that was part of who I was. And I had to let that go because she doesn’t exist anymore. There was work Carolyn and there was home Carolyn , and now there’s this interesting blend of figuring out who I am when I’m working behind a screen and building relationships with my remote co-workers, but also taking my dog for a walk in the middle of the day. And living in the suburbs and I have a lot of cranberry bogs and connecting a bit more with nature than I was when I was in the city. So there are these huge changes that we’re all going through.

Carolyn (host):
And I think when we talk about a remote culture, we think about like team-building games and communication and all hands meetings and how we’d stay connected. But there is a big piece of, what actually is culture when you’re at a remote company? Is it the ability to have your senior leaders tell you to take a walk with your dog in the afternoon and to find flexibility throughout your day, and to feel like you’re trusted and can work autonomously. There’s so, so much there. And I’m glad you brought that up because it’s such a huge part of this conversation and what a company decides to be remote.

Tony:
Yeah, I was in London the other day and I saw this event of a coffee machine provider for businesses and on their van, they say that the slogan was, we make business culture. And I had this question, what does they mean by that? What is culture? And for me, culture is this set of shared norms and habits that an organization have, that removes uncertainty around how the work gets done. And how do we… What is the relationship on the job and how do we treat each other as team members? And what is a strong culture? A strong culture is these norms and habits are not only shared, but they are reinforced. And that’s what’s a great culture for me, and there’s definitely a way to do it.

Tony:
And first is really about building trust among the team. And this is really, you have to up the game on that in a virtual environment because trust in a physical environment is much easier to build because you have this emotional messaging, signaling such as body language that you have, that you can really screed the person better. And then that removes the distance between you and the other person. So how do you recreate that in a virtual environment is something that we focus on, how do you create opportunities to connect with people in a way that creates safety, that creates closeness and intimacy with the other person is something that can be engineered. But that’s not enough, that’s like hygiene factor that you have to really work on and in a virtual environment to deliberately create opportunities that build trust, like for instance in my team, I cannot engineer opportunities to work with them on a personal basis. Let’s say I have a roadmap discussion with my head of product.

Tony:
So I spend a few hours or long one month period working synchronicity with her, brainstorming, building on each other ideas. I want her to have an insight about how I think, and I want to have an insight about how she thinks. And I do it with other… I can have, create these opportunities deliberately because that can we understand each other and create language-shared meaning about the work. And that’s one piece of the equation. The other piece of the equation that is also a hygiene factor for building strong culture in a virtual environment is around the discipline of how the work gets done. We call them at Oyster, tools and the rules. And that’s again, that’s if you’re in an office environment and you’re not very clear or prescriptive about how to get the job done, then you can get away with it.

Tony:
So in a virtual environment, it’s not going to work if people are on different time zones, people are coming from different culture, different backgrounds. So you have to be very prescriptive of how you work together, what tools do you use? When do you use them? What different meetings you have? I mean, obviously embrace this as synchronous communication and collaboration and then reinforce it. And then thirdly is it cannot be a top down effort, has to be co-created among the team, and you as a team manager, you have to be the best remote worker in your team to show the example for your team that this is something that everybody needs to buy into, and it gets reinforced.

Tony:
And I think these are the foundation of creating a strong culture in a virtual environment. And actually when you think about it, there’s a way to outperform in office cultures. So for instance, a virtual environment requires you to share leadership more, so essentially because everybody is in different location and the leader cannot do everything like they used to do in the office, then suddenly you have an opportunity for other leaders to come in and fill that gap. So it becomes a great place to grow leader fasters in the business. And you’ve seen how Oyster in very excited about the opportunity.

Tony:
Another superpower from distributed teams is, the best ideas win. I don’t know if you remember when you used to work in an office and you go to a meeting room and usually the loudest person in the room monopolize the discussion, but you have maybe this extroverted, brilliant person on the side that they’re not sharing their ideas. So when you adopt these as synchronous way of collaborating, the work happens before, we share a new doc, everybody comes in, everybody collaborates on it and then you go and have a conversation. Maybe one last one is really dealing with conflict is also, there’s a super power there because again, when you’re doing in-person, face-to-face, trying to solve conflicts, there’s a lot of emotional baggage that come into the conversation.

Tony:
So if you solve that in a synchronous way, people are not reactive in solving this problem, are more active, which mean that they don’t feel that they have to speak at that time. They have make sure that they have their pressure to say something. So essentially, if you shift some of the problem solving or conflict management into a synchronous, then you can also gain a superpower. And then the role of the leader is really to be aware of these superpowers and create an environment that actually facilitates and foster these benefits.

Carolyn (host):
Wow, thank you. All of that really resonates, especially being at a remote company. We’ve been remote for about a year now, and it wasn’t up until maybe six months or so ago that we realized we weren’t going back to an office, but I’ve seen a lot of these things happen naturally at Workable. And I don’t even know if, until now I really realized that those things were happening and that’s really good news. But it also makes me think of just the fact that a lot of these companies, like members of our audience were thinking about hiring remotely and taking that leap and opening positions in different companies do have to look inward at how they’re managing their remote workforce, because you really do have to have all of that place. And that’s really great advice for companies who are thinking about moving in that direction, and be able to have like a strong well-oiled workforce.

Tony:
Yeah. I mean, do they even think about it? The war on talent is going distributed. So essentially it’s not… To the companies that have thought about how to enable a strong culture, how to enable a distributed workforce to grow and develop, they are the ones that are going to attract the best and the brightest talents in the world. And there’s no going back on this. I mean, that lasted us to a year, we’ve seen that many companies think about Spotify. Spotify is saying, guys I think about competition policy. They want to pay anybody the same San Francisco and New York salary, regardless of where they are. And I try to compete with Spotify on hiring the best talent. So from an employee branding standpoint, you have to start incorporating some of these softer approach around how you work together. And you want to explain to candidates, why are they going to be successful in your company working remotely. And it’s not nice to have anymore.

Carolyn (host):
No, it’s an absolute necessity. So going off of employer brand, when we’re hiring in certain locations, how do you position yourself as a strong, competitive local employer brand.

Tony:
Yeah, so let’s take the example of, let’s say Mary in Nigeria. Okay, so she has the option of being hired with a great local bank that can give her a local employment contract, the best local benefits. And you want to be able to match that, you want to be able to understand what good looks like in country X, and then extend a generous offer to that employee. And that goes to, first hiring them as a full-time employee rather than a contractor, so that you can reduce their anxiety and provide them with the ability of having a stable job and a stable income. And then supplement that with whatever local benefits Mary expects to see from a top employer in that country.

Tony:
And some countries are more heavy on benefits, especially the US. It’s must have to have a health insurance in the US, otherwise it’s very problematic. Other countries, like in France, they expect to have restaurant vouchers. I mean, assuming the world is going to reopen and restaurants going to reopen, I mean pre-pandemic, the restaurant option was an important thing to have in France and some sort of complimentary health insurance. And there are some countries where you don’t have to have any health insurance because the local national health system is what is expected. So every country is different and you have to navigate that. And this is something that also we help our customer to do is, is not only to be able to extend a full-time employment role job to marry in wherever she is, but also to make this employer become an attractive employer for an evermore distributed workforce.

Carolyn (host):
Yeah, that’s great. And another interesting question that came up, going off of competing with local employers that maybe have an office. So how long do you think it will take looking at the future for companies to understand that remote first by region and area and people working remotely there versus opening up, like we work in these small office locations throughout there, it’s two different paths. And it sounds like a lot of companies haven’t been able to break away from the idea that you need some sort of office location. Is that something you’re seeing? When do you think that will break off? Is it just both will exist?

Tony:
Yeah. I mean, clearly the world is shifting from an office only culture to a hybrid culture where you have both the co-existence of both an office and a distributed workforce at the same time. And there are certain tasks and certain to work experiences that require us to have face-to-face. So I don’t think that a hundred percent distributed virtual can work or functions and for our companies. I think that there are going to be always a… It depends is the question, depends on what does the company do? If you’re… Or what is the role of the person? So for instance, maybe software engineering is been around for, it’s been distributed for virtual for a very long time. And maybe other roles are less prone to that. And also it depends on the task well solve, highly complex cross-functional creative tasks might require people to be together and solve problems in the same place. But it’s not necessary, I think that really where I see the world going, is that it’s become optional. It’s not necessarily a must have in order to get stuff done and to create a great culture.

Tony:
And employees are asking for an extra degree of freedom, which is location. We want to be able to leave wherever they want to leave. Now that they know that they can be productive no matter where they are, and actually that’s going to be… That’s hard for companies to manage, if they want to go back to an office only culture, because talent will go to wherever they have more freedom and that’s assuming equal pay and equal benefits.

Carolyn (host):
Yeah, it’s a good answer. It is going to be a bit different for everybody, but I guess, last question going off of that could be, as you look forward, and being CEO at Oyster, you have an interesting position of seeing companies firsthand that are adopting this approach and are using your platform to handle the legal, the tax, the compliance, the benefits. Do you see that there is a big spike here? Do you think that the future is going remote? Do you think it’s going to be mixed? When do you think this is going to be happening? What is your outlook for the future?

Tony:
Yeah, I think we know that my outlook for the future is that we want to have a future where people have a choice in where they want to live. And they don’t have to necessarily live in the city, becomes a choice if they decide to want to live in a city, but if they don’t, if they decide not to they shouldn’t be forced to be living in a crowded space. And that’s the world that we want to portray. That’s a vision we want to portray for the world that Oyster… Because we’re a mission-driven company and not only we want to bring the great job opportunities to anywhere in the world, but there’s also environmental impact that attached to this. I mean, think about it, there are every year, we’re pourning the equivalent of four New York cities in terms of concrete on planet earth. And in many cities, it’s not any more livable condition.

Tony:
I mean, if you’re currently living in Delhi, working in Delhi, you’re going to lose seven years of your life expecting because of air pollution. So I think the pandemic enabled us to realize that actually we are past that tipping point of sustainability of cities. And I hope that the world will reverse that trend now that actually it’s not a necessity to be in the office to get the job done, at least for knowledge workers. And to give you some statistics, there are 1.5 billion knowledge workers coming into the workforce in the next 10 years. That is the biggest labor democratic shifts since the industrial revolution. So we have that opportunity now as a world to rethink what work is and make it more sustainable and more focused on bringing that opportunity to people no matter where they are.

Carolyn (host):
Awesome. It’s an exciting time and Oyster and your whole team is in a really exciting position to be enabling these companies to make these moves because truly it’s incredible. Last January started up Oyster, and there’s a huge need for figuring out all of these admin focus things so that we can start making a difference in our organizations and our workforce. And it does make a difference in the world, so really cool stuff. But that pretty much brings us almost a time at 45 minutes. So I’m going to go ahead and thank everybody who joined us live. I will drop a link to Oyster site for everybody to check out if you are looking for a solution to help you with all of that to hire remotely. And I’ll also add it to the podcast description. We’re going to be live on our podcasts that are hiring. So go check that out on iTunes. But yeah, thanks everybody for joining. Thank you so much Tony for your time. Anybody who’s interested, head over to Oyster and yeah.

Tony:
Thank you Carolyn for having me here and for giving me a voice on this podcast. Bye.

The post Podcast episode #9: The new land of opportunity is anywhere appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

So can you break through the screen and bring your company’s story to life? Find out in our chat with Elena Valentine, CEO & Co-Founder of Skillscout. She’ll guide us through steps you can take to level-up your employer brand strategy with video.

Subscribe to the podcast for more ways to move your hiring forward.

The post Podcast episode #8: How to attract, engage, and retain talent with video appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

There’s a lot more. Let’s take a look how the world of work has changed and will continue to change in the coming years.

1. EX marks the spot
2. ‘Moneyball’ HR
3. IT takes the wheel
4. Redefining departments
5. Going (fully) remote
6. Flexibility goes mainstream

1. EX marks the spot

Just like in Stevenson’s classic, Treasure Island, where X marks the treasure, EX is making a mark on the rapidly changing workplace around the world.

Employee experience (following previous hits such as UX and CX) is gaining momentum and moving front and center in the world of work., According to Josh Bersin, the value of the EX industry rose to $15 billion during the pandemic, which included surveys, feedback, case and knowledge management, and other developments.

In the past, EX was often an HR project on the back burner, mainly concerned with core metrics such as retention and productivity. It’s since moved through phases of development corresponding with business trends, including resource and time optimizations for a certain job, employee engagement, perks and benefits, and standard HR fare.

Now we’re seeing a fundamental shift in corporate culture, signaling long-term changes in EX through organizational overhauls.

While the brand-defining aspects of EX unfolded with bigger players long before the pandemic, including Google, Facebook and Apple. The new EX brings a deep culture shift in the business world and encompasses every stage of the employee lifecycle, starting with the initial candidate experience:

• The job ad and careers page
• The application process
• Screening call / one-way video interview
• Face-to-face interview (be it video or in person)
• Job offer and acceptance of offer

And then the experience of the role itself:

• Onboarding and training (including in remote environments)
• Working across and within teams
• The day-to-day of the role
• Management of the employee
• And every other element of the employee’s tenure with your organization

And finally, the overall employee experience lifecycle includes moving on to another job: how the news is received and handled, the transition phase, and even the exit interview.

EX efforts have recently transformed from passive observation to active action-taking, designing the full experience on top of the basic tenets of monitoring, surveying, and responding as needed. The pandemic has driven numerous challenges to the forefront.

Remote work has unique challenges for EX, and women are more affected than men – from parenting to racial issues to other inequalities underaddressed until now. From an EX design perspective, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion is top of mind.

As an HR practitioner, know that the advent of EX is penultimate in the list of workplace changes for the 2020s.

2. ‘Moneyball’ HR

Much like Brad Pitt in Moneyball, the new HR will not use their stats just for making reports, but also to pre-define strategies and come up with solutions for new challenges. This is a shift in focus from analysis to proactive planning.

The major upskills for HR specialists will focus mostly on soft skills: learning to identify problems and solutions faster, and implement them. This requires clear communication at all levels, especially in a remote setting. Clear discussion in a language that makes sense to the person you’re talking with will become crucial for a problem-solving approach to work.

Other skills that make HR a bigger player include:

• Analytical thinking and attention to detail – taking information from hiring managers, datasets, economic and hiring trends, etc., and turning that into meaningful guidance for your organization’s hiring plan
• Employee personas – i.e. defining your “perfect” employee and designing your recruitment strategy to attract those candidates
• Developing scenarios and strategies, and executing on them

These all need to be backed by a continuous influx of quality data. In doing so, the goal of the HR department will be to address individual requirements in more detail, but also to develop a strategic approach to potential problems and challenges, including safety and health issues of working from home, a plan to hire at scale, or the implementation of a new policy.

Oversimplifying again: the new HR needs to leverage people analytics while maintaining genuine connections on a human level.

2020 saw cuts in HR staff around the world, while the department faced entirely new challenges (which often came with a bigger workload). This is not exclusive to 2020. HR is already notoriously understaffed, even when dealing with an increased workload or a growing workforce. The pandemic has led to limited MOs in all types of businesses, leaving HR practitioners to find solutions on leaner budgets – and find them fast.

The new – sudden and unexpected – close collaboration with IT, business intelligence, and other data-focused teams might be the answer to these pain points, even in the long run. HR is now:

• Accessing and recruiting a new type of labor with different needs and requirements
• Needing solutions for new developments such as virus strains, vaccinations etc.
• Taking into account increasingly louder calls for greater diversity and equality;
• Crunching serious numbers into stats and reports.

The new processes and solutions need to be standardized, reliable and adaptable, since they need to accommodate for a diversified talent pool and new lines of communication. The need for quicker and better decision-making and problem-solving, with a leaner HR team and budget, while simultaneously incorporating new developments, is putting another department to the forefront – IT and data.

Brad Pitt’s character in Moneyball, Billy Beane, led his Oakland Athletics to a string of winning records year after year – all the more impressive considering his tight budget. One of the big developments in that story was the hiring of an expert data analyst (played by Jonah Hill in the film), who played an integral role in Beane’s data-focused approach to baseball.

As Jonah Hill’s character says: “Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players – your goal should be to buy wins.” Is Moneyhire next?

3. IT across all departments

The previous decade saw a steady rise in digital economy – with it, IT rose as a core function. IT is developing automations not to replace workers, but rather, to support them. As Josh Bersin says, “You’re getting augmented; you’re not getting replaced.”

The sudden shift to remote work in 2020 identified bottlenecks in various workflows: some long-awaited workplace changes were expedited to enable successful remote work. When executed well, it contributes to a better EX.

A much closer cooperation with other departments is benefiting IT experts as well: they are becoming multidimensional workers, not only IT specialists. Their soft skills are now more important than ever, especially in working with team leaders.

Closer cooperation with staff and the need to quickly overcome challenges adds value to everyone’s role. And the crucial goal is better and more uniform data distribution across all departments – including HR.

4. Redefining departments

As mentioned above, the newly evolved EX will require different functions and departments working more closely together in a flexible and streamlined manner.

Working remotely and managing labor – which can now be located across the globe – will require newly designed and defined workflows, including easy-to-follow roadmaps, flowcharts, clearly defined procedures, concept maps and similar fresh approaches to recruitment, interdepartmental projects, safety protocol implementation, and other standard business processes.

With the trend towards “flatter” organizational structures, employees now have a more direct influence and better engagement – they can work directly on solutions for their unique needs. These tasks often involve close collaboration with other departments. While this usually required a stroll down the hall to your colleague’s desk or office, things can become more challenging in a remote setting.

Which brings us to:

5. Going (fully) remote

Even as the pandemic becomes a thing of the past, workers will likely continue to be free to choose their locations. In fact, a Microsoft study states that 46% of them plan to move since work is no longer necessarily tied to a physical location. The shift to remote was also one of the biggest workplace changes we identified in our New World of Work survey.

This can work both ways: it means access to a larger talent pool for employers, but also a bigger job market for candidates. Likewise, tools are being developed to streamline recruitment at both ends, making remote work easier for candidates and HR specialists. Remote work also prompts dialogue on reimbursements for Internet charges, utilities and other home office-related expenses.

However, a physically distant work environment brings new challenges. It requires a proactive approach to re-skilling or up-skilling on all levels, especially soft/social skills, asynchronous communication, and resiliency. This will include both existing employees – especially HR, Management and IT – and job candidates.

Nevertheless, candidates and employees can now leverage all of the above for their own benefit, and it seems we have a new umbrella term for it: work flexibility.

6. Flexibility goes mainstream

The primary concern in 2020-propelled changes was productivity, as well as trust levels between employees and management. Both remained high throughout lockdowns.

Following this success, flexibility is becoming mainstream in 2021 and beyond: new work relations in a post-COVID place more value on empowering the labor force. The workers have more control of their time and careers, which leads to more engaged employees, which leads to better performance.

There’s a downside to it as well: working with ambiguity, always being ‘on standby’ for new measures and guidelines, etc. – but as is the case with every new trend and development, new processes and policies are introduced and adapted.

Again, like remote work, flexwork is less of a trend and more of a paradigm shift. In April 2020, Forbes found that 63% of leaders expected increased flexibility in time and location; by September 2020 that expectation grew to 87%.

Workplace changes are here to stay

From implementing safety protocols, to providing all the necessary hardware and software for remote work, to maintaining a sense of community, the leverage now shifts to the employee. The employee now expects these things from their employer. Not only that, but new candidates can leverage a host of newly-available options and requirements as well – as an HR practitioner, you need to stay on top of this with a candidate-first approach.

In the workplace itself, culture is transforming from mere ambient care to having proactive team members who are initiators, making sure all employees feel a connection to their work beyond their paychecks. This all means a better EX.

2021 marks a period of stabilization after the rollercoaster of 2020. It’ll define and consolidate what 2020 (sometimes hastily) set in motion. Let’s see how the new normal transforms into the next normal, paying close attention to our workplaces and work environments. With a touch of proactivity and a pinch of creativity, it could include resolving issues and progressing in areas in dire need of attention.

—

Silvana Carpineanu is a Marketing Specialist who works at mindomo.com. Driven by passion and creativity, she’s responsible for copywriting, advertising, SEO, and content creation. She does all of this knowing that for every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.

The post 6 workplace changes we can expect in the 2020s appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Subscribe to the podcast for more ways to move your hiring forward.

The post Podcast episode #6: Hiring in another country appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Subscribe to the podcast for more ways to move your hiring forward.

The post Podcast episode #5: Remote work and what it means for work culture appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Subscribe to the podcast for more ways to move your hiring forward.

The post Podcast episode #4: The talent market is changing and recruiters need to evolve with it appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Subscribe to the podcast for more ways to move your hiring forward.

The post Podcast episode #3: Tips from a remote work trailblazer appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Subscribe to the podcast for more ways to move your hiring forward.

The post Podcast episode #2: The New World of Work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. Remote work introduced itself as the new normal
2. Many companies were forced to layoff people
3. Hiring froze but is now recovering
4. We’re all in this together
5. A big ‘thank you’
6. This is the end and the beginning

1. Remote work introduced itself as the new normal

According to the New World of Work survey report published in August 2020, 62.2% of businesses moved fully to a remote work environment – and 32.3% partially remote – when the pandemic hit. This transition proved a struggle for many companies which suddenly had to digitize their processes and find new ways to continue their operations in a seamless way.

Some of the biggest topics that emerged included:

• Employee engagement and worker morale
• Team building, recruitment and onboarding
• Team collaboration and project logistics
• Productivity and work-life balance

Workable also switched to a remote work environment – one of the first to do so. According to our experience we share with you what soft skills our colleagues find that are a must-have for staying productive and efficient in a virtual office — you can take those into consideration when you seek your next remote hire:

Zaharenia Atzitzikaki, our VP of Design and an experienced remote manager long before the pandemic, also shared with us the challenges of remote management, tips to maintain human connection, and thoughts around productivity and required skills:

2. Many companies were forced to layoff people

Letting people go is difficult for everyone. Many companies handled the situation one way or another. We present some of this year’s HR statistics and facts.

You can get an idea of the gravity of this situation in this chart from CNBC:

According to our New World of Work survey, those in hospitality (62.5%) and manufacturing (50%) were more likely to layoff or furlough their staff, whereas healthcare (7.4%) and education (4.3%) were less likely to do so.

3. Hiring froze but is now recovering

Hiring freeze was also a fact, but not the dominant one. 67.1% of respondents confirmed that their company continued hiring employees, either with the same or with lower/higher frequency.

Our Benchmark Report tool tracks job postings created via Workable. The good news is that after the downfall in April, it seems that hiring velocity is back to where it was compared to 2019. Hopefully, better days are coming:

You can also get an idea of how many candidates were hired per region over the last couple of years via Workable:

And how a selection of job functions were affected the most globally:

Note that while the vast majority of job postings fell from 2019 to 2020, there was job growth in:

• Healthcare: This states the obvious. The pandemic called for greater mobilization of health services which meant more hiring in the healthcare sector.
• Manufacturing and Production: This is perhaps due to a shift to more local manufacturing and production as the pandemic strained worldwide supply chains. Another indication is that, after numerous layoffs in the manufacturing sector in the early months, the rebound was strong with many new jobs over the remainder of 2020.
• Administrative: The complex logistics of shifting to online markets and remote work environments required more administrative work than previously.

4. We’re all in this together

We’re not talking only about this year’s events; we’re talking about life. Both the Black Lives Matter movement and the pandemic underlined that nobody is alone — or at least should not be.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, allyship and unconscious bias were some of the most important topics this year that extended far beyond the sphere of the workplace.

Fadjanie Cadet was one of the experts that talked about how DEI has changed over time, how you can get started, what makes it unique now, and how to make it sustainable over time:

Mental health

The same applies to mental and physical well-being. This was a tough year and it’s OK to not be OK, plus you’re not the only one feeling like that.

Psychological safety, stress management, self care and work-life balance were all topics that initiated discussions among experts and will continue to gain attention in the future.

Here you can also find some tips to share with your team and achieve a healthy work-life balance:

5. A big thank you

This is a time for reflection – and it’s also a time for gratitude. We dedicate this to the front-line workers in the healthcare industry and all of those working to contain COVID-19.

There are no words to describe what you’re facing, nor what you’re sacrificing. None of us can even imagine.

We’d also like to thank our partners and customers for supporting us throughout this tough time.

Thank you.

6. This is the end and the beginning

Endings bring us closer to the path built for this moment and prepare us for the future. We wish you to only grow stronger from this year and never forget that we’re all in this together. You’re not alone.

Cheers to a happier new year.

The post HR statistics and trends: Demystifying 2020 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The post Struggling with your remote team? Learn from someone who’s managed it for years appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Common workplace communication barriers in remote teams

What makes it difficult to communicate efficiently when we work across different locations – especially when you’re in different time zones? First of all, if you’re operating in this fashion for the first time, the first challenge is in that transition itself. You need to find new ways to deliver clear messages across the company.

Tech plays a huge part in this change – we’re trying to solve these new barriers with collaboration and communication tools. Those tools are starting to dominate our work lives. We use them to control our projects, and onboard and train employees more than we used to. But can tech fix all daily issues that we encounter in terms of communication when we’re not in the same workplace? There are a few things missing in the distributed work world:

Absence of non-verbal cues

A huge part of human communication and interaction results from non-verbal signs between us. When you spend time with a person in the same physical space, you “read” them better. You also self-organize and coordinate with them through mirroring – the process of synchronizing with people we connect with organically – especially when you’re driven by similar goals.

So, when meeting people solely online, most of these elements don’t surface as naturally as they would in the workplace. You’re not always aware or even perceptive of how a coworker feels or what they’re up to, if they don’t openly communicate their feelings and emotions. For example, someone could log into an e-meeting with their game face on for the entire time, and then resume in a totally different work mode after the meeting is over.

Tech constraints

Yes, tech is obviously a major asset to remote work – and some may say, the only way – but it can add complexity to our daily work lives. For example, when you use a tech tool for the first time, you need time and resources to be able to fully capitalize on its capacities and seamlessly incorporate it into your daily workflow.

Plus, when working remotely, your daily productivity depends on your own internet provider; if something gets messed up, for example, connection is lost for a while or you face more complex technical issues, not all troubleshooting guidelines will prove to be handy. Worse, that can happen in the middle of an important meeting with a prospect or when you’re up against a deadline.

Time differences

Things can become even more complicated when your team functions across different time zones and have just a few hours where your respective work days overlap. In many cases, you can’t just reach out to a teammate when an urgent problem occurs; you have to wait until they are back online in order to sync.

When dealing with crucial or time-sensitive projects, this whole setup can be tricky. Sometimes, to fix an issue as quickly as you can, you want to be able to sit down with your team in the meeting room and work together for a few hours to resolve it; for distributed teams this is not an option at your disposal.

So what are the risks?

When you don’t have standard communication channels and protocols set up across your organization and teams, there can be negative consequences on your business. Here’s why:

1. It affects clarity: When exchanging one-way messages with employees and teammates asynchronously, you can fail in setting the right expectations and proper goals – especially when crucial information gets lost in translation. Information can be conflicting and this can hurt team collaboration in the long run.
2. It reduces employee satisfaction: All these hiccups in everyday communication create a frustrating environment without clear boundaries and structure. If employees feel that they’re not being heard or that the messages they receive are confusing, they might lose their trust in the employer and may even neglect opportunities to sync with their teammates. What does this mean? Lower team morale and, eventually, reduced collaboration.
3. It hurts company goals/results: All of the above contribute to reduced effort and eventually impact results. When teams fail to exchange appropriate information, set the right goals and resolve problems, all these will eventually affect your business’s bottom line through cumbersome processes, delays in resolving issues, and misaligned goals.

So should you, the Head of Talent, give up trying? Definitely not. There’s a lot team leaders can do to help communication for distributed teams get on the right track.

How to improve workplace communication in distributed teams

First off, to find the ideal communication styles that will suit your team best, you’ll enter a trial-and-error phase. Fortunately, there are certain practices you can start with and prepare for success:

1. Get the right tools

To easily connect with employees in different places you need to provide them with easy-to-use tech tools that enable collaboration and communication. The good news is that most of us are already familiar at least with some of these platforms as we’ve been using them for years in the company office as well. For instance:

• Email communication – e.g. Gmail, Outlook
• Live chatting – e.g. Slack, Microsoft Team
• Virtual meetings – e.g. Google Hangouts, Zoom
• Shared Documents – e.g. Google Workspace, Office 365
• Shared Storage – e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox
• Project Management – e.g. Trello, Jira

Before choosing the best tools for your team, analyze business and employee needs and consider how employees could exchange information with the least possible disruption. Whether that’s through written notes or by jumping on a quick video call, offer them the chance to connect as they wish with a complete set of collaboration tools. An extra tip: Consider purchasing easy-to-use – and to learn – solutions that ideally integrate with other tech platforms.

This list is not extensive. You can find more solutions in this “Best tech tools for the virtual workplace” tutorial.

2. Set the tone

Having the right tools is not enough to achieve optimal communication in remote teams. It’s important to share some good practices and get employees on the same page on what effective communication looks like in your business. For example, you could train them on how to use each tool appropriately, whether to send an email or a meeting invite for instance, and what information to keep in each platform.

These guidelines will be life-saving especially when onboarding new employees. According to a Workable survey, virtual onboarding and training are big pain points for employers and communication hiccups can make them even worse. With tech solutions such as learning software (e.g. TalentLMS) you can structure the essential training for the new hires and onboard them successfully.

Another example would be to create a checklist on how to provide effective written feedback on ongoing projects. If they follow the guidelines but there is still confusion, they can set up a video call to inspect the problem in-depth.

3. Practice asynchronous collaboration

If you have distributed teams across different time zones, an asynchronous communication style will be the best fit for you. In asynchronous collaboration environments, employees are not expected to reply directly to requests – except if they are considered urgent. They can examine requests and projects on their own time as long as they respect deadlines and serve business goals. Employees usually organize their tasks in a way that they can review them flexibly.

So how can you ensure top-notch communication in asynchronous terms? Most importantly, you make your availability clear to your colleagues. If everyone knows each others’ official working hours it’s easier to coordinate. Use tools that enable note-taking and editing.

Remote working employees should be as precise as possible when providing feedback, because their teammates won’t always be able to reach out to them for clarification. The more detailed they are, the better the outcome.

4. Capitalize on synchronous meetings

Of course live chats and meetings will still be an important part of the game. Managers with employees should “fully synchronize” regularly to move ideas further or resolve complex problems. During these meetings, set a clear agenda. Don’t forget to plan regular 1:1 meetings with your teammates, as well; that’s when you really get to know them and you can identify potential blockers.

Plus, during 1:1 meetings, you have an opportunity to really check in with your teammate or direct report. Not only can you get synced on that individual’s work processes, you can also get a stronger sense of how they’re doing. This is their opportunity – and yours, too – to remove the “game face” and communicate at a deeper level.

5. Train your managers

The communication transformation needs to happen top-down: If line managers and C-suite leaders set the example, employees will follow. Encourage leaders to discuss with their teams how they prefer to exchange feedback and how to conduct tactical and non-intrusive check-ins. If they follow this process and show trust in their employees, they won’t fall into the trap of micromanaging.

A manager should spend time with all teammates equally. You can set creative reminders to follow up with employees often, as Melissa Bruno from Stack Overflow recommends:

Adopting an inclusive leadership style also helps communication at work flourish. Inclusive leaders create psychologically safe environments where employees are not afraid to share every idea and concerns openly. This is a huge deal breaker for effective communication. It means that people don’t have second thoughts and they’re united in a culture of trust.

With frequent updates and check-ins, followed by structured team processes and a culture of trust you can maintain psychological safety in the virtual work world.

6. Remember to have fun

It’s not all business; sometimes it’s also fun and games. And for distributed teams where everyone is siloed and camaraderie is more difficult to develop behind a screen, it’s important to come together and socialize. Work should not always be at the core of those gatherings – you can organize virtual quizzes or have casual chit-chats instead.

It’s also worth organizing a company retreat every year – employees relax, teams bond outside “virtual borders”, and their morale and engagement gets a boost. Ryan Malone from SmartBug Media explains why these annual get-togethers are valuable:

Those social meetings will help understand how employees behave in a “live set-up” and you’ll be able to decode their reactions faster and connect better with them going forward.

We get it – effective communication has always been a persistent priority for many businesses; more so in remote workplaces. These days, with teams functioning from places all around the world and our pure dependence on technology, it becomes even more complicated and it’s OK to feel lost at times. But if you follow those tips and tricks, you’re open to feedback, and you continue to refine the process, you’ll make it work.

The post Effective workplace communication: 6 tips for distributed teams appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We asked employers about that and got pretty good responses. For instance, Agneiszka Kasperek has a lot to offer on the topic as the CMO of Estonia-based Taskeo.co, a software supporting companies moving to cloud management. She recommends deliberately hiring people who would be a good fit for remote work.

“That is,” she explains, “people who aren’t intimidated by software or learning how to use it, self-starters, motivated and independent. In remotely working companies, certain character traits are more important than the skills that the new person comes with. The skills can be learned. Character traits – not so much.”

In other words, different people thrive in different environments. When you’re screening applicants for remote jobs, you may need to update your hiring criteria. So what ‘character traits’ can you look for when evaluating candidates?

Let’s start with four common worker archetypes. They are Jennifer, Pam, Lukas, and Esther.

Jennifer

Jennifer is an extrovert who thrives off interaction with others. For her, ideas happen between people, not inside one person’s head. Not only does she inspire others through her contributions to the team; she also is inspired by working closely with others towards common goals.

As such, she excels in a driven office environment where she can walk into a room and take over that room’s energy, and comes up with her best work through meetings and presentations. She can rapid-fire her way through a brainstorming session and thrives in spontaneity. She’s the talkative one at lunch who breaks the ice immediately.

If you had a project that needed multiple team members dynamically working together for it to succeed, Jennifer would be the first person you’d recruit to ensure a successful project.

Pam

Pam, on the other hand, is much quieter. She’s an immensely creative and productive employee, but in a different way than Jennifer. In a busy and noisy office environment, she struggles with all the distractions when she’s trying to get work done. As such, she’ll come early in the morning when few people are in the office to hunker down and do some deep work for a couple of hours. She’ll also find a spot away from others – whether it’s a vacant meeting room, a cafe, or in a quiet corner of the workplace – and work diligently with headphones on.

Those who know Pam know not to bother her when she’s got that game face on. They know they’ll get what they need from her at lunch hour, on a coffee break, or during a pre-scheduled meeting. With all that, you know that if you give Pam a project to complete by a certain date, she absolutely will deliver on time.

Lukas

Then there’s Lukas. Like Pam, he likes to have control over his schedule, because he works better in a predictable and structured work environment. He doesn’t like surprises – he likes to know what he’s in for. He likes to know that the weekly team meeting happens at 10 on Mondays, and that his project is expected on his manager’s desk by EOD on Wednesday – provided it’s been discussed ahead of time.

He doesn’t like to have extra work thrown at him with a “Lukas – I’m really needing to get this done by mid-afternoon today, can you clear your calendar and give this a quick look?”. Likewise, he doesn’t like seeing a meeting on his calendar bumped on 30 minutes’ notice. But if there’s a clear structure and a well-thought-out plan already in place, and if he knows exactly what needs to be done, Lukas will absolutely crush his part of the project.

Esther

And finally, there’s Esther. Like Lukas, she prefers structure and predictability in her work world. And, like Jennifer, she thrives off interacting with people. But she also understands that things pop up and priorities get moved around on a regular basis. She gets frustrated at first, but she’ll take it as it comes and adapt accordingly, knowing it’s better to adapt.

