What is a drug and alcohol policy?

The drug & alcohol policy is designed to promote a safe, healthy, and productive workplace by addressing the potential challenges and risks associated with drug and alcohol use. 

Substance misuse can lead to decreased productivity, increased workplace accidents, and compromised decision-making. 

A drug & alcohol policy should include:

• Scope of the policy defining who the policy applies to and under what circumstances
• Prohibited behaviors outlining specific actions that are not allowed, such as the use or possession of illegal drugs at work
• Support and rehabilitation assistance to employees who self-disclose or are identified as having substance misuse issues
• Consequences of violation detailing the disciplinary actions that will be taken if the policy is breached

Why is it important to have a drug & alcohol policy for your organization?

Substance misuse can lead to impaired judgment, increased risk of accidents, and decreased efficiency. 

By setting clear guidelines, the organization can mitigate these risks, uphold its duty of care towards its employees, and maintain its reputation. 

Furthermore, a well-defined policy provides a framework for supporting employees facing substance misuse challenges, emphasizing the organization’s commitment to employee well-being.

Step-by-step instructions to write a drug & alcohol policy

1. Research legal requirements: Understand the legal implications related to drug and alcohol use in the workplace, considering both national and local regulations.
2. Consult with stakeholders: Engage with department heads, legal teams, and employee representatives to gather insights and ensure the policy is comprehensive.
3. Draft the policy: Start with the scope, defining who it applies to. Detail prohibited behaviors, such as the consumption of alcohol during work hours or the use of illegal drugs. Use real-life examples, like “Employees are prohibited from consuming alcohol during lunch breaks.”
4. Incorporate support mechanisms: Outline procedures for employees to seek help, such as counseling or rehabilitation programs.
5. Define consequences: Clearly state the disciplinary actions for violations, using examples like “Possession of illegal drugs on company premises will lead to immediate termination.”
6. Review and feedback: Circulate the draft among a select group for feedback, ensuring clarity and comprehensiveness.
7. Finalize and implement: After incorporating feedback, finalize the policy and communicate it to all employees.

Drug & alcohol policy template

[Organization Name]

Drug & Alcohol Policy

1. Purpose & Brief

This policy aims to ensure a safe, healthy, and productive work environment by addressing the use and misuse of drugs and alcohol within [Organization Name].

2. Scope

This policy applies to all employees, contractors, and visitors of [Organization Name].

3. Prohibited behaviors

Consumption of alcohol during work hours, including lunch breaks.

Use or possession of illegal drugs on company premises.

Reporting to work under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

4. Support and rehabilitation

Employees struggling with substance misuse are encouraged to seek help. [Organization Name] offers counseling and support programs to assist in recovery.

5. Consequences of violation

Violations of this policy, such as possession of illegal drugs, will result in disciplinary actions, up to and including termination.

6. Reporting

Employees are encouraged to report any suspected violations to their supervisors or the HR department.

7. Review

This policy will be reviewed annually to ensure its continued relevance and effectiveness.

Signature:

[Employee Name] ________________________ Date: ____________

Disclaimer: This policy template is meant to provide general guidelines and should be used as a reference. It may not take into account all relevant local, state or federal laws and is not a legal document. Neither the author nor Workable will assume any legal liability that may arise from the use of this policy.

The post Drug and alcohol policy template appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

A medical leave policy should include:

• Eligibility criteria with clear guidelines
• Duration of leave and under what conditions extensions can be granted.
• Documentation requirements

What is a medical leave policy?

A medical leave policy is a formalized set of guidelines and procedures established by an organization to address the circumstances under which employees can take time off from work due to health-related reasons.

This policy outlines the conditions under which medical leave can be granted, the duration of the leave, the documentation required, and any compensation or benefits associated with it.

It serves as a protective measure, ensuring that employees have the necessary time to recover from illnesses, surgeries, or other medical conditions without the fear of losing their job or facing workplace repercussions.

Why is it important to have a medical leave policy?

Having a medical leave policy in a company is crucial for both the well-being of employees and the smooth operation of the organization.

Firstly, it demonstrates a company’s commitment to the health and welfare of its employees. When employees know that their health and recovery are prioritized, it fosters a sense of security and loyalty, leading to increased morale and job satisfaction.

Furthermore, a well-defined medical leave policy provides a structured framework for managers and HR professionals, ensuring consistency in decision-making and reducing potential legal liabilities. It sets clear expectations regarding the process, duration, and documentation required, minimizing ambiguities and potential conflicts.

Step-by-step instructions to write a medical leave policy

1. Research and benchmarking

Start by understanding legal requirements, such as the FMLA, and industry best practices related to medical leave.

2. Define the scope

Clearly state who the policy applies to, considering full-time employees, part-time employees, contractors, etc.

3. Draft the policy

Begin with a clear title and brief overview. Delve into a detailed explanation, ensuring clarity and comprehensiveness. List down the key components, ensuring they are exhaustive and relevant.

4. Consultation

Engage with legal experts to ensure the policy is compliant with all regulations. Also, consult with department heads and managers for practical insights.

5. Feedback loop

Circulate the draft among a select group for feedback. This helps in identifying any gaps or ambiguities.

6. Finalize and implement

After incorporating feedback, finalize the policy. Organize training sessions to familiarize employees with the new policy.

7. Regular review

Set a periodic review, preferably annually, to ensure the policy remains relevant and effective. Update based on changing organizational needs or legal requirements.

Medical leave policy template

[Organization Name]

Medical leave policy

1. Purpose & Brief

This policy aims to provide employees of [Organization Name] with clear guidelines and support when seeking medical leave due to illness, injury, or other medical conditions.

2. Scope

This policy applies to all full-time employees of [Organization Name]. Part-time employees and contractors may refer to their specific contractual agreements for related provisions.

3. Eligibility

Employees who have been with [Organization Name] for a minimum of [e.g., “six months”] are eligible to apply for medical leave.

4. Duration of leave

Employees can avail up to [e.g., “12 weeks”] of medical leave in a calendar year. Extensions can be considered based on medical certifications and organizational requirements.

5. Documentation

Employees must provide a valid medical certificate from a registered medical practitioner, detailing the nature of the illness and the estimated recovery time.

6. Return to work

Upon recovery, employees are expected to notify their respective managers and HR at least [e.g., “one week”] in advance of their return. A fitness certificate might be required based on the nature of the illness.

7. Compensation

As per the FMLA, employers are not mandated to provide paid leave1. However, [Organization Name] allows employees to utilize their accrued paid leaves like sick leave or vacation during this period.

8. Confidentiality

All medical records and information will be kept confidential and will only be accessed by authorized personnel for official purposes.

9. Non-retaliation

Employees availing medical leave will not face any form of retaliation or discrimination. Any such incidents should be reported to HR immediately.

Signature:
[Employee Name] ________________________ Date: ____________

Disclaimer: This policy template is meant to provide general guidelines and should be used as a reference. It may not take into account all relevant local, state or federal laws and is not a legal document. Neither the author nor Workable will assume any legal liability that may arise from the use of this policy.

The post Medical leave policy template appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But then, PTO isn’t always so easy to navigate, especially when an already approved PTO needs to be reversed by an employer.

This bears the question: can you deny PTO after approval? Let’s dive into this complex issue.

The legal perspective

The legal landscape surrounding PTO is a blend of federal ground rules and state-specific stipulations. The United States, specifically, has no federally mandated PTO minimum, so it follows that the related Fair Labor Standards Act will not support employees if you revoke PTO after approving it.

So, it really falls to the states when it comes to laws around time off management. A pivotal point is the employer’s commitment to the employee once the PTO is approved. That’s the long way of saying: check with local legislation and legal counsel for guidance in this area.

Meanwhile, while the law may offer some leeway, it’s in the moral and cultural implications where this becomes the bone of contention.

When can PTO be denied after approval?

The big question – under what circumstances is it even conceivable (or ethical) to backtrack on PTO? Let’s look at some potential scenarios in which this scenario might occur:

1. Business crises

Maybe something unforeseen happened, and it’s so sudden and needs immediate attention. Maybe there’s a high-profile client visit, a product launch that’s gone awry, or a breakdown in the system requiring urgent work from IT. These are things that don’t wait for Zofia to return from her staycation or allow for Claude to take off at noon on Friday no matter how buttoned-up the team’s processes are.

2. Unavailability of replacements

Some roles are so specialized that finding a substitute, even for a short while, becomes a Herculean task. Or, maybe, there’s a sudden employee departure that leaves a team entirely unavailable until the end of the month – and you’re left twisting in the wind until then.

3. Approval errors

This is where human error enters the scene. A slip in the system or miscommunication can lead to overlapping PTOs that leave the department shorthanded. That’s why it’s crucial to have a reliable software to manage PTO requests and approvals to reduce or even eliminate these problems.

PTO reversal and its impact on morale and trust

Now, reversing PTO after it’s been approved should never be common practice. You should reserve it only for last-gasp situations and stop-gap solutions.

Why? Well, imagine you’re Zofia. You’ve booked an amazing trip to Italy and you’ve been building towards that for months on end. Then you receive a call from your managers that something happened in engineering that puts the company’s existence in balance – and only you can fix it.

OK, legally, you can find ways to do this with Zofia or Claude. But is it really the best thing to do? The fallout of this isn’t just the immediate disappointment but potential long-term mistrust of you as an employer and as a management team. If you can’t keep your [bleep] together, then who’s to say this won’t happen again? That kind of uncertainty can lead to unnecessary stress among employees including Zofia or Claude above.

There are ways to avoid this situation to begin with (more on that below). There are also ways to mitigate the situation – for example, you might allow them to continue with the original plan but invite them to work one or two days during their time off (with recompensation, of course).

But sometimes, the decision is 100% unavoidable. You really do need Zofia to cancel outright. Let’s look at ways you can mitigate the damage that might follow.

How to remedy the damage of PTO reversal

Even when faced with the undeniably tough call of retracting approved PTO, your responsibilities as an employer are manifold. Not only is it crucial to manage the immediate situation, but it’s also essential to ensure that Zofia’s sense of trust isn’t irreparably damaged. Here’s how you can approach it:

1. Compensation for financial losses

Your employee has probably already made arrangements – hotel bookings, flight tickets, or other plans – and those are likely to be non-refundable. Stepping up to cover these expenses (and then some) goes a long way.

2. Offer additional perks

Consider giving them extra time off immediately after said crisis is resolved. Perhaps set up an all-expenses-paid weekend getaway on the company coin or something similar. It’s a tangible way to express gratitude for their flexibility and understanding.

3. Future PTO assurance

Now, this is where you can truly shine. Assure them of a priority status for their next PTO request. Let them choose their dates without the usual red tape, ensuring swift and hassle-free approval. This isn’t just about giving them a rain check; it’s a promise, a pledge of regret and a gesture that underlines their importance to the organization.

It’s important, nevertheless, to recognize that PTO was booked for a reason. It’s not just for fun. Some people have weddings planned. Others have booked a dream holiday. Others are headed home to visit family. Stuff can’t always be moved around.

Meaning: while these steps are reactive measures to manage the fallout, it’s pivotal to delve deeper and understand why such a situation arose in the first place. More often than not, these are symptoms of larger management or communication issues within the organization.

Prevention is better than cure

As the custodian of both business interests and employee well-being, it’s imperative to introspect. Could this situation have been avoided with better workforce planning? Was there a breakdown in communication channels? Or perhaps, it’s an indication that the existing PTO policy needs a revisit.

By proactively addressing these systemic issues and bolstering internal processes, not only do you reduce the likelihood of facing such situations in the future, but you also foster an environment of trust, transparency, and mutual respect. Being proactive rather than reactive can save a lot of headaches. No one wants to reverse PTO – let alone the employee themselves. It’s not a bridge you ever want to cross.

Let’s look at how you can prevent such a scenario.

1. Implement a more robust PTO system

This is about creating an ecosystem where PTO requests, approvals, and changes are transparent and accountable. This ensures that anomalies are caught early on. This can be done with a reliable PTO management software with consistent human oversight.

2. Communicate more openly

Creating a bridge of understanding between teams and their managers is invaluable. Regular check-ins or even casual conversations can preempt many last-minute surprises. You can also bolster a policy with clear backup plans – if Jimmy isn’t immediately available, Agnieszka can provide backup.

3. Establish backup plans ahead of time

On that last point about Jimmy and Agnieszka: cross-training is a word you’d want to consider seriously. Ensuring more than one person is equipped to handle critical roles can be a game-changer.

Deny PTO after approval only as a last resort

This is not kids’ play. You’re working with professionals who have complex personal lives, and you have a clear agreement in place (if not, you should) for PTO. It’s part of the fabric of employment.

Don’t let the small thread of PTO unravel your relationship with your employee. The legal aspect of it is fine and well – but in this case, any legal rights should take a back seat to employee engagement.

As the custodians of workplace culture, it’s upon you, the HR professionals and employers, to manage the denial of pre-approved PTO with extra care, ensuring that even when tough decisions are made, they’re made with empathy and foresight. The Zofias and the Claudes of this world will thank you.

The post Can PTO be denied after approval? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What is an acceptable use policy?

An acceptable use policy established clear guidelines on the appropriate use of IT resources. Also, iit ensures that employees and stakeholders operate within a secure and productive digital environment. From data confidentiality to software licensing, this document addresses potential risks and sets clear expectations. Regularly updating this policy in line with technological advancements and regulatory changes will further enhance its effectiveness in safeguarding your organization’s assets and reputation.

An acceptable use policy should include:

• Acceptable use
• Prohibited use
• System and network activities
• Email and communication activities
• Software and intellectual property
• Confidentiality

Step by step instructions

Writing an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) requires a systematic approach to ensure that all necessary elements are covered and that the policy is clear, enforceable, and aligned with the organization’s goals and values. Here’s a step-by-step guide to writing an AUP:

1. Define the Purpose

Determine why you need an AUP. This could be to protect company assets, ensure a productive work environment, or comply with legal and regulatory requirements.
Clearly state the purpose at the beginning of the policy.

2. Determine the scope

Decide who the policy applies to (e.g., employees, contractors, visitors, etc.).
Specify which systems, networks, and devices are covered by the AUP.

3. Research and benchmarking

Look at AUPs from similar organizations to get an idea of industry standards.
Stay updated with relevant laws, regulations, and best practices.

4. Outline acceptable uses

Define what constitutes acceptable use of the organization’s IT resources.
Include examples where necessary for clarity.

5. Detail prohibited uses

Clearly list behaviors and actions that are not allowed.
This can include things like illegal activities, accessing inappropriate content, or using resources for personal profit.

6. Address system and network activities

Set guidelines for accessing and using the organization’s systems and networks.
Include rules about password security, unauthorized access, and software installation.

7. Set email and communication standards

Provide guidelines on appropriate email usage, including sending mass emails, content standards, and data sharing.
Address other communication tools if relevant, like instant messaging or collaboration platforms.

8. Discuss software and intellectual property

State the organization’s stance on software licensing, unauthorized software, and intellectual property rights.
Emphasize the importance of not violating copyright laws.

9. Emphasize confidentiality

Highlight the importance of protecting sensitive and confidential information.
Provide guidelines on how to handle, store, and share such information.

10. Define enforcement procedures

Detail the consequences of violating the AUP.
This can range from warnings and retraining to termination or legal action.

11. Review and revision procedures

Mention how often the AUP will be reviewed.
Outline the process for making updates or changes to the policy.

12. Obtain legal review

Before finalizing, have the AUP reviewed by legal counsel to ensure it’s compliant with local, state, and federal laws.

13. Communicate and train

Once the AUP is finalized, communicate it to all relevant parties.
Provide training or informational sessions to ensure understanding and compliance.

14. Obtain acknowledgment

Have users sign or electronically acknowledge that they have read, understood, and agreed to the AUP.

15. Review and update regularly

As technology, laws, and business needs change, revisit and update the AUP as necessary.
By following these steps, you’ll create a comprehensive AUP that protects your organization and provides clear guidelines for users.

Acceptable use policy template

Acceptable use policies may differ from company to company. Here’s a template based on a hypothetical software company, called TechNova.

This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) outlines the acceptable use of computing resources at TechNova Solutions. All employees, contractors, and affiliates are required to follow this policy when accessing and using TechNova’s network and IT resources.

Brief & purpose

The purpose of this AUP is to ensure the security, reliability, and privacy of TechNova’s IT resources and users’ data.

Scope

This policy applies to all users accessing TechNova’s IT resources, including but not limited to employees, contractors, visitors, and external partners.

Acceptable use

• Users must use TechNova’s IT resources for business-related purposes only.
• Personal use is permissible as long as it does not interfere with company operations or productivity.

Prohibited use

• Users must not engage in illegal activities.
• Users must not access, upload, or distribute offensive, threatening, or harmful content.
• Users must not use IT resources for unauthorized commercial activities.

System and network activities

• Users must not attempt to access data or accounts for which they do not have authorization.
• Users must not introduce malicious software into the network.
• Users must not perform any action that compromises the performance or security of IT resources.

Email and communication activities

• Users must not send unsolicited email messages or spam.
• Users must not engage in any form of harassment via email or other communication means.

Software and intellectual property

• Users must respect all copyright and licensing agreements.
• Users must not download, install, or use unauthorized software.

Confidentiality

• Users must protect sensitive and confidential information.
• Users must not disclose confidential information without proper authorization.

Enforcement

Any user found to have violated this policy may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment and legal action.

Review and revision

This AUP will be reviewed annually and may be revised as deemed necessary by TechNova’s IT department.

Agreement

By accessing and using TechNova’s IT resources, you agree to comply with this AUP and all other related policies.

Disclaimer: This policy template is meant to provide general guidelines and should be used as a reference. It may not take into account all relevant local, state or federal laws and is not a legal document. Neither the author nor Workable will assume any legal liability that may arise from the use of this policy.

The post Acceptable use policy template appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

It will provide them with a clear understanding of their eligibility for relocation assistance, the types of expenses that can be reimbursed, and the process for requesting and receiving reimbursements.

What are employee moving or relocation expenses?

Employee moving or relocation expenses refer to the costs incurred when an employee has to move or relocate to a new location due to professional reasons. These expenses can include costs related to moving personal belongings, travel, temporary or new housing, and other related costs.

An employee moving or relocation expenses policy should include:

• Clear definitions of who is eligible for relocation assistance
• A detailed list of reimbursable and non-reimbursable expenses
• The process for requesting and approving relocation expenses
• Guidelines for submitting receipts and other documentation
• Any limits or caps on relocation expenses

Step-by-step instructions

1. Define the purpose of the policy

Start by stating the purpose of the policy. This should be a clear and concise statement that explains why the policy exists and what it aims to achieve.

For example, the purpose of the employee relocation expense policy is to provide guidance to the organization regarding reimbursement for relocation expenses incurred by new personnel.

2. Define eligibility

Clearly state who is eligible for relocation assistance. This could include new employees, specific roles, or positions within the organization. Specify any conditions for eligibility, such as the distance of the move or the timeframe within which the move must be completed.

3. Define reimbursement amounts

Outline the maximum amounts that can be reimbursed for different roles or positions. This could include direct costs of relocation, indirect costs, and mileage. Be specific about what each of these categories includes.

4. Define direct and indirect costs of relocation

Provide a detailed list of what is considered a direct cost and what is considered an indirect cost of relocation. Direct costs might include packing and unpacking, transportation of household goods, etc. Indirect costs might include travel costs enroute, house hunting, etc. Be clear about what is not considered a direct or indirect cost.

5. Outline the process for using commercial carriers

If your organization has contracts with specific moving companies, provide details about this. If employees are allowed to use other carriers, explain the process they need to follow, such as getting estimates from a minimum number of vendors.

6. Outline the process for self-moves

If employees are allowed to move themselves, provide guidelines for this. This might include limits on reimbursement, requirements for receipts, and restrictions on who can be paid for their labor.

7. Define the process for transporting the employee and family

Provide guidelines for how employees and their families are transported to the new location. This might include a maximum reimbursement for mileage and requirements for the route taken.

8. Define the responsibilities of the organization and the employee

Clearly outline what the organization is responsible for and what the employee is responsible for. This might include approval of expenses, payment and reporting of stipends, and adherence to the policy.

9. Provide references and resources

Include links to any relevant laws, regulations, or other policies that employees might need to refer to. This could include IRS publications, organizational policies, or other resources.

Employee moving or relocation expenses policy template

Policy Brief & Purpose

Our employee moving or relocation expenses policy aims to provide clear and comprehensive guidelines for the reimbursement of expenses incurred by employees who need to relocate for work-related reasons. The purpose of this policy is to ensure that employees are adequately supported during the relocation process, and that the process for reimbursement is fair, transparent, and consistent.

Scope

This policy applies to all employees of our company who are asked to relocate permanently or temporarily for work-related reasons. This includes both domestic and international relocations. The policy does not apply to employees who choose to move for personal reasons or those who commute long distances to work.

Policy Elements

Eligibility: Employees are eligible for relocation assistance if they are asked to relocate more than 50 miles from their current work location for a period of more than six months.

Reimbursable expenses: Reimbursable expenses may include the cost of a moving company, packing and shipping of personal belongings, travel expenses to the new location, temporary housing for up to 30 days, and certain costs associated with setting up a new home (e.g., utility connection fees).

Non-reimbursable expenses: Non-reimbursable expenses include costs related to selling or buying a home, meals during the move, costs related to moving pets, and any expenses not directly related to the move.

Approval process: Employees must submit a relocation request to their supervisor or the HR department. The request should include an estimate of the expected expenses. All requests will be reviewed and approved on a case-by-case basis.

Reimbursement process: Employees must submit all receipts and documentation related to the move within 30 days of incurring the expense. Reimbursements will be made through the regular payroll process.

Limits on expenses: The company reserves the right to set a reasonable cap on relocation expenses. Employees will be informed of this cap at the time their relocation is approved.

Disclaimer

This policy template is meant to provide general guidelines and should be used as a reference. It may not take into account all relevant local, state or federal laws and is not a legal document. Neither the author nor Workable will assume any legal liability that may arise from the use of this policy.

The post Employee moving or relocation expenses policy template appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Is a higher salary the golden ticket to employee satisfaction, or are there other, more nuanced factors at play?

As HR professionals, it’s our responsibility to delve deeper into these questions, understanding the multifaceted nature of job satisfaction and how we can foster it within our organizations.

The salary-happiness misconception

There’s a common misconception in the world of work: a higher salary equals increased job satisfaction. It’s an easy assumption to make. After all, who doesn’t appreciate a generous paycheck at the end of the month? However, recent data and real-life experiences are challenging this notion, revealing that job satisfaction is a complex construct influenced by a myriad of factors beyond just monetary compensation.

Money can’t buy… job satisfaction

Three recent studies shed light on the intricate relationship between salary and job satisfaction, each from a different industry perspective.

The first, a survey conducted by Vivian Health, focused on the healthcare industry, known for its competitive salaries.

The survey revealed that despite the attractive compensation packages, a staggering 48% of respondents reported their jobs as stressful, with 50% considering or actively applying for a new role in a different industry within the last year.

This suggests that a high salary isn’t enough to offset the stress and dissatisfaction experienced by these workers.

On the other end of the spectrum, a recent study by Moneyzine found that self-employed individuals, who typically earn significantly less than their employed counterparts, reported greater work-life balance, job satisfaction, and lower stress levels.

Despite earning 56% less on average, 4 in 10 self-employed respondents described themselves as happy or very happy with their current employment status. This stark contrast underscores the fact that factors beyond salary significantly contribute to job satisfaction.

Contrary to expectations, a study conducted by My Perfect Resume found that there were no major disparities in overall job satisfaction between individuals earning less than $25,000 and those earning $75,000 or more per year. In fact, 77% and 74% of respondents in each income bracket, respectively, reported high levels of job satisfaction.

Factors that contribute to job satisfaction

So, what are these factors that contribute to job satisfaction beyond salary? Here are some of the top factors that you have to consider:

Work-life balance: The self-employed individuals reported a better work-life balance compared to employed workers. This balance, or the ability to juggle work demands with personal life and family needs, significantly contributes to overall job satisfaction.