And there’s also a lot of Pam in her – she will absolutely revel in a setup where she can block off a few hours a day to do some deep work and churn out a day’s worth of productivity in those hours. But she knows that she needs to make herself available at any given time in the day, and that she’ll need to adapt accordingly.

And also – if you had a half-baked but novel idea and needed someone to take a deeper look and even bring it to fruition without needing a lot of guidance, Esther’s your go-to person. Likewise, if you had a last-minute project that needed immediate attention and you needed someone to say “Don’t worry, I got this!”, Esther would excel there too.

Evaluating candidates for soft skills

Now, imagine you’re a hiring manager evaluating candidates for a remote position. These four are your finalists. They all tick the same boxes – work experience, education, qualifications, skills. But you’re looking for someone to specifically excel remotely. First, let’s look at the soft skills needed for that.

In the aforementioned survey, adaptability and resilience (67.4%) and self-motivated/self-starter (54.2%) led the way as sought-after traits in the new remote world of work.

Also, a recent survey of Workable’s own employees found that time management, effective communication, and adaptability were the three most common new skills developed when they went fully remote at a moment’s notice in March. While the first two can be good soft skills in any work environment, the third one – adaptability – can be more important when evaluating candidates for a fully remote company.

Does it work in practice?

The signs point to ‘yes’. SmartBug Media CEO Ryan Malone – who has run a fully remote company since launching in the late 2000s – looks at two specific properties when evaluating candidates for their ability to work in a distributed team:

Social energy: Ryan will ask a simple question: “When’s the best time for you to work?” The answer may help him see whether a candidate gains a “freedom” in setting their own hours and removing all the distractions typical of an office environment, as opposed to losing the social aspect of office life (i.e. a lunch with colleagues).

In other words, he’s looking for where they get their social energy from – and that helps him determine if they can thrive in remote work.

Resiliency: Ryan is also looking for people who can adapt and pivot quickly in a less structured work environment, where there are very few windows for employees to walk to a colleague and vent after a hiccup in the workflow.

“So,” Ryan says, “we have to find people that have handled some adversity, and our resilient people can understand [that] maybe a client emergency comes up that you need to move stuff around.”

Alison Bernstein, the president of New York-based real estate firm Suburban Jungle Realty, is also pragmatic about remote work. The ability to be self-organized is high up on her list of highly valued skills when evaluating candidates.

“Having an organized schedule with space, time and childcare (if need be) to take calls, attend video chats, and simply execute daily activities is a great start,” she says. “One must begin to set their own goals and timelines and make sure those goals and deadlines are met.”

Sheena Ponnappan, the Chief People Officer of Singapore-based business outsourcing/offshoring agency Everise, also likes to look for those special signs that a person can thrive in a home environment.

“We have built a high-touch model through the recruitment process where we strategically interview for work-at-home propensity and demonstration of abilities to be successful without face-to-face contact.”

Sheena will go as far as to look for specific regions and population groups with high retention rates when evaluating candidates. Additionally, like Alison, she’s looking for “the ability to self-support home technologies and [candidates] who are committed to remote work as a life choice.”

The same goes for Inna Shevchenko, the CMO at iGMS, a short-term rental management SaaS company headquartered in North Vancouver, Canada. For Inna, determining a candidate’s potential to succeed within the existing remote structure at iGMS is a core focus of her candidate evaluation process.

“I believe that if you hire the right person, getting buy-in, user adoption, and the desired level of learning become less challenging,” says Inna. “This way, we ensure that the new hire will adapt easily and fit into the culture.”

So, who is that ‘right person’?

Let’s go back to evaluating our candidates in the final-four list – Jennifer, Pam, Lukas, and Esther, paying attention to their ability to thrive in a remote work environment.

Jennifer

Jennifer’s productivity might falter without being able to organically interact with her deskmates and colleagues on a regular basis. Unless her calendar was booked with meetings back-to-back or if her manager was connecting with her every day, the hours on end in an isolated home office might negatively impact her energy and motivation.

Pam

Next to a desert island, a remote job would be Pam’s dream job. She would love to stay at home and work 24/7 in her home office, where she’s able to maintain greater control over her own schedule and not “have” to talk or engage with others on a regular basis. She can muster up the needed energy for meetings, but the times in between are those golden solitary times where she can really crank out her best stuff.

Lukas

Like Pam, Lukas may see this remote job as a perfect setup for him. But a remote work environment is not necessarily absent of those unpredictable “pop-up” meetings – loved by Jennifer, Lukas not so much. He functions better when he knows precisely what everyone else is doing and what is expected of him each week. In a remote environment, there’s more of a need to fly by night. If he isn’t 100% informed of his expectations and deliverables early on, his productivity might falter.

Esther

Finally, Esther understands and appreciates the ambiguity of a remote work world and has the resilience that allows her to overcome the little trip-ups and changes throughout. Even if it’s not ideal, she can pivot as needed, whether it’s for a meeting being moved or a lack of clarity as to what’s needed for the client presentation on Friday. She also has the self-confidence to go forward without needing a greenlight or validation from her manager. She can take on a task or project with minimal supervision, and can be trusted to turn out a great product in the end.

Don’t put all soft skills in one basket

So, with all of that, who would you hire for a remote position? At first glance, it might come down to Pam or Esther, with the latter getting the job due to her ability to perform even in a volatile or ambiguous working environment. And in remote – you really do need that because it’s such a hands-off climate.

But take care when evaluating candidates for soft skills. Just because a Jennifer comes off as more outgoing does not necessarily mean that she cannot thrive in a remote work world. Maybe she’s an incredibly quick learner and can adapt to a new balance in her work and life.

Likewise, an Esther isn’t necessarily set for success remotely – maybe she rolls with the punches, but when direction is needed, she doesn’t handle that well or doesn’t know how to follow instructions step by step. You may even come across a Pam or Lukas who turns out to be the very best candidate for the position based on their amazing output and performance in spite of everything else – and that’s OK, too.

Not only that, soft skills are not always easy to gauge in those first few interactions in the candidate evaluation process. Jennifer’s demeanor may seem outright extroverted, but there may be some deeper aspects to her you might not initially perceive in an interview. Likewise, Pam and Lukas might be more adaptable to unpredictability than you – or even they – realize.

In the end, the ‘environment’ matters

Also, while you’re evaluating for skills and best cultural fit, it bears noting that if the rest of your system isn’t conducive to success and productivity, it doesn’t matter who you have in your team. You still need a quality recruitment process, a standardized onboarding, and a strategy to build connections with others.

But do you know what the trickier part really is? In the long haul, it’s still up to you to set them for long-term success regardless of the environment they’re in and their individual traits. That’s ultimately your job as an employer and manager – to bring the best out of your team whether remotely or in the physical workplace.

The post Evaluating candidates for remote work? Your hiring criteria matters appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• When do businesses expect their operations to return to “normal” after COVID-19?
• When do businesses expect their industry to return to “normal” after COVID-19?

The COVID-19 crisis is unpredictable and volatile, making the future hard to plan for. However, our respondents do have to make projections on a return to normalcy so they’re not operating fully in a vacuum in the new world of work.

Post-COVID world

So when do we return to normalcy or at least return to some semblance of stability? We asked that question as it applies to business operations and to the overall industry.

“I have been amazed at how well our team have adapted to working from home. We have all acknowledged that we miss the team interaction, but I really feel we’ve got to know each other more, we’ve had daily calls since the lockdown, which has helped our split-site company. I think it will take time to accept the new normal, but we will get there. … I hope that we take all the learnings we’ve acquired during this lockdown and bring these forward. Our air is clearer, our seas are cleaner, we recognise the importance of being connected after being so isolated for so long, we appreciate the small exercise time we’ve had outdoors. The world will be different, but so much potential to be better too.” – Survey respondent

There was no clear consensus on when there would be a return to normalcy – only that 4-6 months was the most popular answer for both own business operations and for industry. The differences between “business return” and “industry return” were quite marked in the 0-3 month category, with 21.9% of businesses saying they’d return to “normal” within three months compared with 13.5% saying their industry would return to “normal” in the same time frame.

The opposite was true for a return to normalcy within 1-2 years – with just under 10% of respondents seeing their business returning, compared with 16.9% for their industry returning.

When we dissect the “business return to normal” responses by senior-level positions versus entry/mid-level positions, senior-level workers projected a longer road to recovery than their entry/mid-level counterparts. They were also more likely to say their business had already gone back to normal or hadn’t been affected in any way.

But it’s interesting to note that nearly twice as many senior-level as entry/mid-level employees think their business has already returned to normalcy.

Overall, a very small percentage of respondents across the board think it won’t return to normalcy or take longer than two years to do so. The short interpretation of this is that most respondents do think there’s an end date to the COVID-19 crisis and its impact on business and industry. It’s just a matter of when.

“In our industry, it will never return to before COVID-19. We will need to change our focus to marketing to consumers within our own country, province or within driving distance. The visitors from around the world will be minimal.” – Survey respondent

 

“This time shall pass. Social distancing will end. We will all be back to being regular humans again.” – Survey respondent

Conclusion

Our initial goal in the survey was to identify when businesses thought they would return to normalcy after COVID-19 – in short, when the future workplace would arrive. That part of the survey, however, resulted in the most inconclusive findings.

What we learned, instead, is that remote work is clearly the way forward, digitization of processes is the way to enable that shift, and employee engagement is – understandably – a mounting concern in the future workplace.

Also, most of our respondents either have the tech tools to operate in a remote world of work, or are at least aware of or plan to introduce more tools to support that new work environment. The basic know-how of work has not changed; recruiters and hiring teams, for instance, still know how to source, evaluate, hire, and onboard candidates – but they aren’t fully versed on how to do all that in a remote environment.

Finally, the emphasis on the solutions of more meetings, more “coffee dates”, and all-hands to maintain employee engagement in a virtual work world as opposed to new trainings for a new world echoes Einstein’s famous quote: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

The remote world of work is here to stay, and there’s a clear willingness to adapt to that new world – at least in the adoption of new technology. But in order to really succeed in this new world of work, we need to loosen up on the traditional operational practices, and start thinking about different solutions and practices so we continue to set ourselves for success. In short: the new world of work requires a new way of thinking.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Chapter 6 on what businesses see in the road ahead 
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post A return to normalcy: When will work go back to business as usual? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What are the biggest problems in remote work?
• How can businesses overcome remote employee engagement issues?
• How can businesses attract candidates in this new world of work?

Understandably, the current climate marked significant upheaval in many forms – economic, health (mental and physical), social, political, and many others. The shift to remote work is just one of those new developments, but a significant one nonetheless. Everyone’s affected – including in the workplace.

Working in a new remote work environment

When asked what they think will be significant challenges in a remote-first environment, 73.2% of respondents highlighted individual employee engagement and motivation. Team-building and morale (54.7%) are next, followed by team collaboration and logistics (41.1%).

What makes remote employee engagement a major concern? Is it that our respondents are worried that if employees cannot physically see each other at work, can’t have lunch together, or work together in the same space, they’ll start tuning out? Maybe.

In a follow-up question, we asked about the top focal points to ensure remote employee engagement. The responses are predominantly focused on communications and getting synced, with 54.5% of respondents planning more team meetings (virtually) and 52.8% planning to incorporate more communications technologies (chat, video, etc.).

About a third (33.7%) said they plan regular all-hands from top management as one of their top three major focal points going forward. Just 27.8% said they plan remote-work trainings and seminars.

It’s striking that given the overall worries about working remotely, there’s less emphasis placed on upskilling and retraining employees for remote work than there is on connectivity and synchronous work in that same environment.

So, we broke down survey responses to see if there was a difference between remote-work challenges for senior-level management and for those in entry/mid-level positions. Concerns around team collaboration and team building were relatively similar, but we found that productivity is a much bigger concern for senior-level executives (a 15.3-point difference). Individual employee engagement is a greater issue for those in entry/mid-level roles (a 14.5-point difference).

This makes sense. The bottom line (and therefore, productivity) is what keeps senior-level management up at night. Individual employees and managers, on the other hand, are perhaps more concerned about staying motivated in a new, unfamiliar work world. Given that work is often collaborative, it does make sense that increased virtual communications are highlighted as ways to maintain remote employee engagement.

But now that we’re operating in a socially, politically, and economically volatile landscape, there’s more emphasis on engagement than remote-work performance.

A perceived shift in engagement

Employee disengagement is a dominant concern in a post-COVID world for many in our survey – with a full 54.8% including it in their list of top challenges going forward. New logistics (i.e. staggered schedules, virtual meetings, etc.) comes in at a distant second (32.3%).

Respondents who picked “Other” listed lower budgets for financial stability, maintaining company culture, and employee mental health as additional challenges.

We then asked respondents what they felt would become more important or less important in terms of candidate attraction going into the new world of work. They predicted that remote work, flexibility, and work-life balance (81.8%) will become more important in the eyes of candidates than before COVID-19, closely followed job security (79.8%)

Just a third of respondents thought compensation (33.3%) and career opportunity (34.6%) would become more important going forward – although it bears noting that compensation and career opportunity are traditionally high in value, possibly making “more important” a moot point.

Also: these are the opinions of employers and professionals. If one were to ask candidates themselves, the numbers may differ.

A potential insight is that candidates – and employees – will be more concerned about their physical and mental health now more than previously. The ability to determine one’s own hours and workspace is a huge benefit for many in that regard, and can improve remote employee engagement. It’s worth conducting an employee engagement survey to find out what’s at stake in your own business.

“There will be more focus on the person rather than on what the person produces. Companies will start asking why people do what they do before asking them to just do their job.” – Survey respondent

The uncertain economic climate also means job security is predicted to be a huge, huge deal for candidates. Most of our respondents are aware of this going forward – and they’ll need to include assurance of job security in their communications with candidates to attract them.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Chapter 7 to learn more what businesses see in the road ahead 
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Remote employee engagement: a new world of work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The post Workable CEO Nikos Moraitakis on remote work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What are businesses planning for the remote work future?
• How important is technology in remote work?

Digital transformation is a long-time buzzword that now means the digitization of information, industries, organizations, and operations. And if remote work is the biggest paradigm shift prompted by COVID-19, remote work technology is the vehicle to make that a smoother transition.

Technology – the great enabler

When we asked respondents what made them able to move to a remote workflow without disruption, more than two thirds (68%) reported it was because they already had the technology for remote workers to do so.

“… industries and businesses are going to adapt to using digital platforms to deliver their work and product. People are adjusting to social distancing and embracing the technology to meet people and make their daily earnings.” – Survey respondent

Of those planning to remote operations or distributed teams, nearly half plan to introduce or increase digital capabilities in that transition – in short, more technology for remote work.

Those in senior-level management prioritized tech adoption in the post-COVID work environment, much more so than those at entry/mid-level. Perhaps executives see tech adoption as a company-wide, internal digital transformation while entry/mid-level employees see it primarily as technology for remote work day-to-day.

“COVID-19 has shown … that weak link [in] being penny wise but pound foolish when it comes to technology adoption. During the shutdown, those who spent on technology were able to be ‘business as usual’ where workforce worked 100% remotely.” – Survey respondent

Those in entry/mid-level employee positions are more concerned about the readiness of their business than those in senior-level management. Also, several custom entries from our respondents indicate the lack of senior-level buy-in.

Some of these differences may indicate potential issues around employee engagement.

“The world of work will be focusing on new technology to make work efficient and boost collaboration in virtual ways, [and] more adaptive to remote working style. The expenses for office rental & travelling will be cut as well, [and] more creative ways in employee engagement events.” – Survey respondent

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 6 on remote employee engagement in the new world of work 
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Remote work technology: the road ahead is digital appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What are the biggest hiring challenges during COVID-19?
• What will be the biggest challenges in hiring remotely after COVID-19?
• What skills are good for remote work?

When operating remotely, unique issues surface particularly in recruitment. Finding the right people to fill those much-needed roles is crucial to business success and survival; imagine doing that entirely via your laptop. So, we asked respondents about that in our New World of Work survey.

For those continuing to hire during COVID-19, a whole new set of challenges surfaced. Remote onboarding/training challenges (37.4%) and hiring in a remote environment (33.1%) are top of mind among respondents, with uncertainty among candidates about job security (31.7%) and economic anxiety within the business (30.6%) also listed as major concerns.

In regards to challenges of remote hiring and remote onboarding as well as training, perhaps the lack of remote experience indicated in the previous graphs is a factor. The recruitment process – so familiar to entry-level and veteran recruiters alike – looks very different in a remote environment. For recruiters and hiring managers, this can be a steep learning curve.

So, we asked respondents what they thought the biggest challenges of remote hiring would be going forward. The top responses were candidate engagement (51.7%), candidate onboarding (49.7%), and candidate evaluation (42.4%), easily doubling and even tripling any tech-focused concerns such as insufficient tech stacks and lack of buy-in/adoption.

So, evidently, the problem isn’t technology itself – also shown in previous graphs where tech adoption or availability lagged behind other challenges in shifting to remote. Rather, the problem may be worker know-how in conducting standard recruitment/HR practices in a virtual world. As above, recruiters need to relearn large parts of their work. This places a greater value on soft skills around adaptability and willingness to take on new skills.

“I think it will be vastly different depending upon the sector. My company is in the technology sector so I expect there will be minimal disruption to productivity and team engagement (if the past few months are any indication) but other sectors that are not so conversant with technology may have a much more challenging experience in shifting to new models of work.” – Survey respondent

In fact, our respondents highlighted these soft skills when asked about what the most valuable traits they would be looking for in new hires. Adaptability and resilience (67.4%) and self-motivated/self-starter (54.2%) led the way as sought-after traits.

One custom response in the “Other” category put it succinctly: “Ability to work remotely with limited supervision”.

This suggests that respondents see an uncertain road ahead, that requires plenty of pivoting for businesses and their employees – in a remote environment, no less – and so, they will look for candidates who thrive in that new world.

Recruiters are themselves also operating in that ambiguous, fast-changing environment. But there are many tools available that empower hiring teams to find, evaluate, and hire candidates in the new world of work.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Challenges of remote hiring: Tech isn’t the problem appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Onboarding remote employees – in many cases, without having ever met them in person – is no easy task. In Workable’s New World of Work survey, 37.4% cited remote onboarding and training as major issues when hiring in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, while 49.7% said candidate onboarding would be problematic in recruiting in the post-COVID work world.

But Eric isn’t one to be discouraged by those numbers.

“Regular meetings and discussions on Zoom, Hangouts, and Google Duo have helped us in overcoming all the challenges,” he says.

He adds that there are business benefits as well.

“There’s been a reduction in costs because no infrastructure is required in the workplace. Team members are arranging it at their distant locations themselves.”

That’ll be a welcome reassurance to the 26.4% of budget-conscious senior-level executives in the above-mentioned survey who said new hire onboarding would be one of the main overall challenges in the new world of work.

Camaraderie makes the team merry

Eric is just one of the dozens of business owners and managers who responded to our query for tips and tricks on remote onboarding. One lesson was clear from many: while a standardized process is especially important in successful remote onboarding, there’s a lot more to it than that.

Companies thrive on teamsmanship and camaraderie, so you want to build those strong connections from the first day forward if you want the new hire to be set for success.

That’s easier when it’s done face-to-face, as those connections are built via introductions, meetings, and team exercises in a shared physical space. But strengthening work culture and bonding between colleagues is tougher virtually.

“Remote onboarding has been a big challenge because with this we’re not able to introduce the new team members to the culture and environment of the organization,” Eric says.

So, how do you get started on building connections in a remote work world, particularly when onboarding? It’s not easy, but if you follow these best practices from those we heard from, you’ll be able to build those important connections between your new hire and their new colleagues.

Here are four best practices for you to stay ahead of the new trends in remote employee engagement.

1. Be even more hands-on

It’s easy enough for new hires to spontaneously chat with others when in the same physical workspace, but it’s not easy when that new hire is sitting invisibly in front of their computer. They can’t look around and chat with their desk neighbors or take a tour of the office and introduce themselves to people. That can severely impact new hire engagement from day one.

This puts the onus on you to be even more hands-on than you would in a normal onboarding process. This applies not only to HR but to colleagues and managers as well, says Neal Taparia of Solitaired.

“You have to be very hands-on to ensure successful onboarding,” says Neal, the CEO of this new NYC-based company that ties classic games to brain training. “New employees are [more] hesitant to speak up via online channels than they are in person to get an understanding of everything. They don’t want to ask too many questions over Slack, and ask for additional Zoom calls.”

He adds that you also need to check in regularly to ensure that a new hire is headed in the right direction and is on track throughout your new hire onboarding plan.

Involve the hiring manager

The value of inclusive leadership is especially crucial for new hire engagement when working remotely, Neal emphasizes.

“It’s easy for managers to forget to check in on new employees that have started remotely. [At Solitaired], we train our managers on what successful remote onboarding means. Specifically, we have a rule where managers should be checking in at least 10 times through the week to make sure everything is going in the right direction.”

Husam Machlovi is the founder of digital studio With Pulp, which operates fully remotely out of New York state. His company has served notables such as AMC Networks and World Wrestling Entertainment. He also advocates for the active participation of hiring managers in the new hire’s engagement.

“The most effective remote onboarding tool for us is simply to check in with each other,” says Husam. “I like to check in with new hires and ask them how I can support in any way, how things are going, do they have any questions? My goal is to create a space where people feel safe to ask questions.”

Grant Aldrich, CEO/founder of the Los Angeles-based online learning site Online Degree, says the manager or CEO is responsible for making sure everyone feels connected throughout the company, keeping new employee engagement high at this crucial time.

“This goes beyond checking in and extends to starting conversations and asking questions in your communication channels,” he adds.

Michael Alexis, the owner of New York-based Teambuilding, a virtual team cohesion service, emphasizes the importance of active participation by all parties included – both the newly hired and the ones doing the hiring and onboarding.

“Following documents and watching videos alone is boring,” says Michael. “It’s important to us that these early days and weeks for a new team member are as engaging as possible.”

Make yourself available – and ensure the new hire knows it

Dan Bailey of WikiLawn, an online lawn and garden care resource center which lists services all across the United States, notes that it does take more time to onboard someone remotely, as he simply cannot sit next to the new hire and walk them through all the steps of their job. But it’s still important that he and his colleagues are available to the new hire for anything they may need on the spot.

Not only do his teams record videos with instructions and prepare documents to be more detailed, but also set response time as a critical measurement. In fact, he applies customer support standards to ensuring his new hires get what they need quickly.

“We’ve found that new hires often have many questions that can go unanswered for an hour or more if someone isn’t assigned to being available to help them, so that is one way we’ve improved how we manage onboarding,” Dan explains.

“At least one other teammate is available during working hours by messenger, email, and phone so the new hire doesn’t have to waste time and become frustrated waiting on a reply.”

2. Make the employee feel welcome

Austin Heerwagen of Koda Digital, a medical marketing agency operating out of Carrollton, Texas, admits that disconnection was an issue when operating remotely, especially with new hires coming on board.

“Our biggest pain point initially was gaining buy-in from new employees. There is no tour around the office, parking space, elevator ride, or birthday parties – employees can feel like they are a replaceable cog in a machine.”

That makes it even more critical to make your new hire feel welcome and connected.

Caitlin Byrnes can speak firsthand to the value of this. When she was hired as VP at Peppercomm, a public relations firm in NYC, she found that her new company had a great new hire onboarding plan in place, but some things stood out above and beyond HR obligations particularly in a remote work environment.

“For instance, team members carved out time for virtual coffee with me, and gave me a positive ‘shout-out’ in my first all-hands meeting,” Caitlin says.

“These personal touchpoints made me feel more comfortable working with a team I’d never met in person. Even more importantly, it helped me understand who I could go with questions when I couldn’t just pop around the corner.”

Line up meetings with everyone

Shayne Sherman, the CEO of TechLoris, a computer service in Brookline, Massachusetts, highlights that importance in the absence of water cooler conversations and “quick drops by one’s desk”.

“We made sure to make company intros and offer the chance to say a few words at the latest company all-hands meeting. From there, the new hire’s manager would schedule a remote lunch or after-work drinks, via Zoom, to get to know each other and open the chat up to be a bit more informal.”

Greg Hayes, CEO and co-founder of venture-backed office furniture startup Branch in NYC, makes sure the new hire is properly and formally acquainted with their full team right away.

“We ensure that each new team member has a lengthy 1:1 video chat with everybody on our team, to ensure they better understand everyone personally and what their scope of work entails. We also plan a happy hour around each new member’s arrival to welcome them in.”

Tara Lilien, the Chief Talent Officer at Peppercomm, takes it one step further.

“I think giving the new hire an opportunity to lead a meeting, facilitate a staff learning event or shadow a client meeting or call are all great on-the-job moments that will allow for stronger and quicker integration into the team.”

Send them a welcome package

Austin at Koda Digital likes to make sure the new employee receives a gift basket containing company swag and attire, business cards, and gift cards for restaurants near them. He’ll even make sure to include personal gifts based on interview discovery.

“For example, one employee really liked sloths, so we sent her a desk-buddy sloth to let her know that we care about her too – not just her work. In addition, on the employee’s first day, we send out UberEats gift cards to everyone and have a ‘catered’ nice-to-meet-you lunch.”

Kick things off with a friendly, informative email before their first day, setting the tone going forward.

3. Don’t assume everyone knows your tech, because they don’t

When you’re working in a company that utilizes a lot of technologies and has fully jumped on board the digital transformation train, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that everyone knows your tech stack. Don’t do that, says Neal at Solitaired.

“Some of us use Google Apps and Microsoft apps so regularly, we assume everyone knows these systems as well as we do. This is definitely not the case.”

He learned this the hard way, too. One time, he hired an employee that had never used the Google productivity suite and they were too embarrassed to admit that. That made onboarding an especially painful process.

Doesn’t matter who’s at fault for it – it’s a negative first experience for the new hire that starts things off on the wrong foot.

Get them acquainted with tech quickly

Get ahead of the problem, Neal recommends. “Take an intake survey beforehand. If someone does not know about Google apps, we ask them to read up on it beforehand, and give them a tutorial on their first and second day of work.”

Amy McWaters, the CEO of Gifts Australia, a souvenir e-commerce company in Sydney, Australia, also finds that tech adoption remains an issue in the remote new hire onboarding plan. Late logons, lost connections, and struggles with tech integrations continue to be a pain point for her company. She recommends taking care of things even before the first day of onboarding or training – effectively preventing a problem before it even occurs.

“Work under the assumption that tech issues will arise, if not on your end, then on the trainees’ end,” Amy says. “Give installation instructions at least three days out.”

Gargi Rajan, general manager of human resources at Mercer / Mettl, an HR technology company operating just outside of New Delhi, India, likes to get several birds with one stone: hackathons. The benefits are multiple: it helps onboarding in a remote manner, gets new hires quickly acquainted with their new colleagues, and puts everyone on a level playing field bonded by a common interest. Tech adoption is a huge, huge bonus.

“Since everyone understands the challenges at hand,” Gargi explains, “they all come together to accept the technological tools and processes as partners in working smoothly and seamlessly.”

But don’t be fazed if you do run into some issues with tech adoption among your existing and new employees. It may seem daunting on the surface, but with a silver lining underneath.

“Every aspect has its limitations,” Eric at Couture Candy says. “Maybe we wouldn’t have known the creativity required in businesses if tech adoption was quick and easy.”

4. Make it a two-way street

Even as an employer who knows your company inside and out, you can’t assume to know everything that the new hire needs. So, establish a two-way street – solicit feedback from your new employees and refine your new hire onboarding plan based on what they’ve shared with you.

Neal at Solitaired is quick to that point, having new employees fill out a daily survey about their onboarding during their first week on the job.

“It became a forum where they could clear up any confusion, and for us to get them back on the right track. It’s simple and effective.”

At Branch, Greg encourages new employees to be “hungry learners” and not to be afraid to ask any questions.

Listen, learn, and improve

Phil Strazzulla, the CEO at the online review site Select Software Reviews, doubles down on collecting feedback from your new colleagues, acknowledging that it is new ground for many companies.

“Ask your new hires for feedback on the [new hire onboarding plan], what worked and what didn’t. Get your HR team as well as your managers together to go over the results and make changes to address them.”

Jitesh Patil, SEO and content specialist at project management software company Toggl Plan in Tallinn, Estonia, also advocates for this measure of successful remote onboarding – and himself works remotely from Maharashtra, India.

“We request regular feedback from new joinees — end of week 1, end week 2, end of the first month, and so on.”

This series of sample questions for your new hire can help you collect valuable feedback on your remote new hire onboarding plan.

Set up an open Q&A channel

Michael at Teambuilding takes a unique approach to the two-way street in his company’s remote onboarding strategy.

“One way we’ve made the onboarding process more engaging is using employee journaling. For each new hire, we create a private channel in Slack where they can share their thoughts and ideas,” Michael explains.

“For example, it might be a note like, ‘I’m a little confused at who these people are’, and then we can chime in with info about team members or organizational structure. The journal also introduces fresh eyes to our systems to help improve. For example, ‘I noticed that XYZ is inefficient, and in previous roles I’ve done it this way that was more efficient’.”

It can also be a morale booster for those doing the actual onboarding, he adds.

“[We] are happy to receive feedback like ‘never felt so welcome in any of my jobs before’ or ‘everyone is so welcoming here’”.

Maximize the connectivity

Nuances are often lost in the remote work world. You can overcome that by getting everyone as involved as possible, ensuring the new hire feels part of the team from day one, staying on top of any potential tech hiccups, and establishing open two-way communication channels. That will set your new hires for success as early in the game as possible.

It also helps your existing employees get better acquainted with each other – including their individual styles and working habits – and fosters a more cohesive team environment, even in a world where few people have actually met but still work together on a daily basis.

And this doesn’t need to be a chore, either, says Eric at Couture Candy.

“Remote onboarding is fun if you enjoy it,” he says with a smile.

Want to read more? Check out our tutorial on reducing new hire turnover in your company.

The post Your remote new hire onboarding plan: Build those connections appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How much can companies go remote?
• Why can’t some employees go remote?
• Why can some employees go remote?
• Which industries are good for remote work?
• Which industries aren’t good for remote work?
• What helps employees succeed in a remote workplace?

We’ve established remote work as the number-one disruption going forward. But what will that new remote work world look like, and how feasible is it? We asked those questions in our survey as well.

Shift to remote is doable – to a degree

Two thirds of respondents (64.3%) reported that, of their workforce not already working remote, more than a quarter can move to a virtual environment without disruption. And 15.2% said they’d be able to move their entire workforce to remote.

But that’s just one side of the same coin. The other side is that more than a third (35.7%) of respondents can only move at most one quarter of their current non-remote workforce to a virtual environment without disruption. In other words, a full three quarters or more of their workforce cannot go virtual.

So, what’s stopping them? We asked that, too.

Challenges of remote work

Predictably, the need to be physically present for work is a dominant challenge in shifting to a remote-first environment, particularly for those in healthcare (81.5%) and education (73.9%). Yet, those same sectors didn’t consider adaptability, resilience, and readiness of workers to be a major issue when transitioning to remote-first.

“There is still value in being present. We are a route-based business and some staff must still report to the physical location. We want to avoid creating a disparity between job roles.” – Survey respondent

In the “Other” category, respondents cited logistics, the value of physically being in the same space, and lack of management buy-in as leading factors in the challenges of remote working.

When asked about what does enable them to go remote, a full 69.6% of education workers said they didn’t need to be physically present at work, tops across our four major sectors, while at the same time trailing all other sectors in terms of technological readiness.

One could dive deeper into the “why” of this, but one potential takeaway is that those in education feel they can work remotely if they have the technology to do so. There are myriad reasons for not having the technology, for instance, a digital divide among students, budgetary challenges, or lack of buy-in or support from key stakeholders and users.

What we do know is that many major schools from K-12 to college/university – including in California and at Harvard – are moving to a digital-first curriculum and may even remain so for the foreseeable future. Technology has enabled that to happen.

Perhaps that technology component marks a permanent shift and a major change in a sector that traditionally has required physical presence. We may see similar trends in other sectors.

So – the paradigm shift continues to be remote, and technology helps that shift to happen – but some sectors are not as ready as others.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post Challenges of remote work: the tech shall overcome appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How many workers worked remotely before COVID-19?
• How many workers are working remotely during COVID-19?
• How many businesses plan to make the remote workplace permanent?
• What are the biggest paradigm shifts due to COVID-19?
• How do the COVID-19 paradigm shifts differ by industry?

COVID-19 isn’t just a health pandemic – it’s also a social and economic pandemic in that it has significantly impacted how people and businesses operate.

Shift to a remote workplace

The majority of respondents (68%) reported that, prior to the COVID-19 crisis, a quarter or less of their employees worked remotely. Just 11.2% of businesses reported that three quarters or more of their workers operated in a virtual environment before the crisis hit.

And now? A significant portion of respondents (nearly 60%) said at least three quarters of their staff currently operate in a remote working environment.

The stark difference between these two graphs (pre-COVID and current COVID environment) indicates that COVID is a major catalyst in moving to remote, and that this change was very sudden. It also tells us that many companies hit the ground running in that shift – in many cases, literally one day to the next.

Shift to the remote workplace is permanent

When asked about a permanent shift to a remote workplace, 41.3% of respondents said they will move at least some positions to a virtual environment, and an additional 9% said they will be fully remote after COVID. Just over one-fifth (21.9%) said they will not permanently move any positions to remote.

Remote work and distributed teams led by and far in a list of predicted paradigm shifts post-COVID, with a full 71.1% of respondents citing that shift as a new standard. This is well ahead of other options including rules around physical distancing, more tech adoption, and updated workplace design.

“Remote jobs will increase. Companies will adapt to remote working patterns; this will be the new normal even with the invention of a vaccine. As people become used to working from home, meeting physically will be only a matter of necessity.” – Survey respondent

Of those businesses considering a more permanent shift, one-third (33.3%) of respondents said that they plan to move half or more of their workforce to remote going forward. Another 40.8% said they will move 26% to 50% of their workforce to a remote workplace environment.

The difference in the pre-COVID remote work numbers and post-COVID plans – and the large number of businesses who moved some or all their workforce to remote during the crisis itself – tells us that COVID-19 not only is a significant catalyst in shifting to remote, but also heavily impacts future plans around remote work.

Of course, each business has their own unique experience in this shift. Three potential stories are:

• Businesses were already planning to move some of their workforce to a remote environment for a variety of reasons (economics, logistics, engagement, etc.), and COVID-19 merely expedited those plans (for example, Twitter);
• Businesses were considering remote as a possibility, but not as a priority until COVID-19 hit; or
• Businesses did not think remote was feasible or even a good idea, but changed their perspective when forced to operate in that environment by COVID-19.

Numbers differ across industries

Although remote work was the most popularly predicted paradigm shift across all respondents in our survey, those in the healthcare sector say rules around physical distancing (63%) and tech/digital adoption (59.3%) will be as significant as remote work (also 59.3%) as major changes going forward.

And those in education tagged changes in the physical workplace as their second-most popular choice after remote work.

Still, remote work is the clear leader in terms of paradigm shift. This tells us that, regardless of industry, remote work is here to stay.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 1 on the impact that COVID-19 had on business and processes
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

Want to read it all in one place? Check out the full report here.

The post COVID-19 big shifts: The workplace will stay remote controlled appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But remote onboarding is no longer an unusual part of the job. It may become more the norm than the exception – according to Workable’s survey, 71.1% say remote work and distributed teams will be a major paradigm shift going forward.

It’s also a welcome shift; in the TalentLMS study, 77% of employees say they would accept a job even without a physical visit to their employer’s office, while 73% say they’d accept a job even without meeting any of their new colleagues in person.