Autonomy: Being one’s own boss was the top factor that self-employed individuals enjoyed about their job. The freedom to make decisions and control one’s work can lead to a greater sense of satisfaction and fulfillment.

Job security: While not explicitly mentioned in the surveys, job security often plays a significant role in job satisfaction. The uncertainty of job loss can lead to stress and dissatisfaction, regardless of salary.

Workplace culture: A supportive and positive workplace culture can significantly impact job satisfaction. This includes factors such as relationships with colleagues and supervisors, opportunities for growth and development, and recognition and appreciation for work done.

Meaningful work: Employees who find their work meaningful and purposeful are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs. This sense of purpose can come from the nature of the work itself or from the impact of the organization’s work.

Related: The real reasons your employees don’t want to work for you

The role of HR in enhancing job satisfaction

As HR professionals, we can leverage these insights to enhance job satisfaction within our organizations. Here are a few strategies:

• Encourage flexible work arrangements where possible, and respect employees’ personal time.
• Wherever possible, give employees the freedom to make decisions about their work. This can increase their sense of ownership and satisfaction.
• Transparent communication about the company’s health and future plans can alleviate fears about job security.
• Foster a supportive and inclusive workplace culture. Recognize and appreciate employees’ efforts, and provide opportunities for growth and development.
• Help employees find purpose in their work. This could involve connecting individual tasks to the organization’s broader goals or engaging in corporate social responsibility initiatives.

In conclusion, while salary is an important factor in job satisfaction, it’s not the end-all, be-all.

We need to look beyond the paycheck and consider other factors that contribute to job satisfaction.

By doing so, we can create work environments where employees feel valued, satisfied, and engaged, leading to better outcomes for everyone involved.

The post Why money alone can’t buy happiness at work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The handbook contains useful information to assist new employees during onboarding. It is not solely focused on policies and processes. It can also stand as a guide on your wiki pages as well. Please make any necessary changes to align it with your company’s tone of voice and spirit.

In the next chapters, we will see every aspect of a good employee handbook, part by part. Add your policies to each section, and you can have an excellent output.

You can download this template now by clicking on the right sidebar. Begin customizing it based on your needs.

Introduction

This is an introduction to your company’s employee handbook.

This could be a head start for your employee handbook:

If you’re a new member of the team we’re so pleased you joined us! This handbook will help you get up to speed on how our company operates with useful signposts to people, tools or guides that will not only help you ramp up faster but also make every day at [your company name] a little bit easier, so you can focus on doing great work you enjoy.

Our employee handbook is accessible by anyone so that prospective candidates or customers can get a better understanding of [your company name] – its history, product, customers and the way we work.

1. About [your company’s name]

This is the best place to express everything about your company. Feel free to gather your values, vision, and mission to make your employees feel aligned with them. Regardless of the product or service, this section allows you to share critical information about it. It’s the right place to get creative about how someone can quickly share with a third party what your company does.

Briefly, share with your employees the following:

• Values, vision and mission
• How did it all start?
• How to explain your product or service to someone
• How your teams are structured

a. Our values, vision and mission

Depending on the format of this handbook (e.g. PDF, website, third-party app like Confluence), you can share your company’s values, vision, and mission as text, a brief presentation, a video, or any other preferred way.

What is your company motto? What impact do you want to create in the world? What are the stable values that govern you?

The more realistic and descriptive you can be, the more you will give your employees the opportunity to follow the same vision and integrate into your company.

For example, at Workable, we envision a world where there are no barriers between talent and opportunity. What is your vision for your company?

Be concise and robust.

b. How did it all start?

In every company there is an underlying story of success, or not. Show your employees how you managed to grow a company like this and make them feel like a part of this story.

The Google story began when Larry Page met Sergey Brin at Stanford University in 1995. Despite initial disagreements, they formed a partnership in 1996. Together, they built Backrub, a search engine that used links to determine page importance, which was later renamed Google. Google quickly caught the attention of the academic community and Silicon Valley investors, and with a $100,000 investment from Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, Google Inc. was officially born. The team moved from their dorms to a garage in Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki, where they worked tirelessly on their mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Shopify was created by its founders who were looking for a shopping cart solution for their snowboarding ecommerce site but couldn’t find one, so they built their own using Ruby on Rails. Their solution ended up being perfect for many others, and they ran the business independently for six years before raising funds from VCs and eventually going public, resulting in a valuation of $14 billion.

Jon Oringer, a professional software developer and amateur photographer, utilized his skills and personal photo library of 30,000 images to launch a stock photo service known as ShutterStock.

Workable was founded by Nikos Moraitakis and Spyros Magiatis, who had previously worked together for five years at Upstream. They realized that great hiring was essential to scaling a business, but the recruitment software available at the time was outdated. With the aim of creating a beautiful product, building a successful business, and creating a workplace they love, they founded Workable to provide modern recruitment software.

Regardless of the size of the company, there is always an interesting story to share about how it all began. Write this story in an engaging manner and allow your employees to gain a deeper understanding of the organization they are working for.

c. How to explain your product or service to someone

In a company, there may be complex procedures and multiple products or services for your audience. Perhaps your new hire is not familiar with them from day one. People will ask them about their new workplace and the domain of activity.

Here, you can write a short description of your services or products to clarify your target market and strengths making it easier for someone to explain it.

d. How our teams are structured

It is important for your new hire to have a comprehensive understanding of your company’s hierarchy. You can provide a link to your organizational chart or briefly explain the various departments, their missions, the managers, and the cities in which they are based if you are a hybrid or remote company.

2. Our Product & Customers

In this section of your employee handbook, it is necessary to mention a few things about the process of designing a new product and how you track your customers’ needs. Who is your buyer persona? What is your target group? How do you manage to get new customers in the funnel? This is a great place to take a more detailed approach towards product development and growth.

You can include optionally the above subcategories:

• How the product is made
• Who we sell to
• How we get customers
• Learn more about the product and customers

a. How the product is made

By describing the process, you can make it easier for a new employee to understand the progress of new development.

At your company, especially if it is a service, you may constantly enhance it by launching new editions, features, or even creating entirely new offerings, enabling the company to stay competitive, meet customer needs, and foster innovation.

What is the process of product development in your company?

You may begin the product development process by gathering customer feedback through surveys, interviews, focus groups, social media, customer support interactions, and sales data.

This valuable feedback is probably stored in a centralized repository, such as a CRM system or a product management tool, for easy access and analysis.

Your cross-functional teams may collaborate to analyze and prioritize the feedback, ensuring you address critical areas for improvement and align with customer needs.

You may create a product roadmap to provide clarity and direction, regularly reviewing and updating it to adapt to evolving requirements.

By utilizing project management software, you can effectively track progress, assign tasks, and facilitate collaboration.

Your dedicated quality assurance team conducts comprehensive testing to ensure high-quality, reliable, and user-friendly products/services.

After launch, you collect customer feedback to continually improve and meet their expectations.

Depending on your market (product, service, infrastructure), you may follow different guidelines in the production.

Feel free to explain them briefly here.

b. Who we sell to

It is time for a new presentation. You can use infographics to depict the different segments of your customers. Additionally, you can provide more information about your ideal customer profile/buyer persona. This will greatly aid your new employees in better understanding who you sell to. It can prove to be very beneficial for all positions within your company.

c. How we get customers

What is your competitive advantage that makes customers prefer you? Is it your excellent customer service experience? Is it the special features that only you offer? Or is it your brand awareness that makes prospective customers eager to work with you? Describe the top reasons someone is interested in your brand and explain them.

You can also add some infographics here that show the sources driving traffic to your product or service and be clear about how these are generating new leads.

d. Learn more about the product and customers

How can an employee gain a better understanding of your product or service from the client’s perspective? Do you have a video explainer that is typically sent to new customers to guide them through the product? Is there a trial use available for employees to experiment with the product? Perhaps your employees could test your manufactured products in some way? Depending on your industry it’s always good to have your employees check and use your product.

It is important to explain to new hires how they can become familiar with what you sell. This will drive their future decisions in many cases.

3. Some of our rituals

If you have annually planned events for business purposes or entertainment, here is the place to write them down for your new hire. These ‘rituals’ can be:

• Retreats
• All-hands meetings
• Performance reviews

a. Retreats

Is it a summit at an all-inclusive hotel or an annual team-building event in nature? Describe your efforts to improve employee satisfaction. If you organize such annual events, this is the perfect opportunity to showcase them.

b. All-hands meetings

If you regularly organize all-hands meetings throughout the year, it is important for your new hires to be aware of them. This is because these meetings provide an opportunity to gather all employees, including managers and stakeholders, to discuss matters concerning your company. It is crucial to explain the importance of these meetings to ensure everyone is on the same page and can contribute to the success of the company.

c. Performance reviews

This performance management tool can help you recognize high performance and boost productivity within your company. By providing your employees with a detailed approach, you can help them understand the significance of these reviews. Some companies link these reviews to bonuses or salary increases.

4. The company cadence

Things are getting more serious here as this is where we explain the company’s cadence. This may include the company’s budget forecast procedures, critical executive meetings throughout the year, employee survey periods, critical product announcements, and the flow of information throughout the company.

a. The things we do every year

Write an informative piece about the major procedures of the company and the missions behind them, and explain why you are sharing this information. These annual or biannual events play a crucial role in shaping the future of the company. They set the rhythm of your company and they can set or reset new goals for the organization.

5. Mode of work (hybrid, remote, work from office)

This section is entirely optional and is intended for companies that have implemented a hybrid or remote working environment. In this chapter, you can explain the work policies and rules that are of utmost importance to your employees. Depending on any additional rules you may have in terms of hybrid working or working from abroad, you can add new subchapters here.

a. Working from home or the office

You can list here all of the office addresses where someone can work, and additionally explain the company’s work-from-home policy. If there is a rotation policy that permits or obliges everyone to work in a hybrid format, it must be presented clearly. If all approaches are acceptable, list the benefits of both options.

b. Work from abroad

If you offer your employees the ability to work from abroad, but there are limitations, you must provide those limitations here.

c. Getting together in real life

Does your company have a plan for getting employees together? If you regularly organize team bonding events such as dinners, retreats, nature activities, etc., please feel free to write them down here.

6. Operating Principles

We are certain that your company operates under specific principles, and sharing them with new hires is an excellent step. This will help them better understand the culture of your organization and position themselves in a way that enables them to contribute to the organization’s success.

You are free to express your own principles here. To aid you in this process, we have chosen to provide a set of principles for you (some of them are in Workable’s employee handbook) to take as inspiration.

a. Know where you want to be

What are the qualities that drove the company’s success? How can your new hire learn from them and continue this journey? Let them know where you want to be, how you position your company in the market, and what your aspirations are. This way, you can both be looking at the same goal.

b. Drive a performance culture

Perhaps you want your employees to focus on their performance. In order to do so, it is important to explain to them why keeping track of their performance is crucial and how it can assist them in achieving greater things within the company. To help them understand, consider using an example of a team whose performance plays a significant role in their development (you can draw inspiration from sports).

A performance culture could include:

• Clear Goals
• Constructive Feedback
• Ownership and Accountability
• Collaboration
• Teamwork
• Continuous Learning and Development

c. Make the difference

Your employees want to feel valued while working for you. Your efforts should be directed towards achieving this goal. This means that everyone must take their role seriously and work towards a greater objective. You do not need employees who share the same perspective on everything. Collaboration is essential for success, and diverse opinions can contribute to it. Describe how an individual can have a positive impact on your company. Is it through their ideas, work ethic, or dedication? Take a few minutes to jot down your thoughts.

d. Keep exceptions exceptional

Maintaining a high-performance team necessitates minimizing exceptions and embracing clear, streamlined processes. Underestimating the time and effort required to manage exceptions is common, and their impact affects not just the individual involved, but also other team members.
By avoiding unnecessary exceptions, your company ensures efficiency and productivity, benefiting both your organization and customers.

e. Avoid process escalation

To avoid unnecessary process escalation at your company, it is important to foster a culture of open communication and collaboration. Encouraging employees to address concerns and challenges at an early stage helps prevent issues from escalating further.