If remote is accepted both by employer and employee – the focus then moves to onboarding remote employees. And an effective remote onboarding process is essential if you want your new hires – and your business altogether – to be set for success.

Related: 9 remote onboarding FAQs to level up your process

New jobs are stressful – and can be costly

Onboarding is not only important for business performance – it’s a concern for new hires as well. Starting a new job is a stressful experience. The tips for new employees range from finding support to not being afraid to ask for help – but how do you do that if you can’t even see your work environment or even know who you’re working with? Fast Company recommends designing familiar schedules outside of work and sticking to a regular work routine. Great, but even our non-work activities are severely disrupted by COVID-19. This just adds to the existing challenges of a regular work routine in a remote environment.

If you don’t solve or at least alleviate those stresses in a new hire, the costs to business are clear, both factoring into the cost per hire:

Increased employee turnover

A clumsy onboarding experience can make new hires feel frustrated and lose faith in you as an employer. Culture Amp’s Joshua Bach told us at an event last year: “10% of people [leave] within the first six months of starting a new job. And many people decide if they’re going to leave a job within the first six weeks.“ So, it’s crucial to make that strong first impression as an employer.

Those are important numbers considering that the costs of employee turnover can be a real eye-opener.

Increased time to ramp

When it takes longer for a new hire to know how to do their job properly, be it in utilizing new technologies or fitting into the existing workflow, it causes delays and even breakdowns in operations and processes. You want your new hires operating at full productivity as quickly as possible – and onboarding is a huge factor in that.

A good onboarding process can increase new hire productivity by 70% and employee retention by 82% according to Sapling, an onboarding/offboarding platform. The numbers speak for themselves, including at the bottom line.

People like predictability

Structure. Systems. Clarity. Uniformity. Organization. People trust people – and employers – who are organized ahead of time. If a new hire comes into your company and experiences a clear, well-thought-out process for onboarding remote employees, that’s a powerful first impression, showing them that your company cares about them and that you’ve got their back.

There’s a reason why process standardization is a heavily emphasized necessity in the survival and sustainability of a company: it’s because it works. When you have a clear blueprint that everyone can follow to a T, the benefits are numerous:

• It reduces costly errors and breakdowns in process.
• It ensures higher-quality and quicker execution.
• It enables scalable training when you need to fill numerous positions at once.
• It helps you identify specific areas for change and improvement – and act on them.

Inna Shevchenko, the CMO at iGMS, a short-term rental management SaaS company headquartered in North Vancouver, Canada, says that the most important lesson she’s learned after five years of hiring, training and managing employees remotely is to have a well-established process to follow.

After 12 years in the marketing biz during which she managed and trained remote teams, Inna finds that remote onboarding really isn’t all that different from ‘normal’ onboarding – the core components are the same.

“Creating a well-crafted process and structure, preparing detailed training documentation, and hiring the right person are the secrets to success.”

Business executive Erik Rivera of Thrive Talk, a telehealth platform focusing on mental health, emphasizes the importance of setting up a system beforehand, to increase clarity and reduce cost.

“A premade onboarding process followed by assessment tests helps ensure that employees know the essentials before working. Since the process is entirely automated, it lessens the expenses of the company because it eliminates the need to hire onboarding specialists.”

SuperAwesome’s Nick Yockney highlighted structure as one of his four go-to strategies in successful remote onboarding.

“We have a very, very structured way that anyone joining SuperAwesome comes into the business.” Nick said. “We call it a 30/60/90. And when someone comes in, they will have a list of tasks that they need to do for their first 30 days, and they will be specific to the role that they’re doing, but there’s also a core foundation of exactly what they do.”

Meanwhile, this comprehensive, step-by-step guide on how to build a new employee onboarding process will give you the framework to build on.

On board with us now?

Let’s start with four top tips for standardizing your onboarding process for remote employees:

1. Start with existing templates and tools

Not having an onboarding foundation already in place is a big mistake, says Max Harland, CEO of Dentaly, one of the world’s largest online dental health resources.

“The biggest challenge in remote onboarding is starting from scratch without any robust plans to start,” Max says, pointing to unreliability in the process and cost creep as potential issues. “You might end up creating a structure that is not suitable for remote onboarding and spend resources aimlessly without getting any results.”

Max recommends procuring an existing remote onboarding template from a colleague or investing in a reliable onboarding tool to more quickly set you up for success.

Following up on Max’s point – it’s better to have something in place and build on that. You can customize to your unique needs as they reveal themselves, and identify areas for improvement. Premade onboarding tools such as Rippling or Click Boarding can help you get a head start with your online onboarding until you’re ready to refine the process.

Also, here’s a remote onboarding checklist template you can use.

2. Line up your training materials – and diversify the format

The second point of advice from Inna at iGMS, that of having detailed training documentation to share with the new hire, is also crucial to a standardized process for onboarding remote employees.

“Documenting the processes, steps, training, and related materials make it easier both for the trainer and the new hire.”

She recommends having training materials with easy-to-follow instructions enriched with visuals, creating how-to videos, and recording online training sessions for future reference. And, she adds, it’s better to be short, legible, and to the point.

“In the end, all these materials help build an internal knowledge base and make the process of onboarding smoother.”

Greg Hayes, the CEO/Founder of Branch Furniture, a venture-backed office furniture startup in New York City, also likes to have starting guides for new employees including all the information they need to know about their department, past and ongoing initiatives, and goals to aim for in their first week and first month.

“These guides help give them practical, tangible to-dos so that they can get active on day one,” Greg says.

As above, use templates to get started, and build from there. Be informative and make sure everything’s covered – more so than in a normal onboarding, even. These training materials give new employees a treasure trove of resources they can tap into if they’re feeling uneasy about asking colleagues for tips or guidance.

Keep the resources diversified. A folder with 25 wordy documents is boring – include videos, audio, infographics, and other forms of media. Make it interesting and digestible.

3. Have a handbook ready – packed with information

Similarly to #2 is an employee handbook. It’s the ultimate go-to guide for everything you want the new hire to know about your company. It can include:

• Mission, visions, values, positioning statement, corporate social responsibility statement
• Organizational chart
• Guidelines for work and code of conduct
• Benefits, perks, trainings, programs, incentives, bonuses, etc.
• Performance reviews
• Important dates for reviews, holidays, annual functions, etc.
• All policies as they relate to employment (i.e. parental leave, time off, sabbaticals, etc.)

There’s a lot more that goes into an employee handbook, of course.

Husam Machlovi has seen a lot of success in having a detailed handbook. He’s the founder of digital studio With Pulp, which operates fully remotely out of New York state. His company has served notable clients such as AMC Networks and World Wrestling Entertainment, and he’s found a lot of success hiring remotely.

“Something that’s really helped is sharing the company culture very early on. From the hiring process into day one.” says Husam. “We took a page out of Valve (the game development company) book and designed a fun and casual employee handbook. The goal was to share more about the history of our company, how we work and to inspire new employees.”

Like Husam, Greg has found a larger business benefit to having a ‘user’s manual’ for onboarding remote employees.

“It’s forced us to consider more than we normally would, as everything now must be written down and contextualized in critical detail.”

Think of it as an all-inclusive guide to working at your company and an opportunity to show off your company culture. Create an employee handbook using this tutorial. And you’ll want to check out GitLab’s comprehensive employee handbook which is available for the public to look at. If printed, it would be 7,100+ pages!

4. Have a pre-set schedule – and stick to it

You also want to have a schedule in place for the new hire. Preload a calendar with meetings, training sessions, inaugurations, introductions, 1-1s, and anything else for the new hire so they’re already busy from day one.

CEO Neal Taparia of Solitaired, a new NYC-based company that ties classic games to brain training, speaks to the value of a detailed, well-planned onboarding schedule.

“You don’t want new employees twiddling their thumbs [during] their first week of work. That’s an awful first impression,” says Neal. “Our HR leader with their manager schedules out almost every hour of their day in their first week to make sure they have a productive first week. It sets the precedent that we are serious and thoughtful.”

Tara Lilien, the Chief Talent Officer at Peppercomm, a communications agency located in NYC, San Francisco, and London, transferred her team to a fully remote environment in early March. It was a steep learning curve, but she and her team worked hard to determine the right touchpoints for new remote employees.

“Video introductions, a very solid orientation week 1 schedule, and a ‘buddy’ program allowed us to ensure that we were setting up our new hires for success even if they were remote,” she says, admitting that it was easier to have met new hires in person prior to March before getting to know them via video communication.

That being said, she’s pragmatic about the remote onboarding process:

“We acknowledged early that there would be a longer ramp up period to get to know the agency, our clients and our culture and spent time checking in with our new hires to see how they were doing at the 30-60-90 day period.”

In addition to the aforementioned onboarding softwares, use these calendar tools to organize a schedule in advance of the new hire’s first day.

Success can be standardized

Templates, software, training materials, an employee handbook, a set schedule. It’s really not that different from a normal onboarding process, as Inna says.

But there are some important differences – you’re utilizing tech more often, you’re arming your new hires with the needed tools and information to be able to work autonomously in their new remote job. And, in a remote environment where spontaneous meetings are nearly impossible to come by, you’re laying out a schedule so that those meetings still happen.

Now that you have a system that can familiarize the new hire with the essential components of the job, you need to think about the more nuanced parts of onboarding remote employees: building connections with colleagues, familiarizing the new hire with the company culture, and helping them feel like part of the organization. Yes, they’re the new kid on the block, but if you follow a standardized plan, they won’t feel like it for long.

The post Onboarding remote employees: A standardized process for the win appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How did businesses respond to the COVID-19 pandemic?
• What were the effects of COVID-19 on business operations?
• How did COVID-19 change hiring?
• And finally: how are businesses planning for a post-COVID future?

Not only was COVID-19’s impact palpable, it was also very tangible and it forced action in many aspects of business. Let’s look at what our respondents did when COVID-19 became a reality for them.

Business response to COVID-19

As is now known, a significant impact of COVID-19 on business was that it triggered a sudden transition to a fully remote working environment where all employees worked from home. Our survey confirmed this – nearly two-thirds (62.6%) of respondents cited going fully remote as one of the actions their business took.

A third (32.3%) of respondents said they moved part of their operations to a remote environment. It bears noting that nearly a third of all respondents work in IT/technology – considered to be one of the most remote-friendly sectors.

A sizable percentage of businesses introduced precautionary measures at their working location (37.9%) and/or reduced capacity at work, if remote was not an option for all workers (18%).

“It’s going to look very different without a doubt. … Personally, I think it will be good for us, we were starting to lose focus of who we were, it was becoming less important to talk to people face to face and more important to stare at phones. … Yes, we will be using technology more in our day-to-day lives due to COVID-19, but now we are focusing more on what’s actually important.”
– Survey respondent

Economic impact

The economic impact of COVID-19 is also significant in our dataset. A full 12% shut down business altogether – albeit temporarily in most cases. All but one in hospitality and 26.1% of those in education shut down. In terms of company size, 21.7% of those in the 1-9 employee-size bracket opted to shut down temporarily, a far higher rate than any of the other size categories.

More than a fifth of our respondents reported that their businesses laid off or furloughed employees. When breaking down by company size, we found those in the 50-99 and 100-499 employee-size brackets were statistically more likely to lay off workers, with percentages choosing this option being 12.3 and 10.6 percentage points more than the percentages of total respondents in those brackets. The opposite was true for those with 10-49 employees, with just 17.1% in that category choosing to lay off or furlough workers, compared with 26.1% of total respondents falling into that size bracket.

And by industry, those in hospitality (62.5%) and manufacturing (50%) were more likely to turn to layoffs and furloughs as an option, whereas those in healthcare (7.4%) and education (4.3%) were far less likely to choose that route.

Changes going forward

When asked about the changes businesses are planning going forward, the response was comprehensive, with all listed options being selected widely. The most popularly selected moves are travel reduction (59.3%) and a shift to remote (56.5%). Closely following are plans to switch to staggered/flexible work schedules (44.9%) and a redesign of the physical working environment (44.1%).

Many of those in the “Other” category stated they aren’t entirely sure yet, with one indicating they want to see how other businesses fared before taking action of their own. Others plan to increase personal protective equipment (PPE), sanitation protocols, and overall employee safety either in the field or in the workplace. One respondent in the business/consulting sector plans to require clients to be tested beforehand.

Most striking is that just 6.2% of respondents stated that nothing is being planned going forward.

Whether it’s layoffs, a shift to remote, or redesigning workplaces, this response tells us that COVID-19 impacted the majority of businesses in our survey, and drastically altered their planning.

“I think that it will change a lot in the world. Adapting as we have gave us knowledge to be more flexible and change to remote working. I think many people will adapt more wellness programs and education.” – Survey respondent

Impact on hiring

COVID-19 was also readily felt in the hiring space. Two-thirds of respondents (65.2%) said they were hiring less during the crisis or had frozen hiring altogether. Just 8.1% said they increased their hiring in response. Although our own survey results don’t reflect it in terms of healthcare hiring, it’s well documented that healthcare, supply chains, telecommunications, and the mortgage industry are sectors that aggressively ramped hiring in the early days of the crisis.

Company size also dictated responses: smaller companies (1-49 employees) and larger, enterprise-sized companies (>1,000 employees) were the most likely to report that they’ve frozen hiring completely, while a full half of companies with 500-999 employees said they were hiring less than planned.

None of the six size categories saw more than 10% of respondents hiring more than planned.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post How businesses responded to COVID-19 – and what they’re planning now appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The conversation around remote work has shifted from short term to long term planning with companies looking to establish stable remote work policies and maintain business continuity.

For many businesses going fully remote is the most viable option, however it is not an easy decision to execute. Business leaders from HR, to Legal and Finance must work together to weigh the complex considerations that go with a move to fully remote work.

In this webinar Shopify, GitLab, Hired and Workable will discuss how they’ve transitioned to fully remote businesses and how to successfully navigate through this change.

Key Takeaways

• Legal, financial and operational factors to consider
• Cross functional partners to include in your decision
• Managing through change as a team

The post Managing the cross-functional transition to fully remote work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

SuperAwesome creates products and services that make the internet safer for kids and has distributed teams in the UK and the US. SuperAwesome’s Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Nick Yockney, kindly explained to us how they managed to onboard around 18 people remotely in March 2020, amidst the pandemic. Below, you’ll find his remote onboarding best practices.

Related: Learn how Nick Yockney built an effective hiring plan and increased SuperAwesome’s workforce from around 55 to 160 employees in two years.

Onboarding remote workers – the essentials

First of all, Nick highlights the importance of having a stellar People Operations team to reach remote onboarding success:

“Our People Ops team who manage the onboarding are the real stars of this show,” Nick says. “They’re the ones that make everything happen, really. I take things up to the point of getting an offer accepted, and then they take over, and they run a brilliant process.”

Yes, a top-notch operations team can definitely save the day, but Nick admits that they had an additional asset that enabled them to quickly transition to a fully virtual set-up: Remote technology. With distributed teams in different countries, they already had functional tools in place which proved to be valuable when onboarding employees fully online.

Which brings us to the first remote onboarding essential – that of technology.

1. Make the most of technology

How can you replicate in-person meetings and training sessions in the digital world? First off, with e-conferencing platforms such as Meet and Zoom, you can easily set up a virtual appointment with your teammates. All training can be transferred online, as well. Pro-tip: if the learning material is complex, you can enable an e-learning platform for better structuring and outcomes (e.g. TalentLMS).

According to Nick, tech can help new hires get to know people in the company quickly, which is very important to feel comfortable when joining a new business, especially in the remote world, where, Nick says, “everyone is working slightly more siloed than previously”.

With the right communication tools and live-chatting options, such as Slack, and the video options we mentioned above, you could organize online quizzes or daily challenges to bring people together to interact for non-work related matters. It would be beneficial to maintain that spontaneous socialization that can go missing in the digital work world.

Nick points out how socializing at work will change in virtual environments:

“There would regularly be team lunches, evenings out, all of this kind of stuff, and always as well just that social thing of after work, maybe going for drinks or going for some food with colleagues or going to the gym at lunchtime with them,” Nick explains. “That kind of stuff has kind of fallen a little bit by the wayside, which there’s nothing you can do about. It’s the new world that we live in, unfortunately.”

2. Prepare a structured remote onboarding plan

Nick’s last point on how social relationships among colleagues change in remote work setups shows that not everything can be replicated equally online. But certain parts of onboarding can be transferred without much disruption. Having a standardized process makes the difference:

“We have a very, very structured way that anyone joining SuperAwesome comes into the business.” Nick says. “We call it a 30/60/90. And when someone comes in, they will have a list of tasks that they need to do for their first 30 days, and they will be specific to the role that they’re doing, but there’s also a core foundation of exactly what they do.”

Apart from consistent and structured, the remote onboarding process should also be flexible enough to accommodate potential changes, such as additional meetings:

“Every hiring manager knows that they’ve got to have this 30/60/90 written for the day that their person starts. And part of that will be to get that person to go out and to set up these meetings with various different people. So, they need to go out and organize those meetings themselves.”

3. Communicate your vision and mission

Communicating remote culture is not a piece of cake – especially if you’ve never done it before. Apart from revealing bits of your culture during meetings, get-togethers with teammates, or through your careers page, it’s critical to get your business leaders onboard in this journey.

Nick explains the role SuperAwesome’s CEO Dylan Collins and other C-suite employees play when onboarding remote workers:

“Everyone in the business, regardless of if you come in at a senior level or a junior level, will have a talk with Dylan, our CEO, around the history of the company, what we’re doing, what the strategy is. Everyone in the business will have a meeting with our chief product officer who will talk us through all of our products and what they are.”

So, when onboarding remote workers your leaders can work on getting everyone on the same page and walk them through the product’s or services’ details:

“Our product marketing managers will take everyone through how we talk about SuperAwesome, how we talk about the products, the lexicon of all these different definitions that you need to learn.”

4. Craft a careful logistics process

Your new remote hires will need access to tech gear to get the work done. According to Nick, it was hard to get laptops quickly during the lockdown and this was a challenging task for them:

“Bizarrely during lockdown a lot of people started to find that they didn’t have as long notice periods, or they wanted to start very, very quickly. So, that kind of put a bit of strain I think on our office ops who’re amazing”.

So if you plan to hire and onboard remote employees, especially in different regions or even countries, keep logistics in mind. Ask your people ops or office management team to set up a solid and agile plan and partner with vendors and suppliers you trust.

You don’t need to start from scratch

SuperAwesome’s onboarding story is definitely a positive one. Based on Nick’s description as long as you have some basic digital tools that are easy to use and a well-structured onboarding process, you can easily transfer them to the virtual world.

But what is going to matter the most to rate new hire experience as successful? Is it the culture or a different factor? Nick shares a wise thought:

“Well, I think a lot of the things will come down to adjusting how people measure companies and how they measure whether a company’s doing the right thing or the wrong thing”, Nick says.

“I can’t remember where I read this, but it’s around that people kind of shift from talking about company culture or measuring culture as a benchmark of how they appreciate a business to actually whether the company does what they say they’re going to do. I think that’s going to be a really kind of interesting change for them.”

So, if you’re moving operations remotely make sure to revisit your employer branding and culture and stick to your promises as much as you can. Transparency and consistency will be crucial going forward to the new work world to ensure talented employees stay with you.

The post Onboarding remote workers: SuperAwesome’s success story appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Let’s begin!

1. Warm up
2. Flextime stretches
3. Flexplace stretches
4. Insights from those who did it
5. Ready-to-roll policy templates

Warm up

Just like every body, every company too has its own strengths and needs. Hence, as a warm up, you should identify the strengths and needs of your own company.

Begin with a body scan:

1. First of all, listen to employees. Survey them using Google Forms or SurveyMonkey. Are they interested in a flexible workplace? What kind of flexibility would be ideal for them?
2. Do a ‘jobs’ audit. Make note of all jobs in the company and determine which job can be done remotely and which ones require physical presence.
3. Do a company tech audit. Determine whether your company has all the tech tools and capabilities to work in a virtual workplace.
4. Check employees’ locations, time zones, and common hours where work days overlap. Determine which roles can operate asynchronously.
5. Think about how potential stretches will affect customers, and weigh the outcomes.
6. Set goals. These can either be aligned to pre-existing business goals (e.g. increase in revenue) or entirely new (e.g. increase in productivity). Make sure you’re quickly able to track and measure the results.

Once you’ve followed these steps, you should have an in-depth understanding of your company’s muscles. Now it’s time to examine your options before choosing the best stretches for your future workplace.

Flextime stretches

So what is flextime?

Flextime is a work arrangement between the employer and employee that allows the employee to define the workday’s starting and finishing time. According to the U.S. Department of Labor:

“A flexible work schedule is an alternative to the traditional 9 to 5, 40-hour work week. It allows employees to vary their arrival and/or departure times. Under some policies, employees must work a prescribed number of hours a pay period and be present during a daily ‘core time.’ The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not address flexible work schedules. Alternative work arrangements such as flexible work schedules are a matter of agreement between the employer and the employee (or the employee’s representative).”

Simple as it may sound, there are multiple variations of flextime all aiming to create a flexible workplace and boost employee wellbeing by providing work-life balance options. Let’s see some examples:

• Weekly flextime. In this arrangement, employees can determine a steady work hour schedule that will apply from Monday to Friday (eg. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.).
• Daily flextime. This arrangement allows employees to choose their weekly work schedule by day and apply it in general (eg. Monday – 10 a.m. to 6 a.m., Tuesday – 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. etc.).
• Unlimited flextime. With this option staff works with a free schedule as long as each worker fills a 40-hour work week (eg. Monday – 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Tuesday – 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Fridays off, etc.).
• Flexyear. When an employee has to work a certain amount of hours per year, but is able to schedule it at will (e.g. 2,080 hours per year).
• Lunch flextime. With this option employees can determine their lunch break length and therefore their work time (e.g. half an hour, one hour, two hours long).

Flexplace stretches

What’s the right place?

Well, you can let employees decide this one.

Flexplace is an arrangement which allows employees to work full-time or part-time from home or a different location.

Not only did COVID-19 lead 62.2% of companies to transition to a fully remote environment, 71.1% say that remote is here to stay. Even though operating fully in a virtual workplace is an option that many companies have adopted, it’s not the only one. Let’s see all the alternatives:

• Remote working. As already known, remote work enables employees to work full-time from anywhere in the world. Local labor laws do need to be considered, however.
• Telecommuting. Telecommuting is a combination of employees’ physical and virtual presence, either part-time or full-time. This is mostly convenient for companies with personnel living locally and can be shaped as:
  • Time shifts where some hours require presence at the office and the rest of work transitions at home.
  • Day shifts where some days per week all or part of the workforce is able to work remotely, typically from home.
  • Weekly shifts where employees in turn work from the office and an off-site location.
  • Short-term telecommuting where, during holidays, employees can work in a different location for a set amount of time.

A piece of advice

To get more insights we raised the matter to the larger community. We looked for those who operate in a flexible workplace and asked them to bring up their own experience with not-that-typical working hours and give some advice to those who are thinking of implementing flexible policies.

Here’s a selection of what some of our respondents said:

• John Doherty, CEO & Founder of Credo: “I believe in a ‘get your work done’ environment, and if you work and value to the company takes fewer than 40 hours then that’s great for you!”
• David McHugh, CMO at Crediful: “Being a remote company with employees all working from home in different time zones, we don’t have any work-hour policies. Which is to say, we have the most flexibility there is.”
• Glen Wilde, CEO & Founder of Diet to Success: “If you give employees the luxury of increased flexibility, they’ll know not to abuse that privilege since they don’t want to force the manager’s hand at returning to a more rigid schedule.”
• Andres Aguero, SEO Strategist at Barbeques Galore: “Listen to your employees and see what makes them comfortable. Different people are productive in different environments.”
• Alan Borch, CEO & Founder of DotcomDollar: “You can opt for a time tracker if you would like to monitor your workers but I prefer simple documentation. I want my workers to feel at ease because the less stress they have, the better the work-quality becomes.”
• Savannah Thieneman, Marketing Manager at Slingshot: “I usually work from 8:30-ish to 5:30-ish. This allows me to add an extra-hour per day, making my Friday a half-day.”
• Katie & Medra, Agents at Liveops: “Liveops agents are able to select their own shifts throughout the day in 30 min increments, allowing for total flexibility and control over their schedules.”

Ready to roll policy templates

Have you decided on how to stretch your company towards a more flexible workplace? Here is a list of flexible policy templates to quickly adjust and apply:

• Flexible working hours policy
• Work from home policy
• Remote work policy
• Working hours, PTO and Vacation policy
• Breaks policy
• Unlimited vacation policy

Before you go

Each and every one of us is dreaming of an ideal flexible workplace. Think about your own priorities and ask around to see what your colleagues’ aspirations are. After that, it will be easier to choose the right ‘stretches’ for your team.

But before you go, bear in mind that people change and, along with them, their motivations; so what works now, won’t always work. So keep your finger on that pulse and stay fit!

The post Stretches for a flexible workplace appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The result is Workable’s New World of Work survey report. We think you’d be very interested in this. Out of many insights, we’re highlighting three for you:

• Remote work is the big paradigm shift.
• Digital transformation is the way to get there.
• Employee engagement (particularly in remote) and remote hiring/onboarding are huge concerns now and in the future.

Other insights from the data include:

• COVID-19 forced nearly two out of every three businesses to move fully to a remote-first environment.
• 56.5% of businesses plan to make remote permanent for at least some of their workforce going forward. Just 6.2% of businesses plan to do nothing in general.
• 68% of those going remote did it without disruption because they had the technology in place. Plus, 46.1% will prioritize tech in their plans to go remote.
• 7 in 10 education workers said they could actually go remote if they needed to – but the technology is just not there to allow that to happen.
• Candidate engagement, onboarding and evaluation are predicted to be major headaches in the new world of work. Add remote to the mix, and it becomes even more challenging.
• Senior-level executives are more worried about productivity while their employees are far more concerned about engagement.

But while there’s plenty of discussion and consensus in the three highlighted areas of the report, there is no clear solution or even a rulebook to follow in this new world of work that we’re entering.

What we know is that the traditional form of work – effectively, being roommates with your colleagues, sticking to a set schedule, being “present” at your desk – is no longer tenable. It’s like trying to drive an autonomous vehicle with a stick shift.

Remote is easy at first, and so is the tech adoption to get us there. But in the long term, the pandemic is forcing us to evolve. The numbers from our survey prove that. We may not know exactly how to go about it, but it’s now on us to figure out how to do it in the best way possible.

One respondent summed it up aptly:

“It is a road that has not been walked. I honestly don’t know what is ahead; one is only just willing to explore many different strategies until they find one that works.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing crisis is unprecedented, and is already being called a seminal event in modern-day world history. There will be entire books and documentaries produced on the topic.

One day, we’ll settle into a new form of living, whatever that may be. Until then, let’s keep thinking, talking, collaborating, as we work towards a new – and very different – future.

Stay healthy,

Nikos Moraitakis
CEO, Workable

The post Announcing our New World of Work survey report appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Obstacles to remote work

In response to the question, “Of your workforce that can’t go remote without disruption to workflow, what’s stopping them?”, logistical challenges and willingness to work from home were common refrains:

• “Not having the space for working at home uninterrupted.” (Marketing, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Some don’t have a great setup at home – some people are struggling emotionally from isolation, WiFi, comfortable workspace, noise, family, living in small spaces.” (Healthcare, Middle East & Africa, Service/Support Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote working is very much a personal thing. The office is a controlled environment. Home is very different for different people.“ (Staffing/Recruiting, UK & Ireland, Recruitment Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “No space at home to work remotely.” (IT/Tech, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “They prefer to work from the offices.” (Education, Multinational, Product VP/SVP, <50 FTEs)
• “They do not want to work remotely.“ (IT/Tech, Multinational, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

The value of being physically together in a workspace also came up:

• “There is still value in being present. We are a route-based business and some staff must still report to the physical location. We want to avoid creating a disparity between job roles.” (Landscaping, US & Canada, Owner/Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “Lack of team work experience/stand-ups, spontaneous interactions, etc.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “The fact that we’re solving very tough problems and we believe in people having a chance to discuss how to solve them.” (IT/Tech, Continental Europe, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “Easier to collaborate in the office.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “We like being together.” (Accounting/Finance, US & Canada, Office Administration Entry Level, <50 FTEs)

And overall lack of buy-in, especially among management, was a major sticking point:

• “We could offer all our team remote working, but it won’t work for us.” (IT/Tech, UK & Ireland, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “Employer not in full support of remote work/flexi-work.” (Accounting/Finance, Middle East & Africa, HR Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Mindset of leaders who cannot trust people working from home.” (Accounting/Finance, Continental Europe, Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Managers not really happy with having people in full remote.” (IT/Tech, Continental Europe, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “CEO does not like it.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, self-described sole Talent Manager reporting to CEO, <50 FTEs)
• “Managerial trust.” (Salon, US & Canada, Operations Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Team leads want their teams to be physically in the office saying that it’s more effective.” (Accounting/Finance, Continental Europe, HR Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “CEO opinion on WFH.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)

Hiring challenges during COVID-19

In response to the question, “If your business is continuing to hire during the COVID-19 crisis, what are the top three biggest challenges in filling job positions?”, the following challenges were cited:

• “Candidates unable to apply for visas/permits due to a temporary freeze from certain countries (in this case Switzerland).” (Publishing, Multinational, Recruitment Entry Level, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Difficult to find qualified engineers.” (IT/Tech, Americas, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Small talent pool of profiles we are looking for.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, HR Executive, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Coordinating remotely with hiring teams.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Uncertainty of permanent job location.” (Nonprofit Publishing, US & Canada, IT Support, 100-499 FTEs)
• “People extending their notice periods of termination as mutually beneficial due to economic uncertainty – thus feeding into hiring freeze.” (Education, UK & Ireland, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Restrictions to travel/relocate.” (Gaming, Europe/UK & Ireland, Recruitment individual contributor, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Candidates unwilling/unable to relocate despite generous relocation offers.” (IT/Tech, Continental Europe, HR Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Candidates accepting the first offer they get, so we need to be quick. And passive candidates not wanting to change roles for uncertainty and new probationary periods.” (Education, Continental Europe, HR individual contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Candidates not wanting to work at specific sites” (Security, US & Canada, HR Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “Unsure if candidates truly want to work for us, or if they are applying due to a layoff and they just want any job.” (Consumer Packaged Goods, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor. 50-99 FTEs)
• “Initially, we had many people looking for positions as they were out of work. As more areas open up in our state, we have seen less availability. Healthcare is very busy.” (Healthcare, US & Canada, Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Not being able to hire internationally (can have temp visa holders enter Australia).” (Education, Asia, Recruitment, 1000-4,999 FTEs)
• “Reduced recruitment pool due to border restrictions.” (Science/Research, Oceania, Operations Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)

Hiring challenges after COVID-19

In response to the question, “If your business plans to hire in the future after the crisis passes, what do you anticipate to be the three biggest challenges in filling positions?”, diluted talent pools and hiring in a distributed fashion were listed as top challenges:

• “Candidates requesting total remote working options from countries where we don’t operate offices in.” (Publishing, Multinational, Recruitment Entry Level, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Coordinating with hiring teams remotely.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “With an increase of job-seekers, quality of candidates may lower and sifting through ‘qualified’ applicants will be time consuming.” (Facility Management, Multinational, Marketing Manager/Director, 5,000+ FTEs)
• “Increased supply of candidates but finding right/good people and not excited by all who present well but are not who they seem.” (Consulting/Business Services, Multinational, Recruitment Individual contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Too many candidates for some roles, not enough in others, highly specialized high tech positions may be hard to fill.” (IT/Tech, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Onsite interviews during a slow re-open process.“ (Accounting/Finance, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, US & Canada, <50 FTEs)

Ending quotes from respondents

The most comprehensive responses were reserved for the end, with more than 90 of the 350+ adding their own insights, commentary and opinions on completion of the survey.

The question was as follows:

Any additional thoughts or comments on what you think the world of work will look like after the COVID-19 crisis? No right or wrong answers here – we just want to hear your perspective.

The overall themes were clear as seen in this word cloud generated from the responses.

Even then, the answers were broad, insightful, and varied.

The ‘New Normal’

Many respondents highlighted huge changes going forward, with “new normal” being a popular catchphrase throughout.