Providing clear guidelines and training on decision-making authority empowers individuals to make informed choices without constant escalations.

Unnecessary escalation at work can occur in various scenarios.

For instance, a minor disagreement between team members over a project’s approach quickly escalates into a heated argument, creating tension and disrupting productivity.

Another example is when a supervisor immediately involves top-level management in a minor performance issue instead of addressing it directly with the employee. T

his escalates the matter unnecessarily, undermining trust and bypassing opportunities for constructive feedback and growth.

Additionally, escalating a customer complaint without first attempting to resolve it at the frontline level can lead to an unnecessary involvement of higher management and potential damage to customer relationships.

If you feel that this principle is crucial for your company, please use this space to expand on it.

f. Foster collaboration with international colleagues

Whether you have hires beyond the border or closely cooperate with companies around the world, you can share this principle with your new hire. Here is a sample with basic guidelines you can use:

When collaborating with international colleagues, it’s crucial to consider time differences, opting for asynchronous communication like email when possible. Plan meetings thoughtfully, accommodating different time zones. Take the initiative to learn about their country, customs, and holidays, either through research or by asking colleagues directly.

Remember to see your colleagues as individuals with personal lives and interests. Ensure clarity in communication, as cultural and language differences can lead to misunderstandings. Give the benefit of the doubt, assuming good intentions in case of errors. Whenever feasible, utilize video chats or meet in person to strengthen relationships and foster a sense of connection.

g. Embrace diversity

Embracing diversity means actively recognizing, respecting, and appreciating the differences and unique perspectives of individuals from various backgrounds.

If your company has a principle of diversity, it’s the right time to elaborate on it.

Here is a sample you can use to explain it to your employees:

You can embrace diversity in these ways:

• Foster inclusion: Actively include and involve colleagues from different backgrounds in discussions, projects, and social activities. Seek their input and make sure everyone’s voice is heard and valued.
• Cultivate cultural awareness: Educate yourself about different cultures, traditions, and customs. Show genuine interest by asking questions, attending cultural events, or participating in diversity and inclusion workshops.
• Challenge stereotypes and biases: Be mindful of your own biases and prejudices, and challenge them. Avoid making assumptions based on stereotypes and treat each individual as unique.
• Be open-minded: Embrace different perspectives and approaches. Listen attentively, be willing to learn from others, and consider alternative viewpoints when making decisions.
• Engage in dialogue: Initiate respectful conversations about diversity and inclusion. Engage in discussions that promote understanding, empathy, and awareness of diverse experiences.
  Support and advocate: Stand up against discrimination, prejudice, or exclusionary behaviors. Be an ally for colleagues from underrepresented groups and support inclusive policies and initiatives.

You can implement diversity by following some of these examples:

• Actively seeking diverse perspectives in team meetings and ensuring everyone has an opportunity to contribute.
• Participating in employee resource groups or affinity networks that celebrate different cultures, ethnicities, or identities.
• Collaborating with colleagues from diverse backgrounds on projects, embracing their unique ideas and approaches.
• Attending diversity and inclusion training sessions or workshops to enhance cultural competency.
• Mentoring or being mentored by someone from a different background, fostering cross-cultural understanding.
• Supporting and participating in initiatives like Pride Month, Black History Month, or International Women’s Day to raise awareness and celebrate diversity.

7. How we hire

By making the way you hire known, you increase the transparency of your business and help attract more talent. Although employees have already been hired at the moment, it’s important to confirm that there is a dedicated process in place.

In this section, you will explain your company’s hiring process and suggest a referral system if it is utilized in your hiring strategy.

a. Our hiring process

This chapter is crucial for your company, and it needs to be properly integrated here. What is your hiring process? If you divide the process into stages, you can outline them in this section. For instance, you may begin with a screening interview or a one-way video interview. The next step could be sending assessments and assignments to your candidates, followed by an interview with the hiring manager and/or an executive interview. Finally, you may request reference calls. Whatever your procedure may be, it is highly recommended that you document it here.

b. Referrals

In this section, if you utilize a referral system, you must provide your new hire with any useful information and the procedure for suggesting someone for a specific job position.

Referrals in hiring bring numerous benefits to organizations. Referred candidates align well with company culture, resulting in higher quality fits. Hiring processes are faster and more efficient, bypassing lengthy sourcing and screening stages. Referred candidates exhibit higher retention rates and job satisfaction, enhancing long-term employee engagement.

8. Benefits

If your company offers amenities to employees, this is the right time to mention them. Are there any requirements for receiving these benefits?

You may provide a pension plan, private health insurance, or company bonuses. Perhaps you offer equipment to new hires to work more efficiently.

In other cases, you may offer extra days off (PTO) per year depending on specific circumstances (blood donation, volunteering etc.)

Please feel free to list your benefits in this section.

Here are some benefits you may have or you want to include in your company:

• Health Insurance: Companies often provide health insurance coverage, including medical, dental, and vision plans, to support employees’ well-being and help cover healthcare expenses.
• Retirement Plans
• Paid Time Off (PTO) under circumstances (blood donation, volunteering, unexpected events)
• Flexible Work Arrangements (flexible work hours, remote work options, or compressed workweeks.)
• Employee Assistance Programs (mental health, work-related stress)
• Professional Development (training programs, workshops, mentorship opportunities, or tuition reimbursement.)
• Performance Bonuses:
• Stock Options or Equity
• Wellness Programs
• Parental Leave

Take the time to elaborate on each benefit by creating a subsection.

a. Vacation / PTO

Here, you need to gather all the benefits related to vacation. These could include summer bonuses, fully paid vacation, discounts on hotels, flights etc.

b. Company Bonus Scheme

Explain to your new hire the structure of your bonus and the requirements for earning it.

Some useful things to mention

This section will assist you in including any useful information that was not suitable for the above but is still essential.

It could be a brief biography of the founder or the board of directors, office regulations, or a presentation featuring the company’s investors. Perhaps you want to be transparent about your revenues and wish to share some charts with your new employees.

It is up to you to create your subsections and include information about anything you consider significant.Some ideas:

• Performance Metrics
• Get to know our founder
• Our investors
• Office rules

9. HR FAQs

This section needs to include answers to common questions and directions for getting assistance. Your new hire wants to know more about holidays, sick leave, and the flow of information within the HR team.

You can either provide a link to your help center or write some common questions and answers here to assist them.

Some useful questions:

• Where do I find my time off balance?
• I’m sick. What should I do?
• I want to work from the office/home, what should I do?
• I have a new passport/ID/home address? Do I need to provide it to you?
• I want to attend a training, who should I speak to?
• How do I submit expenses?
• Where can I find a calendar of public holidays?

10. IT FAQs

This includes information on how to contact IT, if there are sessions for software installation, hardware guides, and more.

11. Meet your HR team

Introduce the HR team and explain how they can support your new hire. Provide contact details and clearly outline their responsibilities.

You are now ready to prepare your own employee handbook

A well-informed and engaged workforce is the foundation of success. This employee handbook serves as a testament to your commitment to transparency, collaboration, and growth. Make the onboarding process a delightful experience for your new employees and enhance your employer branding.

Workable offers thousands of templates to help you hire faster. Check them out here.

The post Employee handbook policy template appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

PTO is always a breath of relief for your employees, giving them the chance to take some distance, fueling their energy, and returning rested and ready to perform at their best.

Offering unlimited time off is a common practice only for a few companies. According to the 2023 SHRM Employee Benefits Survey, only 8% of employers offer paid open or unlimited leave.

Is it beneficial to the employers? Does it actually work? Let’s address those questions now.

What is PTO?

PTO, or Paid Time Off, is time employees can take off work and still receive their regular pay. Unlike traditional vacation policies, PTO groups together vacation, personal, and sick days, offering employees a more flexible way to manage their time off.

Unlimited PTO is an innovative policy where companies allow their employees to take as much time off as they need. The aim? To foster a culture of trust, autonomy, and ultimately, higher productivity.

Top companies offering unlimited PTO

Let’s delve into some of the companies leading the charge in this ‘unlimited’ arena:

1. Netflix – Netflix was a trailblazer in adopting unlimited vacation time, encouraging employees to take the time they need to rest and recharge.
2. HubSpot – With its ‘flexible vacation policy,’ HubSpot underscores its culture of flexibility and autonomy [HubSpot Culture Code, 2023].
3. Dropbox – Believing that rest and recovery are an essential part of productivity and collaboration, Dropbox rolled out its unlimited PTO policy to attract top talent.
4. Virgin Group – Inspired by Netflix, Richard Branson introduced unlimited PTO at Virgin, advocating that employees would only take time off when they feel fully up-to-date with their tasks.
5. Buffer – Buffer, the social media management company, offers unlimited PTO as part of its “default to transparency” and “work smarter, not harder” values. This allows employees to manage their time and workloads effectively.
6. General Electric – GE started offering unlimited PTO to its senior employees as a means of attracting and retaining top-level talent. The policy has been hailed as a positive move towards prioritizing work-life balance.
7. GrubHub – The online and mobile food-ordering company GrubHub allows its employees to take time off at their discretion, believing it fosters a healthier and more productive work environment.
8. Gusto – Gusto, a cloud-based payroll and benefits provider, offers unlimited PTO, claiming that trusting employees to manage their time has led to higher levels of productivity and job satisfaction.

These companies serve as leading examples of the growing trend of unlimited PTO.

It’s crucial to note that while the implementation and specifics of the policy might differ among companies, the underlying aim is the same: fostering a culture of trust, promoting work-life balance, and driving productivity.

Why you might consider adopting unlimited PTO

Wondering if it is worth joining the above list?

Unlimited PTO can bring substantial benefits. It has been linked with increased employee satisfaction and retention. It also empowers employees, promoting a culture of trust and flexibility.

This condition can have positive results for employers too. Better performance aside, a study showed that those with unlimited PTO took only 13 days off yearly compared to those with prescribed and limited time-off benefit packages, who took 15 days on average.

Why you might consider not adopting unlimited PTO

However, it’s not all rosy. Some employees can feel anxious about taking time off, fearing it may reflect poorly on their work ethic. Employers may also grapple with potential abuse of the policy and difficulties in tracking PTO.

It’s essential for us, as HR practitioners and employers, to carefully consider whether this trend aligns with our company culture and goals. Implementing an unlimited PTO policy requires a strong culture of trust, clear communication, and guidelines to prevent potential misuse.

The rise of unlimited PTO among top companies signifies a shift in our work culture. It’s a trend that’s well worth our attention as we seek to foster an environment where our employees can thrive. As leaders, it’s our responsibility to balance the benefits and potential challenges of such policies, and tailor them to best serve our teams.

The post Top companies with unlimited PTO – they do exist and thrive appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

However, this trend could have both beneficial and detrimental effects on productivity, work-life balance, and the global job market.

What is unlimited PTO?

Unlimited PTO (Paid Time Off) is an emerging trend in the HR field where employers offer their employees an unrestricted amount of time off from work. The premise is rooted in the idea of trust and accountability – employees are trusted to responsibly balance their work and time off, contributing to their well-being and productivity.

With an unlimited PTO policy, there is no predetermined limit to vacation or personal days, empowering employees to make decisions in their best interest while maintaining performance standards. The intention is to enhance work-life balance, lower stress, and increase retention.

How does unlimited PTO work?

Unlimited PTO operates on a principle of trust, autonomy, and responsibility. Rather than allotting a specific number of days for vacation, sick leave, or personal time, companies with this policy allow employees to take as much time off as they need, whenever they need it. The idea is to enable employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance without the constraints of a conventional leave system.

However, it doesn’t mean employees can take indefinite time off. The policy is grounded in an understanding that employees will complete their responsibilities and maintain their performance levels while using their discretion to take time off.

This requires open communication between employees and management to ensure workloads are managed and business objectives are met. Some organizations may require employees to provide reasonable notice or have their time-off requests approved, while others may operate on a more informal basis.

Unlimited PTO works best in a culture of mutual respect and responsibility, where time off is seen not as a luxury, but as a necessary part of sustaining productivity, creativity, and overall employee well-being.

As ShortStack CEO Jim Beloisie says: “I’ve learned that when you treat employees like grown-ups, they act like grown-ups.”

Now let’s look at the potential impacts of unlimited paid time off in depth:

1. Productivity

The pros:

A Gallup study finds that when employees are more engaged and less stressed, they are 18% more productive and absenteeism goes down by a whopping 81%.

One might think that giving those employees unlimited options for time off can lead to those kinds of results. Workers would have more freedom to rest, recuperate, and pursue personal interests, reducing burnout and maintaining mental health.

Moreover, with the ubiquity of digital technologies, work can often be done remotely and on flexible schedules and even a “work from anywhere” policy, maintaining productivity.

The cons:

However, on the flip side, unlimited time off may lead to an “always on” work culture. If employers anticipate that employees will take more time off, they may expect them to be available outside of traditional working hours.

This could result in employees feeling compelled to work during their time off to stay on top of their tasks. If not managed appropriately, this could decrease productivity due to fatigue and burnout.

2. Work-life balance

The pros:

Unlimited PTO could greatly improve work-life balance. Employees could take time off to handle personal issues, pursue hobbies, or spend time with family without worrying about conserving their limited vacation days.

This could contribute to a healthier lifestyle and improved mental health.

The cons:

However, paradoxically, some employees might end up taking less time off. Some people may feel guilty or anxious about taking too much time off, particularly if there’s an implicit expectation within their company that they should always be working – or if they see their colleagues taking less time than themselves.

There is also a potential detrimental effect when non-parents and up-and-coming workers are able to devote as much as they can to their work to increase their changes of advancement – and a parent or mid-career employee will feel guilty about taking a few days for themselves and their families.

This could, in fact, lead to a worse work-life balance.

3. Global job market

The pros:

With unlimited time off, jobs might become more attractive to potential employees around the world, leading to a more competitive job market. For example, employees from a country that normally standardizes time off will be attracted to the concept of taking as much time as they want or need.

Companies offering such benefits may attract top talent, increasing their competitiveness.

The cons:

On a broader scale, if this becomes a global trend, it could affect migration patterns. Employees in countries with less generous time-off policies might be more inclined to seek employment in countries or companies where unlimited time off is standard. If your company has a PTO limit for all employees, your hands may be tied in attracting workers who value their personal time.

Smaller companies and those in industries with thin profit margins may also struggle to offer unlimited time off, making it harder for them to compete for talent.

Other changes in unlimited time off

Should unlimited time off become widespread, it could change societal norms about work. People might start to prioritize personal time and flexibility over salary and traditional job security. This could lead to a reimagining of success and fulfillment, shifting away from the “workaholic” culture prevalent in some societies.

While that would be the ideal scenario, there are drawbacks. Offering unlimited time off options could also exacerbate societal inequalities – for example, those in higher-paid, knowledge-based jobs might enjoy the benefits of unlimited time off, while those in lower-paid, manual jobs might not.

Unanticipated outcomes of unlimited PTO

Having an unlimited PTO policy might also lead to some unanticipated outcomes. For instance, it could change our perception of retirement. If people can take time off throughout their careers, they might choose to work longer, changing the demographic dynamics of the workforce.

On a more cautionary note, it might lead to companies blurring the lines between personal and professional time, creating a kind of “pseudo-freedom,” where you’re never really and truly off work.

Unlimited PTO: is it right for your company?

In summary, the trend of unlimited PTO holds promise for improved work-life balance and productivity, but careful management and clear communication of expectations will be key. Also, it’s essential to consider potential inequalities that might arise, and measures should be taken to ensure this benefit is accessible to as many people as possible.

However, its effectiveness varies across organizations and cultures, necessitating a thoughtful implementation process. It’s crucial for HR practitioners to ensure clarity, communication, and manage the potential pitfalls of misuse or underuse, fostering a culture where taking time off is normal and encouraged.

An unlimited PTO policy signifies a shift towards more flexibility and autonomy in the workplace, although its real-world implications and impacts on productivity and employee satisfaction are still subjects of ongoing research and debate.

The post What is unlimited PTO and how does it work? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here are some things I’ve seen that can help you if you want your company to be the talk of the town.

1. Praise high gas prices

An Applebee’s executive emailed colleagues praising high gas prices. He reasoned that with gas being so high, people would need to work more hours. With more people desperate for work, Applebee’s could pay their employees less. A profitable situation for sure!

This helpful tip for saving money made Applebee’s hit the headlines in Inc, CBS News, Fortune, Fox Business, and many other news outlets. Can you imagine how much work a public relations department would have taken to get average news into the headlines? A golden opportunity, for sure!

2. Take WFH to the next level

Working from home is exactly what employees want. As such, companies that allow people to work from home can easily attract applicants and keep current employees engaged (even if new figures show that remote work has made people less productive).

Many people argue that anything that can be done in an office can be done remotely, and these companies went viral as an employer, showcasing just how they genuinely mean anything–like firing people.

Vishal Garg, the CEO of online mortgage lender Better.com, fired more than 900 people via Zoom. Everyone heard about that.

McDonald’s generally required everyone to work in the office, but when they had layoffs planned, they sent everyone home so that they could fire people remotely. Talk about embracing new technology and new ideas! Everyone talked about McDonald’s for days, not just because their chicken McNuggets are like crack to toddlers.

And then there’s Elon Musk, who goes viral just by breathing (it helps when you own Twitter), who announced the end of remote work for Twitter employees but didn’t make people come into the office to lose their jobs.

If you can fire people remotely, you already have a leg up on your competitors when it comes to virality.

3. Bring in a bit of (fake) religion

When your employees want to go to confession but don’t have time, you could bring in a priest. That’s what Taqueria Garibaldi in northern California did. Except he wasn’t a real priest, and he reported all the “confessions” to the boss, who used them to discipline the staff.

The Department of Labor uncovered this during an investigation into wage and hour problems, and the optics of it made the case go viral. Any time you want to get more press for your business, consider thinking outside the box and faking religion.

4. Go on a date (with your mistress)

China National Petroleum went viral this week when one of its executives got caught on video on a date with his mistress. If your junior accountant has an affair, the only people who care are the HR department and the injured spouse. But, if your leadership does, it can make people talk about your company.

Do you really want to go viral?

While sometimes good things cause companies to go viral, it’s far more likely that your screw-up will be what trends on Twitter.

Like it or not, people don’t sit around talking about this small business that gives paid maternity leave.

If you focus on getting your company in the limelight, you may not like it too much. Take Gravity Payments, which went viral a few years ago when CEO Dan Price made the minimum salary at his company $70,000 – himself included. While that made great headlines and positive discussion, it also made people pay a lot of attention to a relatively small company.

When it turned out that Price was not a fine and upstanding gentleman, he went viral again.

The best thing you can do for your employees is to have a stable, legally compliant business. If you want something to go viral, you want it to be a product – a well-tested product.

You’ll likely get attention when you ignore the Americans with Disabilities Act or fire pregnant employees. Giving employees reasonable accommodations and following the law (including the newly activated Pregnant Workers Fairness Act) will keep you out of trouble and out of the spotlight. But honestly, that’s what you want. You want a rock-solid business with good employees, and that’s how you get that.

Forget going viral. It’s not the best solution for your recruitment marketing needs.

The post Going viral as an employer – for all the wrong reasons appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here is what you can do to foster a truly inclusive workforce in your organization.

Making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive

Let’s start by looking at the numbers. A Human Rights Campaign survey found that:

• 46% of LGBTQ workers are closeted at work
• Half of non-LGBTQ employees reported there were no openly LGBTQ employees in their company
• 1 in 5 LGBTQ workers have been told or had coworkers imply that they should dress more feminine or masculine (compared with 1 in 24 non-LGBTQ workers)
• 54% of non-LGBTQ workers said that they would be very comfortable working with an LGBTQ coworker; of those who wouldn’t be very comfortable, a majority said it was because they “didn’t want to hear about their coworker’s sex life.”

LGBTQ employees are not comfortable everywhere they work, and there are some misperceptions out there. No one wants or needs to hear about their coworker’s sex life, which shouldn’t even be an issue on the table regardless of preference.

We share five tips on how to make your workplace more LGBTQ inclusive:

1. Speak with your pocketbook, not your rainbow logo

It’s easy to change a logo, put up a flag, or tweet about happy Pride Month. But LinkedIn took a step further and started paying the heads of their affinity groups $10,000 a year for the extra work. This demonstrates their desire to support all diversity groups, including LGBTQ groups.

Nothing says real support and inclusion like cash which recognizes the hard work these employee resource group leaders put in.

2. Be thoughtful about pronouns

This is a hot button issue at work, and you need to tread carefully. For example, look at the following exchange on Twitter:

Katrina Kibben: One of my Pride wishes this year is to ban the phrase “preferred pronouns.” They are not preferred. This isn’t steak or shrimp. It’s a human’s identity.

Dr. “Coach” Dawn Reid #ReidReady: I respect how you feel and I ask if you can consider preference is about a label choice. I.e., My son is non-binary. He has a pref of they/she/he depending on his affect. It’s his pref of a social label in the moment. Not who he is as a person.

Katrina Kibben: Every experience is different. I respect it. For me? My first thought is that your child may be code-switching for their safety (I do it too), not changing pronouns.

Dr. “Coach” Dawn Reid #ReidReady: Agreed. It’s different for each person. Code switching is another topic. We all do that for communication clarity. The original term/use is from linguistics. And that’s not it for them. It’s his preference. We are talking about this now.

In other words, there is no way to get it right. An October 2020 survey by Tallo found that 88% of Gen Z candidates think it’s important for recruiters to ask them their pronouns. But many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers find it offensive to ask their pronouns. This leaves you to guess, but there are some things you can do.

Listen to what people want to do. Respect and use their pronouns. (But it’s not reasonable for an employee to expect everyone to follow regular pronoun changes.) Allow people (but don’t require) to list their pronouns on email signatures and other work-related things.

3. Don’t make assumptions

Does someone look gay? Is that person trans? Whisper, whisper, whisper. This type of thing makes for a very unwelcoming environment for everyone.

Instead, make sure your staff understands employees treat every other employee and client equally across the board. Everyone gets respect. If you allow people to bring personal items to decorate their cubicles, then everyone gets to bring a family picture – regardless of what their family looks like.

Make sure you schedule and provide promotions and perks based on performance and seniority, not the perception that so-and-so needs a bump in pay because his wife just had a baby. If an employee announces the impending birth of a baby, don’t speculate about just how that baby was conceived or carried. Instead, just say, “Congratulations! Let me get you the FMLA paperwork!”

4. Remove bias from your recruiting process.

EPM Scientific gave five tips for reducing bias in hiring. These are:

• Anonymizing resumes in the review process
• Encouraging validated pre-employment testing
• Pre-employment testing, such as work samples, predict job success.
• Encouraging a diverse interview panel and hiring committee
• Challenging bias in recruitment and hiring decisions

All these things help you ensure you hire the person who is best for the job regardless of their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or national origin. Letting candidates know you do through these processes helps them feel like they have a chance based on their skills.

5. Educate your leadership on the benefits of diversity

You can only increase LGBTQ candidates when you have a welcoming environment. But, to make a welcoming environment, senior leadership needs to be on board. Presenting the business case for making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive will help.

People who have to hide their identities at work experience more stress. Higher stress results in more days off and an increase in medical costs. It’s saving you money to have a welcoming environment.

Consulting giant McKinsey reported in May 2020 that companies with diverse leadership have higher financial returns than those that don’t. While they looked only at gender and race, it stands to reason that bringing in people with different sexual orientations would bring additional viewpoints that would help the company reach different audiences and support all employees.

Finally – candidates, especially Millennials and Gen Z, want to work for inclusive organizations and leaders. They’ve made that clear. So make sure you let them know what your company is doing to ensure everyone feels comfortable.

The critical point of all this is that everyone deserves a job based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Everything else should be irrelevant. This means ensuring that everyone is welcome in your company. A simple concept that goes far.