• “New normal, more remote work and virtual meetings, less unnecessary face to face activities.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Service/Support Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “More tech/digital adoption; More WFH opportunities: More need for employee engagement and employee monitoring.” (IT/Tech, Asia, Recruitment Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “I think that it will change a lot in the world. Adapting as we have gave us knowledge to be more flexible and change to remote working. I think many people will adapt more wellness programs and education.” (Human Services, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “The new normal will change definitely our lives especially in work perspectively. We need to follow set of rules, guidelines for you to be able to move on forward.” (Healthcare, UK & Ireland, Service/Support Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “Businesses will hire less workforce as they adjust to the new ‘normal’. Some businesses will definitely adopt a virtual platform that will see shift in work schedules. New policies adopted should ensure that the workforce is confident in how the businesses will treat them in psychologically, professionally and financially.” (Consulting/Business Services, Multinational, Operations Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “People are adapting to the new normal. That means, industries and businesses are going to adapt to using digital platforms to deliver their work and product. People are adjusting to social distancing and embracing the technology to meet people and make their daily earnings.” (Education, Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote and flexible working will be the new reality.” (IT/Tech, Asia, HR Individual Contributor, 5,000+ FTEs)
• “After COVID-19 crisis, everything will change, industry, leaving environment, job opportunity in market and unemployment will increase.” (Education, Asia, Sales Owner/Executive, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Less social interaction, business travel, longer work hours.” (Energy Commodity, Multinational, HR Owner/Executive, 100-499 FTEs)
• “All of us will need to adapt to the new normal. Travel and work will be planned differently. BCP-DRP will be looked at differently.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Engineering Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote working will be the new normal with great flexibility, greater international opportunities and life balance.” (Fashion, Continental Europe, Service/Support, Owner/Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote jobs will increase. Companies will adapt to remote working patterns, this will be the new normal even with the invention of vaccine. As people become used to work from home, meeting physically will be only a matter of necessity.” (Consulting/Business Services, Service/Support Owner/Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “In our industry, it will never return to before COVID-19. We will need to change our focus to marketing to consumers within our own country, province or within driving distance. The visitors from around the world will be minimal. This means hospitality won’t be big employers any longer.” (Hospitality, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Company headquarters will transform to be brand builders, places to develop company culture, drink the Kool-Aid, for candidates, employee training/gathering and customers. Think McDonald’s Hamburger University meets Google headquarters.” (Healthcare, Multinational, Marketing Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)

Some respondents highlighted the lack of clarity about the road ahead:

• “There is no standard to go off of. My company is in tech/software and it is far more about what the competition is doing than what is a good idea for our business and population. A small start-up of 60 is trying to set precedent based off of Twitter going 100% remote. That does not seem reasonable to me.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Everything is still unclear… No visibility of what tomorrow will look like…” (Logistics/Supply Chain, Middle East & Africa, Marketing Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “It is a road that has not been walked, i honestly dont know what is ahead, one is only just willing to explore many different strategies, until they find one that works.” (Hospitality, Sales Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “I’m not even sure. It’s scary to think that the covid will never go away and that at any given time you could run into someone who is infected but not showing any symptoms and can infect others.” (Substance Abuse Counseling, US & Canada, Senior Counselor, <50 FTEs)

A few suggested it’ll eventually return to the norm that we always knew:

• “Things will go back to normal, businesses will operate like how they used to.” (Education, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “This time shall pass. Social distancing will end. We will all be back to being regular humans again.” (Telecommunications, US & Canada, Finance VP/SVP, <50 FTEs)

Technology becoming a necessity

The emphasis on tech as part of a company’s business continuity plan (BCP) and disaster recovery plan (DRP) was clear:

• “The world of work will be focusing on new technology to make work efficient and boost collaboration in virtual ways, more adaptive to remote working style, the expenses for office rental, travelling will be cut as well, more creative ways in employee engagement events.” (Healthcare, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “Asian work environment was still very much conventional where employees are expected to be in office. Covid-19 has shown the Asian business owners that weak link where they refused to even contemplate a more modern outtake in workplace practice (i.e. have flexi-working arrangement, therefore reduce office space or have office suites), being penny wise but pound foolish when it comes to technology adoption. During the shutdown, those who spent on technology was able to be ‘business as usual’ where workforce worked 100% remotely.” (IT/Tech, Asia, Operations Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “It will have to be very flexible and open to new and unprecedented measures in allowing productivity to flow despite the new office norms. There will be a greater need for technology and its various intents and purposes so that operations can still continue despite physical limitations. What humans or live personnel cannot do, technology should cover.” (Staffing/Recruiting, US & Canada, Recruitment Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Technology constantly changing and updating. Need training for new tech that changes constantly. We all work with different ideas and really don’t train to work as a team. It would be helpful if we all worked in a similar manner – using similar styles for best in class work.” (Staffing/Recruiting, US & Canada, Recruitment VP/SVP, <50 FTEs)
• “I think it will be vastly different dependent upon the sector. My company is in the technology sector so I expect there will be minimal disruption to productivity and team engagement (if the past few months are any indication) but other sectors that are not so conversant with technology may have a much more challenging experience in shifting to new models of work.” (IT/Tech, UK & Ireland, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Innovation cycles in our (conservative – mechanical engineering) will be faster, customers are more used to digital technologies and will ask for that, e.g. IoT.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

Challenges are unique and varied

Managing a business through this time and in the future had challenges specific to industry:

• “Universities’ revenue model has to change. Will people be more inclined to become self-employed?” (Entertainment and Telecommunications, Multinational, HR Individual Contributor, 5,000+ FTEs)
• “Hopefully more UK manufacturing as reliance on manufacturing from abroad has been a huge issue.” (Staffing/Recruiting, UK & Ireland, Recruitment Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Working in a preschool environment, we found it challenging to meet the needs of our families remotely. We were able to deliver a quality educational experience, but families really missed the childcare component of our program. They are not interested in a remote alternative to preschool and would accept it only as an emergency measure.” (Education, US & Canada, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

Logistics and operations were affected as well:

• “It’s difficult to enforce policies that aren’t government mandated, like mask wearing, to non-employees, such as drivers coming to the warehouse. Then a decision has to be made to refuse that person into the building and potentially delay customer orders? The variety of how much people care on an individual level makes it impossible to modify everyone’s behavior the same way.” (E-commerce/Online Store, US & Canada, Operations Manager/Director, 50-999 FTEs)
• “In our region, we struggle with our labor legislation – more employers are looking at new ways of working and that impacts every aspect of our work , from remote teamwork to sales and customer service, critical cloud infrastructure and security. We need to be 100% focused on keeping our employees safe and serving our customers the best way we can ever be.” (Food Industry, LATAM, HR Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “I guess my only anxieties are: When we partially reopen the office how much everyone will stick to the new rules we’ll need to have about hygiene. When we partially reopen the office if will this impact presenteeism (i.e. my boss has gone in today so I feel I should go in even if I don’t feel safe, or have to take a busy underground train, etc.)” (IT/Tech, Multinational, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Overall, adjust of employees to the new normal will be a challenge. As once in the office, most of them will easily forget the distance measures or to continuously wash hands. But looking forward to have operations and sales increase, having Clients confidence.” (Consulting/Business Services, Multinational, Sales Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)

And sadly for some, the challenges were insurmountable:

• “This is all so sad. Very very unnecessary. I lost my business because of a dishonest political agenda.” (Education, US & Canada, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “It has completely destroyed a business that I have worked 38 yrs to build. I do not see how I am going to be able to stay in business with the new guidelines.” (Education, US & Canada, Office Administration Executive, <50 FTEs)

It’s not just about business

For many, the crisis has a political or social component to it:

• “It feels like the politicization of the pandemic can’t be avoided. if you wear a mask or insist on 6ft distancing, some people treat you differently. this is a much larger issue obviously, but the lack of empathy for immunocompromised/at risk individuals is sad, and it’s hard to empathize for those who think I’m brainwashed by the CDC, WHO, etc.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Service/Support Individual Contributor, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Instead of thinking it is a post-COVID, we need to think that this is the balanced and readily available economy. Gap between rich and poor has to come to a point where both can meet. Only poor feeds the rich.” (Hospitality, Middle East & Africa, Finance Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)
• “More remote working. Increased tech. Increased tracking. Less personal contact. More depression and mental health issues. The phrase ‘New Normal’ was thought up by Communist China. I wish these phrases were not adopted along with assuming everything is all new. Critical thinking is key as is compassion and kindness. Adopting new slogans and so forth sweeps people along but at a cost.” (Consulting/Business Services, multinational, Recruitment Individual Contributor, 100-499 FTEs)

The human factor

People are at the core of the crisis and its impact on business, and many respondents were quick to highlight the changes in how colleagues approached their work – and how that fit into their personal lives:

• “Workers will care a lot more about their loved ones than ever before; work will be secondary…” (Staffing/Recruitment, multinational, Recruitment Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “There will be more focus on the person rather on what the person produces. Companies will start asking why people do what they do before asking them to just do their job.” (Education, LATAM, HR Entry level, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Basically this Covid has made us realize that people can work remotely with the same efficiency and giving extra time to their family as well. So we can keep or introduce a few new policies in our company where each of the employees can get an opportunity to work from home for particular week or days, which will make them more happy as their willing to spend time with their family will be fulfilled during their work.” (IT/Tech, Asia, HR Executive, 50-99 FTEs)
• “On the positive side: People will be more aware of self and growth which will lead career stability and as an organization attrition can be controlled. On the other side: there may not be enough opportunities for those who are laid off – as most of the work would be automated or virtual. We need to create more jobs … that is something which will take time.” (Consulting/Business Services, Asia, Recruitment Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “I have been amazed at how well our team have adapted to working from home. We have all acknowledged that we miss the team interaction, but I really feel we’ve got to know each other more, we’ve had daily calls since the lockdown, which has helped our split site company (some on Isle of Man, rest in London) I think it will take time to accept the new normal, but we will get there. My feelings about travel certainly feel different, I live on the Isle of Man, but travel to London to see our team there, and I don’t feel comfortable being on a busy tube right now, so I think it will all just take time. I hope that we take all the learnings we’ve acquired during this lockdown and bring these forward. Our air is clearer, our seas are cleaner, we recognise the importance of being connected after being so isolated for so long, we appreciate the small exercise time we’ve had outdoors. The world will be different, but so much potential to be better too.” (IT/Tech, UK & Ireland, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “New life and new way of living is happening now, the most important is to adapt and find the right way to work and to improve.” (Retail, Middle East & Africa, HR, Individual Contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “It’s very ambiguous how the world of work will look like after the COVID-19 crisis. What I’d like to see though, is to make adjustments which benefit employees and define new standards which will make employees feel safe. There are so many things going on around us as a covid-19 effect, that make mental health quite fragile. And this is something very crucial we should focus on.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Marketing Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)
• “It’s going to look very different without a doubt. However, we are a resilient species and will adapt to this like we did other situations. Personally, I think it will be good for us, we were starting to lose focus of who we were, it was becoming less important to talk to people face to face and more important to stare at phones. People are now more aware than ever about the importance of family and friends, and less people will take that for granted. Yes, we will be using technology more in our day to day lives due to Covid-19, but now we are focusing more on what’s actually important.” (Mining/Exploration, Oceania, Operations Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

The post New World of Work survey report: In their own words appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The majority of respondents were from companies in the 100-499 employee range, in IT/Technology, operating in the United States or Canada, in HR, and at the manager/director level.

Number of full-time employees:

Main industry:

Region of business operation:

Primary function of department:

Job level:

The post New World of Work survey report: Methodology and firmographics appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The concern is valid. Time wastage due to non-work-related tasks has been a perennial problem even when managers are in the same building as employees. According to a Salary.com survey, 89% of employees have admitted to wasting time at work, with the top 10% wasting three or more hours each day.

It comes as no surprise, then, that several of the top concerns of owners and managers about employees transitioning to remote work are related to how employees spend their time at work. Concerns include reduced employee productivity, reduced focus, task completion rate, and work-life conflict.

The solution to this problem may seem obvious: time tracking software. It’s not a new technology. Both co-located and remote teams have used it for years. Yet, the debate about whether time tracking is a boon or bane has been going on since the technology was invented.

As with any other technology, the benefits and perils of remote time tracking lie in the details of its implementation. The technology isn’t inherently good or bad. Your time tracking outcomes will depend on how well you use it.

To help you get the best results from tracking with your remote team, outlined below are the dos and don’ts of remote time tracking in three key areas of productivity and performance management.

1. Initial implementation

Don’t: shock your employees with a sudden rollout

Whether or not the transition to a work-from-home arrangement is the reason that prompted you to implement time tracking, make sure not to drop the news on your team like a brick. Any change you introduce needs to follow a specific set of steps for it to be accepted. This includes remote time tracking.

As explained by project manager Michal Bielak, “Don’t just gather your team members in a room one day and say, ‘From now on, we’ll be using this IT time tracking software to see how your work’s going. Click here, now click there, perfect, thanks, the meeting’s over’ — that is, unless you want to bump into a group of gossipers every time you go to the kitchen. People want to be treated fairly: if you introduce some changes, explain the rationale behind it.”

Do: conduct a Time Tracking 101 with your team

Instead of a sudden, out-of-the-blue implementation, notify employees well ahead of time and explain the importance of time tracking to them.

Then, get them up to speed with the software well in advance and teach them everything they need to know about the time tracking system you’re about to introduce. The time you invest in doing this prep work will result in better utilization and a higher level of appreciation for time tracking among your employees.

Below are the key areas you need to cover when doing a time tracking 101 with your team:

• The tool/platform/technology that you will use for remote time tracking
• The activities/tasks you will track
• How the time tracking data you collect will be used
• Privacy protection measures you will put in place
• The benefits of time tracking for your team

2. Employee management

Don’t: use time tracking to micromanage

It’s very easy for managers of newly transitioned remote teams to fall into the trap of micromanagement and to use time tracking to do it. Managers can abuse the capabilities of time tracking software to monitor every minute detail of how employees are spending their work hours.

Some may even use the additional features of time tracking technologies such as screenshots and geofencing to implement a “Big Brother-like” surveillance over their teams.

Do: use time tracking to foster accountability

To address micromanagement, you must understand where the desire to micromanage stems from. Most of the time, it’s the fear that your employees might not be doing the work they’re supposed to be doing during the hours they’re supposed to be doing it. This can lead to resentment and resistance from employees.

Instead of using time tracking to create fear among your employees that you’re watching their every move, empower them to foster a sense of accountability. Give them the leeway to track and manage their own productivity.

Of course, you will still use the data gathered using time tracking to make informed and smart decisions about performance management and employee engagement. However, the ultimate goal is to use time tracking as a tool to enable your team members to be constantly cognizant of their performance and productivity.

3. Time tracking structure

Don’t: leave procedures up to your team

One of the primary goals of time tracking is to generate reports that you can use to help your team meet both productivity and business goals. This won’t be possible if there’s no uniformity in how your team members track their time. While you want to make it as easy as possible for your employees to record their time, you also don’t want time tracking to lack structure.

For instance, one of the common pitfalls of time tracking is the lack of naming conventions, a common problem in project management. Without uniformity in naming protocols, you won’t be able to determine whether resources are allocated properly to tasks and projects. It can also affect how you charge for billable hours.

Do: provide clear and simple guidelines

Even the most sophisticated time tracker will fail if you don’t implement clear and easy-to-follow guidelines. Below are a few of the questions your remote time tracking manual should answer:

• What tasks/projects should be tracked or not tracked?
• How should time entries be recorded?
• How should tasks/projects be categorized?

Having clear and straightforward guidelines is a key time-tracking best practice that shouldn’t be ignored. When tracking remote team time, make sure you have documented procedures in place to make it as seamless as possible.

Making remote time tracking work for your team

Time tracking is a pretty straightforward concept, but its implementation is an intricate process. Following the gold standards and avoiding the pitfalls in your time tracking system’s initial rollout, in employee performance management, and in providing a structured time tracking methodology will create a solid foundation for remote team time tracking.

If you do decide to make remote work your company’s “new normal,” you will discover iterations to these do’s and don’ts and come up with your own time tracking best practices for your team.

The post The 3 dos and don’ts of remote time tracking for you to know appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• Natalia Panowicz – CEO at Codility
• Lee Biggins – CEO and Founder at CV-Library & Resume-Library
• Nikos Moraitakis – CEO and Co-Founder at Workable

Learn what the top four issues are top of mind for our three CEOs below:

Future workplace – CEOs share their thoughts

1. Flexibility will be the new reality

One of the things that stood out over the past few months was workplace flexibility – whether that’s in work schedules or location. Being flexible and agile was the only way to adhere to physical distancing restrictions. Some companies moved their operations fully remotely while others did it partially, with rotational shifts and strict hygiene measures to keep employees safe and sound.

With most businesses shifting to a virtual workplace – and in some cases a more asynchronous collaboration style – structured work arrangements, such as 9-to-5 schedules and long meetings started to fade out. Employers quickly realized that they’re not the key to productivity but rather a habitual schema they probably had to revisit.

Related: We also talked with Ørsted, a multinational company in Europe, on how they planned their return-to-work strategy. The takeaways here will be invaluable to you if you’re doing the same. Learn how they did it

This flexibility trend became also evident at a poll we carried out during the webinar; nearly half of the 562 attendees stated that they’re planning to offer more flexible work options in the future.

Take Workable as an example; Nikos explained that the company switched to remote-first amidst the pandemic. Employees will be able to explore which working style suits them best, in-office or work-from-home and freely go for it:

“The office is going to be there and everybody can choose whether they want to work from the office or they prefer to work from home, or even to change their mind”.

Nikos noted that for most businesses there is going to be an exploration stage to see what works and what not to keep employees happy and productive in the long run:

Natalia continued in the same mindset saying that the best workplace is the one that serves the best work, whether that’s virtual or in-office. The good news is that now most of us, businesses and employees, have experienced both working styles because of the pandemic and we’re more likely to create the best workstyle for us.

Natalia highlighted:

“I think we are in a unique place to blend and to figure out what we want to keep from the typical office situation with our teams, and what we want to keep from the current remote setting, so that what we design for the future is the best mixture of both – to support [the] best possible work.”

2. Remote office: pros and cons

Many companies nowadays are increasingly moving their operations to remote-first; before making that decision, CEOs weigh advantages and disadvantages to ensure maximal productivity and revenue growth with minimal impact on business operations.

Natalia gives a high score to the remote-first office. She believes that it allows employees and employers to concentrate their full energy on what matters the most – operational efficiency and discipline:

Nikos supports the remote office as well, especially in terms of productivity compared to the typical office which can come with distractions:

“There is some fluff and there is some distraction, some waste of time. We all know that companies like ours, due to many physical constraints, have open offices. These are not ideal for concentrating [on] your work.”

On the flip side, with remote work, it’s not always easy to set boundaries between work and personal life:

“To be able to regiment routine and create those boundaries, you know, the meaning between family and work is not easy,” Nikos said. “And not everybody experienced it the same way. Some people were stuck in a small apartment alone. Somebody had to take care of another person in their family.”

For those who experienced remote work for the first time during the pandemic, Nikos stated that this is not the most representative remote work sample to draw from as an ideal example. The lockdown created some constraints that will not always exist – and in many cases, happened in an unprecedented situation. Once the physical restraints are limited, maybe employees will need this shared space again to thrive as teams.

Lee also shared his remote office pros and cons and got straight to the point – remote work allows business owners to save a good deal of money they would otherwise spend on facilities or transportation.

Lee unveiled his thoughts further and also talked about the bystander foe which we’ll call employee burnout:

3. Access to global talent

As Lee stated in the video above, one of the biggest assets of being remote-first is access to a “massive talent pool”. You can attract top, diverse talent from all over the world, not just your restricted area.

Natalia agreed and added:

“The talent pool became global. We all figured out that we can do our work from wherever and we can do our work well. If work can be done remotely, you can also hire remotely, so you don’t even need to meet the person to make a hiring decision.”

But this remote work arrangement can also cause a shift in compensation arrangements: “What does that mean to compensation, if we had localized compensation in the world based on talent pools and local job market conditions?” Natalia suggested as a question.

Nikos had a word on that:

“If we get to the point where we really are paid for the output of our work, you may have a completely different employment relationship sometime in the future, maybe in five or 10 years. They have to face things like comp was tied to location. And it should be tied to location, it makes sense. If you didn’t, you would destabilize the world economy.

“Suddenly,” Nikos adds, “you have a lot of people replaced, earning disproportionately from the people around them as well.”

There are numerous logistics business leaders should take into account when adopting more flexible work arrangements, such as localized compensation and employment laws. HR and people operations teams will have plenty of work to do to fine-tune all these elements and bring on best results – hopefully the output will reward the struggle.

4. Re-inventing benefits and culture

What will benefits look like in the future workplace? Following the flexibility and remote work trends, they will have to cater for new employee and workplace needs. With many companies switching to remote work, employers have already adapted some of their benefits to help employees prepare a home office. Lee and Natalia, for instance, offered allowance for equipment, Internet and phone calls.

“We offer our team equipment allowance to make their work settings most comfortable to them,” said Natalia. “We gave the teams a chance to take stuff from the office that might actually help them”.

But how can you be sure of what each employee needs when they work from home? Some of them may already have a catered home office and may prefer other perks, such as babysitting or internet supply. That’s exactly why it’s best to offer a more “vague” allowance as Nikos suggested to cover all types of needs. With a workforce all around the world this will be handy, as well.

Apparently all these changes will impact employee expectations and employment relationships in the long run. Nikos elaborates:

So the culture that companies have tried to nurture all these years, with cool offices and perks – especially in start-ups – may stop existing at some point. But, says Natalia, this is not going to happen at a glance but will be an ongoing process that the employer will have to re-evaluate and update regularly:

Future workplace – a two-way street

“Employees and companies will have to work together to figure it out,” Nikos said. “We all need to be prepared to make some mistakes or to change our mind, which you know is very hard to do recently, so check that out. We need to be a little bit patient.

“I don’t think there’s many people who have a single answer – maybe it’s not the same for all companies. So everybody will have to figure out their way.”

According to our speakers, these “future workplace trends” that have already started to gain ground are here to stay. The future workplace will be more flexible, remote-first, globalized and, in short, different from before. As long as we’re agile, open-minded and patient, employers and employees will make things work – together.

The post CEO insights on the future workplace appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this webinar, we explore what HR and Talent professionals can expect from a post-COVID hiring process — and what you can do now to prepare. You’ll get a closer look at our collective “new normal” and learn how it will impact your day-to-day, from attracting talent to onboarding new employees.

In just sixty minutes, this webinar will help you:

• Ready your hiring process for the new normal
• Immediately improve your employer brand and candidate experience
• Develop an engaging strategy for onboarding remote employees

The post Working, hiring and onboarding in the “new normal” appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s why on June 25, 2020, we hosted a webinar titled: “Working, hiring and onboarding in the new normal”. Jess Meschino, Workable’s VP of Account Management moderated and the guest speakers were:

• David Vencis – Head of Talent at Drizly
• Natalia Panowicz – CEO at Codility

Here, we present their most insightful takeaways that shed light on the future of hiring – and the future of work in general. Get on board and enjoy!

1. “New normal” – emerging trends and challenges

So what will this new normal look like? First clue: remote work is not going to be just a cool perk anymore – it’s here to stay.

For some remote-first companies this was already the reality, but for those who were hesitant about it, the emergency shift to telecommuting because of COVID-19 proved that remote work is not only feasible – except for jobs where physical presence is required – but also beneficial in many ways.

As Natalia said:

“We quickly discovered that it’s possible to do our best work not from an office, that was a traditional way to go, but we’re actually able to do it from anywhere.”

Greater authenticity

This has given a fresher outlook to the way we collaborate and connect with our teammates. We don’t bring only ourselves virtually to work, but also our dogs, our children, and even our personal home decoration taste:

“Work becomes way more authentic and purposeful to a sense [that] we are able right now to bring our full selves to work”, Natalia said.

But according to David, there are two sides of this coin. Sometimes it may be hard to set boundaries between work and personal life, and together with the consequences of the pandemic, this disruption has put employee wellbeing at risk – and at the center of HR attention, too:

Technology giveth

What was the main contributor to transitioning to a digital workplace so quickly? Second clue: tech and digital solutions played a pivotal part in this shift, and will continue to do so. Virtual screening tools, such as Workable Video Interviews, and other collaboration platforms surely saved our lockdown days:

“If before the pandemic every company was becoming a tech company, right now they were forced to do so overnight, pretty much”, Natalia highlighted.

2. The future of hiring – remote screening and D&I

While one of the direct consequences of COVID-19 in hiring is the so-called ‘abundance of talent’ due to widespread layoffs and increased unemployment, there are longer-term impacts on the application and screening processes –such as the increase in need for empathy when dealing with candidates.

David explained:

“We’ve really been challenging ourselves to really meet the moment of what’s happening and remind ourselves about just how important empathy is with candidates,” he said. “Because if they’re finding themselves unfortunately in the layoff situation, [or] maybe they’ve dealt with the COVID situation personally, if they’re still working at a company there might be uncertainty… I mean we are […] really connected by this all in a human way”.

Natalia – and Codility – is on the same page: “We’re in it [the COVID-19 crisis] as humankind. We’re not in it as employers and employees that much anymore”. That’s exactly why being transparent and respectful with candidates is extremely important these days to gain their trust. Natalia elaborated:

E-hiring on the rise

As mentioned earlier, technology has been life-changing for HR and hiring teams; interviews started taking place fully online, either synchronously – with video-conferencing tools, such as Zoom – and/or asynchronously – with solutions such as Workable Video Interviews. According to David, virtual hiring makes things move faster, as you no longer need to invite someone to your headquarters to meet them:

“Knowing there’s so many great job seekers out there who are so qualified, we’re engaging with people a lot faster,” said David. “As soon as we post a position we’re starting to see people who are a great fit – we’re not waiting a few weeks to need to kind of do sourcing efforts.”

Skill-based assessments ascending

Both speakers agreed that hiring teams should rely more on skill-based assessments to find those candidates who are the best fit for both the role and the company. David elaborated more on how, at Drizly, they do their homework and prepare for each job posting beforehand and what they focus on during screening:

Skill-based assessments can also boost diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace. Natalia talked about introducing blind evaluation techniques in early screening phases to eliminate unconscious biases around gender, ethnicity or appearance:

“We have an anonymous workflow mode where we can actually uncover who the candidate is well past the assessment is done on the core [engineering] skills of that candidate”.

This is a positive change; with remote work on the rise, you’ll be able to hire people from all over the world and diversify your teams more than ever.

3. Remote onboarding – pre-onboarding and new hire engagement

Remote onboarding became a huge challenge for companies during the COVID-19 outbreak, but with the right tech tools and tactical moves they managed to cope.

According to David, to nail your remote onboarding plan you first need to succeed in pre-onboarding – syncing with hiring managers and teams and designing the process step-by-step – and based on data, too.

David walked us through Drizly’s onboarding process and gave tips to make new hires feel instantly part of your team and to show them what your goals and biggest values are.

His bonus tip: conduct a survey – or even a fun quiz – to explore what impact the onboarding had on new employees’ learning:

Natalia added how useful buddy systems are when onboarding new employees to maintain human connection and a sense of camaraderie, especially in a remote environment. This way new hires have someone to reach out to when their manager is not available for questions and support:

“It helps everybody to connect way faster and to [kind of] tactically help them find things out if they need to quicker” Natalia added.

4. Remote management – flexible and empathetic

First signs have shown that a thriving remote work culture is one that promotes flexibility and inclusion. As Natalia explained, we now know that “we can work from anywhere, we can hire people from anywhere and have access to a wider community”.

But how can managers adapt to leading their remote teams in this new flexible, wellbeing-oriented style? First off, leaders should accept this new arrangement and make the most of it. David explained:

“It can be tough for managers. It’s tough for everybody to kind of distance themselves from their work, but I think those things are really important to give people the space they need. We have a flexible unlimited time-off policy so reminding people about taking that time, I think, is also a big part of engagement as well”.

Being more human

They could also benefit from a deeper shift that would allow them to be more vulnerable in front of employees and true ambassadors of psychological safety and empathy in the workplace, said David:

“Emphasizing things like self care and psychological safety, and having managers be more vulnerable as well, I think, can really fuel culture”.

As for everyday practices managers can follow to engage employees, Natalia shared her own insights:

5. Remote benefits – flexible and personalized

Switching to a new world of work, which is also remote, means that some benefits will be temporarily – and in some cases permanently – rendered obsolete. Plus, with many companies shifting to a remote-first culture, HR professionals should build a new benefit scheme from scratch that would be more relevant to employees’ ongoing needs – such as equipment for a home office or health insurance.

David noted that it’s important to individualize benefits as much as we can, keep them flexible and explore what each employee would value the most:

“Some people might need to use that money to pay for a babysitter to free up some of their time during the week because that’s what’s going to set them up to do their best work”.

It matters to candidates

Candidates are increasingly asking whether remote work is still going to be an option – either fully or partially – when the pandemic is over. David explained:

“A lot of people are asking what’s the plan, when do we go back to the office, when does your company go back to the office, is being fully remote something that you’re you’re willing to do as a company? Will I have the option? People are asking about that because that’s just the way we’re working right now, right? Some people want to be in the office and I get that, and some people don’t, and we get that [as well].”

Natalia highlighted how crucial employee wellbeing initiatives and benefits are now and will continue to be to prevent burnout as a consequence of the pandemic:

“There’s so much pressure, there’s so much stress everywhere. boundaries between work and private life are shifting. We have to learn how to adapt to that world“.

Emphasis on employee mental health, flexibility and individualized benefits is important; these trends shouldn’t be forgotten and companies should continue to offer them when the hard days of the pandemic are over.
Click To Tweet

The future of hiring is here and now

The COVID-19 crisis is a debilitating time for many – including businesses and workers – but has some silver lining in it, in that it’s prompted paradigm shifts that had been in discussion for a long time – namely, the acceptance of remote work as a norm and a greater emphasis on empathy and inclusion. Change is uncomfortable and as a result, preferably avoided, which means some of these shifts may not have happened – or not as quickly, at least – without COVID-19.

It’s a tough time right now, but if you focus on the good that’s coming out of it in the new world of work – such as greater flexibility, work-life balance, an increased focus on wellbeing, and the introduction of new tech – then perhaps it can be said we’re all headed to a much better place, provided we follow through on the promise.

The post The ‘new normal’: the future of hiring, onboarding and working appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The style of “working remotely” has brought up challenges (distractions, barriers to productivity, etc.) that many employees have suddenly come face to face with for the first time over the past few months. As a result, new and existing skills have been brought into the spotlight.

The ultimate question arises: What are the best skills for remote work?

Workable employees – operating in a fully remote environment over the past few months – recently filled out an internal survey to help us gain insight:

Here are the resultant top skills for working remotely in an efficient way, and how our peers ranked them:

• Personal skills
• People skills
• Organizational skills
• Strategic skills

Personal skills for remote workers

Resourcefulness & Versatility

Have you ever hit a dead end in a project and rolled your chair towards your teammate to ask for some help? What if you didn’t have that convenience and you had to figure it out yourself? How would you do that?

That’s where resourcefulness and versatility come in. Being able to maneuver your skills and knowledge to learn new things and break down all kinds of challenges – even IT stuff – is a process that you face almost every day when working remotely. In a Workable employee’s own words:

“Resourcefulness – I think this is important in a remote work setting as you do not have someone sitting next to you who you can ask every question to. Being able to find information on your own is an important skill to work efficiently while working remotely.”

Self-efficacy

In the field of positive psychology, self-efficacy is defined as “the belief we have in our own abilities, specifically our ability to meet the challenges ahead of us and complete a task successfully”.

But why do remote workers need self-efficacy? Things are quite simple.

This particular measurable skill comes along with self-control, motivation, confidence, resilience and discipline. Since remote workers are “alone workers” most of the time – especially in an asynchronous environment – this skill set is the main ingredient to maintain internal focus towards completion and success.

“Self-efficacy and time management are by far the most important soft skills for a remote worker (which are also difficult to learn too). They both help the employee to focus on the tasks at hand and execute upon them.”

People skills for remote workers

Communication, Επικοινωνία, Comunicación, Comunicação, Kommunikation

Imagine being at the office, walking down the hallway to ask Steve for clarification about the project you are working on. You find him, share your thoughts, and now you’re ready to get back to work. Great!

Now, what if Steve was not at the end of the hallway, but at the other side of the world, just getting ready to dive into deep sleep? Of course you’ll write down all the questions and thoughts you want to share and send them over – fingers crossed you don’t forget anything – but you will probably not get your answers until a few hours later. So delivering to-the-point messages is crucial for a distributed team with an asynchronous model of communication.

Now let’s make it a little more tricky: Your virtual office will probably have multinational people, which means you won’t speak the same native language, nor share the same culture.

And here is where cross-cultural literacy comes aboard. When it comes to communicating, being understanding, patient and open to diversity are major remote work skills.

As another employee put it:

“Respect. Time sensitivity. (I am respecting my colleagues’ time, do not schedule useless meetings that can be discussed in a Slack channel). Introvert at times. No need to discuss too much in order to get things done.”

Teamwork

As a remote worker, you may physically work alone, but at the end of the day, you are still part of a team spread all over the world – well, at least sometimes – and it is quite easy to forget that you are part of a broader group of people with a wide range of cultural backgrounds.

And you are not to blame!

Sitting alone at your desk at home is the polar opposite of being in an office with busy hallways. However, you are not alone, and teamwork not only boosts productivity, but also works like an invisible chain holding the company together.

One employee highlighted teamwork as one of the best skills for remote work:
“Top skill is to be a team player, always sharing information with your team about your current/future work, blocking issues, etc, as well as proactively help and guide your colleagues.”

Organizational skills for remote workers

Adaptability & Flexibility

Adaptability and flexibility represent the ability to easily adjust and bend to changes. Whether this is a strategy turnaround, or simply the fact that your dinner table becomes your office spot for some hours per day.

A recent Upwork survey on remote work found that 32% of respondents said that increased distractions at home have impacted performance. Even though some circumstances, in fact, cannot be totally controlled – such as parenting at home – being adaptable and flexible are major assets for dealing with and breaking daily walls.

“A lot of it is about discipline and mindset. It’s easy to go through the ritual of getting up, getting dressed, having breakfast, go out the door and into your commute to work,” one Workable employee said. “Working remotely means you don’t have to do any of these things (apart from breakfast). The sudden shift from kitchen/breakfast to your office setting and getting into ‘work mode’ is sometimes jarring – so you have to somehow be able to make that shift in your mindset as you do it.”

Time management & Multitasking

The clock is ticking and each tick brings you closer to two crucial deadlines, your upcoming big meeting, the arrival of that delayed package you’re expecting, and your daughter’s volleyball practice that you will have to drive her to. Can you handle all these in a way so as to sign off at 7 p.m. as scheduled?

Time management and multitasking is all about combining and organizing tasks and being on time – if not ahead. Working from home enables you to add more family time and household chores to your daily routine, but you have to be able to manage all these, along with your workload.

Being organized with time was a popular subject in our survey:

“Time management is the number one soft skill required to work efficiently whether working remotely or in the office. Understanding that even though you’re at home, you have to manage your work day and accomplish everything that you would be expected to accomplish in the office is important”

Another employee highlighted the value of multitasking:

“I am able to juggle several conversations/tasks. An asynchronous work style often bleeds from the macro into the micro, so being able to address a peer’s questions while working on a project while also digesting a previous meeting is a common occurrence during a typical workday at home. Being able to separate and juggle concepts (and knowing when to do which), has allowed me to get more done more effectively.”

Strategic skills for remote workers

Critical thinking & Decision making

These two skills do apply to physical workplaces as well, but that does not mean that they are less needed in a remote workforce.

In fact, both critical thinking and decision making are skills that help remote workers:

• Examine available options
• Manage difficult situations
• Take action effectively

Managers won’t be available the whole time. So being able to analyze and make the right decisions quickly are two of the best skills that any remote employee should have.

One employee said it as much, when asked to highlight an essential skill in the remote worker’s toolkit:

“Independence: because you do not have your coworkers and especially your manager close by for the ‘little things’, you have to make decisions and believe in yourself to make progress.”

Problem solving

Consider this challenging scenario: Your manager values your skills and assigns you a task which is quite new to you. After providing some guidelines of what you have to do, your manager signs off for the day.

You plan your approach to the task at hand and start working on it.

Suddenly, a problem pops up and no one is there to help get through it – at least not for the day.

You slump back in your chair, rubbing your eyes. What do you do?

The above scenario is not as rare as it may seem at first sight. As a remote worker you will have experience with that feeling of not knowing what to do and not having someone to assist you at the time needed.

Who or what can save the day?

Your problem-solving skills, says one employee:

“In a remote environment, it’s important to be able to solve problems on your own. You might not be able to walk up to someone’s desk and ask them a question, so being able to figure out things on your own is very important.”

Bedtime story

Working remotely might be a challenge for some, but it is a great opportunity to gain valuable experience and skills, you think while brushing your teeth before bedtime. At the end of the day what matters the most is evolving, both personally and professionally, whether you’re working remote or not.

And to be sure, having all of those skills will get you a full good night’s sleep and a fresh start to another day of remote work in the morning – after your coffee and breakfast, that is!

The post Company survey: What are the best skills for remote work? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

If you haven’t operated in a remote fashion before and you find it difficult to imagine and designate it, you could kick off by asking these questions:

What makes for a great team culture in a “remote world”? Is it flexibility in working hours and work-life balance? Is it allowing employees to own their workload and act independently?

If you’re in Jasmine’s shoes and you’re searching for ways to build a remote work culture that boosts employee morale and inspires staff to get out of bed in the morning, here are some useful tips to get started.

Remote work culture – tips for HR and business leaders

Whether you’re going partially or fully remotely, first and foremost, you need to craft a good plan. You can start by meeting with your company’s executives and managers to figure out how they imagine this new era to be. If you feel lost, check what your peers are up to; you can look at what other companies are doing and what their executives are saying. When you reach your conclusion, it’s time to think of how you will communicate it with your employees before moving to implementation (e.g. updating the employee handbook, revisit benefits, etc.).

Remember to take it slowly; even when you have too little time – the physical contact restrictions of COVID-19 forced many companies to go remotely at a glance – you need to gradually move towards your end goal: a thriving remote culture.

1. Reimagine your vision and mission

As a good builder, you need to start from the foundations; the company’s vision and mission. Now that remote work is in the game, your employer branding will benefit from a tweak. You can brush it up and reconstruct it by prioritizing the new values you’d like to embrace. Flexibility, adaptability, agility are some of them; no, they’re not just trendy buzzwords, but rather, your main assets to succeed in the remote workplace.

Update your content

Once you’ve spotted these new values, it’s time to sprinkle those throughout your careers page, company description, and overall messaging. If cool office perks – e.g. food supplies, play room – and a more relaxed office life were your “thing”, try to transfer these to the home-office life. For example, you could emphasize your priority to work-life balance, flexible work schedules and discounts for local supermarkets or restaurants and food chains.