The post 5 tips on making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

It’s easy for new employees to feel isolated when they start work at a new company. They’re either rushed from one department to the next for introductions, with no time to socialize, or abandoned at a desk or work station, or left to complete a ream’s worth of induction paperwork.

With the onboarding process intrinsically linked to the employer brand, you can’t afford for your candidate to have a negative experience. First impressions are crucial, and poor onboarding can start things off on the wrong foot for your new employee.

You can avoid this by implementing employee onboarding software. With this HR system, your new recruit can submit all their relevant information into a single portal that’s accessible by all relevant parties. Done and dusted, it leaves them with plenty of time to enjoy the onboarding experience.

Here are some of the best employee onboarding software packages you’ll find.

Best onboarding software for small businesses

BambooHR

Renowned for its comprehensive HR applications, BambooHR follows the pattern with a feature-filled onboarding program. Quick paperwork completion, the gathering of electronic signatures, IT checklists, and welcome emails streamline an employee’s entry into a company.

They also offer New Hire Packet Templates that are personalized for each new recruit, creating a welcoming experience for them.

Trainual

Trainual has a quirkier take on the onboarding process, offering fun features like gifs, in-app recordings for guides, and the ability to embed company videos. Along with these, there are simple steps to share your founding story, mission, vision, values, products or services, and competition with your new employee.

Their onboarding playbook includes a hiring process checklist template as well as various company policy templates.

RUN Powered by ADP

This cloud service promises smart onboarding with a form library specific to your industry that can be accessed and completed anywhere. You can create personalized employee portals, landing pages, and information packages for your employee to explore before they even start work. Compliance is also taken care of, including the completion of identification and citizenship documentation.

If you’re using ADP payroll, RUN’s onboarding software is easily integrated. Both systems are automatically populated with employee information and simultaneously update.

Ease

Ease ranks in the third spot on G2’s list of top onboarding software. With a 93% overall satisfaction score and “ease of use” polling at 95%, Ease is a great option for small businesses that have simple HR requirements.

A central, secure employee database means that all the information entered, including W-4s, I-9s, and direct deposit details are well looked after as evidenced by Ease’s HITRUST CSF Certification.

Elmo webonboarding

Elmo promises to save you 80% of your time when it comes to contracts and signatures by digitizing the process. With a user-friendly dashboard that shows you the high volume of onboarding projects the system can manage, HR can track progress and check unfulfilled items.

By creating a program for digital and remote onboarding, Elmo assists hiring managers and the recruitment team to engage with employees on a regular basis.

Deel

With Deel’s international connections, they can help you hire and onboard employees throughout the globe. Saving you the hassle of opening a local entity to hire an employee from a specific country, Deel ensures all local regulations and compliance requirements are adhered to.

Taking on all employment liability, Deel digitally gathers all the relevant tax, payroll, and compliance documents to streamline the onboarding process.

How to choose the right employee onboarding software

There are endless options available when it comes to employee onboarding software providers, so how do you choose? Here are a few factors to consider:

1. Functionality – What do you need it to do?

Consider the specific features and capabilities that the software offers. For example, does it allow you to create customizable onboarding plans, assign tasks, and track progress?

2. Integration – Will it fit in with your current system?

Think about how the software will integrate with your existing systems and tools. Does it integrate with your HR software or learning management system?

3. Ease of use – Does it have a user-friendly interface and intuitive navigation?

The software needs to be clear and well-designed, allowing any user to easily navigate through the program.

4. Scalability – Will it grow with you?

While this article is aimed at small businesses, it’s a happy hope that you soon expand and grow your business to peak levels. As you develop and grow, so should your software.

5. Cost – How much are you willing to spend?

It always comes down to the bottom line. How big is your budget? What features can you let go of and which are must-haves? Do your market research before you buy to make sure you’re getting the best bang for your buck.

With answers to these questions, you’ll soon have the right software to create an onboarding experience your new recruit won’t soon forget.

Need more information on choosing the right onboarding software for your business? Check out our comprehensive buying guide on the choosing the best HR onboarding software.

The post Best employee onboarding software for small businesses appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Human Resource Information System (HRIS) is a software solution that helps you manage your human resources processes. This includes recruitment, hiring, onboarding, document management, training, performance management, and more. Its main goal is to streamline your processes and save time, money and a ton of paper.

An HRIS not only reduces the number of potential human errors but also boosts employee engagement. Offering a self-service option gives your employees some autonomy in managing their employee profiles.

An efficient HRIS program frees up your HR employees to focus on the aspects that should take priority – learning and development, talent management, and creative strategy development to advance your company’s objectives.

Not quite what you’re looking for? Check out our high-level guide to HR software selection.

But it won’t just help your employees. The system’s report-generation capabilities will help you identify trends and address issues before they have a significant impact. It can also include a regulatory compliance module that ensures you comply with regulations at national and local levels.

And data management? Forget old personnel files gathering dust in archives. Now you can access everything you need from a compatible device without calling on an intern to sift through reams of paperwork. It’s a secure way to handle your employees’ important information and documentation, thanks to cloud-based storage.

So the question isn’t “Why do you need it?” but “Why don’t you already have it?”.

Breaking down the different types of HRIS

Separated into five categories, these HRIS software solutions pinpoint the needs of various organizations.

1. Operational HRIS

• Addresses HR’s functions, such as personnel changes, hiring, promotions, and performance management
• Keeps a record of pertinent documents, including employee records, appraisal information and job specifications
• Ideally suited for the standard requirements of HR and employee management tasks

2. Tactical HRIS

• Great for organizations that need a holistic overview of their status and data to support larger-scale decisions
• Helps allocate resources by supplying information on elements such as recruitment, learning and development, job openings, and compensation
• Includes data related to competitors, legal requirements, and union policies
• Assists in the decision-making process but less handy when it comes to daily HR functions

3. Strategic HRIS

• Similar to Tactical HRIS but aims to expand or grow an organization
• The same data is now used to plan the future of the workforce and the goals the organization can attain
• Provides information pertaining to market status and financial implications to help form the foundation for tide-turning maneuvers

4. Comprehensive HRIS

• Embraces all the functions of the other systems and creates a cohesive package for all your HR needs
• Streamlines your HR processes and offers a dashboard for easy review and access
• More costly than the others but proves its worth with the time and money it will save you in the long run

5. Limited-Function HRIS

• Serves a single purpose and are best suited for smaller operations
• Objectives range from payroll to training to benefits
• Modules with alternative functions may be added on as the needs of the organization diversify
• Maintains a central employee information database
• Affordable way to start the digitizing process and easily monitored

Choosing one of these HRIS systems fully depends on the requirements of your organization. Even if you have a starter company, certain features are must-haves. Read on to find out the components you won’t be able to do without.

Essential features of an HRIS

In choosing the best HRIS software for your company, it helps to compile a list of functions you’ll need to run your HR department at an optimal level.

Here are some features that make a good starting point:

• Applicant Tracking System (ATS): An ATS allows you to manage job postings, resumes, and applications in one place, making the recruitment process more efficient. Workable’s own best-in-class ATS comes ready-equipped with its own HRIS, which makes it a good fit for many businesses.
• Onboarding: With a single space for the completion of “paperwork” that relays this information to the relevant departments, you can avoid errors in the capturing of a new employee’s details as well as save time. Along with the necessary introductory process, some HRIS solutions can even perform background checks. Workable’s recruitment solution also comes with a native onboarding feature.
• Employee Self-Service (ESS): This portal links an employee with their personal information, allows them to request time off, and view their paychecks, among other functions.
• Benefits Administration: An HRIS should include a module for managing employee benefits, including health insurance, retirement plans, and paid time off.
• Performance Management: Performance appraisals are recorded, helping to set goals and provide feedback to employees. With real-time performance notifications, managers can respond almost immediately to positive and negative actions.
• Reporting and Analytics: Being able to track key metrics such as turnover rate, headcount, and employee engagement is a powerful tool in the decision-making process of any organization. An HRIS should be able to produce reports that are ready for the boardroom within minutes.
• Mobile Access: Anywhere, anytime, your HR information should be available with just a few taps of your fingertips. With a cloud-based service, the storage capabilities are amplified, making access to all employee information quick and easy.
• Scalability: Sure, your company is small now, but what happens when you begin to build your empire? You shouldn’t have to start fresh with a new software program. Your HRIS must grow with you and meet the demands of your burgeoning business.

There may be other HRIS features that are mandatory for the success of your HR department, such as payroll, learning and development functions, or talent management.

However, even starting with something as simple as a centralized database will show a world of improvement in how your workplace runs.

How to choose the best HRIS software for your needs?

With numerous options available in the market, it’s important to consider several factors before making your choice. Here are some steps to help you select the best HRIS software:

1. Identify your organization’s requirements: Start by clearly defining your organization’s HR needs and goals. Determine the specific features and functionality you require, such as employee self-service, payroll management, performance management, recruitment, and onboarding.
2. Consider scalability and flexibility: Ensure that the HRIS software you choose can accommodate your organization’s growth. Look for a system that allows for easy customization and integration with other software solutions you already use or may need in the future.
3. Evaluate user-friendliness: User-friendly software is essential to ensure smooth implementation and adoption within your organization. Look for a system with a clear and intuitive interface that is easy for both HR professionals and employees to navigate.
4. Assess data security and privacy: HRIS software handles sensitive employee information, so data security should be a top priority. Ensure that the software provider has robust security measures in place, such as data encryption, regular backups, and adherence to industry standards and regulations like GDPR.
5. Review customer support and training: Implementing new software can be challenging, so it’s important to have reliable customer support available. Look for a software provider that offers comprehensive training and ongoing support to assist with implementation, troubleshooting, and answering any questions.
6. Consider your budget: Assess the cost of the HRIS software, including licensing fees, implementation costs, and ongoing maintenance or subscription fees. Consider whether the features and benefits offered justify the investment and align with your organization’s budget.
7. Request demos and trials: Reach out to software vendors and request product demos or trials. This allows you to explore and test the software’s functionality, interface, and overall user experience firsthand before making a final decision.
   By following these steps, you can identify the best HRIS software for your organization, streamline HR processes, improve efficiency, and enhance employee experience.

What’s the difference between HRIS and HRMS?

Being in business these days is no easy feat. It can be bewildering to keep up with technological advances and ensure you have the most suitable systems in place for your requirements. In your search for an HR software solution, you will inevitably come across Human Resources Management Software (HRMS).

It’s essentially the top shelf of HR software that combines the capabilities of HRIS and Human Capital Management (HCM). That means it covers every aspect of HR, from payroll and time off to analyses and strategic HR functions.

Related: Learn more about the difference between HRIS vs. HRMS vs. HCM.

If you have a large number of employees, a complex operation, and a reasonably large budget, then an HRMS will be your best option. However, if your HR needs are pretty basic and you have less than 50 employees, an HRIS that centers on an employee database will serve you well.

What’s the difference between HRIS software and a payroll system?

While both are essential components of human resources management, they serve distinct purposes. HRIS software is a comprehensive solution that encompasses various HR functions beyond payroll. It enables HR departments to efficiently manage employee data, recruitment, performance evaluations, training, and benefits administration. On the other hand, a payroll system focuses solely on processing and managing payroll, including calculating salaries, deductions, taxes, and generating paychecks or direct deposits.

Payroll systems automate the calculation of wages, deductions, and taxes, reducing the risk of errors and saving time for payroll administrators. They generate reports related to pay stubs, tax filings, and employee payment history, which facilitate compliance and ensure transparency.

Although a payroll system can be a standalone software, integrating it with an HRIS software allows for the seamless transfer of relevant employee information and ensures that payroll data accurately reflects the employee data managed in the HRIS.

Cloud-based vs. on-premise HRIS

Another selection to make is whether you prefer cloud-based Software as a Service or retaining on-premises software licensing options. The PwC Tech Survey of 2022 found that while cloud transformation is the third biggest challenge when it comes to human capital for HR leaders, expectations were met and mostly overcome.