The more you work on this new work framework, the more suitable candidates you’ll attract. People who seek remote work opportunities or employees who are familiar with this work arrangement will be able to tell if your culture is supportive and well-structured for that environment.

Remember, proving yourself as a good remote employer is an ongoing process; make sure what you’re saying in your employer branding is compatible with what you’re doing and you’re willing to do. Otherwise you might lose valuable employee points, and those are hard to reclaim.

2. Bridge the new communication gaps

In distributed teams it’s common to have people that operate from different places and across time zones, which means that you only have a few precious hours overlapping with your colleague or manager throughout the day. How can you overcome this communication barrier and work together effectively? First off, you can reinforce asynchronous communication skills in your teams.

Emphasizing asynchronous communication will enable everyone to work based on their workload and availability. When employees receive a colleague’s request, they can process it based on their bandwidth – different rules could apply for urgent matters. Also, employees communicate a lot through writing in a remote environment; so if you need feedback on a project you provide full notes to your teammates and inform them about all the steps you’ve been through.

Bonus: recent research has shown that asynchronous communication has a positive impact on both productivity and performance, so by designing your remote work culture to that direction, both employees and business will benefit in the long run.

Provide the right communication tools

You’re not going to succeed in asynchronous collaboration by yourselves; tech will stand by your side. Find the right collaboration tools that will enable your team to communicate effectively in writing and that enable personal and team organization. To make the right choice, figure out what your business priorities are and search for the appropriate digital tools and platforms that will cover them. For example:

• For project management: Trello, Jira, etc.
• For cloud storage: Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.
• For HRIS: BambooHR, Namely, etc.
• For onboarding: Rippling, ClickBoarding, etc.
• For training: TalentLMS, Confluence, etc.
• For timezone management: TimeZone.io

In remote-first companies writing is a huge contributor to tracking or understanding feedback and notes. Not everyone excels in that skill though; to improve in that area, you could offer employees a short training when onboarding them on how to describe their projects efficiently and provide structured feedback.

3.  Redesign your onboarding process

Remote onboarding is a bit different compared to in-office; a common company practice to onboard new remote employees is bringing them to the office for one or two weeks so that they get familiar with the operational processes, who does what, how problems are usually addressed – and to whom.

But what if the company is fully remote and in-office onboarding isn’t an option? For starters, you can craft a remote employee onboarding checklist; try to follow the same steps you would at the office but in a virtual way and find solutions for those steps you cannot easily replicate remotely. For example, now that the IT administrator will not be around to help new employees set up their tech gear, create a clear step-by-step guide to help new employees prepare their equipment sufficiently. You can hand them over guidelines and be available for questions – be sure to include a troubleshooting section!

Fortunately, there are tools that can help you with HR paperwork. Search for an HRIS and an onboarding platform (see the list above) that suit your needs the most and you won’t have to worry about bureaucracy too much when setting a new employee up with payroll, benefits, and the like.

Finally, it’s harder to showcase the company culture to new remote employees. They’ll get hints from everywhere – how you talk during meetings, how responsive you’re in Slack – but they won’t be able to demystify your culture sufficiently. Make it easier for them; build a thorough employee handbook and help them learn your culture’s ins and outs, and set up a regular touchpoint for colleagues new and old to connect – and themes don’t necessarily have to be work-related, either. Which brings us to:

Make it social

How can you replicate the human connection and natural vibes that surface among teammates online? Firstly, if you’re onboarding multiple members at the same time, train them together and create the environment of a hub; they can turn to each other if they have a question or share some thoughts with their peers.

Also, you can introduce buddy systems to help new employees navigate safely through uncertainty. Set some free time slots for virtual face-to-face meetings so that they can easily reach out to you if something pops up. Be supportive and act as an ally; remember how you felt when you were a newbie and see how you could help.

Meetings in the form of a support group can be powerful as well. You can set up a “managerial meeting” to work through pain points related to managing down and managing up. You can also set up groups for working parents who can share tips and tricks on how to navigate life as a full-time mom or dad. Be proactive – set up those meetings and inform the full company that anyone is welcome, and emphasize that these are safe spaces, in the sense that nothing that’s talked about goes outside of these meetings, not even to you.

4. Schedule regular meetings and get-togethers

Live meetings and conferences can still be in your and your employees’ weekly agenda. With platforms such as Google Meet and Zoom, you can tune in with your teammates from anywhere in the world to discuss your projects in-depth or resolve complex issues that arise. If you’re a team leader make sure to spend time with teammates individually and as a team to discuss openly about projects and other work-related issues.

But when working asynchronously or holding virtual meetings solely for business matters, how will employees nurture that extra human bond often gained from a coffee or lunch break together? They still can – encourage them to take those breaks the digital way. They could invite teammates and hop on a coffee break and chat when they feel like it.

Keep it fun

Organizing big events and retreats makes a huge difference with distributed teams. Whether that’s a fun day out or a four-day retreat in a beautiful location, it will improve your team’s bonding and collaboration.

In this video SmartBug CEO Ryan Malone describes the annual summit they organize as a remote-first company and how that boosts their employer brand:

It would also be nice to offer a social committee budget for each individual team for dinners (for example, when onboarding a new team member) or to attend fun activities together. It will boost the team’s morale and cohesion in more ways than you could imagine.

5. Invest in leadership

To thrive as a remote work employer, you should revisit your attitude towards several outdated work practices – for example working 9 to 5. Is that possible for someone operating from home with several distractions throughout the day? Or is it even necessary now? To tackle these challenges start top-down; train your managers first.

If you spot managers being uncomfortable with employees who work remotely, try to explore why. Are they afraid that employees are unproductive just because employees aren’t readily visible sitting at their office desk? As Ryan at SmartBug says, “it’s not really just trust – it’s more like an unfounded fear that something’s not getting done.”

That’s brilliantly parodied in this old Bud Light video:

Instead of having a culture that encourages this sort of “steaming coffee cup” solution from employees, train management on a more result-oriented and asynchronous approach that allows employees to own their workload and learning pace. This then makes it irrelevant whether or not an employee is ‘present’ at their work – you’re now emphasizing output and delivery regardless of location and time.

Again, open communication is key; be available to employees and allow them to reach out to you when they want. One challenge of distributed teams that practice asynchronous collaboration is that you might believe that your manager or your colleague is unavailable and might avoid talking to them, even when you’re in serious trouble. To prevent such conflicts, set clear expectations for such matters beforehand.

One more tip: Encourage managers to have regular check-ins with their teammates, whether that’s a standup or a 1-1 meeting and being empathetic and open-ended in their outreach to them. Be there for your employees and they will be more likely to be there for you, too.

Adopt a growth mindset

In distributed teams with asynchronous communication as the main collaboration style, employees often have to deal with urgent matters independently and resolve complex issues alone. To prompt agility and adaptability – the conditional requirements to thrive in uncertainty – you first have to cultivate a growth mindset and empower employees to see problems as challenges and learning opportunities, not threats.

If leaders endorse a competitive environment that limits this mindset, employees will overstress when they struggle to complete a task – or fail in the process. Since challenges and other types of surprises are common in the workplace, this might trigger anxieties and lead to fatigue or burnout. Instead, having a learning and growth narrative to rely on will boost employee wellbeing and morale.

6. Embrace diversity and inclusion

How can you transfer diversity and inclusion strategies in the virtual workplace? Besides taking active measures to remove unconscious biases in the selection phase, you’ll have to find ways to make your remote workplace as inclusive as you can. Start by showing trust and respect to each employee’s different personality and strengths. For example, some will be more extroverted and talkative during meetings and others will be more introverted, staying silent and writing down their feedback when the meeting has ended.

Operating remotely means that there is going to be backstage that you won’t be able to notice. You can easily spot an employee who always eats isolated in the sitting area but you won’t easily notice who is left out or even mocked online.

To avoid these issues, ask your employees about their experience and their needs; how do they get along with their team? Do they feel like they can ping you when something is wrong? You could also run a survey to understand how inclusive your workplace is, how employees perceive it and what alterations they would suggest.

Promote psychological safety

Do you recall a time when something unfair had happened to you at work but found it really hard to open up about it? It happens to many of us and with the majority of interactions fully online you might never be able to observe a teammate’s disappointed face if they are unwilling to talk it through.

That’s why it’s important to allow your employees to speak up; as long as a comment or opinion is politely and respectfully put, it’s accountable. Feeling that your voice is heard, even when your input is hard to consume, is the only means to have authentic and honest communication. Make sure managers know how to listen to all voices equally – even when their direct reports have only negative things to say.

One step at a time…

It’s no small undertaking. When switching to a remote workplace, there’s a lot to take into consideration. Remember, the culture shift won’t happen overnight. Don’t try to tackle everything at once. Build your plan and take it one step at a time. When everything is settled and results start to show on successful projects and, above all, on people’s relaxed faces during online meetings, you’ll feel proud and cheerful.

So, Jasmine, you’re absolutely right. A carefully built-out plan to facilitate a healthy remote work culture is a huge step in the right direction when you’re switching to virtual operations for the first time.

Final kind reminder: always hunt for your employees’ feedback.

The post How to build a remote work culture from scratch appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But there is content being written about this return to some sense of “business as usual”. We’re pulling all of this together into five major insights, plus a bonus list at the end of companies who have shared playbooks and blueprints for their own action plan.

Table of Contents

1. Physical office revolution
2. Introduction of new equipment and supplies
3. Change in office etiquette
4. Change in work hours and commutes
5. An increase in remote work
6. Additional resources – what other companies are doing

1. Physical office revolution

If the discussions are any indication, office space in the new world of work will be remarkably different. There will likely be a departure from the open-office environments that surged in popularity in recent decades.

But the return to the cubicle environment isn’t necessarily accurate, despite what Wired may make it sound like. The reality is, this is more of an evolution of office structure than a regression to the horrific fabric-laden wall separations so commonly derided in pop culture – particularly in the movie Office Space.

No, your employees needn’t be left behind in the dark. There are many brains behind the design of the “new” workplace, with COVID-19 being a catalyst for the evolution of a more functional office space, as is intricately detailed in this piece from Business Insider, complete with sketches and diagrams of how your new office might look.

“The fundamentals of real-estate economics — we don’t suddenly have the cash to buy three times more space,” Melissa Hanley, the CEO of the design firm Blitz, told BI. “So if we’re going to engage in social distancing, we have to think about it in a different way.”

Many design solutions are being proposed, including the “Six Feet Office” concept from commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, showing how routing and physical distancing rules can be implemented to ensure compliance with the six-feet separation recommendation:

The good news is that you probably don’t have to plan for the new world of work on your own. There are numerous workplace management platforms out there that can do the grunt work for you based on algorithms and data, including:

Maptician Flex – This tool analyzes an office’s physical layout including hallways, meeting rooms, etc. to devise the best desk arrangement. It also includes options for staggering employee schedules and has a built-in contact-tracing system to help identify those most at risk when a colleague falls ill.

Wisp by Gensler – This tool analyzes the existing layout of a workplace to identify an optimal plan for assigning seating, and includes personalized human expertise as needed.

Salesforce’s Work.com – This tool includes a contact-tracing system, shift-management algorithm, and a dashboard of localized COVID-19 data and government guidance. This product is created with open-architecture coding, allowing developers to design/build as needed and share via a marketplace for other users to utilize.

2. Introduction of new equipment and supplies

Office layout is just the first step in what’s being discussed in return-to-work best practices. Employers and thought leaders are also talking about the introduction of new technologies, supplies, and capabilities throughout offices to ensure minimal transmission of viruses and bacteria.

For example, low- or no-touch fixtures may be introduced throughout (buttons, door handles, faucets, etc.). Temperature checks and hand-washing stations will be available on arrival for employees and office visitors. Some offices will implement required wearing of masks and other face coverings. Those with the munchies may suffer – snacks and other all-in food options will potentially be limited or phased out altogether, and canteens may be closed or tightly managed.

Plexiglass sneeze guards and movable or permanent barriers are being considered by employers, as well as movable partitions in what is being described as the potential end of the open office as we know it. Employers are talking about hand sanitizers at every desk. There may be an increase in the use of copper as a design element in office spaces, as it’s less hospitable to germs. And there’ll be increased, intensive sanitizing and cleaning during off-work hours.

A breath of fresh air

Good news for those who are weary of the dead-air offices, numbing drone of air returns, and flickering fluorescent lights – we may be looking at brighter, breezier offices ahead. HEPA filters will be more often used and there’ll be more ventilation in offices with open windows and more free air-flow. Ideally, we’ll bid a final farewell to the sick-building syndrome for good. Offices will be designed to take in more sunlight and there’ll be more outdoor office space where it can be accommodated.

3. Change in office etiquette

Physical layouts and added equipment can only do so much. There are human habits that also need to be managed and controlled. Common cultural greetings such as the touching of noses in the UAE and Qatar, the cheek-to-cheek kiss commonly seen in many countries worldwide, the friendly hug between familiar companions, and, of course, the ubiquitous handshake are all being strongly discouraged.

But we’re social animals – we need to greet each other somehow. Don’t despair – the “Wuhan shake” (touching feet instead of shaking hands) has been played up in social media as a safe alternative. There’s also the clasping of one’s own hands as a greeting – as seen in Beijing – rather than shaking hands. There are many other touch-free options to greet one another, including the head nod, the wave, the obvious “hello”, and if you’re an Office fan, the Jim and Pam air-five:

Face-to-face meetings can also be reduced where possible. There are many instances in which these meetings can’t be avoided, and are even preferred to video or other telecommunications, particularly to get through some of the difficult stuff like conflict resolution, complex project strategizing, and so on.

In cases where face-to-face meetings are inevitable, there are etiquettes that can be expected to be followed. The obvious precautions – no touching, no handshakes, etc. – apply, but there are other rules that will be implemented to mitigate transmission in the new world of work. For instance:

• Reducing or eliminating the sharing of paperwork
• Using hand sanitizer both on entry and exit from the meeting room
• Banning of food sharing – and especially no need for catered lunches
• Ensuring physical separation in the meeting room – sit at least one full chair away from each other

4. Change in work hours and commutes

If the 9-to-5 was already on its way out, the pandemic may actually be the final nail in the coffin for those industries that don’t absolutely need to adhere to such a schedule and only stick to it out of habit. The greater emphasis on flexible work hours and work-life integration may be already in vogue for many, but there’s another thing that will likely become norm as business returns to some kind of “normal”: hot desking and staggered work days to reduce the density of workers in the office at any given time.

Spreading out the work hours also means lesser concentration on the commute during rush hour, which will benefit many who do need to go to the office. We won’t see nearly as much packing onto trains and buses – or even highways – as workers travel to and from work every day, with the benefit being twofold: a reduction in the average commute time which reached a new record high of 27 minutes each way in the United States in 2018.

An IBM study finds that 20% of respondents who regularly used buses, subways or trains now said they no longer would after the crisis passes, and 28% would use it less. More than half surveyed would reduce or even eliminate ridesharing (Uber, Lyft, etc.) as an option. A staggering 75% said they were less likely to attend an in-person conference or trade show in 2020.

Are you ready – really ready – for the new world of work? These 5 insights will help your business prepare and land on your feet – and reassure your employees that you've got their back.
Click To Tweet

With the health consequences of a heavy commute being tangible, including obesity, breakdowns in family dynamics and relationships, burnout, disengagement and increased sick days – and augmented by congestion being a perfect recipe for COVID-19 to spread, the benefits of a reduced commute would be hugely welcome for both employee and employer.

5. An increase in remote work

Remote work is the obvious go-to solution – and the most widely discussed one – to reducing the risk of COVID-19 contamination in the new world of work. GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics found numerous socio-economic benefits to offering remote work as an option or even shifting an entire company to a remote-first operation.

Even though the remote work trend has been gradually introduced across industries and economies for years – even decades or centuries – it’s still a new thing for many companies. But the COVID-19 crisis has been a catalyst to push that even further – with the pandemic being described as the “remote work tipping point” by TopTal in a detailed infographic of the history of remote work dating back to 1560.

The IBM study mentioned above notes that it’s not just a “nice to have” among employees – it’s a growing “must have” or an “expected to have”. A full 40% now expect their employer to offer remote work options when returning to normal operations,and 75% would like to do it occasionally.

Plus, 54% would like their job to be remote-first. The perks are clear – no commute, more time with family, greater control over schedule, decreased stress, and so on. Paramount is the emphasis on work-life integration – the ability to determine one’s own schedule to excel in both work and personal life.

It’s not just about reducing the transmission of COVID-19 – it’s about increased tangible benefit to the employer as well. Remote workers put in an additional two full weeks of work than their in-office counterparts, the costs saved in providing traditional office space is lower, and employee retention is higher. Suffice it to say, remote work is here to stay.

The work, it is a-changin’

Whether you’re an employee or employer, a hiring manager or recruiter or HR manager, your work world will be impacted massively. There’s no point in crawling under a rock and hoping everything goes back to normal once the COVID-19 crisis passes – because it most likely won’t return to the way things were. We’re entering a whole new world of work.

This isn’t necessarily a terrifying revelation – rather, consider it a concentration of the next five years of progress happening within the span of a few months. There’s a famous quote by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

Right now are the weeks where decades are happening, so to speak. What you can do as an employer or HR manager is to try and prepare as much as you can – because one thing that isn’t changing is that we’re going to continue business in some form or another. In the end, what matters is the health and safety of your employees – be it mental, physical, financial or otherwise – and taking many or all of the above learnings into account will go a long way for them and for you, as well.

Additional resources

Theories and predictions are fantastic, but you want to see what companies are actually doing and planning in terms of return-to-work strategies. That’s great, because there’s plenty out there, and they’re sharing their plans with the public. Learn from them as we enter a new world of work:

Bergmayer

This self-declared design collaborative focused on improving everyday lives through design – shared a comprehensive return-to-work plan that included:

• details on compliance with local and federal government
• sanitization protocolsa staggered schedule – i.e. Mon/Wed/Fri for some employees, Tues/Thurs for others
• detailed visuals on how the office layout will look

They’re clear that some of these are temporary guidelines around re-entry to the office, but some of it will become a new standard.

KPMG

Irish financial services company KPMG shared a PDF of their return-to-office plan, with step-by-step details on:

• gradual and phased return for employees
• key mitigation measures (access controls, physical distancing, PPEs, office cleaning/hygiene)
• travel considerations and preemptive measures for conferences, events and meetings
• preparations for technology incorporation

KPMG also included guidelines on communications and compliance in what they ultimately called the “New Reality”.

Kroger

Supermarket chain Kroger, being an essential service, has this blueprint for their new world of work efforts, including details on:

• the process to follow if an employee tests positive for COVID-19 and measures to contain the spread of the virus throughout its own workforce
• utilization of data to make informed decisions
• best practices regarding employee and customer physical and mental well-being in their supermarkets and manufacturing plants (communications, sanitation, safety, traffic control, contactless solutions, PPEs, etc.)
• providing physical, mental, financial, and holistic support to managers, team members, and other colleagues throughout.

“We want to share what we’ve learned and best practices with other businesses, so they can take steps now to develop protocols and procedures to reopen safely and continue to flatten the curve,” Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen said in a video message.

Salesforce

Cloud-based CRM software mogul Salesforce shared six steps to be considered on returning to the office space, starting with:

• a guideline matrix on reopening (government guidance, medical advice, local leadership) specific to each office location
• preparation of new health and safety measures (testing, temperature screening, face covering requirements, physical distancing, deep cleaning, etc.)
• setting expectations and clear communications, office redesign, and supply chain strengthening

Forrester

Tech market research company Forrester shared two sets of pandemic management protocols for businesses to follow in returning to the office. The first set includes:

• guidelines on staggering your employee schedules
• tightly managing business travel
• maintaining social distancing
• boosting remote-work capabilities

The second set focuses more on the physical office itself:

• rigorous cleaning schedules
• rethinking office space to allow for greater distancing and less physical contact
• limitations on gatherings (meetings), temperature checks
• travel history monitoring for both colleagues and visitors.

Snap (Snapchat)

CEO Even Spiegel of Snap – the brains behind Snapchat – described his company’s return-to-work plan to CNBC’s Squawk Alley in a recent interview. He detailed changes to the floor plan, temperature checks, surveying for health conditions, micro-kitchens, and even the possibility of removing ice dispensers.

American Enterprise Institute

DC-based think tank American Enterprise Institute shared a detailed roadmap on returning to work, based on four phases of progress with many of the elements already discussed above – and with clear trigger points that need to happen to move to the next phase.

Alphabet (Google)

Internet behemoth Alphabet – best known as the parent company of Google – will reopen its offices starting June 1, and is looking to get 10%-15% capacity across its global offices. Those employees who require access to special equipment and those higher up the ladder will be prioritized for return, and those who can work from home will continue to do so until further notice.

“There will be no one-size-fits-all approach, and the specific guidance will vary from location to location,” according to a Google-issued memo.

Others

Similar practices were being looked at by numerous other companies including the tire company Pirelli, UK recruitment company PageGroup, and business services group Rentokil.

Social distancing, return-to-work schedules, PPEs, on-site testing, limitations on business travel, lesser density in office workforces, ramping up IT spending to accommodate remote work, and increased office ventilation and air quality were some of the hot topics being shared by some of the world’s top companies, including Boeing, IBM, and Discover Financial Services.

“Things will return to normal in our personal lives, like going to restaurants, but things in business will change forever,” cloud content and file-sharing service Box Inc. CEO Aaron Levie told MarketWatch.

Many other large US companies, including IBM, Hewlett Packard, JPMorgan, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs are enacting similar staggered return-to-work plans over the next few months. Like others, they’re also reevaluating crucial needs in the new world of work, which includes the hiring for new jobs such as “thermal scanner” and elevator attendants.

Note: Workable’s Marketing Content Intern Zinovia Panagopoulou’s research contributed significantly to this article.

The post Return to a new world of work: Get ready with these 5 insights appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Almost overnight video has become essential to the way we work and hire. And while video interviewing is nothing new, asynchronous interviews, also called one-way video interviews, are becoming a key tool for hiring. More than just a short-term solution for a temporarily remote workforce, many talent & people teams are embracing video screening as the new normal.

In just sixty minutes, this webinar will help you:

• Develop a process to screen candidates at scale on your own time, from anywhere and any device
• Learn how structure effective one-way video interviews, from question input all the way to hiring manager collaboration
• Empower candidates to show their best self with a guided, thoughtful process (no download required!)

The post One-way video interviews: The new normal appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

As Ryan’s company grew, he found people’s hesitation about remote work only grew with the size of the company – effectively, the larger you are, the more you must have an office for everyone to work in.

But Ryan has shushed those naysayers. SmartBug, a marketing agency that’s “headquartered” in California with its entire 80-strong workforce all working remotely, is now certified as a Great Place to Work. It’s also been named to the Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Companies for three straight years, as well as the AdWeek 100 Fastest Growing Agencies List.

With the world rapidly – and for many, uncomfortably – moving towards remote work as a permanent solution, it’s good to learn from the experts who’ve already done it and have been doing it for a long time. So we got in touch with Ryan to find out the method behind the madness.

Back in the beginning

As it happens, Ryan’s life as a remote CEO was personally motivated:

“When I was 17, my dad passed away. He worked so hard. He was in aerospace and in quality assurance, so he traveled a lot. But he was always present at 95% of the things that I did. He coached our sports teams and all of these things.”

Ryan wanted to be that kind of a father for his kids. “I didn’t want to be the dad who never saw his kids grow up because I’m always at the office.”

He also had large aspirations being the CEO of SmartBug. He wanted to be able to invest a fair amount of time and energy into that but without taking it away from his family or vice versa.

“If you’re the CEO of a company and you parachute in once a month to make a decision about which you have no information, you have no camaraderie with your team, you’ve never gone to war with any of them – like, nobody wants to work for that person. That’s not a leader in my opinion.”

So – being caught in that career-vs-family dilemma, Ryan opted to choose both.

“At the time, the only way that I could be there for my kids and be there for my company was to be remote – it was the only solution to our problem.”

It’s a two-way street

Ryan wanted to extend that setup to his employees. He believes that if you show employees that you value what they do outside of work by granting them the power to set a work and life cadence that suits them best, the payoff is huge.

Ryan figured he could make that happen with an all-remote model at his company – this way, he could get better talent faster, and as a result, people at his company would work in an agile way in a challenging environment with very smart colleagues.

“At the same time, [you] give them the flexibility and freedom to have a great career and go create memories in their life, which at the end of the day is what matters to us, and that we could do both.”

A work-life integration

But according to Ryan, that doesn’t mean work-life balance. It’s actually work-life integration.

“I think work-life balance assumes that you turn off things at 5 o’clock and there’s some kind of schedule in which work isn’t a big part of your life. Work-life integration is more that you can do both. Let’s assume I want to run a triathlon, and my triathlon team trains at 3 o’clock on Tuesday. In a work-life balance environment when I’m 9 to 5, I wouldn’t be able to participate in that because the expectation is that the company wants you there til 5. Those are business hours.

“In work-life integration, the employee makes a decision to say, ‘You know what, I’m gonna schedule in 3 to 6 p.m. every Tuesday for my training’. In fact, we encourage people to schedule the things that matter in their life first. I pick up my kids every day from the bus at 3, I train for the triathlon, whatever, and then make life decisions after that, knowing that I can do the non-customer facing things outside of business hours. It’s an empowering decision for people.

“That’s integrating your work in your life in such a way that you can win both.”

This requires a special kind of worker who can thrive in this sort of environment.

“We feel like people who are kind of sharp and driven […] we’ll take advantage of that and design their work schedule in such a way that they do the best work at the right time and that they have time for the things that matter at the right time, and there’s so much time in a week that you should be able to do both.”

The realities of the 9-to-5

Although the death of the 9-to-5 schedule is often proclaimed by leading publications including Financial Review and Inc., with arguments to shorten it to as little as five hours a day, the 9-to-5 grind is still a common reality. Since this work tradition dates way back to the days of Ford and his automobile plants, there’s bound to be skepticism.

That’s evident in the clear gap between those who want greater flexibility in many different forms in their work schedules (a staggering 96% of those surveyed) and those who actually have it (less than half that – just 47%). So, what does Ryan say to those companies that insist on staying with the standard?

That kind of pushback, he says, usually comes from someone who’s either unfamiliar or new to remote work. And that applies not only to employers, but employees too:

“In fact, there was an example of someone here who when you talk to them, they’re like, ‘I’m really stressed out with this remote stuff’, and I ask them why. [Their response is]; ‘Well, I just feel like I need to be at my desk all the time in case a client calls’.”

Ryan says he would ask them what it was like when they worked in-house at an office – the response would be that they would leave a voicemail message. If that call was at 4:30, i.e. later in the day and you weren’t able to return that call, then they’d just call the next day. And so on.

Ryan’s point: “What’s the difference so as long as you’re available for your clients and you’re available for your team? Why does the rest of it matter?”

And not being able to see someone physically at their desk is a sign of distrust, he says. “It’s not really just trust – it’s more like an unfounded fear that something’s not getting done.”

Face the fears, and then overcome them

We’re now in an environment that has really pushed many companies to a fully remote workplace. But that doesn’t mean that when we return to “normal” office life, we’ll also all move back into the office. A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey has found that 49% of companies are prepared to go fully remote with roles that can accommodate that.

That makes it even more important to hire great people who can thrive in that new remote environment, says Ryan. You don’t have to worry that they’ll do their job, because you’ll know pretty quickly if they aren’t, by way of feedback from clients or colleagues.

He emphasizes that when you make a hire, you’re sending a message of trust that your new employee will be a valuable asset to your team – so it doesn’t make sense if you want to be able to see them at their desk or keep them to a fixed schedule after they’ve been hired.

At the root of it is an underlying fear of change for many managers and companies, and this current crisis is a catalyst that makes them face that fear. Ryan explains:

“It forces them to realize that what people can do is just as good […] and they’re just as passionate about their work – they just happen to be on a video or they happen to be in their pajamas or their kid might be running in the background, but you [still] hired a passionate person.”

ID your stars from the start

Not everyone’s cut out for remote work, obviously – a Gallup poll finds that 41% of U.S. workers will want to return to the office once COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. But that means 59% do want to work remotely as much as they’re permitted to do so by their employer.

Of that 59%, however, there will be some who just don’t operate that well in a remote fashion. When you’re hiring for a remote position, you’ll want to identify the ones who can indeed shine in that environment. That means you’ll need to adapt the way you assess candidates.

But before doing that, Ryan stresses, you can’t let go of the normal job interview process. Out of all the hires he’s made in the history of his company, he’s only met two in person before hiring them. That’s two, out of an 80-strong employee base. The rest were via video – and previously, phone calls, which he called a huge leap of faith.

But that doesn’t mean the hire is made entirely on a hunch. There are strategies you can follow outside of the normal hiring process with the standard interview questions. Otherwise, you may make some bad choices:

“A candidate could put on their game face and say they love remote, and be this dynamic person, and talk to me about autonomy, and how they plan their schedule, but at the end of the day, if they do it for two weeks, they might be, like, ‘I need some friends’.”

How to screen for remote-first workers

How do you recognize those red flags in a candidate before you’ve hired them? First, Ryan looks to where the candidate’s social energy comes from. For instance, if you find that a candidate likes going to work and goes to lunch and happy hour with the same people regularly, then remote work may be viewed as that being taken away from them.

That’s problematic, Ryan says. There are questions you can ask around that – for instance, ask a candidate: “When’s the best time for you to work?” Ryan says if the answer is that they love coming to work early in the morning or staying late, or shutting their door and having no meetings, because they can really get work done, then you know you’ve got someone who would be a good fit for remote.

”[You know] they’ll appreciate it. They gain something. […] It’s like ‘I lose something’ versus ‘I gain a freedom’. We really try to find the people that aren’t going to lose something when they go remote, but are looking for remote as a way to get rid of all the distraction.”

The second thing Ryan looks for is resiliency – the ability to adapt and pivot quickly in a less-structured environment. You don’t have those normal outlets where you can just go down the hall and vent in someone’s office after every minor hiccup. While there are still avenues through which you can help each other through rough patches – remote doesn’t mean isolated, after all – being resilient is still a powerful skill in a remote environment.

“So, we have to find people that have handled some adversity, and our resilient people can understand [that] maybe a client emergency comes up that you need to move stuff around,” says Ryan.

“That resiliency of understanding that, ‘Hey, I’ve got a certain amount of time during the day. My plan is X, but it may be that my plan is Y by noon because something more important came up, and I’m OK with that. I made that bargain in my head that I’m exchanging this for that, and it’s no big deal.”

Someone who’s able to do that, operating in unpredictable and less-structured environments, can really step up at a remote-first company like SmartBug.

Go deeper into the background

Ryan suggests taking a good part of the interview to talk to the candidate to assess their resiliency, even asking outright if they think they’re resilient and to share some examples of their being so. Rather than asking, “Give me an example of when you had a challenging project and what you did about it”, which Ryan thinks isn’t deep enough, he suggests that you open it up and explore the candidate’s background and experiences in a more open-ended way.

“It could be that you worked at a company where you were under-resourced constantly and you had to be scrappy, it could be that you had some situation that required you in your personal life to do something outstanding.”

Ryan says that part of the interview can take up 20 minutes or more because it’s worth it.

“I think that if you fish around for adversity and resiliency and stuff, you find people who have mettle, and mettle, I think, goes a long way in a remote workforce.”

The benefits of remote work

There are actually benefits to remote work that aren’t enjoyed in a traditional office environment, Ryan says – especially as it pertains to office culture and politics.

“In any company, there is sometimes animosity between one employee and another for whatever reason. In a remote company you never see that. You know, one person that’s always in the boss’ office at 3 o’clock and you see them through the window and they’re laughing and having a great time, and everyone’s wondering what’s going on. You just don’t have all that at a remote company.”

Remote work also better avoids other problems that can arise in a normal office environment, including clashing political views, harassment, discrimination, and other potential toxicities in the workplace.

But it’s not just about eliminating the potential negatives – Ryan finds a fully remote working culture opens up some new opportunities to foster a much more positive environment.

“There are some things that from an HR perspective you don’t really have to focus on. You can just focus on some of the positivity of culture if you find the right people.”

Teams get stronger, too, he adds.

“People [try] to help each other, and people [create] tribes of different interests. Those are really strong because that’s what keeps the remote team together.”

Deeper connections in physical separation

There’s a certain irony in finding deeper connections with people you’ve never – or rarely – met in real life. But that’s what’s happening at SmartBug.

“We hear it frequently when people come [to SmartBug] from in-house that they have tighter relationships here than they had when they were in-house. I think it’s because you have a lot of people who want to make connections with people, and they’re able to find their groups.”

Ryan says that’s because departments don’t tend to interact solely with each other in a relatively larger company of 100 or more employees. “They all have their little fiefdom.”

But those departmental separations are erased at SmartBug, and the company proactively ensures that.

“If I’m at a remote company, the common intersection between the two is that we all like reality TV or we’re all coffee aficionados or we’re all basketball fans. And so when we do onboarding, we have everyone do a get-to-know-you call which is just a 20-minute call, like, the rule is you can’t talk about work. And they do it with every employee.

“The purpose of that thing is to let people find their tribes and the other people that are interested and have commonalities, so that when they […] get into our Zoom, they have their groups that they are part of. Now they have multiple tribes that have the same interest, and the commonality is that interest.”

Teamwork makes the dream work

Unlike in the old days, we as a society are well-equipped to take much of our company remote – or even all of it. Ryan Malone freely admits that it’s still a challenge and that SmartBug Media is still trying to perfect their practice. So far, with a clear emphasis on recruiting strong performers who are drawn to this way of work, and having an effective vetting process in place to find these performers, it seems to be working.

Now, with the push to move to remote work as a result of the COVID-19 crisis and a mounting workforce that values flexibility in schedule, Ryan Malone and SmartBug Media don’t just have a head start – they’re already there.

The post Remote work trailblazer: Insights from SmartBug Media’s founder appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Salad and Go is a fast-growing, healthy fast food chain that’s been featured in Business Insider and Fast Company. Based in Arizona, their mission is to make healthy food accessible to everyone. As COVID-19 hit the United States, Salad and Go adopted Workable’s Video Interviews platform to screen candidates for 2 new restaurants in addition to the 16 they already have.

“We’re using the new Video Interviews tool to pre-screen candidates and move quickly into the interview step. Normally, we have daily open interview sites, where any interested candidate can come by,” says Brandi Hale, Salad and Go’s Head of People and Culture. 

“This [in-person interview] process is not possible for us right now due to the [COVID-19] crisis. This tool has helped us be more efficient during this time and get our jobs done. Thank you!”

The pivot to remote hiring was a seamless experience for Salad and Go. They quickly adopted Workable’s Video Interviews feature and the results were nearly immediate – they screened 50 candidates within two weeks. That works out to at least five screens per business day. 

Says Brandi: “Video Interviews helped us retain that personal contact we want to have always with anyone who’s applying to our organization.”

When the world goes back to normal, they’ll continue to use Video Interviews as it’s made their hiring process more efficient.

The post Salad and Go – now expanding – screens candidates remotely with Video Interviews appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The survey of 150+ software developers shows that the majority of respondents are very comfortable interviewing and beginning a new job entirely remotely, especially if they are actively looking.

Further, 39% of software developers in our survey reported feeling more productive since shifting to work remotely, compared to 30% feeling that they have become less productive (31% estimated no change). So not only is there available and eager talent, but many software developers may be operating at peak productivity. Of course, this is going to vary depending on each individual’s situation and experience, but perhaps it is one bright spot in a truly unfortunate environment.

“Development work doesn’t need to be centered on a physical location. With how wide-spread technology is and how responsive it can be, there’s no need to shackle people to cubicles and corporate offices.”

– Full-stack software developer with 5+ years of experience

Employers in growing industries need to quickly reinvent themselves to attract and onboard the best talent in this new work-from-home reality. Here is how you can rapidly implement a remote tech hiring process:

Set expectations internally and externally

It’s dangerous to assume that you can continue running the same exact interview process you’ve always had with the only difference being a Zoom or Google Hangouts link in the calendar invitation. Several things could easily go wrong:

• Employees may get too relaxed with attire, body language, and overall presentation.
• Internet connectivity, background noise, or other distractions could interfere.
• Sensitive or private Slack notifications and text messages could show up on screen shares.
• Interviews that typically include whiteboarding technical scenarios may lack the necessary tools to assess and qualify candidates.

To avoid these pitfalls, set expectations with the candidate and interviews accordingly:

• Emphasize to the employees conducting the interview that it is important to maintain professionalism despite the circumstances.
• Provide both the candidate and interviewer’s phone numbers in case there are internet issues.
• Remind employees to turn on do-not-disturb notifications before interviews.
• Do role play on a quick dry run with the interviewers and candidate beforehand to make sure all the necessary systems and tools are working.

Further, remember that your candidate (and interviewers) may have been severely impacted by the pandemic in ways you are unaware. Candidates may have recently lost their job or have a family member who is sick. Remind your team members to be sensitive, considerate, and patient.

Revisit your company culture and how to emphasize it

Does your engineering interview process typically contain bells and whistles to impress candidates? For example, do you often introduce a company executive or give an office tour? Do you take the candidate to a fancy lunch with their prospective coworkers? Here are a handful of ways you can rethink how to emphasize your company culture it during a remote tech hiring process:

• Develop an engineering culture packet that includes:
  • a note or link to a video from your VP of Engineering or CEO introducing themselves and how the company is continuing to operate given the circumstances
  • a demo video of your product and services
  • links to relevant Glassdoor, Built in NY, or AngelList pages and articles.
• Reimburse the candidate and interviewers for a coffee and lunch delivery from their favorite restaurants to enjoy during the interview (and support the local economy).
• Let the candidate sit in on an engineering standup (or another meeting where there won’t be sensitive information shared) so that they can see how the team is continuing to collaborate while quarantined.
• Share a snippet of a recent company email or All Hands video with the candidate that highlights the upbeat mood and tempo your company is maintaining during these trying times.
• Emphasize how you’ve transitioned your benefits packages to better accommodate and facilitate wellness during social distancing.

Even if your company culture has temporarily – or perhaps, permanently – changed during the pandemic, you still have the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage and impress prospective candidates. Going out of your way to deliberately and thoughtfully rethink your culture puts you ahead of the pack.

Update your recruiting technology stack

You may have to rethink sourcing efforts as meetups and events get postponed. Resumé review could become less relevant as rapid introductions from previous employers take precedence over an updated job history.

For sourcing, you need a new strategy for increasing visibility of your job postings. There are a number of aggregators online to post your remote job or list your company as hiring:

• https://candor.co/hiring-freezes/
• https://www.getsilverlining.com/
• https://www.layoffs.tech/
• https://www.wfhbuthiring.com/

Now is also a good time to monitor LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and trackers for layoffs and for potential candidates who have recently started looking for new roles.

To complement traditional resumé reviews, consider using a code screening platform. Overall, it’s less biased and more scalable due to being virtually automated once integrated with your ATS.

• Medium: The Best Technical Assessment & Code Screening Platforms of 2020
• G2: Best Technical Skills Screening Software
• Capterra: Pre-employment Testing Software

For live interviews where you need to assess coding, architectural, or critical thinking skills, check out Mural and Coderpad.

And, of course, you’ll want to be using a flexible and candidate-centric recruitment solution like Workable to seamlessly manage the entire hiring experience in a remote environment.

These are trying times but you are fortunate to still be hiring! Good luck getting your team aligned and reinventing your technical hiring process. I’ll continue sharing the latest proprietary employment and interview data for software development on Medium.

The post How to reinvent your tech hiring in a remote-first world appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. How can I train & empower our managers to manage their teams remotely?
2. How can we keep employees accountable and productive?
3. What are creative ways to maintain team morale, relationships and cohesion?
4. In-person companies are able to have social events and happy hours. How do you replicate this digitally?
5. How can you create a meaningful buddy system?
6. How can we train hands-on, direct-care, or field workers remotely?
7. I work for a school system and many of our employees are not tech-savvy. Have you put together trainings for employees like this on how to use video conferencing softwares and how to be creative with technology?
8. How do you find the right balance in over-communication and make sure important things don’t get lost in the noise?
9. What software do you use/recommend for remote working? (communication, conferencing, team recognition?)
10. If you had a friend who was going to move their business remote and they’re going to open their laptop at 9 a.m. tomorrow, what is the one piece of advice that you would give them?

1. How can I train & empower our managers to manage their teams remotely?

One of the biggest challenges of managing remotely is the relative isolation that a manager may feel from their team. There are logistical challenges in getting synced and on the same page. These can easily be overcome using technology and regular communications to maximize the connections and “team spirit” within a squad.

There are several ways you can help your managers succeed when their teams are remote working:

Utilize technology

Darko Jacimovic, co-founder of e-learning company Whattobecome.com, pointed to technologies that enabled his colleagues to overcome the physical remoteness between colleagues, mentioning Slack and Hubstaff as tools he uses to ensure teams are aligned and productive.

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, highlighted the power of video technology in maintaining connections. While it’s not a perfect substitute for in-person interaction, Hope says it’s still key to successful communication in a remote working environment:

Regular check-ins

If possible, set up regular checkins with your teammates at the same time every day or when it works best for you. These do not need to have specific agendas – you can save those for other, more targeted meetings. The purpose of this check-in is for colleagues to have an opportunity to give general updates on work projects, share ideas for future undertakings, talk at length about campaigns, or even just engage in regular chit-chats. Many colleagues within a team sync naturally as they’re desk neighbors or have a coffee break together – this is your way of making sure that energy continues in a virtual environment. Workable’s marketing department started doing this as soon as the company shifted to a fully remote working environment and it’s worked very well.

Ensure everyone is accessible – even at the top level

Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, encourages the concept of a weekly “virtual gathering” where even the top person in the company participates to talk about business as a whole:

“We actually do fireside chats where our CEO comes up on a weekly basis and we talk about the business and we all record each other. And we actually have different people who come in and talk about different pieces of the business.”

Also, work gets busy and managers need a bit of a nudge at times. If your boss is reaching out to you to see how you’re doing, that overcomes the physical separation in a powerful way, as Melissa says:

Communicate early and communicate often

Because you can’t simply walk up to your team and update them on something crucial at work, you have to be more diligent in using every virtual channel available to you – be it chat programs, email, even a quick recorded video that you share with the team as recommended by Smartbug Media founder and CEO Ryan Malone.

Ryan also notes that this communication outreach doesn’t have to be only professional. You’re both humans – it’s important to nurture that relationship. He admits that it can be “awkward” to reach out and dedicated time to that, but it’s still beneficial to open the channels and say, ‘Hey, I haven’t talked to you in two weeks. How are you?’. You just have to make it happen.’

Make sure your team knows you’re available

Ensure your calendar has regular 1-1s and team meetings each week, giving each team member the opportunity to sync with the team and meet with you one on one. Think of it as the virtual version of the “open door policy”.

Remember, it’s not about whether or not you can get the work done. It’s about making sure your team is fully accessible and your managers are available to them – and it takes a few proactive steps to ensure this continues to happen in a fully virtual environment.

2. How can we keep employees accountable and productive?

The easy way would be to introduce a productivity software that requires employees to clock in and clock out throughout the day so you can monitor how much they’re spending in work. While useful for workers who are paid by the hour or for contracted workers, it’s not an optimal setup for your full-time employees. If you’ve trained them well, and you’ve shown them that you value them, they will respond in kind.

A few tips for you to ensure accountability and productivity:

Results-based approach

Be clear to your employees that it doesn’t matter where, how, or what time they’re doing the work – the emphasis is on the results. If you’re looking for X project to be delivered by a specific date, simply specify that, and be confident in their ability to do it. Empower your teams to create their own ideal environment – be it time of day, location of work, surrounding scenery, accompanying music, etc. – in which they can thrive.

Train your employees to succeed independently

The best time to ensure an employee base that can succeed independently without intensive direction or micromanagement is in the hiring process, when you’re vetting their ability to work in ambiguous and remote environments – Smartbug Media founder and CEO Ryan Malone has that down to a T.

The second-best time is to train your existing workers to operate in that kind of remote working environment. Empower them to take steps without needing extra direction. Do this by communicating clearly to employees that you’re fully confident in their ability to do the job. Also, remember to include incentives for the best performers and stage regular “celebrations” where everyone gets a chance to be recognized for their contribution in front of the entire company. That’s a powerful motivator when people realize they can have their time in the limelight for something they’ve done well.

Regular check-ins

Instead of the “clock-in” approach, do the “check-in” approach. Check- in regularly with your staff, not to show them that you’re monitoring them but to keep that connection strong. The questions you ask can make a lot of difference, i.e. “How’s that project coming along? Can I do anything to help?” as opposed to “Will that project be ready for Monday?” Your staff knows Monday is the deadline – don’t talk down to them about that but show confidence and support.

Even as a CEO, Ryan at Smartbug makes sure he does that with people in his company:

“I personally call everybody at our company over a period of time to just say, what can we do to make [it] healthier? What does your roadmap look like here? And is there a path to see it? Because you don’t have that office kind of chatter that you typically see.”

3. What are creative ways to maintain team morale, relationships and cohesion?

Maintaining that all-important team morale is more challenging when you don’t get to see your team every day, because you’re missing out on the crucial nuances. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible – here are some tips to make it happen:

Be aware of the non-verbal signs

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, highlighted in response to question #1 the importance of video to catch the non-verbal cues. Ryan Malone, CEO and founder at Smartbug Media, agrees that those important nuances are harder to see when you can’t just walk by someone’s office:

“When somebody gets on camera during the work day, you know they have their game face on, but you don’t know what’s really going on,” he says. “In fact, we had an employee who had a death in the family like an hour before a call and when she got on the phone call, she was completely buttoned up. But you had no idea, if you were in the office you would have seen that and said you need to go home. Like you do not need to go on this call.”

So, it’s crucial to be aware that there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. If your colleague walks into the office space with hunched shoulders and a sunken face, you know something’s up. Sometimes you just have to reach out with regular, personal check-ins and be actively observant of their current mood.

Don’t do texting/email if you can do video

While texting and emailing have their place in a work environment, there’s a tendency to resort to those even more often in a remote working environment because you just can’t shout over to your coworker about something in the moment. Hope at InVision urges video even in those quick one-off interactions, saying the technology shouldn’t be reserved just for meetings.

Ryan at Smartbug Media agrees, and says this is even more so for a manager when it comes to announcements and updates.

“If they’re going to do an announcement, do an announcement on camera and don’t script it,” he says. “Just let it rip, because when your team sees your own emotion, your own kind of non-verbal cues on your face, I think it’s really, really impactful to them. And it comes across really cold, if in a remote environment as a leader, you just send out email announcements all day. It’s a tiny little change. It’s actually easier than writing a big old email. And it’s really impactful.”

Be clever with your resources

Hired’s Head of Customer Success, Will Alexander, says we have the opportunity to be clever and innovative in boosting team morale in a virtual environment – and shares his own real-life examples:

Stage regular meetups

Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, admits that you can’t always replace those in-person interactions and gatherings virtually, but it can be done to some degree. She suggests breaking your company into regional teams to have virtual meetups – even with a budget::

Make it more personable

Ryan points out the importance of personal interaction even during those formal blocks in a workday set aside for meetings. As he says, in a virtual environment, “you miss out on that five minutes before a conference call where everybody is sitting at a conference table chatting about whatever.”

So, Ryan says “I always encourage people to take some piece of a call that they have with a client or with themselves and just shoot the breeze because that’s how relationships are made and if it’s all business, you miss that opportunity.”

Remember the ‘well-being check-in’ as well

Ryan also adds that it’s important to do a ‘well-being check-in’ – not for work purposes, but for making sure everyone’s doing OK within a team. Not only does it send the message to your team that you’ve got their back, but it’s also about looking after your employees to make sure they’re happy and healthy:

Technology may not be an ideal substitute for authentic human interaction, but when you set the stage for people to willingly participate – and help them overcome their tech hurdles – you may see a high level of engagement within your company.

4. In-person companies are able to have social events and happy hours. How do you replicate this digitally?

It’s definitely hard to have a ‘happy hour’ when everyone’s in a different location. However, Will at Hired has made it work at his organization. In his team’s ‘remote’ happy hours, they gather weekly in Zoom after work is done for the day:

“Everybody’s got their drinks together and everyone’s having a conversation. It’s a different sense of connection, because people are in their homes.

He notes there’s another kind of connection happening that doesn’t actually happen in the physical workplace:

“You’re dialed into the actual homes of your colleagues. […] And they’re preparing their dinner and their partner’s walking by, and we’re grabbing them and asking some questions. And [one colleague] has been showing us how to make particular drinks, and what’s she’s been cooking and stuff. And so, yeah, I actually find that more connection-driving than you could argue even in person.”

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, takes a similar approach, with a weekly ‘fun day’ free of the burden of an agenda. This, she says, can boost connections both between colleagues and with management:

You can also set up virtual ‘drop-in’ meeting rooms and online chat rooms. Have a chat channel titled ‘Cabin Feverrr’ – as Workable’s own employees have done. Distribute “happy hour gift cards” – i.e. $10 at the local supermarket to spend on something to consume during this time.

These events can also be gamified. There are numerous apps out there that support virtual games with participants tuning in from different locations. You can also stage competitions for best work-from-home environment, best ‘work companion’ (a pet, toy, kid, etc.), and more. Make it fun for everyone.

5. How can you create a meaningful buddy system?”

Touchpoints are as crucial in a remote working environment as they are in a physical work environment. Feeling socially distant from your colleagues is commonplace when someone’s a new kid on the block – that’s the importance of having a buddy system in place so they don’t feel so far removed from work social circles.

It becomes even more crucial in a remote setting. When everyone’s fully remote from one another, you need to replicate every part of a normal buddy or mentor system in the workplace. Those in the onboarding buddy or mentor system will touch base at regular times throughout the week – whether it’s dedicated meetings or going for lunch/coffee together. These can easily be set up remotely, bearing in mind that face-to-face interaction through video isn’t ideal but still very beneficial.

Do it the “mentor” way. Set lesser experienced/new workers with the more experienced. Don’t do them within departments – do them across departments and emphasize confidentiality “safe space” throughout.

6. How can we train hands-on, direct-care, or field workers remotely?

Regardless of the reason for it, there are many solutions for when you’re working remotely in a relatively normal situation and wondering how you might train new hires.

Get boots on the ground

When you’re setting up shop in a new location – whether you’re entering a new market, expanding, or opening an additional outlet – have at least a couple of employees native to that location who can be tasked with training new hires on site. When we reached out to organizations on their recommendations for successfully opening up business in a new location, hiring local talent was one of the most popular tips. It applies here as well.

Build a ‘training team’

A common strategy adopted by companies is to have a ‘mobile training team’ who travels to locations to train new hires and existing employees. The concept is widely utilized in the military, but has been adopted by businesses who have many workers in the field or are aggressively expanding to new areas. These training teams can be ‘trained’ at headquarters, and then carry their knowledge and expertise with them to multiple locations for team-building purposes.

7. I work for a school system and many of our employees are not tech-savvy. Have you put together trainings for employees like this on how to use video conferencing softwares and how to be creative with technology?

According to Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, it’s critical to have an educational system in place to make sure everyone is well informed on how to use that technology and tapping into the willingness of people to learn. She also recommends appointing two or three highly motivated employees as tech ‘champions’ to help rally their colleagues:

8. How do you find the right balance in over-communication and make sure important things don’t get lost in the noise?

Think of it the same way you would in a normal workplace setting. If you simply get an all-in email from HR or from the company at large communicating various things every week, that usually doesn’t have a lot of impact, especially if sent out at a frequent cadence. What carries a lot of power, instead, is what Ryan at Smartbug Media suggests above: record yourself, warts and all, talking about the ‘important things’ and put that in an email or a chat channel. Better yet – do it live, pulling everyone together into a virtual room.

You aren’t necessarily holding meetings that could be an email. That challenge doesn’t change if you’re working remotely. Emails, text messages, phone calls, video check-ins, 1-1s – they all have their part in workplace communications. A good manager should know when to bring all hands on deck for important messages and when a quick note to the team will suffice.

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, notes that every company will have a different threshold around how much is too much in terms of communication. If you’re finding your messages lost in the ‘noise’, you can switch things up a bit – and be creative and engaging at some point in your messaging to maximize the response:

9. What software do you use/recommend for remote working (i.e. communication, conferencing, team recognition)?

There are hundreds of tech tools out there – we have our own extensive list of the best tools that can get you operating in a fully remote fashion, broken down by function and purpose.

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, notes that it’s important not to get stuck in one software to get most of your work done. Keep it variable and interesting, and monitor what’s working and what’s not. She explains:

“Use your messaging, Slack, G Chat, whatever it is that you’re using, use that along with maybe a video. Right? […] Don’t overcomplicate it. Just do a quick video and look at [your] email. And if you don’t feel like something’s working, don’t be afraid to change that in the middle, and really think about how things are communicating.”

Primarily, look at what your team already does, and see how that work can be continued at a high level using a tool from our above-mentioned list. And keep monitoring the efficiency of that tool – not just for the tool’s capabilities, but the way in which your team is using it to excel in their projects.

10. If you had a friend who was going to move their business remote and they’re going to open their laptop at 9 a.m. tomorrow, what is the one piece of advice that you would give them?

It’s a hard thing to do, moving your entire operation to a fully remote working environment. It’s easy to think that not everything can be done fully virtually – but as the saying goes, there really is an app for everything. And It’s been done before – as proven by those who’ve been there and done that.

When your teams open up that laptop at 9 a.m. on their first day of remote work, Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, says it’s important to remind them to go easy on themselves:

“Give yourself a little bit of grace. You’re not going to be perfect at everything. You’re going to have some things that go amazingly well, and then you’re going to have some areas where you can learn from, and just make sure and give yourself grace. And don’t take yourself too seriously.”

Ryan Malone, founder and CEO at Smartbug Media, is more succinct:

“Trust people and don’t over-analyze things.”

Finally, Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, builds on that element of trust and having faith in things to work out:

“I would say trust that every interaction, that comes with good intent and that everybody wants you to succeed and that everybody wants the company to succeed, that intention piece where if you make a mistake, it’s really not a big deal. What Hope talked about, don’t take yourself too seriously. Because at the end of the day, we’re all in it together.”

The post Remote Working FAQs appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We turned to the experts, those who have been working remotely for many years, to get useful insights and tips on how to hire employees remotely. Here’s what they had to say:

• Should a remote time-to-hire be shorter or longer than an in-person time-to-hire?
• How can we structure a remote hiring process? For example, should we invest more time in final interviews?
• How can we get old-school executives/upper management to be more open to virtual interviewing?
• How can we engage candidates during a hiring freeze and build interest so they’re ready when we are?
• What software do you use/recommend for remote hiring?
• How can we explain the virtual hiring process to candidates, especially to those who are less tech-savvy?
• How can we prepare candidates for remote interviews?
• How does the remote hiring process for executive-level employees differ?

1. Should a remote time-to-hire be shorter or longer than an in-person time-to-hire?

A remote interview process doesn’t have to be sloppier than the traditional, in-person interviews. You can still have different hiring stages so that various team members meet and evaluate candidates. However, when you interview candidates remotely, you have the chance to speed up hiring, which eventually benefits your overall time-to-hire. Here’s how:

• One-way video interviews are pre-recorded, so you can evaluate them at any time, at your own convenience.
• You don’t have to block specific time for each candidate and you don’t have to reschedule if something else comes up.
• The entire hiring team can view recorded video interviews and decide whether they want to move on with a candidate or reject them. Otherwise, each interviewer will have to meet with candidates separately which is more time-consuming or you’ll have to conduct a panel interview which is harder to coordinate.
• You cut back on time spent sending directions, welcoming candidates to your offices, making travel arrangements if you’re in different locations, etc. Video interviews allow you to meet candidates without leaving your desk, which can make a huge difference when you’re scaling and have multiple interviews per day or week.
• When screening candidates through one-way video interviews, you can simply send one email with the questions or instructions to all candidates. Instead, if you rely on phone screens, you have to interview candidates one-by-one.
• It’s likely that some candidates will drop out of the hiring process if they have to invest time to record a video of themselves instead of the more traditional application form or phone screen. This leaves you with the candidates who are truly interested in the job and your company – i.e. you avoid spending time interviewing candidates who doubt whether they’re a good fit for the role.
• If you rely only on local talent, it might take you longer to find the candidate who fits your requirements. On the other hand, when you cast a wider net, by interviewing and hiring employees remotely, you increase your chances of finding the skills you’re looking for faster.

Brandi Hale, Head of People and Culture at Salad and Go, has found that video interviewing is a great solution when you’re scaling and can help you keep hiring in times of a crisis and mandatory social distancing:

“We’re using the new Video Interviews tool to pre-screen candidates and move quickly into the interview step. Normally, we have daily open interview sites, where any interested candidate can come by. This process is not possible for us right now due to the crisis. This tool has helped us be more efficient during this time and get our jobs done.”

2. How can we structure a remote hiring process? For example, should we invest more time in final interviews?

During a recent webinar on remote work that Workable and Hired co-hosted in light of COVID-19, Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, mentioned that a remote interview process shouldn’t differ much from a regular, in-person one; it’s all about finding whether a candidate would be a good fit.

There are some nuances, though, when you hire candidates remotely, which means that you might need to tweak your interview process to make sure you hire the right people.

For example, founder and CEO at SmartBug Media, Ryan Malone, notes that it’s important to measure candidates’ resilience as well as their ability and willingness to work remotely.

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, shares some inside tips on how they run interviews at the final stages. As she explains, they’ve chosen to run brief interview sessions not only with team members the candidate will work directly with, but also cross-functional teams, from various levels.

“We really make sure that they’ve got a wide view of what it’s like to communicate in a 100% kind of a remote environment; the advantages that come along with that, and then also that gives us an opportunity to really get to know them.”

“At the end of the interview once everybody has gone through what we call their interview loop, we have all of the team, the interview team, come back together and we run a debrief the same way that you typically would if you’re going to go grab somebody in a conference room and talk about the candidate that you met. These debriefs can last anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. Ideally, at the end of those debriefs, we walk away with a decision. It feels very similar to what would happen if somebody were coming in, in an all-day interview.”

Hope also shares how the interview process slightly changes for senior-level positions:

“If it’s a manager or higher position, we spend about 30 minutes really talking about and learning more about the candidates, in terms of how they lead or potentially see themselves as leaders in a remote environment.”

3. How can we get old-school executives/upper management to be more open to virtual interviewing?

Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, reminds us that if the company is not tech-savvy, you will have to start from the basics.

“The first thing I would do is probably run an education class to help people get up to speed with some of the remote tools that we would be using. And I would probably start with the very basic Google Hangouts type of tools, because it’s the easiest to use.”

She also reminds us that leading by example can make a difference, so look for the people who are more willing to use virtual tools for hiring. “When you find those two or three people, make them your champions, teach them and help them spread the word. And then, they share and spread the really great things that we’re trying to initiate in the organization.”

Ryan Malone, founder and CEO at SmartBug Media, says that reluctance to use some of those tools is often a matter of confidence. So, he encourages supporting employees who feel less tech-savvy through mentorship, small videos, exercises and small wins where they can build momentum. He also notes that work friendships can be very helpful, as employees can address people they feel most comfortable with when they have quick questions instead of feeling they’re the ones raising their hand every time.

4. How can we engage candidates during a hiring freeze and build interest so they’re ready when we are?

A hiring freeze – whether it’s due to a global crisis like COVID-19 or internal company processes – is an uncomfortable situation. Since you can rarely say for sure when the hiring process will start again, it’s best to be honest about it and show empathy towards candidates.

For example, ClearScore, a UK-based fintech company, talks openly about the current situation and prompts job seekers to apply so that their hiring team can quickly reach out in the future:

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision explained how a slowdown in hiring gives recruiters the chance to create meaningful relationships with candidates for future job opportunities:

Hope highlighted the importance of ensuring that candidates know these are just conversations:

“Because the last thing that you want to do is by no ill will, this candidate will think, ‘Oh, gosh, I’m interviewing for a job that I could start in three weeks or a month,’ or something like that. But just saying, ‘Hey, just being very open and upfront that we’re having conversations and we expect to hire this position at X amount of time.’”

Ryan Malone, founder and CEO at SmartBug Media, added:

“Be upfront with them and let them know that it’s not there yet, but that you care about them enough to invest the time. It means a lot.”

In uncertain times, you can’t talk about the things that are out of your control, but you can emphasize on what you know, as Hope said:

“While we may not know what tomorrow brings, we know the values and the principles in which our company lives by and we know, from an industry standard, where we stand, and where we anticipate to go.”
Click To Tweet

5. What software do you use/recommend for remote hiring?

To run live video interviews with candidates, you can use popular tools such as Zoom, Google Hangouts and Skype. Candidates will be able to join the interview easily by following a link, so make sure to send them an invitation in advance.

If you want to conduct one-way video interviews with candidates, you can ask them to record their answers through software such as Vidyard or SparkHire. If you’re using an ATS, check whether it’s integrated with a video tool; this way the process will be more seamless. Here are some additional tips on how to choose the best video interview software to hire remotely.

When you want to evaluate candidates, beyond written assessments, you can use virtual whiteboards that facilitate interaction, such as FreeHand and Zoom Whiteboard.

For a better collaboration with the entire hiring team, make sure you use cloud software, like Google Docs and sheets, to share documents, an Applicant Tracking System to manage the hiring process and communication tools like Slack for quick updates. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of tools to help you run a virtual workplace.

6. How can we explain the virtual hiring process to candidates, especially to those who are less tech-savvy?

Even for people who are familiar with technology, video interviews can be a bit intimidating if they’re used to being in an office setting. That’s why getting them comfortable with the remote hiring process is essential.

Start by making it clear that you’ll connect through video. Share some simple guidelines, explain how they’ll join the call or how they’ll record their answers and help them set up their equipment.

A good idea would be to create a guide with useful tips on how candidates can prepare for a video interview. You might also want to record a video where a recruiter or hiring manager from your company talks about the company or welcomes the candidate to the hiring process, in order to set the tone and give candidates a glimpse of your team before the interview.

Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, adds that the virtual hiring process and the way you describe it to candidates should be aligned with your company culture. For example, at Stack Overflow, where they’re more casual, they encourage candidates to bring their true selves during the video call. “We actually invite people if they have a cat or a dog they want to introduce in their interview, they can do that, because I think it starts to build rapport.”

7. How can we prepare candidates for remote interviews?

While remote interviews don’t differ much from regular, in-person interviews, consider helping candidates prepare themselves before a video call. This way, both parts – interviewers and candidates – can focus on the actual interview. Here’s what you can do:

• Help them set up their equipment (camera, mic, video software)
• Share some quick troubleshooting tips (e.g. what to do if the internet connection is flaky)
• Give some alternatives beforehand in case of technical hiccups (e.g. “If you have trouble connecting to Zoom, call me at [number]”)
• Advice on how they can look better on camera (what colors work best, how to fix the lighting, how to choose their background, etc.)

An interesting aspect to take into account is the role you’re hiring for. If you’re looking for tech employees, the way they use the video technology could be part of the evaluation. Likewise, if you’re hiring for customer-facing roles, you’re probably measuring for ease of speech and good self-presentation.

Ryan Malone, founder and CEO at SmartBug Media, attests to that:

“Since we’re a digital agency, if somebody is really having a hard time creating a video, that might be a little bit of a red flag for a certain role,” he says. “But we try to make it as easy as possible and we don’t want people to spend two days producing some video. We just want to hear you talk. Are you articulate? Can you convey an idea? Is your space well kept? They’re going to represent our brand so, short of telling them who they’re going to interview with, we don’t give them any preparation at all, because that’s part of the interview for us.”

8. How does the remote hiring process for executive-level employees differ?

For executive or C-level roles, it might be useful to schedule in-person interviews during the final hiring stage. You’ll be working closely with them and they’ll be driving many business decisions, so it’s crucial to build that more personal connection.

Ryan Malone, founder and CEO at SmartBug Media, explains why and how they schedule these in-person interviews:

“We do try to meet people face-to-face, because at the end of the day, you want to spend a significant amount of time with that person. And I think they appreciate the investment,” he adds. “There’s an opportunity cost of not taking something else. So, you want to meet [C-level candidates] in person, because it’s also a chance for you to demonstrate for them that you have your act together. We recently hired a COO. Everything was remote except for the last couple interviews and those were in person over a full day basically.”

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, highlights the importance of a strong communication path and multiple check-ins throughout the hiring process.

“We have our CEO do multiple check-ins and deeper dive conversations as they’re going through the interview process, just depending on the specific role. And then, when we get to that final conversation, that’s the in-person conversation, it flows a lot better and it’s not nearly as uncomfortable.”

Whether final interviews are remote or in-person, talking to the CEO – or someone from the senior management – of the company you’re interviewing at can impact your decision to accept a job offer or not, particularly if you’re a senior-level candidate yourself. Ryan elaborates on that:

“We’re still of the size where I interviewed the last interviewer and it’s not a control thing. It goes back to that unwritten rule, which is, you’re choosing us versus something else. And you should be able to ask anything you want of the person who’s driving the strategy of the company. It’s also a chance for me to convey what we’re trying to build. I think hearing that from somebody high up at the company means a lot to a candidate.”

Want to learn more about how to make remote work successful at your company? Read our guide on remote onboarding.

The post Remote Hiring FAQs appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Table of contents:

1. How can a company adopt a virtual onboarding approach when it is not tech-savvy or/and doesn’t embody a learning culture?
2. Can you share a sample agenda for a new hire for the first week of onboarding remotely?
3. Do you conduct “culture trainings” to communicate what culture looks like at your organization? If so, what do these look like?
4. How can you replace the experience of a new hire meeting coworkers over lunch?
5. What is the most important thing we shouldn’t miss or the best learning/best practice you’d share with a company who is looking to onboard remote employees soon?
6. How do you complete I-9s & W-4s remotely?
7. What software do you recommend for remote onboarding?
8. Do you have experience with hiring independent contractors? If so, does the onboarding look the same for them as it does for a W-2 employee?
9. How can we execute drug tests that are required as part of onboarding?

1. How can a company adopt a virtual onboarding approach when it is not tech-savvy or/and doesn’t embody a learning culture?

If your company is not tech-savvy, you’ll need to invest some extra energy to lead the “tech way” – at least in the beginning. First off, do a thorough research to find what kind of software and tools you could use to onboard new hires successfully, and learn how they work. Opt for platforms that seem easy to use, match your business requirements, and integrate well with other platforms you’re planning to use. Use this list to find the tools you’ll need to communicate with remote employees virtually, such as a video-conferencing solution, and manage essential onboarding steps (e.g. completing HR paperwork).

But, how can you ensure that employees will learn how to handle these tools effectively, too? Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, suggests organizing online class sessions where you can train new employees on how to effectively use these tools. This will boost their confidence in using tech gear, which according to Ryan Malone, CEO and Founder at SmartBug Media, is necessary, especially in a work culture that isn’t initially tech-savvy:

“What we found [at the company] is that if you mix mentorship and small videos and exercises, and give people small wins where they can create some momentum, then [onboarding is] not as daunting.”

In the absence of a learning culture, Melissa adds that even when there are not officially established onboarding trainings for new hires, there are always people who can voluntarily train or mentor their new colleagues on how to best utilize tech tools. She suggests identifying those employees and assigning them an active training role:

“In every single program in an organization, I look for my champions, the people who really care deeply about these things. I engage them, and then they go out. […] They share and spread the really great things that we’re trying to initiate in the organization. That’s how I would approach it.”

2. Can you share a sample agenda for a new hire for the first week of onboarding remotely?

When onboarding new remote employees, during the first week you can focus on:

• preparing gear and tools
• completing necessary HR paperwork
• explaining company culture
• connecting with team members

Use this remote employees onboarding checklist as a guide to schedule the first week’s events and tasks. But don’t forget that you’re still onboarding in general – this how to build a new onboarding process guide and this onboarding new hire checklist will help you succeed.

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, describes her company’s remote onboarding process and which areas they focus on during the first few days:

Successful onboarding, of course, at the core of it all – whether remotely or not. This step-by-step new employee onboarding process guide will help you refine your strategy.

3. Do you conduct ‘culture trainings’ to communicate what culture looks like at your organization? If so, what do these look like?

It’s to be expected that a remote workplace has different norms and culture as opposed to a typical in-office one. There’s more room for flexibility, which even though it is worth savoring, it can also impact the employers’ – and employees’ – ability to set clear expectations and boundaries. That’s why you should dedicate the first onboarding days to showing the culture and company norms to the new hires.

As in the video above, Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, shared tips on delivering ‘cultural trainings’ virtually, through official or less structured calls and video meetings (you can also jump to the video in question 2):

“The ultimate goal is to really teach our InVision operating system, and how we work, what our culture’s like, what you can expect; [it’s about] really being able to bring your whole self to work, which a lot of times you’re not able to do in an office setting. We talked about kids walking around or maybe a new puppy that you just got, that is barking in the background and wants to jump up and see you all day. Those are things that we expect. Those are things that we appreciate.”

Ryan Malone, CEO and Founder at SmartBug Media, says cultural marketing plays a pivotal role in understanding what type of family employees are joining. Moving to an earlier stage, you can demonstrate your culture to candidates early on, for example, at the interview stage or through your careers page and prepare them beforehand. Share glimpses of your daily virtual work life through posting photos and videos, and allow new hires to get a sneak peek into what a working day looks like at your company.

4. How can you replace the experience of a new hire meeting coworkers over lunch?

There are many creative ways to integrate new hires to your existing teams and nurture a friendly atmosphere among colleagues. For instance, Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, suggests scheduling a weekly video call with a loose agenda, where employees can jump in to socialize:

“We call it Friday fun day and we just come in and we just chat about anything and everything; sometimes related to work, sometimes not. And sometimes there’s an agenda and most of the time there’s not. Jump in if you want, you don’t have to join if you don’t have time. And that’s been helpful as well.”

She also encourages employees to use video-conferencing tools for chit chat, too, and not just for scheduled work meetings.

Ryan Malone, CEO and Founder at SmartBug Media, sets up 20-minute calls with team members for new remote hires, where they can discuss non-work-related interests and get to know each other better. Also, you could plan a large-scale event, such as a corporate retreat, for all teams to get together and bond:

5. What is the most important thing we shouldn’t miss or the best learning/best practice you’d share with a company who is looking to onboard remote employees soon?

In the first days of onboarding, it’s important to keep employees motivated to understand company culture and goals, connect with co-workers, and gain new skills. Ryan Malone, CEO and Founder of SmartBug Media, says this is the first practice he introduces to nurture healthy communication among co-workers:

“The first thing that you do when you come here, is you set up a get to know you call, which is a 20-minute call with everybody at the company. And the only rule is you can’t talk about work. And it’s a way for people to figure out who their crew is and what they have in common with people, so that they can quickly get integrated into teams that are like social teams.”

He also advises managers to avoid providing the new members with an extensive list of videos to watch as part of their training – and instead, putting the onus on on-the-job learning. They should support new team members to build core job-relevant skills and learn their role’s primary tasks, to build confidence and feel valuable.