These expectations included:

• Greater HR control (89%)
• Increased employee engagement (84%)
• Improved productivity (86%)
• Saving money (82%)

While it would seem like the obvious choice, there are considerations to take into account:

• It’s possible for the system to be hacked without the right measures in place
• While cloud-based doesn’t require the high upfront cost of on-premises software, the subscription fees may add up to a tidy amount
• It’s fairly difficult to retrieve data from the cloud to transfer to another software solution

On the other hand, on-premises solutions have their own drawbacks:

• It’s a costly undertaking as infrastructure such as hardware, software, and servers need to be purchased to put the plan in place
• An IT team will also be required to troubleshoot any issues and monitor the system
• The uploading of data In this solution is done via manual entry, making the information prone to mistakes as multiple departments capture the same data

As per usual, making this decision is mainly reliant on the specifications of your company and your existing equipment status.

A look at the top HRIS providers

If you’ve done your homework, you’ve realized that there are an astounding number of HRIS providers on the market. Here we’ve separated the wheat from the chaff with the top 5 HRIS companies as voted for by users:

1. ADP

• Full suite of HR functions that include talent management, payroll, and benefits administration.
• Flexibility allows them to service organizations across the size spectrum.
• For small businesses that need a basic package, you can expect to have to add on services like ATS, HR training, and HR forms and documents.

Why we like it:

• Features include payroll, onboarding, ATS, compliance, training, and tracking
• 3 month free trial
• Wisely Direct Debit Card
• Suitable for an organization, of any size
• Flexibility

Why we don’t like it:

• Most features are not available on the basic package
• $63/month (add $4 for every additional employee)
• After-sales complaints when it comes to customer service

2. BambooHR

• The basic package offers a central database, reporting and analytics, time-off management, and employee self-service.
• Onboarding, ATS, and training all form part of the advanced package with payroll, performance management, and time tracking categorized as add-ons.
• The quality of BambooHR’s HRIS is exceptional but with its advanced features, it’s perhaps better suited to medium and large organizations.

Why we like it:

• Comprehensive suite of features
• Simple and easy-to-use interface
• Flat rate for organizations with less than 20 employees
• Available in 6 languages (English, French Canadian, German, Spanish, Dutch, or Brazilian Portuguese)
• New Employee Wellbeing tool to improve retention

Why we don’t like it:

• Features like ATS and onboarding are not included in the basic package
• Not easily customized
• Time tracking is rounded off and problems experienced with converting to payroll
• Customers experience difficulty with integrations

3. Freshteam

• They promise to reduce recruiter workload by 75% thanks to the automation of repetitive routines in their ATS.
• They offer a free plan to businesses with less than 50 employees that includes ATS, employee profiles and directory, organizational charts, basic time-off management, and mobile capabilities.
• Freshteam excels on the recruitment front, but seems to provide fewer functions as employees get past the onboarding phase.

Why we like it:

• Free plan forever for small businesses
• Allows for different levels of access across the organization
• Easy to move applicants from one stage to the next
• User-friendly interface

Why we don’t like it:

• Basic HRIS in free plan that does not include document management or onboarding
• Integrations work best with Freshworks apps, but not as well with third-party providers
• Analytics tools could be improved

4. Zenefits

• They offer seamless syncing across HR, payroll, and benefits administration thereby avoiding time-wasting actions.
• Their base plan offers automated onboarding, time off tracking, integrations, analytics, employee management, scheduling, and mobile capabilities at $8/month/employee.
• At double that amount, they’ll throw in compensation management, configurable people analytics, and performance management.
• Add-ons include payroll, advisory services, benefits administration with your own broker, and recruitment.
• For small businesses looking for an HRIS that covers basic HR functions, Zenefits has a minimum five-employee requirement.

Why we like it:

• Great integration across the sections
• Automated tasks free up employees
• Easily locate resources for quick reference
• Convenient clocking in and out capabilities

Why we don’t like it:

• Features are not as comprehensive as other providers
• Less than five employees and you’ll still be charged the five-employee rate
• Customer support could be improved upon

5. Workable

• They offer a seamless onboarding experience with a branded onboarding portal, automations, and an onboarding dashboard
• Employee information and storage of important documents are easily organized and managed
• Updates are made automatically to your company’s org chart
• Compliance, especially in data privacy, is simplified with automated tools for GDPR and EEOC

Why we like it:

• Has the necessary onboarding & employee management functionalities for SMBs worldwide
• Customizable onboarding and management features
• Centralized platform for all HR-related documents
• Branded onboarding portal for a professional appearance
• Automated tools for GDPR and EEOC compliance
• Comes free with the purchase of Workable’s best-in-class recruitment software, eliminating tech clutter and integration headaches

Why we don’t like it:

• Not as expansive as other, more robust HRIS solutions
• Isn’t isolable as an HRIS software
• Other HR features, like payroll, are not yet built

Choosing the right HRIS for you

Selecting the perfect HRIS software solution boils down to one question: What do you need? If your business is just starting out, there’s no need to overextend yourself on fancy features that won’t make an impact.

Your best bet would be a package that covers the most important HR functions while staying within your budget. Keep it clean, keep it simple, and keep an eye on your bottom line.

The post Find the best HRIS software for your business needs appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What is HR software, and why do companies need it?

By automating some of their more mundane tasks, they can refocus on what is most important – those who make up their organization. HR software benefits not only HR staff but other employees too, giving them a better understanding of their organization’s HR policies and procedures.

The remote work revolution has made it necessary for businesses to learn how to foster dynamic and successful teams in an ever-evolving environment. Therefore, HR departments are tasked to introduce performance management solutions that employees can use, regardless of location. Investing in these tools is essential for companies hoping to remain competitive and achieve optimal results from their teams.

Understanding the different types of HR software

When it comes to digital solutions for Human Resources, three major types of software stand out from the rest. Each has unique capabilities and strengths, so understanding their differences can help you determine which best suits your needs.

Here are the three systems that dominate the realm of modern Human Resources technology:

Human Resources Information System (HRIS)

To maximize efficiency, many organizations rely on HRIS software as their main source of employee information and management. These tools are available both online and in a software form and can be hosted by the company’s server, a cloud provider, or a third-party vendor.

Primary benefit: A centralized database houses all personnel data that can be accessed at any time from any location. This makes it easier for HR teams to enter and manage employee records confidently.

Human Capital Management (HCM)

Human Capital Management (HCM) is a more comprehensive version of HRIS, integrating all the same features with more sophisticated solutions and a focus on talent management.

Primary benefit: HCM focuses on employees’ life cycle and career paths within an organization, from recruitment to management and optimization. Furthermore, it can be tailored to any company’s requirements enabling close supervision of employee well-being and satisfaction, resulting in a higher retention rate.

Human Resources Management System (HRMS)

HRMS is an advanced HR software combining the best of HRIS and HCM features with a focus on administrative processes. Its dynamic features extend beyond just the management of time and labor to encompass an automated payroll system.

Primary benefit: Organizations can take advantage of its powerful capabilities, such as productivity reports and analyses, designed to maximize efficiency in the workplace.

Not enough? Take a deeper dive into the differences between HRIS, HCM and HRMS.

Essential features of HR software

For small and midsize businesses (SMBs), a Human Resources system with specific features is essential. Here are some key functionalities that an SMB should consider when selecting HR software.

Personnel tracking

Personnel management, or employee information management, helps businesses keep tabs on the whereabouts and details of their staff.

• It includes personal information, contact info, previous work history, and demographic data
• It enables organizations to plan ahead for absences and delays so resources may be swiftly reallocated
• Employers can easily monitor the hours worked and location of remote personnel such as salespeople

Benefits administration

Organizing your company’s multitude of benefits programs is made easy with the help of this feature.

• Allows the HR staff to stop chasing after employees to sign paperwork
• Lets employees manage their benefits autonomously through an online portal
• Automatically notifies employees about vendor upgrades or government regulations

Reporting

Data collection and management is a key component of the role of Human Resources, and reporting allows for a greater understanding of this data.

• Organizations will be able to identify trends that can inform future hiring decisions
• Data can be used to pinpoint issues to determine how to best address them
• Gives you accurate insights on how to upgrade your business strategy
• Helps ensure your compliance with local, state, and national regulations

Other features

The size of your organization and the sector you work in will determine the type of HR software that is right for you. Further features that are available with some of the best HR software on the market include:

• Employee management: This feature involves managing employee workload and compensation
• Recruiting: This feature uses a centralized database for candidate information
• Benefits management: This feature allows employees to self-manage benefits by choosing their preferences via a self-service portal
• Learning and Development (L&D): Organizations need to be able to deliver training uniformly and in a well-structured way, which is where a learning management system (LMS) comes into play

A look at the top 5 HR software providers

Understanding the HR software marketplace can be a daunting task. To save you time and effort, here are the top 5 HR companies for businesses.

WebHR

Highlights:

• Cloud-based service is ideal for small businesses that require a high level of communication between employees
• Paid-for subscription service available for up to 1,000 employees
• Options become more complex and varied as you transition from the free plan to the paid version
• Internationally oriented thanks to multi-language and currency options

Why we like it:

• Offers most features that an SMB needs to manage and track staff
• Built-in messenger and employee discussion forums
• Upgrades available one module at a time
• Available in 30 languages and multiple currencies
• Does not have any special hardware requirements
• SSL security, strong encryption, and other data security

Why we don’t like it:

• Free version’s features are limited
• Visual style could be improved
• Limited customization
• Limited choice of built-in templates

Zoho People

Main highlights:

• Available in six versions, including a free version for companies with fewer than five users
• Provides tools to manage the entire HR process
• Integrates with other Zoho products easily, such as its payroll solution

Why we like it:

• Affordable and transparent pricing
• Integrates with other Zoho offerings
• Active community forum
• Mobile app available
• Professional setup services are available
• Virtual support assistant

Why we don’t like it:

• Custom quotes needed for larger organizations
• Some features are limited to the upper tiers of the plan
• Lack of direct support options
• Payroll isn’t included
• Limited phone support

OrangeHRM

Main highlights:

• A good choice if scalability is a priority
• Free starter package provides time tracking, reporting, HR admin, and recruitment features, along with employee self-service and other features
• Complete interface for almost all things HR needs

Why we like it:

• Companies can self-host
• User-friendly and good UI
• Excellent time-tracking functions
• Mobile app
• Permission levels for different users

Why we don’t like it:

• Plugins may be required
• Customer support limited
• Price point is comparatively high

Bitrix24

Main highlights:

• Unlimited number of users in the free version
• Portfolio of task and project management features
• Tools include profile pages, company structure, a social network, and a company knowledge base
• Includes software automation features, file sharing, and email marketing integration
• Will suit companies that want to easily connect to other aspects of the business, such as customer relationship management and website building

Why we like it:

• 35 free tools
• Constant notification of opportunities, tasks, and activities.
• Kanban user interface available
• Free up to 12 users
• Simple reporting features
• Affordable pricing

Why we don’t like it:

• Complex user interface
• Social networking limitations
• Doesn’t support chatbots
• Steep learning curve

Workable

Highlights:

• Comprehensive HRIS software with tools for onboarding and employee management
• Branded onboarding portal for a seamless experience
• Dynamic employee profiles for easy organization and updates
• Automatic org chart generation and updates
• Efficient time off tracking and management

Why we like it:

• Streamlines the entire hiring process, from candidate selection to onboarding
• Customizable onboarding activities tailored to each new hire
• Easy-to-use dashboard for tracking multiple onboardings
• Automated onboarding processes save time and ensure timely completion
• Supports multiple profile templates for different locations and employment types
• Company file storage and document templates for easy access and organization
• Flexible time off policies and accrual options to cater to diverse workforce needs

Why we don’t like it:

• Limited in scope and features compared to some other HR software solutions
• Best suited for small businesses with under 20 full-time employees, with limited scalability for larger organizations
• Continuously evolving, meaning the platform may not yet offer the most complete HR software experience on the market

How HR software saves businesses money

HR software can save you money in many different ways.