6. How do you complete I-9s & W-4s remotely?

Normally, employers should examine and verify I-9 forms only in the physical presence of the new hires*. But when you hire and onboard a remote employee, this is not always a feasible step. In these cases, the employer can assign an authorized representative, a notary, or partner with a I-9 completion center to fill-out the I-9 form on their behalf, in the physical presence of the employee. You can also use a software, such as i9advantage, to help you out with this process.

As for W-4s and other HR paperwork that doesn’t typically require physical presence, you can ask the employee to complete and sign them digitally. You can easily manage this process with a digital onboarding tool, such as Rippling, and by enabling an e-signature solution such as HelloSign.

* The DHS recently announced that during the COVID-19 pandemic, completion of I-9 forms in businesses where physical distancing precautions are being applied, can be temporarily examined virtually by the employer within three days after the initial hiring date, as long as certain criteria are met.

7. What software do you recommend for remote onboarding?

Rippling and Click Boarding deliver digital onboarding solutions that enable you to streamline onboarding effectively (and both seamlessly integrated to our recruiting solution). Other useful tools are:

• An HRIS – e.g. BambooHR
• An online chat platform – e.g. Slack
• A video-conferencing tool – e.g. Zoom
• An e-signature solution – e.g. HelloSign

Find more tech tools, easy to implement in the virtual workplace, in this guide.

8. Do you have experience with hiring independent contractors? If so, does the onboarding look the same for them as it does for a W-2 employee?

Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, advises employers to follow these two steps when hiring independent contractors:

1) Consider moving to a global provider employment organization (PEO) to ensure compliance with the legal requirements of each jurisdiction or country (e.g. local tax laws or statutory benefits), and

2) Follow the same onboarding agenda from day 1, as you would with other employees. In her own words:

9. How can we execute drug tests that are required as part of onboarding?

Employee drug testing is a sensitive matter. Considering that drug testing rules vary in different countries and jurisdictions, it’s easy to lose sight of local laws and regulations. That’s why you should always consult with your legal counsel to ensure compliance and transparency for each individual case before requesting or conducting pre-employment drug tests.

If you have a drug-testing policy, all candidates, both in-office and remote, should know what to expect beforehand. Hand over the drug testing policy to them, including all the recent updates and individual steps they should follow. Once you’ve ensured you’re fully legal and compliant, you can set an appointment for them at a state-certified lab that conducts the drug screening process.

The post 9 remote onboarding FAQs to level up your process appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Last month, over 4,500 people registered for the webinar “Going Remote: Best Practices for HR and Recruitment”. Hundreds of live audience questions poured in to be answered by leaders at fully remote working companies like InVision and Stack Overflow.

There wasn’t enough time to answer them all during the webinar, so the experts met again to tackle the most common ones. Watch this video to hear tactical advice from talent leaders and founders who have learned best practices through years of remote working.

Sample Questions:

• How do I prepare candidates for virtual interviews?
• How should I engage candidates during a hiring freeze?
• How can I empower managers to onboard and train new hires remotely?

You can also get answers to common questions around remote work in our FAQ guides:

• Remote Working FAQs
• Remote Hiring FAQs
• Remote Onboarding FAQs

The post Going Remote: FAQ Video appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

For many of us, working remotely is a whole new ballgame and hiring and on-boarding remotely feels straight out of left-field.

That’s why we turned to People Operations & Talent leaders from Stack Overflow, InVision and Smartbug Media. They explained everything we need to know about remote working, from hiring and on-boarding to managing your day-to-day tasks. With over 2,200 attendees and 250 questions from the audience, the panel was kind enough to meet again and answer your FAQs.

This webinar and FAQ session will help you:

• Adopt a virtual hiring process, without sacrificing candidate experience
• Onboard and welcome new employees in a fully remote setup
• Communicate and collaborate effectively and keep business moving with a newly remote workforce

You can also read the key takeaways of the webinar and our FAQ guides on remote work:

• Remote Working FAQs
• Remote Hiring FAQs
• Remote Onboarding FAQs

The post Going Remote: Best Practices for HR & Recruitment appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow
• Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision
• Ryan Malone, Founder and CEO at SmartBug Media

All shared valuable insights on virtual screening and onboarding, and useful tips to promote effective collaboration and positive employee relationships.

Virtual screening methods and tactics

The main difference between hiring remote employees and in-office recruiting is in the interviewing process – interviews are conducted via video and rarely (if ever) in person. Meanwhile, in the application phase, recruiters can follow their existing procedures.

According to Hope, being transparent and clear regarding the application, assessment, and screening phases is essential. This way, candidates know what to expect and prepare properly.

At InVision, the video interview length and interview questions the hiring teams ask vary based on the job position and seniority level. Candidates also get to meet other team members, too. Hope explains:

You can be creative with the screening methods you use. As Ryan explained, SmartBug Media’s hiring team usually asks candidates to self-record a short video presenting themselves. This is helpful especially for customer-facing roles who represent the brand and company. Ryan said:

“We try to make it as easy as possible and we don’t want people to spend two days producing some video. We just want to hear you talk. Are you articulate? Can you convey an idea? Is your space well kept?”

In addition to job-related questions, what other types of skills can you check during the video-screening? Hope noted that it’s not only the job-fit skills that matter. You should also find out if the candidate is the right culture fit for your business and can thrive in a remote working environment.

On that level, Ryan pointed out the role that cultural marketing plays in remote hiring:

“We’ve spent a lot of time focusing on culture marketing for our company to try to illustrate what it’s like here, and the type of family that you join, such that we’re attracting people [who] want to be a part of that.”

Ryan also highlighted the importance of building rapport with the candidates to understand their personal needs, motivators, and strengths:

“At the end of the day, business is done between people. It’s not done between companies and candidates, or applications and approvals. And everybody here [in the company] wants to create a connection. No different than if you’ve met somebody at a cocktail party, and you want to learn more about them.”

Promoting connection and confidence

All three speakers agreed that when onboarding new employees it’s crucial to make them feel welcome and encourage them to build a supportive network within the company. Each of them described the remote onboarding process steps they follow, once they’ve provided new remote hires with the necessary gear and digital tools (video conferencing, messaging app, project management tool, etc.) to succeed.

‘Xenia’ onboarding program: Hope described InVision’s onboarding process which consists of 20-hour sessions. After they manage the pre-onboarding essentials (e.g. equipment, paperwork) they move to the core activities.

In these sessions, they explain InVision’s operating system and the company culture to new team members. They also elaborate on how to use digital tools in an efficient manner. Hope highlighted the importance of making yourself available and being clear to employees in this phase:

“We’re really helping everybody ask the questions that they may not want to ask their manager, [and] learn the tools that we use in a little bit of a different way, in a really safe place. It helps us really break through that virtual screen and really get to that level of productivity.”

90-day ramp up plan: Melissa described the 90-day ramp up plan for new hires at Stack Overflow – nearly all of it virtual. During the first 30 days, Stack Overflow focuses on building connection. They share the company culture and norms and introduce new employees to their teammates and partners. During days 31 to 60, they explain business strategic priorities and give employees their first projects. Over the final 30 days, employees set future goals with their managers.

Melissa emphasized that this plan isn’t rigid across the organization:

“Those are the three pillars that we use across the organization. […] There are areas where we customize for the teams, for instance in technology, to be a little bit different, because they have to take a deeper technical dive.”

80% effective in 60 days: According to Ryan, building confidence is key for new team members. At SmartBug Media, during the first 60 days, they train employees on a specific job responsibility and when they excel at it, they move to a new task. They also meet with customers early on.

In Ryan’s own words:

Nurturing communication and employee relationships

For Melissa, an essential asset for effective remote work is “connectivity”, building personal connections with your teammates. An example would be to create virtual “buddy systems” and help remote employees gain a sense of belonging in their new team.

Ryan highlighted the importance of non-verbal communication to understand how employees feel, and how you can pick up on non-verbal cues and nuances through calls and video conferencing:

“I personally call everybody at our company over a period of time to just say, what can we do to make business healthier? What does your roadmap look like here? And is there a path to see it? Because you don’t have that office kind of chatter that you typically see.”

Hope mentioned that every week they schedule virtual meetings with a rather loose agenda, where employees can jump in when whey feel like it, to socialize:

“I set up an hour every week on our team. We call it ‘Friday fun day’ and we just come in and we just chat about anything and everything; sometimes related to work, sometimes not.”

Leaders play a crucial role in promoting healthy communication and making employees feel valued. The speakers shared some tactics for leaders who manage remote employees. Melissa talked about a nudging system they have that reminds managers that they haven’t spoken to an employee for weeks and catch up with them:

Finally, Ryan advised leaders to do announcements via video instead of sending extensive emails to staff:

“Do an announcement on camera and don’t script it. Just let it rip, because when your team sees your own emotion, your own kind of non-verbal cues on your face, I think it’s really, really impactful to them.”

Just when you thought it wasn’t possible – or easy, even – it is indeed a realistic and doable prospect to manage onboarding fully virtually. Equip yourselves with the right tools and, most importantly, with the right attitude and you’ll be more than ready to tackle this challenge successfully. And of course, you’ll probably make mistakes down the road. That’s OK. Just be sure to embrace them and grow through them.

The post Remote hiring tips for recruiters and HR appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In recent times, improved technology has enabled many employers to experiment with having a work from home policy (or/and a remote work policy) for employees. For some companies, it has become a common practice; they either hire professionals who work fully remotely – even in different countries – or offer flexible work from home/remote work opportunities as benefits. How do they make itwork? Usually, they provide employees with all the necessary gear, from live-messaging to project management tools to work virtually almost in the same way as they would in the office.

But not all companies and employers are familiar or comfortable with this relatively new work arrangement. They have more traditional operational systems and employees may not always be so tech-savvy. Not to mention that several roles require in-person contact or communication, for instance in healthcare or front-facing customer service, and telecommuting (yes, this is another word for work from home) is not a viable solution for them.

However, in certain cases, transitioning to work from home becomes imminent, for example during a health crisis (see COVID-19 in 2020) or even less complex situations, like moving to a new office. So, if you’re new to this – particularly to mitigate any kind of breakdown in workflow – the first thing you need to do is ensure that employees have everything they need to work effectively. If you cannot offer appropriate equipment and tools, be honest about it and figure out solutions with them (for example, allow use of personal laptops or permit them to attend meetings via phone).

Once you’ve ticked this box, share some tips with your employees on how to navigate through working from home successfully, avoiding undesirable consequences that might occur down the road such as lack of clarity in tasks, difficulty in communication, and common distractions in the home.

Here is our working from home tips email template:

Email subject line

Working from home tips for success

Email body

Dear [all/name of employee],

You’re about to experience the world of telecommuting (if you haven’t already). There’s a lot to gain; flexibility and better work-life balance are the two main pros. But, working virtually can be challenging at times, especially for those who are not familiar or even comfortable with it. That’s why we decided to put together some tips for you on how to effectively structure your day to remain productive and energetic.

Useful working from home tips:

• Craft a daily work routine: To put it simply, do what you would do in the office. Follow a certain schedule, structure your breaks, and in general, create rituals. This will help you stay more focused and keep your energy at a good level.
• Stick to your working hours: In the same tone, retain your working schedule as much as you can. We expect you to work for specific hours per day; if you need to change this plan for personal reasons, discuss it with your manager first. Let your team members know when they can reach out to you throughout the day and be available to them – they will be there for you, too.
• Stay online: It’s important to stay connected with your team and colleagues. Check your e-mail and [messaging app] regularly to receive your team’s requests and questions. Keep your calendar updated and hop into meetings with your camera and mic on. If you face issues with any of your primary tools, [e.g. mention main tools or apps], reach out to [IT/other department] at [address and/or phone number] to work on quick solutions and inform your team leader about it.
• Check your internet connection: Make sure you have a secure internet connection and fast enough to keep things rolling at all times. Follow all internet security guidelines diligently and do not connect to untrustworthy providers.
• Create a workspace: Having a dedicated room/desk/corner, where you can sit comfortably solely for work, will help you concentrate more. Keep all essential items within your reach. If you live with family or roommates, be transparent with them about your expectations during work time, especially when you are in calls/meetings with colleagues, customers, and partners.
• Limit distractions: Whether that’s scrolling through social media or cooking your lunch, it’s better to separate work from personal duties. This will enable you to retain your focus and dedicate your time to your duties.
• Share your thoughts with your manager and team: Working remotely sometimes can lead to the fear of missing out. Remember that your manager and team members are always there to hear your ideas and updates. Welcome their feedback to boost your performance and feel free to openly communicate your concerns with your teammates.
• Remember to socialize and have fun: Relationships with colleagues are important. Having them around only virtually can become confusing. The good thing is you can still get to know them during 1:1 meetings and calls. Share a laugh whenever you can, and socialize. We trust that you know how to keep things in balance.

We respect that every person is different – we believe that you can make it work on your own terms. After all, we want to make sure that you have everything you need to contribute to our mission and make the best out of this journey.

Email sign off

Thank you,

[Your name]
[Your e-mail signature]

You can also get answers to common questions around remote work in our FAQ guides:

• Remote Working FAQs
• Remote Hiring FAQs
• Remote Onboarding FAQs

The post Working from home (WFH) tips email template appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Please keep in mind: Workable is not a law firm. This article is meant to provide general information and should be used as a reference. It’s not a legal document and doesn’t provide legal advice. Neither the author nor Workable will assume any legal liability that may arise from the use of this article. Always consult your attorney on matters of legal compliance.

What constitutes an independent contractor in California according to AB5?

Until now, workers would be classified as ICs via the Borello test (S.G. Borello & Sons, Inc. v. Department of Industrial Relations (1989)). After AB5 goes into effect, companies and courts will mainly use the “ABC test” to properly classify workers.

The ABC test has three qualifiers, each of which have to be satisfied in order for someone to be classified as an independent contractor. A worker can be an IC if:

(A) they’re free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of their work; and

(B) they’re performing work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and

(C) they’re customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business.

Workers are presumed to be employees, unless a company can prove otherwise via this test that a worker qualifies as an IC.

Exemptions to the AB5

The law exempts several professions including but not limited to the following:

• Licensed insurance agents, lawyers, architects, engineers, private investigators, or accountants
• Certain licensed health care professionals, such as physicians, surgeons, dentists, podiatrists, psychologists, or veterinarians
• Securities broker-dealers or investment advisers
• Direct sales salespersons
• Commercial fishermen working on an American vessel

However, these exemptions from AB5 apply only to the ABC test. This means that an exempt worker still has to pass the Borello test to be classified as an IC.

Contracts for some professional services are exempted from the ABC test, too, but there are some additional factors that need to be satisfied along with the Borello test. These factors are clearly listed in AB5. “Professional services” in this case includes some creative professions (e.g. designers, writers, fine artists), travel agents and more.

There are other exemptions as well, so consult an attorney to get comprehensive information as needed.

Do independent contractors have any rights?

Yes. ICs have full control over how, where and when they work. They charge their own rates and aren’t bound to one employer. This flexibility is a strong motivation for workers to become independent contractors.

On the other hand, independent contractors aren’t entitled to unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation claims, minimum wage, overtime pay, rest breaks, working condition standards, and other benefits and privileges that traditionally are seen – or in some cases that are required by law – in full-time employee status. Consequently, many gig workers don’t have the leverage to negotiate their pay or living conditions, so, as misclassified employees, they are compromised.

Under AB5 law, these workers may benefit. And, the law will also protect companies that usually employ workers as employees against competitors that are trying to cut costs by misclassifying employees as independent contractors.

But, the road to AB5 is no bed of roses

The controversy around employee vs. contractor has lasted for decades. For example, the IRS once audited Microsoft for open tax years 1989 and 1990 and found the tech giant had misclassified its employees as freelancers. In 2013, the IRS estimated that employers misclassify millions of workers. Before Dynamex, there were many relevant cases in recent years – for example, the company Uni Floor had to repay significant sums in back pay in 2017 because of misclassifying its workers. On the flip side, in 2018, delivery company Grubhub won the case against one of its delivery drivers who the court found was properly classified as an independent contractor.

All that aside, AB5 is expected to have an impact on companies that consistently depend on independent contractors. That’s because the ABC test is stricter than the Borello test and its three conditions are much harder to satisfy. Hundreds of thousands of workers in California could be reclassified and many companies are likely to see a jump in employment costs.

Some employers object

The expected increase in costs is mainly why many employers are campaigning against AB5. For example, trucking company Western States Trucking Association (WSTA) had filed a federal lawsuit against AB5 which was dismissed in early 2019. Gig companies Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash started working on a ballot initiative for 2020 that will cost around $90 million. Their purpose is to earn an exemption to the law, providing some benefits to their independent contractors as a compromise.

But, their efforts have drawn fire – in a Vox article on the topic, Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation said:

“No corporation should be above the law, no matter how much they spend on political campaigns to rig the rules in their favor.”

The outcome of this campaign remains to be seen.

What could an employer do to comply with the law?

If you have even one independent contractor in California, you need to pay attention to the AB5’s requirements. Consult a legal expert who specializes in employment law in California – and make sure not to misclassify them (um, pardon the jest).

With their guidance, you can learn whether some workers as exempt or not, and you can start auditing your employment relationship with your independent contractors to determine whether the ABC test is satisfied. If it’s not, you need to change your workers’ status to employees as soon as possible.

If you’re interested in this, you’ll also want to know about other recently enacted laws in California, such as the CCPA. See a basic CCPA FAQ and a comparison of CCPA vs. GDPR.

The post Do you classify employees correctly? California’s law got stricter appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

So, what if your company implemented a new policy where employees get the opportunity to work for a set number of months in a specific country or region if they’ve been with the company for one full year? Here are four reasons why the benefits of remote working for employers can be significant:

1) Boost your talent attraction

As a recruiter, you can market to a pool of people who otherwise might not be interested. It’s a method of talent attraction for different types of companies, whether you’re at an office park in a suburb, in a tech hub in a mega city or in a small town. You can’t compete with the recruitment marketing of the Googles and Amazons of the world — but this is one benefit where you can get ahead.

In the same way a student might choose to study abroad in college or do research in a foreign country while in a graduate program, employees can live abroad or immerse themselves in a new culture while continuing to work effectively at their jobs. It might not be as easy as having an employee in the office where their engagement can be regularly monitored, but for tough-to-fill markets, it’s a strong way to attract candidates.

2) Improve engagement and retention

Many millennials and Gen Zers dream of being able to live abroad but don’t want to put their career on hold. According to a survey from Graebel Companies, 81% of U.S. college seniors want to work abroad. The Gen Z population is keen for work-abroad opportunities and this group of people will continue to take over a larger proportion of the workforce over the next few years.

There’s a burgeoning market of startups looking to capitalize on this trend, such as Remote Year and WiFi Tribe. Their slogans expand on the desire to continue to grow professionally while experiencing the global world, with Remote Year’s “Keep your job. See the world” and WiFi Tribe’s “Design your life.” These organizations are working to make it feasible to continue building one’s professional self while abroad and at the same time keep employers comfortable.

Having such a policy in place in your company can do wonders for employee engagement and retention, especially among the younger crowd.

3) Strengthen your expansion strategy

Imagine you’re at a 50-person startup in Boston, primarily composed of millennials. Your company has just received funding with the impetus to expand your business and build a European customer base. You already have leads, but you’re missing an essential ingredient: locally based talent in that region of the world. Consider the issues that arise:

• Your product requires hands-on onboarding
• Your support team’s hours are US-focused
• Your company doesn’t (yet) have that deep understanding of European markets

So, what can you do? You could hire local talent, but it takes time to onboard new employees and you want to hit the ground running. You can, instead, give your existing employees the chance to work abroad, act as an ambassador for your brand in the new market, and build a local network while your company establishes its presence. Another benefit is the chance to gain a deeper understanding of other cultures so your business is better positioned to expand to that location when the time comes – and moreover, remotely placed employees can help train new hires locally until they’re fully productive on their own.

In short: a policy that allows employees to move to a destination office for a fixed term opens up new opportunities to bring businesses closer to their expansion and new-market goals. Add to that the potential for round-the-clock support if you have offices around the world.

4)Boost your diversity and inclusion efforts

Imagine a scenario where a new immigrant joins your company. They’re more likely to feel included when they have colleagues who have worked in that immigrant’s home country, speak their language, and/or understand their culture. Additionally, the various challenges of traveling and living abroad open employees to experiences that take them out of their comfort zone, and that’s when they learn to think from different perspectives when approaching a situation or problem.

Shane Snow in Harvard Business Review draws the connection between living abroad and business:

Traveling a lot – or, even better, living for extended periods in foreign cultures – tends to make us more willing to revise our viewpoints. After all, if we know that it is perfectly valid to live a different way than we do, it makes sense that our brains would be better at accepting new approaches to problems at work.

Consequently, one of the main benefits of remote working for employers is that employees who temporarily work abroad can bring their new learnings back to the office and your business now has a team that is more multilateral in their thinking processes (diversity) and are more accepting of one another (inclusion).

One size doesn’t fit all

What works for one company might not work for another. For temporary international remote placements to thrive, you need to first understand where your company currently sits in its growth, what your goals and your employee’s goals are, and align all of these towards an overall vision.

It’s important to recognize that your company’s needs and the expectation of your employees in terms of relocation may not necessarily align; for instance, some employees sign up in the hopes that they’ll indeed get to work in sunny Thailand but end up being sent for a three-month stint in a mid-sized German town in the midst of winter – this alone can lead to disengagement and the opposite of what you hoped to gain in implementing a temporary remote-work policy.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. You need to first understand whether you can offer this option, and what it is you’re trying to achieve by bringing in such a policy. You’ll also want to consider the usual variables of where they’ll work, for how long, what they’ll be doing, etc. – these can differ drastically based on company, market, goals, and so on.

That’s not to say there aren’t services available that can help your initiative. However challenging a work-abroad appointment can be, there are options that provide reliable WiFi and comfortable rooms. Instead of going the route of a fully built-out program, you can look at coworking and coliving opportunities. There are global organizations such as WeWork with coworking locations around the world, and Roam, which designs hybrid coworking and coliving spaces. GCUC, the Global Coworking Unconference Conference, reports that as of 2017, there were 14,000 coworking spaces globally up from 14 in 2007, and predicts that number to rise to 30,000 by 2022. Harvard Business Review emphasizes the meaning behind this growth, as people continue to want to work remote, coworking spaces offer professionalism, credibility and community.

The choice of how to approach this is up to the employee and you, the management at the company. Instead of seeing people leave in order to pursue travel, this type of work situation keeps good employees at the company and provides them with a unique opportunity to grow their skillset and their diverse approach to the global world.

While spending six months with penguins in Antarctica might sound enticing, they’re still working for you and the onus is on you to ensure they’ll have access to WiFi, a workspace, and a general smooth transition that works for both you and the employee.

Ultimately, having such a policy in place can make you a more attractive employer that’s willing to build trust with employees by allowing them to work remotely in such a way. Your company can also benefit from the added skills that employees bring back to your office, and you can retain great employees who can now scratch that travel itch or resolve their need to go abroad while keeping their job with you. In an increasingly competitive talent space, the benefits of remote working for employers can put you ahead of your competition.

The post The work-abroad dream: 4 benefits of remote working for employers appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Contents:

• What is a sabbatical?
• How long is a sabbatical?
• Is sabbatical leave paid or unpaid?
• How does a sabbatical work?
• Sabbatical leave policy

What is a sabbatical?

The sabbatical definition is “a break from work” during which employees can pursue their interests, like traveling, writing, research, volunteering or other activities (or even rest). During that time, the employee is still employed at their organization, but they don’t need to perform their normal job duties or report to work.

This practice is common in educational institutions; for example, a professor may take a sabbatical leave for a semester or two to teach at a foreign university or do research in their field.

Some corporations offer a professional sabbatical as a benefit, too – in 2018, 15% of employers were offering sabbaticals (though only 5% offered paid sabbatical leave). This leave is granted to employees after they complete a certain number of years in service, usually more than five.

The sabbatical leave is separate from other kinds of leave. For example, you may be entitled to 20 days of paid time off per year plus a sabbatical after your fifth year with the organization.

The benefits of a sabbatical leave are clear for employees: they get to take their minds off the stress of their jobs and focus on what they love outside of their work. They can also develop skills, both personal and professional. Employers benefit in various ways, too: for example, their employees are rejuvenated and return to work with new energy and motivation (and without the fear of employee burnout). Plus, offering sabbaticals is a great way to attract talent to your organization.

How long is a sabbatical?

The length of a sabbatical from work varies according to the institution or organization. Some universities may grant this leave for six months, a year (called “sabbatical year”) or more.

Private companies may offer one or more months of sabbatical leave depending on their policy and each employee’s years of service. For example, Adobe offers four weeks of sabbatical to those who’ve been employed in the company for at least five years and five weeks to those who’ve completed 10 years of service.

Is sabbatical leave paid or unpaid?

Often, sabbatical leave is paid, either with the full salary or a percentage of that salary – although some organizations may offer unpaid sabbatical leave.

How does a sabbatical work?

Employees who qualify for this type of leave will usually need to ask for it several months in advance. Organizations will consider that request and approve it if it meets their criteria. Organizations will also need to make arrangements to replace that employee for as long as they’re on sabbatical, or divide their work among other employees.

Many organizations have specific rules regarding sabbaticals. For example, employees might need to take their sabbatical within a specified period after they become eligible or they lose it. Also, if an employee chooses to take advantage of a sabbatical leave, they may need to commit to staying at the company for at least a specified period after they come back (much like with tuition reimbursement benefits).

While on sabbatical, people are still officially employed by the organization. This means that they remain bound by their organization’s policies including harassment, confidentiality, data protection etc.

Sabbatical leave policy

If you’re thinking of introducing a relevant policy to your company, that policy needs to be absolutely clear. First, define sabbatical leave. Is it a break from work so employees can do what they want? Or is it a break for a specific reason, e.g. volunteering in an environmental program?

Then, decide when employees should qualify for sabbaticals. Usually, the minimum is five years, but consider what makes sense for your organization.

The next step is laying out clear guidelines about how employees can ask for sabbatical, how you will evaluate their request, what their obligations are and what applies in regards to their pay, benefits or contract. These elements are essential for an employee sabbatical policy, and clarity and transparency about all aspects of the policy is essential to its success.

If you’re not sure where to start, use our sabbatical leave policy template.

Want more definitions? See our complete library of HR Terms.

The post What is sabbatical leave? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

So if you’re thinking of building effective benefit plans or looking to boost your existing policies, we got you covered – we present the basics of employee benefits, including types of employee benefits, common benefits per location and insight on what candidates and employees truly want:

What are employee benefits?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of employee benefits (or fringe benefits), let’s define the term:

Employee benefits are any kind of tangible or intangible compensation given to employees apart from base wages or base salaries.

This employee benefits definition points to examples of job benefits such as insurance (including medical, dental, life), stock options and cell phone plans. But, employee benefits can be much more than these, from training opportunities to startup perks (let’s not focus on the notorious ping pong tables, though).

Basically, any kind of non-wage gain attached to an employee’s position can be classified as an employee benefit, be it mandatory or voluntarily given by an employer.

Why do employers offer benefits to employees?

Benefit packages take a lot of time out of many HR professionals’ time. And with good reason: they’re one of the most basic employee engagement and retention strategies, and they support talent attraction as well.

The numbers speak for themselves about the importance of employee benefits. Extensive research by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) indicates that 92% of employees consider employment benefits as important for their overall job satisfaction (in itself, a great element of retention and productivity). Almost one third of employees also cited work benefits as the top reason of looking for a job outside their organization; and for choosing to stay at their job, too.

Benefits are also among the top driving factors candidates look for in job ads – 63% of job seekers surveyed say they pay attention to what benefits a company offers. This means that offering benefits, and mentioning them in your job ads and careers page, is a great part of your employer branding efforts.

Employee benefits also help you take care of high-performing employees without the need to keep investing in exceptionally high pay raises. All employees should get paid enough to pay the bills and live comfortably, but they might accept less pay if they have strong health insurance, flexible hours and other benefits important to them. The practice of employees giving up a part of their salary for benefits is called salary packaging, and may also result in tax deductions or other gains for either party.

What are the four major types of employee benefits?

The major types of benefits are those categories of benefits that are more commonly met in companies across countries. Many cite these benefits as health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance and retirement plans. However, this view is focused on the different types of insurance, and neglects other equally major benefits. In an effort to expand our scope, we’ve grouped insurance benefits together and listed three other major types of benefits offered by employers:

• Insurance
• Retirement plans
• Additional compensation
• Time off

Insurance

This category includes health insurance (dental, medical, vision), life insurance, and disability insurance. Offering health insurance, or some kind of medical plan, is mandatory in many countries, and there’s often publicly available medical care sponsored by employers. However, many companies opt for private group or individual insurance in order to provide better options to their employees.

Life insurance shows that the company cares not only about the employee, but also about their family. If the employee dies, their family will get a sum to cover funeral and other related expenses, and their cost of living for a set time period. Life insurance may also be complemented by Accidental Death and Dismemberment (AD&D) policies which pay a sum to employees who either die or sustain injuries which render them unable to work.

Disability insurance may cover long-term and short-term disability or illness. For example, if an employee gets sick, they can receive payments for as long as their sickness lasts. In the U.S., some employers may sometimes use short-term disability policies to fund paid maternity leave for female employees.

Retirement

Retirement benefits help employees feel more secure about their future after retirement. In the U.S., for example, a common benefit is the 401(k) in which both company and employee make defined contributions to the employee’s account on a regular basis.

The 401(k) is a type of defined contribution plan which doesn’t guarantee employees a specific benefit amount at retirement. This is because the money invested from the account may be lost if investments fail. Employees choose how to invest contributions, or how much to contribute from their paycheck through pre-tax deductions. Employers may also contribute, in some cases by matching a certain percentage of employees’ contributions. At retirement, employees receive the balance in their account. Before you decide whether to implement a 401(k) plan, learn about its different forms.

There’s also the defined retirement plan which is entirely funded by the employer, so employees can receive a specific monthly benefit at retirement. The amount may be determined based on retirement age and tenure at the company.

Time off

In many countries, paid time off is mandated by law, like in the European Union (Austria, for example, has a legal minimum of 22 paid days for vacation and Finland has five weeks). Employers in countries like the U.S. may not be obliged to offer paid vacation leave, but those that do it voluntarily can get a competitive advantage in talent attraction and retention – 9 out of 10 employees reported that paid leave is important to their overall job satisfaction, according to SHRM.

For similar reasons, employers around the world may choose to extend law-mandated leave, such as giving extra days for sickness. In the U.S., 71% of all workers in the private sector had paid sick leave as a benefit, according to a 2018 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The same goes for other types of leave such as parental or bereavement leave. For example, the law in the UK doesn’t provide for bereavement or compassionate time off, so offering a few days of this type of leave can be an important benefit.

Other time-off benefits may include training days and sabbaticals, which are usually voluntary for employers, but can have just as much impact on employee engagement.

Additional compensation

This category refers to any money offered to employees apart from their regular compensation. This money includes bonuses, commissions, awards and gifts, as well as indirect compensation, like stock option plans and profit-sharing.

Bonuses can be contractual or discretionary and may include:

• Sales commissions
• Individual or company-wide performance awards
• Lump sum gifts (e.g. for exemplary actions on the job)

These compensations are usually part of incentive programs that motivate employees to produce more and better quality results. They may also help keep morale high. Often, bonuses are determined by union contracts.

There are some arguments against monetary benefits though; financial rewards may sometimes spur unethical behavior or create envy among coworkers. For example, a salesperson who knows that the most successful salesperson of the month will get higher commission might resort to stealing prospects from coworkers or otherwise contributing to an unhealthily competitive atmosphere in the office. To prevent these outcomes, make sure you give everyone the same chances to earn bonuses and make the criteria for those bonuses transparent to all, and be suspicious of discrepancies in employee results.

If you want to formulate a clear and transparent bonus policy, here’s our policy template to get you started.

Common and best employee benefits

Apart from the major categories, there are several other types of benefits that appear frequently in company benefits plans.

Here are the top 10 employee benefits worldwide:

• Private Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement / Pension plans
• Training and Development
• Stock option plans
• Work From Home and/or flexible hours
• Food and snacks
• Life insurance
• Extended leave (Vacation, Sick)
• Bonuses / Awards / Gifts
• Company equipment (including vehicles, laptops, phones)

Note that the most popular benefits vary per location and there are also benefits that are exclusive to certain areas. For example, Australians can receive novated leasing as a benefit, enabling them to lease cars with their employer taking on the contract’s obligations.

In the U.S., where paid parental leave isn’t federally mandated by law like in other countries (although it exists at the state level in some jurisdictions), time off for mothers and fathers is a popular company-offered benefit.

In four English-speaking countries, employee benefits may include: (this list isn’t exhaustive for any of these areas and the order of items isn’t significant)

So what are good benefits for employees?

Or rather, what employee benefits do people value the most? The easy answer is that employees value all benefits. But, budgets are limited and companies need to find the benefits mix that will have the most positive impact, while also not breaking the bank.

To do this, first be sure to learn what benefits you need to offer by law. This could be national or state law. Make a list and decide if you can extend some of those benefits. For example, in France, employees are guaranteed three to five days of bereavement leave. You could decide to extend this leave if you find that your employees need it.

Then, take a look at surveys to help you determine voluntary benefits your company should offer. Glassdoor’s Benefits Review survey in the US investigated the correlation between certain benefits and job satisfaction. A correlation of 1 means the benefit is a good predictor of employee satisfaction, while 0 shows no correlation. Here’s the list of employee benefits with correlations of more than 0.5:

Another recent survey by a benefits provider identifies the three most popular non-insurance benefits:

1. Paid family leave
2. Flexible/ remote work
3. Professional development

You can also look at employee benefits examples from big companies with high employee ratings. You may not be able to afford all these benefits, but they can certainly give you ideas.

Of course, it never hurts to investigate what your own employees want – perhaps, they have different needs than workers in other industries or locations. Ask for feedback via email or create an online survey using a free tool like Google Forms. Also, some employers pay attention to the demographics of their employee base to give everyone the benefits they need most based on their characteristics. For example, in order to retain and engage millennials, businesses may offer them benefits such as student loan repayment support and co-sign support for auto loans.

How much do benefits cost a company?

According to a 2019 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employee benefits in the U.S. make up 30% of total compensation costs. Insurance benefits accounted for 8% of compensation costs and legally required benefits were at 7.7%.

Health benefits especially might average $15,000 per employee in 2019, prompting employers to make changes in order to lower the cost of employee benefits (e.g. adding more virtual care solutions).

Benefits do cost money, and their importance is such that these costs will not (and should not) be reduced too much. But, not every benefit has to create heavy financial burdens for companies. You can try your hand by introducing cost-effective benefits and perks, such as:

• Free lunches and/or snacks
• Remote work / Flexible hours
• Public transit cards or reimbursement for tolls, gas and other travel-related expenses
• Company-sponsored discounts (e.g. for coffee places, gyms, restaurants, daycares)
• Extra time off for training or volunteering
• Free parking spaces
• Cellphone plans with free calls/texts/internet
• Housing and relocation benefits for new hires (where applicable)
• Wellness resources (such as standing desks, first-aid training)

Many of these unique employee benefits are on the rise: for example, in the U.S., out of all the organizations that increased their offered benefits, 44% increased their employee wellness resources. These can help boost morale, but they can also help you avoid indirect costs, like costs associated with missed work and associated productivity (about $1,685 per employee each year, according to SHRM).

And this may be the case for most benefits. What seems expensive at first glance might actually save you money in the long run. So make sure you examine the possible costs and gains for each employee benefit before you decide what to include in your plan.

Employee benefits management: How to do it effectively

Employee benefits have a significant impact on the administrative aspect of HR, especially when regulatory issues are involved. But there are ways to manage benefit plans more effectively to save time and reduce the possibility of mistakes. Here are five things to consider:

• Hire a dedicated employee benefits specialist. This person could be in-house (as a Benefits Administrator or Compensation and Benefits Manager) or external (such as a Benefits Broker). They will help you find the best options based on your company’s needs, calculate costs and gains, and even negotiate prices for certain benefits.
• Find the right software. It’s very difficult (and unnecessary) to manage benefit packages without the help of technology. A good employee benefits information system helps you see which employees receive which benefits, export statistics and administer benefits (it might also integrate with your talent acquisition software to further streamline the entire HR process). To find the right software, do your research and make a compelling business case.
• Measure benefits and costs diligently. This will be the responsibility of the finance department, but it’s important for HR to keep track of rising or plummeting costs and gains. Having data will be vital to form your long-term benefits strategy.
• Include a description of benefits and perks in your Employee Handbook. No number of great benefits will be effective if employees don’t know they have them. Prepare a section in your Employee Handbook to give important information on what your company offers (use our benefits and perks template as an employee benefits package example to get started with your own).
• Monitor employees’ wishes and needs. Employees’ needs may change. Offering free lunches and gym memberships is great for younger employees. But, as they grow older and have families, flexible hours or parental leave might be more important. Listen and make changes when needed.

The post Employee benefits: A guide on common and best benefits appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

For example, think of Sam, a sales manager, who used to love his job. In fact, being a top performer himself, he succeeded in building a team of top performers from scratch. But lately, Sam seems constantly exhausted and avoids speaking with others at work. He started missing his deadlines, taking regular sick leaves and, despite being usually cool-headed, he snaps easily when something, no matter how minor, goes wrong. He’s giving his manager and team members a headache, and he’s dangerously close to getting fired, disciplined, or worse, put on a performance improvement plan.

We can’t be sure about the cause of Sam’s altered behavior, but it could well be a textbook case of employee burnout.

What is employee burnout?

All these symptoms that Sam exhibits out of the blue – exhaustion, disengagement, absenteeism, lack of motivation and productivity, irritability – are all employee burnout signs, along with job dissatisfaction and lack of feelings of achievement. Burnout indicates that someone’s emotional and physical resources are spent, and they can no longer function properly at work, being constantly in an oxymoronic lethargic-hyperstressful state. It’s a serious mental health problem that can affect many people’s lives – as of May 2019, it’s classified as a mental condition by the World Health Organization.

As a matter of fact, let’s look at some employee burnout statistics. In the US, 67% of full-time employees reported feelings of burnout with varying frequency, according to a Gallup survey. In Germany, an estimated 2.7 million employees felt burned out a few years back, and the country recently saw a spike in sick leave due in part to work-related mental health issues. And, according to a study completed in 2017, approximately a quarter of French workers were experiencing work-related “hyperstress.”

Plus, nobody is immune to burnout – in fact, a percentage of highly engaged US workers experience employee burnout. Passion for your job doesn’t stave off burnout either. This is probably because the more dedicated you are to your job, the more your workload and job-related responsibilities weigh on your mind. And that could be one of the causes of burnout in the workplace.

So what are the reasons for employee burnout?

The Gallup survey mentioned above indicates five main causes of burnout at work (note that this list isn’t exhaustive when it comes to causes of employee burnout):

1. Unfair treatment at work
2. Unmanageable workload
3. Lack of role clarity
4. Lack of communication and support from their manager
5. Unreasonable time pressure

This makes sense: when employees are overworked and pressured without having adequate support, they burn out.

All this may have to do with how our work is evaluated: high productivity, quick turnaround, and exemplary dedication are considered important values for workers, and they’re what brings great performance reviews and salary increases. Sam was likely promoted to sales manager because his work was characterized by all these factors. Even attempts to use technology to optimize our work and save time can result in us working more.

However, focusing on hard (and long) work alone to evaluate employees isn’t a sustainable situation, especially if the company leaves employees to do their best on their own without providing them with the resources or support they need. Or if it simply asks too much of them.

The good news is that this, and every one of the causes of job burnout, is within HR and company leaders’ power to change, if they put their hearts to it.

Why you should care about burnout

First, as mentioned, nobody is immune. Burnout could happen to you, too, if the circumstances allow it.

Second, burned-out employees incur significant organizational costs. They’re more likely to take sick leave or look for another job and this may increase your employee turnover rate and introduce other scary costs, like those related to lost revenue or hiring and training replacements. Also, these struggling employees may be normally engaged and productive employees you simply can’t afford to lose. Or they might be managers responsible for entire teams; and manager burnout could spill over to many more levels in your company.

Also, if many of your employees exhibit symptoms of burnout, this may amount to a culture problem in your company. This means that you might also see problems in other aspects, for example, productivity might not be what it should or job satisfaction might be grievously low.

And of course, it’s a matter of caring. While our friend Sam is fictional, the testimonials of real people dealing with employee burnout show the damage this condition can inflict. Many people find burnout an obstacle in their family and other personal responsibilities as well, and they’re also slightly more likely to visit the emergency room, according to Gallup. Helping colleagues, friends or family members get over their burnout, or prevent burnout in the first place, can prove beneficial not just for your company, but for the world as a whole.

How to recognize and manage employee burnout

Recognizing employee burnout isn’t always straightforward, but keep an eye out for the symptoms. If employees who are usually productive and motivated show some signs of employee burnout on a daily basis (exhaustion, disengagement, reduced productivity etc.), then they might be burned out or close to it.

For example, Sam’s manager noticed Sam’s unwillingness to reach out to customers that he already had a good relationship with in the past. Sam also started coming to work half an hour later every day without informing anyone. In meetings, he’s become silent, even when issues within his field of expertise or responsibility were discussed (e.g. his team’s projects for next quarter).

Of course, each employee may experience burnout differently, or these symptoms could result from reasons other than burnout. That’s why you should start dealing with this issue with an open conversation.

Discuss with your team member

Arrange an informal meeting and have an honest discussion. Say that you value them as employees and you know they’ve always been reliable and productive, but you’re genuinely worried about them. Address the changes you’ve observed and assure them that whatever is happening, you’re willing to support them as much as possible.

If your team member is indeed burned out, it’s possible they’re also consumed by loneliness, according to research published in Harvard Business Review. By being there for them, you can alleviate some of these negative feelings and open up the way for reversing employee burnout.

If your team member is going through something else outside of the workplace, such as dealing with an illness, a death in the family, a breakup, or another personal issue, you can still do things to help them depending on the situation. For example, your company might have a sick leave policy or bereavement leave policy your team member didn’t know about or didn’t want to use for fear that they might lose their job.

Sort through the workload

Sometimes, highly competent employees might be carrying too much on their shoulders. They may often try to help their colleagues and take up projects that aren’t included in their job description. This workload can quickly pile up and become unmanageable.

So, if your team member tells you that they’re exhausted or that they’re constantly behind schedule, sit with them and create a list of all their tasks and projects, both recurring and ad hoc. Then, help them prioritize. Keep in mind that you should be ready to strike some items off the list as well, especially if they don’t fall within your team member’s job description, and take responsibility for delegating them elsewhere or putting them on hold.

Reflect on your behavior

Do you send emails to your team member late at night or call them on weekends about work? Do you rarely push back when other departments or teams try to force their projects on your own? Are you rewarding hard work and long hours instead of focusing on results delivered? Do you treat some team members unfairly or struggle with your own work so much that you don’t have time to talk with or help your team?

Sometimes, managers are at least partly responsible for staff burnout. Think on your management style, your behavior toward your team and what you do to actively support them. You might be surprised to find that, despite your good intentions, you might have neglected helping your team members adequately.

Ensure variety of work

When an employee is extremely good at something, their employers tend to trust them with that all the time – and that could wear the employee down. For example, Sam was very good at handling complaints from enterprise customers, so his manager always fell back to him for that. But Sam got tired of hearing complaints and being yelled at all the time; he wanted to have a go at sales operations, but there was never any such opportunity.

As a manager, consider your team members’ type of work. Ask your team what would get them more motivated or enthusiastic and make it happen to the best of your ability. Take chances by assigning them different work every once in a while or make some time for them to shadow colleagues, innovate or even pursue educational opportunities via the company.

Make sure you listen to your team’s own wishes about the direction they want to go. You can’t satisfy all these wishes, but it’s good to know what your team members are thinking and what they’d like to do in the future. Just listen and be honest with them.

Employee burnout prevention: The real challenge

How do I keep my employees from burning out in the first place? This might be tough: there’s no magic strategy to follow to prevent employee burnout. Yet, a proactive and preemptive approach is far easier and better than scrambling to fix employee burnout after the fact. It’ll save you a lot of headaches and organizational costs down the road.

If you’re a member of the company’s leadership or the HR team, you can:

• Provide advice to your company’s managers on how to manage employee burnout. Organizing company-wide workshops might be a good idea, so you can get insight on burnout from expert psychologists and trainers.
• Promote a healthy work schedule. If you notice that, at 9 p.m., the office is still abuzz with people who came in at 8 a.m., it’s time to have a talk with executives and inform them about the costs and risks of employe burnout.
• Consider culture problems. If your company culture is transparent, and your company leaders reward employees, support everyone, and respect work/life balance, employee burnout will be easier to prevent. Build a great culture that recognizes the value of vacation time, flexible schedules, and teamwork (and that can boost your recruiting and retention efforts too).
• Craft a mental health policy. Talk to your VPs and other executives to propose solutions, such as employee assistance programs, counseling services or therapy sessions covered by the company’s insurance policy.

As a manager, you can give all this advice to HR if you’re on good terms with them (having a good relationship with HR as a hiring manager certainly helps), but you can also try to prevent burnout as far as your team goes. You can:

• Be clear about roles and responsibilities. Starting with the job description you write for new hires, be upfront about your expectations. Outline all duties for each role and discuss them with your team members to clear any confusion. If the role must change, involve your team member in the process. Avoid delegating work outside of each person’s responsibilities without giving them freedom to say no – especially when projects come from other teams or departments. Your team needs to know that you’ll back them up if they refuse to take up a task that shouldn’t be theirs in the first place.
• Meet with your team regularly. Chances are, you’ve heard of someone who only speaks to their team members every once in a while. This isn’t enough to build trust. Aim for recurring 1:1 time when you can ask team members if they’d like to change something in their job or whether there are any problems with their workload. It doesn’t always have to be an hour-long meeting; even a few minutes on a regular basis to touch base or give feedback on something can strengthen your working relationship.
• Follow an open door policy. No number of 1:1 meetings will be useful if your team members don’t feel they can be open with you. Be a good listener and encourage your team to share their thoughts and ideas; don’t shut them down or disparage them, even when they make mistakes. Be honest and transparent and encourage your team members to do the same.
• Respect your team’s life outside work. Emergencies happen and it’s natural for all of us to put in a few more hours in these cases. But this shouldn’t be the norm: make sure your employees actually use their allotted vacation time and don’t burn the midnight oil on a regular basis. (Pro tip: follow this principle yourself to set the example; no more emails or calls outside working hours unless absolutely necessary, and unplug completely during PTO).
• Advocate for resources. If your team is understaffed, ask for more hires. If you need new software, make a strong business case for it. Be sure you understand your team’s training needs (1:1s will come in handy here) and find educational opportunities. Neglecting to secure adequate resources for your team and leaving them to pick up the slack is counterproductive.
• Stop your employees from overworking. We often don’t see burnout coming until it’s too late. Employees may work harder and harder due to their dedication, unwillingness to turn down requests for help from colleagues, or a simple drive to show that they’re hard workers (be aware that the very idea of working hard being the ultimate goal and the best predictor of success has been excessively internalized by many people). So, have a discussion with your team members about what exactly you value in their performance, what your expectations are, and what they’re not. Don’t hesitate to ‘order’ someone to call it a day, if you see it’s needed.

Doing all this will help you prevent burnout to the best of your ability. Sam was unlucky, and his manager and even colleagues must now work even harder as he rehabilitates and recovers, but you can avoid all this trouble by being proactively open, supportive and helpful toward your team members.

And the added bonus? All these are great tactics to ensure high productivity, engagement and employee retention. Sam won’t only be happier and more productive, he will also stay with the company for a long time.

The post Employee burnout for employers: costs, causes and cures appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Great morning at launch of IHRE18 Summit! Lots of great sessions to go this afternoon. Register on Site @ The TIC, Telford! pic.twitter.com/KFiHSaIc9r

— InHouseRecExpo (@InHouseRecExpo) October 9, 2018

During my time attending seminars and masterclasses, in between presentations and visiting exhibitors’ booths, here are my biggest takeaways from the 2018 HR summit at Telford:

1. Recruiters vs. Robots: the battle hasn’t started yet

And it’s highly unlikely that it’ll ever start. Technology has changed the way we hire and has even had an impact on job-seeker behavior (with 72% of candidates spending an average of 2-6 hours researching and using 14.5 sources to gather as much information as they can for their potential employers.) But we are not talking about removing the human factor from recruiting. Dave Hazlehurst, partner at Ph.Creative and keynote speaker, explains:

Tech knowledge is the enabler – not the solution. The more digital we become, the more human we must be.

There are intangible traits that make us human, like empathy, imagination, passion and creativity, and by incorporating them into the hiring process, we can make the difference in the candidate experience.

Matt Buckland, Workable’s VP of Customer Advocacy with 16 years of HR experience, agrees:

We need to have a human process, not process the humans.

Technology is here to help us hire more effectively and to optimize the process; it’s time-consuming to collect and combine data manually. Think, for example, sourcing tools that use boolean search logic. Or AI-based systems that match your requirements with potential candidates. In the end, though, we use our intelligence to reach decisions.

2. Employer branding is not a buzzword; it’s an action plan

There’s no point in identifying your employer brand and defining your core values if you don’t do anything about it. In his presentation, “How to build an employer brand in 100 days,” Dave Hazlehurst explained that you need to promote your culture everywhere: from your job ads and careers pages to your offline communication with candidates (e.g. during interviews.) Make your brand attractive to potential hires by using engaging content, pictures and quotes.

But before you get there, Dave suggests doing an in-depth research among your current staff. Identify common patterns across your company by asking questions like:

• What’s the one thing you wished everyone knew about working here?
• What did you hear about the company before joining?
• How has this changed after you were hired?

Not everyone will answer the same way. Junior-level employees and executives will have different perspectives. Same goes for an engineer versus a marketer. But these different perspectives resonate with candidates, too. They won’t all join your company for the same reasons. So, use the data you gather to build your unique personas. And then, differentiate your employer branding tactics based on these personas.

3. Employees (should) stand at the heart of HR

Before accepting a job offer or even applying for one of your open roles, candidates will go to multiple sources to learn as much as they can about your company. This adds an extra degree of difficulty for you, as you now have to control the messaging out there about your company and create compelling and up-to-date content on various channels (such as Glassdoor, LinkedIn and Facebook) that will boost your reputation. It’s no longer only about finding great candidates; you also have to convince them that your company is an ideal fit for them.

Tomas Coulter, co-founder of 360 Resourcing Solutions, spoke of the importance of Employee Value Proposition. Or, as candidates would put it, “What’s in it for me?” According to Tomas, your EVP should center around these five pillars:

• Monetary incentives
• Prospect of the role
• Day-to-day
• Company culture
• Relationships with team members

As to how you communicate your EVP to candidates, PathMotion co-founder David Rivel gave some valuable tips:

Stories have a greater impact than facts. That’s why job seekers prefer to hear real stories from real employees to determine whether they’re going to apply at your company.

For example, instead of just saying that you have a great culture, ask your current employees to describe a day at work in a personal, authentic way. This will help illustrate life at your company and attract like-minded people. After all, your employees are ambassadors for your company.

4. Recruiter and hiring manager: #RelationshipGoals

The recruiter-hiring manager relationship is a complicated one. Recruiters might complain they don’t get prompt feedback from hiring managers. On their part, hiring managers often feel that recruiting is not their job. Both parts, though, have a common goal: to hire the best candidates. So, instead of fighting or avoiding each other, they should actually be working closer together. Lee Harding, Talent Acquisition Manager at Shop Direct, put it nicely:

Recruiting doesn’t have to be painful for hiring managers. We, recruiters, need to make a plan to educate and empower hiring managers through the entire process.

This plan starts with recruiters and hiring managers sitting side by side and talking about the role. Recruiters might discover something useful – for example, that they should reach out to candidates from X company because they have built innovative products. And hiring managers will get access to valuable data they wouldn’t be able to find themselves, like salary benchmarks for the role they’re hiring for.

To make it work, this relationship shouldn’t be forced. As Lee explains, both parts should meet regularly, even when there’s no current open role, so that they build a true partnership.

Recruitment is always changing; new dynamics emerge in the space while old tactics either change or become obsolete. That’s why it’s important to stay on top of the trends as much as possible – or better yet, ahead. We’re doing that by attending numerous recruitment-focused events all over the world; next time you’re at such an event, please stop by our booth. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the current and future trends in HR and what you’re doing about them. In the meantime, we’re happy to chat with you on LinkedIn or Twitter.

The post In-House Recruitment Expo: Key takeaways from 2018 IHRE at Telford appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Tech isn’t lossless

Getting to know and understand each other in “real life” is a big part of management. I’m not entirely convinced you can replace the social and interpersonal cues you get in a shared workspace with video and emoticons on a screen, no matter how good the tech has become.

Maybe experienced managers can somehow overcome this by simulating good habits they picked up years ago. But are we undermining the opportunities of a high-potential junior to grow into a good manager by letting them work remotely?

Organizations that scale beyond a dozen or so people rely on serendipity and natural socialization to widen people’s lens about what’s going on. Lunchtime conversation, work-related or not, may be the most unappreciated management tool we have. Remote makes you blind to this. It also renders the tool useless and ineffective.

Peripheral vision

Let’s be fair: tools facilitating informal/transitory socialization do exist in place of the absent in-person lunchtime conversation. HR tech will continue to evolve to support high-five, show-and-tell and such types or “peripheral vision” interactions. Slack (for all its discontents) is loved by remote workers, precisely because of their visceral need to connect.

Yet, I’m still skeptical about the inherent structure of workplace socialization tech. Its makers have incentives that don’t always align with the people and companies using them. We’ve seen this story before with social media. What drives engagement is not always what’s good for us.

Getting the job done isn’t where it should end

The most valuable part of workplace relationships extends past a single employment cycle. My co-founder, as well as some of my best colleagues, mentors, friends, and other social connections, are people I’ve met in a previous job. Are we willing to trade this for the convenience of not having to commute to the same office space every morning?

Truly remote companies will tend to be geographically spread out – or else, what’s the point? This is not incompatible with the modern business, but real life is very geographically driven. In remote work, are we sacrificing the opportunity to form lifelong friends and intellectual partners?

I struggle to articulate the last point. I can’t help but feel there’s a certain naïveté in thinking that an organization can be reduced to process and structured touchpoints. Maybe it works for some types of projects, but humans tend to resist the objectification that comes with it. We aren’t livestock, after all.

Ideological undertones?

There’s an ideological underpinning to this trend. Many corporations put results on a pedestal. Meritocracy advocates insist to focus on “pure skill”, looking at personal relationships and human dynamics with some suspicion. Skeptics like me are seen as “touchy-feely” and parochial.

Is this an inadvertent return to Taylor and the dehumanization of the workplace? The advocacy certainly does bring up some memories of 1990s business process consultancy bullshit – at least in its simplistic depiction of organization in boxes and processes. There’s more to it than that.

So, can remote work be part of an organization? Absolutely. Can you build long-lasting organizations primarily on a remote workforce? It has been done, but it may be situational or limiting in some ways. One has to be very conscious about what they’re giving up.

I’m not just an old fart, just a bit skeptical. Like many, I enjoy work from home. I often produce my best work this way. I love how it forces people to put extra structure in their work. I run a transatlantic company. I’m not a stranger to multinational teams.

What I’m trying to say is we don’t know enough about the effects of remote work. It will take time to see how it behaves at scale and what its long-term effects are. Companies taking a cautious stance are not “backwards” or parochial – perhaps they are just very thoughtful about breaking things that potentially have larger after-effects on people and organizations.

I know successful companies built on remote. I admire them. I notice they put a lot of effort to make it work and often remote is a flagship part of their corporate culture. I don’t deny their success. On the contrary, I don’t assume that their achievement is easily replicable.

The post Why I’m cautious about remote work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

I discussed this with Hung Lee, a well-known thought leader in HR who founded the recruiting platform workshape.io and curates the popular newsletter Recruiting Brainfood. He has observed that there are certain men and women who can’t be hired or retained with the practices we’re used to.

“Some people resemble the artisans of the past – highly-skilled workers who care about their craft, whether they’re developers, writers, designers or beer makers,” says Hung. “Companies want those employees because they produce exceptional, innovative work, but hiring them is difficult.”

He elaborates on why that is:

Perhaps the reason is that the recruiting process, deeply rooted in the industrial revolution (hiring “pipeline” is an industrial metaphor), is just not suitable for people with an artisanal approach to their work. They’re confident they excel at their job and can find work easily so they have reduced motivation to go through multiple screenings or interviews.

So we should be acknowledging that some people – modern-day artisans – can’t be hired with the standard process. But, I had more questions for Hung Lee: how do we recognize artisans and how do we hire them? Most importantly, how do we retain them and give them the means to thrive?

He says that we can learn from the history of work to shape the future.

Artisans of the past and future

Before the industrial revolution introduced assembly lines and mass production, people got necessary goods from artisans: blacksmiths, dyers, shoemakers, weavers, bakers. Those skilled workers had been apprentices of the craft and they mastered it after years of training.

So when you ordered a sword from a blacksmith, you didn’t tell them how to make it. The blacksmith knew – better than anyone. If you told them you wanted the handle upside down, they’d turn you away because they felt strongly about correct specifications. And they always did a great job because they were passionate about their craft. They took it seriously and excelled at it.

This is what Hung describes as “artisan” in the current workplace – imagine Cassandra, a highly-skilled software developer from London. Coding is her passion and she has a strong GitHub and StackOverflow presence. She likes working with innovative companies and often freelances when interesting projects come her way. Hung breaks down the elements of the mindset of artisans like Cassandra:

• They are devoted to mastering their craft: An artisan cares about mastery. They spend a lot of time in self-improvement and dedicate their life to their trade.
• They work better when given autonomy: Artisans need to work on their own terms and choose their tools, materials, schedule and customers.
• They hone their craft at work and at home: Artisans often do the same type of work at home as they do in the office. Cassandra, for example, may go home after work and code.
• They produce handmade products: Artisans use their hands to build, create, shape, improve. Cassandra’s code is ‘handmade’ because she typed it in.
• Their work is values-driven: Artisans are very committed to working on things that they value. They may even sacrifice economic benefits for the sake of their craft.
• They have a holistic understanding of a product: Artisans are usually able to make a complete product from start to finish. Cassandra, for example, as a full-stack developer, can produce an application all on her own.

Why is it difficult to hire artisans?

From what he’s seen of people with artisanal mindsets, Hung observes that they’re highly resistant toward resume screening, assessments or multiple interviews. That’s a recruitment process that was designed during the industrial revolution to hire assembly line workers – people who might be hard-working and good at their jobs, but who would be expected to follow directions and operate in a structured environment.

People who have an artisanal mindset won’t subject themselves to that sort of hiring process or mode of work. Hung puts it bluntly: “Artisans are thinking ‘I know I’m good, and if you don’t know I’m good, it’s your problem.’”

Think about our friend Cassandra. She’s exceptional at what she does, so she receives messages from recruiters constantly. Most tell her to apply for a job, schedule a screening call, send her resume. But Cassandra doesn’t have the incentive to answer, and might also not agree that the methods of assessment are valid.

In the rare cases Cassandra responds because she’s interested in the role, she’s asked to complete assignments and go through multiple interviews. Before long, she thinks that the hiring process may be a reflection of the company culture – structured, inflexible, asking her to prove herself – and she soon loses interest.

However, one company contacts her without asking her to apply or schedule an initial call. They know what she’s worked on – they’ve looked at her GitHub profile – and they’ve spoken with Joe, her former colleague who recommended her. They’ve also heard her name being tossed around in conferences and social media. They’ve done what Hung says is important – look for social proof and evidence of work:

“It’s like when you’re thinking of trying a new coffee shop – you won’t ask to test the coffee or interview the baristas,” says Hung.”You’ll check the shop’s popularity and you’ll hear what other people say about it. And if you like its reputation, you’ll have a taste.”

This company wants Cassandra as part of their team and they understand that she has a different appreciation of work than other office workers. They propose that she works with them on a paid innovative project for a month so she can see whether she likes the workplace and would like to join full-time. Now, this is something Cassandra might be interested in.

This approach might make hiring artisans like Cassandra easier. Hung clarifies: “Instead of one party immediately asking the other for a major, life changing commitment, both sides get together and find out what working with each other is like.”

Ok, you hired them. Will you retain them?

Artisans are difficult to retain. And the reason is that they mostly care about their craft. They’re not ‘businesspeople’ who want to optimize for profit, efficiency or productivity. That’s why they’re usually more comfortable in startups where there’s room and opportunity for innovation.

If you operate inside a tight framework, not allowing the artisans the flexibility to work on their own terms, they’ll soon withdraw their labor and find work elsewhere.

Also, most companies try to please their customers every way they can. Artisans don’t think the customer is always right. If a customer asks for something that’s wrong (like an upside-down sword handle), an artisan will probably refuse to do it.

I asked Hung Lee if companies can realistically provide that flexibility. Wouldn’t it be difficult to accept losing business because customer requirements aren’t up to Cassandra’s standard? Hung’s reply highlights the change of mindset companies should go though:

When a person refuses to perform a task because it’s not up their standard, they’re unprofessional. And that’s because professions are inherently non-artisanal. If you’re a professional, you’ll deliver what they ask of you in the best possible way (customer is always right), while if you’re an artisan, you care more about doing what you know is right.

So, there’s a price to pay when you employ artisans or exceptional employees. You can’t direct these people like assembly-line workers. They’re not people who take orders (although they might accept your guidance and leadership).

Are artisans worth the trouble?

It’s entirely possible to build a successful business with non-artisanal workers. But, as Hung emphasizes, without artisans, the company might hit an early limit in innovation. You might be able to satisfy customers, but you may struggle wowing them.

And, despite the difficulties in hiring and retaining artisans, they seem to be the people that CEOs want. Ask any senior executive if they’d do anything to hire an expert developer who can perfect their company’s product and they’ll probably say yes. Dropbox CEO Drew Houston explains this in an article in Experteer Magazine: “I’m drawn to people who really love their craft, and treat it like a craft, and are always trying to be better and are obsessed with what separates great from good.”

And he’s right, because, philosophically speaking, artisanal work is more attractive to all of us. It used to be different: the industrial revolution moved artisans out of the game because a factory could produce faster and cheaper.

“The products wouldn’t be as good, but they were good enough and that’s what we accepted,” says Hung. “But, we’re slowly returning to a time when we have a better appreciation for what is good.”

True enough, most of us would be willing to pay extra for a handmade bag or watch, or a limited edition book. Hung Lee also uses the example of music:

I ask people to think how much money they’re willing to spend on buying music online. Then, I ask them if they feel the same way about concert tickets. Concerts are always more popular because you don’t just buy music, you buy a unique, artisanal moment, and you have proof that a human hand has created it.

It’s definitely an organizational challenge

If you want people who obey directions, you might get a decent business and product. But if you want to go further than that and employ artisans, you need to be prepared to have a different relationship with them.

Think about the degree of control you’re willing to allow a person to get them to come onboard. If you want to hire a highly skilled person, you need to give them room to operate.

Also, it’s best not to force everyone through the same recruitment process. Have default pipelines for most junior or mid-level roles, but don’t make artisans go through them.

And, of course, think about the future of your business. As companies grow, they become more process-driven and that drives artisans away. Essentially, companies can either optimize or innovate. Artisans prefer the latter, so when you start optimizing for efficiency, they might go work for a startup instead. My naive question to Hung at this point was whether keeping artisans by slowing growth would be a fair trade-off.

“A better solution would be for companies to split,” says Hung. “They could create smaller internal units or ecosystems where artisans would preserve their autonomy and values-driven innovation.”

Hiring and retaining artisans is tough (not even Hung Lee has a complete plan!) Start by customizing your recruitment efforts to the candidate, instead of forcing them to adapt to your standard recruitment pipeline. Granted, it’s work, but the benefit is landing a star employee who can help you improve your business using their special talent.

The post The future of recruiting: How you can hire exceptional employees appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Hiring remote employees can benefit your organization by bringing in skills that are scarce in your location. In turn, remote work benefits employees by offering the option to pursue the job they really want, without the need to relocate. But, attracting and retaining remote workers brings its own set of challenges. Find out how to redesign your hiring process to recruit and hire remote employees, then how to effectively manage and retain them.

How to attract remote employees

Build a strong employer brand online

Having a good employer reputation will help you attract and retain qualified people. Local candidates might be easier to reach: they’ve probably heard about your company, know one of your employees or they’ve seen your offices first-hand during the interview process. But, if you’re hiring remotely, candidates have to rely on your digital presence to learn about your company.

Make sure your online presence shows you’re trustworthy, clearly illustrates your culture and helps candidates visualize themselves as members of your team. To achieve this, create informative careers pages and attractive social media accounts that:

Describe your way of working. Remote employees often make their own schedule, but they still want to know what the job entails and what their obligations will be. Explain the level of flexibility you offer and, if possible, give a glimpse into the typical day of most of your employees.

For example, Buffer is a remote-first company and its employees share how they organize their own schedules to achieve work-life balance.

Include employee testimonials. Ask your remote employees to tell their story, what made them choose a remote job and why they stay at your company. These stories will serve as an inspiration for people who are considering an application.

Here’s a YouTube playlist with stories from Automattic employees, who describe their work and what they like about it.

Showcase in-person meetings. If you host annual company all-hands meetings or if your teams occasionally gather and attend conferences, capture and share these moments using photos or videos.

Expensify, that has both in-office and remote workers, organizes a month-long offsite trip every year. Employees get to explore a new country, work together and live a unique experience.

Present the values that define your culture. Every company wants to hire and work with people who share the same values. Be open about what you’re looking for in coworkers and what kind of qualities are most important to your team.

Doist, the remote-first company behind popular apps like Todoist, makes sure to highlight its inclusive approach in hiring through its careers page and job ads. Find out more about Doist’s method and approach to hiring remotely, in our interview.

Select the best places to advertise your remote jobs

Consider advertising your open roles on job boards and social networks dedicated to remote work. Here are some options:

Large, global job boards, like Indeed and Monster, can also be effective, as long as you clearly state in the job title that you’re hiring remotely. If you want to recruit candidates in a specific city or country, it might be a good idea to advertise your open roles on local job boards.

You can choose between global and local, broad or industry-specific job boards, when advertising your open roles with Workable. You can read the entire list of the job boards we integrate with or contact one of our product specialists directly to learn more.

How to hire remote employees

Use synchronous and asynchronous means to assess candidates

When hiring remote candidates, phone and video interviews will be your primary communication channels. Make sure you use the right tools to make communication easier. Also, it’s a good idea to use assessment tools to evaluate candidates’ skills and make objective hiring decisions, even if you don’t meet candidates in-person.

Here are some suggestions of tools you can use to:

Conduct interviews remotely:

• Spark Hire helps recruiters and managers reach better hiring decisions, as they can view recorded interviews and compare candidates’ answers at any stage of the hiring process.
• Jobma helps you screen candidates faster as you can share your interview questions and ask candidates to answer them via video in their own time.
• HireVue lets candidates self-schedule interviews which can be useful in cases of big time zone differences.

Assess culture fit:

• ThriveMap identifies how people like to work to help you create productive teams.
• Saberr uses data-driven technology to predict how well a candidate will fit into the role, team and organization.
• Human employs AI to remove bias that could unconsciously impact your hiring decisions due to cultural differences.

Ask for referrals

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t reach out to your existing employees for referrals, when hiring remotely. Describe the skills you’re looking for and clarify that there are no location boundaries.

And just like your employees can refer people to you, they can also refer your company to their network and serve as advocates for your employer brand – particularly those who already work remotely. They can share first-hand experience of what it feels like being part of a distributed team and, this way, bring in more applicants.

How to retain remote employees

Design attractive and fair compensation packages

You can’t woo remote employees with ping pong tables and free snacks (and probably not your in-office employees either.) Employees are more likely to care about compensation plans that are:

Attractive: When you’re hiring remote workers, you’re competing against companies from all over the world. This means you should put extra effort in designing equally competitive compensation packages. If you can’t increase salaries, consider offering benefits like mobile plans or stock option plans, if possible.

Fair: Think of two remote employees; one is in Singapore, the most expensive city to live in, and the other’s in Lisbon, the cheapest place to live in. If they’re doing the same job, should you pay them the same or adjust their salaries based on their cost of living? There’s probably a balance. It’s best to build compensation and benefits packages that speak to your employees’ needs but also don’t create huge salary gaps between team members.

Be transparent to let potential candidates know what to expect and reinforce equity among existing employees. Here’s an example from Buffer that created a salary formula to explain how they calculate employees’ salaries and how they increase over time.

Offer meaningful benefits

Consider benefits that matter to all employees. When managing remote employees, ask what kind of perks would be useful to them and, if possible, offer them as welcome gifts (like noise-canceling headsets for employees who’ll work in public spaces.) Here are some examples:

• Professional development. Like most employees, remote workers seek to grow professionally so include them when designing career paths or training programs. You could buy them tickets to conferences, enroll them to online courses and discuss how they can evolve within your company, taking up more challenging projects.
• Vacation plan. It’s common for remote employees to end up working longer hours than office employees, as they don’t need to commute. This means that they’ll appreciate a generous vacation plan or even unlimited vacation days.
• Health and life insurance. Employees who choose remote jobs often claim they want to be closer to their families. Consider offering health and life insurance plans for your employees and their loved ones, as part of their benefits package.
• Memberships to coworking spaces or discount at local stores. Ask your employees what remote work means to them. If, for example, they work at a shared office, buy them a membership. If they prefer to work from a local cafe or library, offer them some gift cards for their daily beverages and snacks.

At the end of the day though, your remote employees are similar to their office-based colleagues in that they want to be respected and have resources to be productive and successful. Build a culture that gives all that to every employee, even if they’re miles or oceans apart.

Useful resources:

• Remote hiring tips for recruiters and HR
• How to reinvent your tech hiring in a remote-first world
• Remote Hiring FAQs
• Employee remote work policy template
• Ask a Recruiter: How do you include video interviews in the hiring process?

The post How to attract, hire and retain remote employees appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

If these recruiting stats sound unbelievable—well, let’s put that to rest right now. They’re real. And Doist owns them. Doist is a startup that creates productivity software. They are also a remote-first company. This means:

• They rarely, if ever, meet candidates in person before hiring them.
• Their recruiting process is just as distributed as they are.
• They have no central office. Anyone can work from anywhere, as long as there’s a stable Internet connection.

So, how do they make hiring work? It’s actually not rocket science. They follow a meticulously structured hiring process. It’s one they are obsessive about it. Because, when it comes to extending a job offer, Doist doesn’t believe being half-hearted.

“There’s no lukewarm ‘yes,’ when we’re hiring a candidate” Allan Christensen, Doist’s COO told us. “It’s either a ‘hell yeah’ or a ‘no.’”