• Streamlines HR admin: It allows HR teams to spend less time on administration and more on strategic activities
• Efficient onboarding: Technology replaces paperwork, reduces the time to replace an employee, and cuts the cost of hiring an employee
• Employee self-service saves time: Fewer HR calls; therefore, a leaner team is needed
• Cuts the cost of outsourcing: A broad range of HR functions, including payroll, can be performed in-house.
• Eliminates costly errors: Automation reduces the risk of human error
• Ensures compliance: Avoid missing regulatory deadlines that may lead to penalties being imposed
• Supports remote work: Reduces the need for office infrastructure and can therefore save on overhead costs

When you look at the considerable time and monetary savings you can achieve by investing in HR software; you can then weigh them against the costs your organization is currently carrying. This will give you a clear idea of your return on investment (ROI). Once this is clear, you may even decide it’s worth exploring other HR software modules that initially didn’t fit your budget – meaning access to even more savings.

HR hiring software – what is it?

Organizations are turning to specialized software to streamline their recruitment process. Commonly referred to as an applicant tracking system or ATS, this type of software covers every detail, from sourcing and screening candidates to issuing offer letters. Although the two terms are often used interchangeably, it is important to note that the scope of recruiting software extends beyond just ATS functions – they also provide tools specifically designed for each step in the selection process.

Hiring (or recruiting) software can provide a range of benefits to assist in the process of hiring qualified candidates:

• They often include features for sourcing, engagement, selection, and hiring
• Sourcing helps uncover potential applicants who may not have seen job postings while engaging with them ensures they remain informed throughout the process
• Selection capabilities help narrow down the list of candidates based on assessments or evaluations
• Some platforms manage the actual step of hiring as well as provide an interface between candidate and employee experience

Related: What is HR software?

Here’s how HR recruitment software works

Through the company portal, hiring managers and recruiters can create job postings, view all relevant job applications, update information as candidates are interviewed, send out job offers, handle paperwork related to onboarding the new employee, and generate reports relating to the hiring process.

This powerful tool organizes and streamlines the entire hiring journey for everyone involved – freeing up more time for additional tasks that need to be accomplished.

The cost of HR software

The cost of an average HR software package typically starts from $3 to $1,200 per month per user, depending on the number of personnel involved. This is how pricing typically works – you get more features as the price increases. The basic plan covers only essential functions, while a higher-priced product will include additional tools for supporting larger organizations or teams.

Choosing the right HR software for you

When choosing the right HR software for your business, start by focusing on what processes you wish would be simplified and which features are most essential. This will help you zero in on the perfect fit and narrow down your selection.

• What to look for: Try to select a program that includes all the Human Resources Information System (HRIS) requirements within its base price; otherwise, acquiring extras could lead to overspending your assigned budget.
• What to be wary of: When selecting a software package, you must be aware of which features are included in the standard version and any extra elements that may require an additional cost.

If you are working with a service provider directly, ensure you secure a service contract providing ongoing maintenance, updates to address changing compliance needs, and software updates to ensure compatibility with other software packages.

Steps to take when choosing HR software

Step 1: Make an initial assessment

Determine if the process will be carried out by internal HR auditors or a consultant that may have the time, data-gathering and evaluation skills your organization lacks.

Step 2: Assess organizational needs

Look beyond the HR department’s needs and consider the organization’s and other department’s strategic plans. This will guide you on the features and modules you require. For example, if you’re a tech startup, consult our SaaS HR software guide.

Step 3: Determine needs vs. wants

Consider how the HR software could improve current procedures, such as new-hire processing. The more value it offers your organization, the higher it will rank as needed.

Step 4: Assess the project parameters

Once you have a list of minimum requirements and additional features you require, see how they hold up against your current infrastructure, for example:

• Budgetary constraints: what are the price points you can afford?
• Technological limitations: do you have the necessary server space and infrastructure in place?

Time constraints – what lead time do you need to complete the request for proposal (RFP), technology selection and review, and implementation processes?

Step 5: Assemble a project committee

This should include IT, payroll, finance, accounting, HR, performance management, operations, training, and recruitment.

Investing in HR software should not be a knee-jerk decision. Taking the necessary steps to ensure you pick the right package and that it can grow alongside your business will also save you time and money in the long term.

HR software: do your homework

For a human resources administrator or executive, having access to good software can make all their complex daily tasks much easier. With modern technology, many of their frequent, time-consuming activities can be automated so that they can spend more time focusing on what’s truly important – their employees.

You now should understand what HR software is, why your company might require it, the available types of HR software, and the features that all HR software should have.

What’s next? Put your assessment process into practice and start weighing up your options. It’s always a good idea to do your homework when investing in new software.

The post Choosing the best HR software for your business needs appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

First, a quick look at the importance of employee onboarding and what it should entail.

What is employee onboarding and why is it necessary?

Employee onboarding is an imperative process when introducing a new employee to your organization. It’s a way to help your new recruit integrate into your company in a welcoming and efficient manner – and to calm any nerves they may feel. This can include, but is not limited to:

• Workstation setup
• Meet and greet with fellow employees and managers
• Guidance on organization processes
• A company culture briefing
• Presentation of mission, vision, and values
• Administrative paperwork for tax and benefits
• On-the-job training
• Security clearance
• Provision of technology requirements (hardware and software)

The process of employee onboarding is exactly that – a “process”. It can take anything from a week to a year for your new employee to truly acclimate to their surroundings.

“My new employees go through orientation; why do they need onboarding too?”

Orientation is vital to a person’s new work role, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to proper induction. Orientation is a once-off event that usually takes place in one day to give that first welcome to the company. Onboarding is a process that is made up of a series of events meant to provide your new hire with everything they need to perform at optimal levels.

“This sounds expensive; do I have to do it?”

According to SHRM, 69% of employees who have had a good onboarding experience are more likely to stay with a company for three years.

Higher retention rates means lower turnover rates. This means money saved.

How so? The average cost per hire is about $4,000 and takes 24 days to fill a role. With a high turnover rate, you spend that amount of time and money whenever you hire a new employee to replace the last. So, make sure you’re giving your recruits a great onboarding experience – it will save you thousands in the long run!

What are the major challenges of employee onboarding?

While it’s entirely possible that your onboarding process won’t go off without a hitch, here are a few challenges for which you can prepare yourself:

1. Paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork

Multiple copies of the same document, forms for IT, clearance information for security, contracts…it’s an endless ream that’s sure to result in paper cuts and ink-stained fingers.

2. Immediate access to information required for work

Your poor new employee has copious amounts of information thrown at them that’s near impossible to remember. A quick-access guide to the most important bits will be appreciated.

3. Struggling to keep track of upcoming events

There are workshops and training sessions aimed at getting your latest recruit up to speed. Creating a schedule that alerts them to when their presence is needed and allows them to track their movements during onboarding gives them some control.

4. Feelings of isolation and incompetence

Joining a new company can be stressful and new hires getting lost in the shuffle is a serious risk. Being bogged down with a backlog of work while expected to perform under pressure can lead to rapid burnout and a swinging door as they throw in the towel. Checking in regularly with new employees and keeping an eye on their progress will make them feel supported and appreciated.

How can HR onboarding software support you?

All these challenges you just read about? Forget about them. Employee onboarding software takes care of the nitty gritty so you can get on with the fun stuff. Let’s see how it stands up to the challenges you could face in onboarding new employees.

1. Paperwork is a thing of the past

Electronic signatures, remote access so they can fill in documents before they even enter the building, and immediate delivery to all the relevant departments – it’s a simple process that can be done within minutes. This will give you the opportunity to focus on employee integration. Time saved, money saved, trees saved.

2. Electronic handbook of work processes and important information

HR onboarding software allows you to create a central repository of documents to which your new hire will have access, guiding them as they find their way through your organization. This knowledge base inspires independence and saves you all from time-consuming queries.

3. Built-in, customizable schedules

When your new employee joins (whether in office or remotely), they will already have a clear idea of what their day looks like, where they need to be, and when they need to be there. Any system that allows a new recruit to operate somewhat autonomously and gives them a sense of self should be instantly incorporated.

4. Communication portals and dashboards

A simple “Hi, how are you doing?” can mean the world to an employee who feels alone or overwhelmed. HR onboarding software usually has a chat function that will allow you to communicate easily and instantly. There are also dashboards for projects allowing those involved to see completed tasks and those that need to be done. You might be able to pick up on red flags by keeping an eye on this data.

What are the essential elements of onboarding software?

Now to consider the absolute must-haves when you’re selecting the best HR onboarding software for you. Here are the essentials every system should have:

1. Includes cloud-based technology

Your employee could be sitting in an office, their home, or a random workspace – you need the seamless integration that cloud-based technology provides for easy but secure sharing.

2. Simple, user-friendly interface

With every new employee, there’s a possibility of a tech knowledge gap. Don’t take it for granted that your new hire is tech-savvy. Choose a software provider that offers a great layout, requires simple inputs, and won’t have your employee calling tech support for every little curveball.

3. A welcome portal

This is where your knowledge base goes. Your new employee’s introduction to the company via this portal should be engaging, fun, and personalized. Videos, welcome messages, quick presentations, etc., should be available to your new recruit as well as instant communication with their colleagues and managers.

4. Automated workflows and processes

A shared task list of everything that needs to be completed should be accessible to everyone involved. The conveyance of information from your employee’s fingertips to the relevant stakeholders should be effortless and once-off. Not only does this ensure the data is accurate across the board, but it also allows your employee to focus on acclimating to their new environment and less on “paperwork”.

5. The ability to set goals

Setting daily and weekly targets allow managers to track their employee’s progress and gives the employee a sense of accomplishment when these targets are met. Any struggles can easily be identified whereas quick completion can indicate potential untapped strengths.

6. Reporting and analytics

There’s always room for improvement, but you need data to implement a plan. Good onboarding software will keep track of your high and low points, allowing you to make changes where necessary and measure the effectiveness of your processes.

7. Easy integration

Some onboarding software is offered as a standalone product, whereas others form part of a Human Resources Information System (HRIS). Opting for a separate program means the onboarding software must complement your current HRIS. A full HR suite might be your best bet to avoid the hassle.

Top HR onboarding software providers

There are hundreds of options when it comes to HR onboarding software. Here are our top picks:

ApplicantStack

This software combines an applicant tracking system (ATS) with an onboarding package. Operating through WorkforceHub and powered by swipelock, ApplicantStack has won G2’s Leader and Fastest Implementation awards for Winter 2023.

Pros

• Highly customizable – easily add training videos, upload forms and information, and you can include your employee handbook
• Constant rollout of updates and new features – the system is developing as the needs of new employees evolve
• User-friendly and intuitive – simple to set up and creating workflows is easy

Cons

• Combining the ATS with onboarding software costs extra
• Lack of reporting options
• Limited search capabilities
• No notifications of changes to the system

ClearCompany

Operating for close to a decade and having helped over 2,500 clients, ClearCompany considers itself to be customer-led, professional, and ethical. The software is modular, so it’s possible to just choose the onboarding software and not the other options.

Pros

• Autofill technology – carries information from one form to the next
• Introduce team members via the Employee Self-Service Portal
• Bulk onboarding – onboard groups of new hires at the same time

Cons

• After-service customer care is lacking
• Not easily customized
• Hard to navigate workflow stages especially when multiple managers are using the same requisition

Enboarder

This onboarding software has been used by the likes of McDonald’s, Fujitsu, and Deloitte. It won G2’s High Performer award in Fall 2022 and claims to have previously increased employee productivity by 25% and decreased 6-month leavers by 20%.

Pros

• Provides data-led coaching to managers
• Best practice journeys are offered as well as personalized experiences
• Great training and support made available

Cons

• Difficulty integrating with other programs
• No notifications when managers or employees haven’t completed a stage in the process
• Cannot track when changes have been made or see a version history prior to those changes

What should you base your decision on?

Before taking a leap of faith with any of these software providers, consider the characteristics, needs, and future of your organization. Clarifying your position, your affordability, and your goals will help simplify the decision-making process. Here are some factors you should take note of:

1. How much do you need your onboarding software to do?

If your needs are complex and call for intricate detailing, an all-inclusive HR software suite might be best suited to your requirements. If your operation is smaller and you need basic functions performed well, then a simple ATS and onboarding package will be more than enough.

2. What are your thoughts on scalability?

If the onboarding software needs to grow with you at an exponential rate, then buying a more advanced program now will save you in the future.

3. Will it integrate with your current HRIS?

If not, do you plan to replace the entire system? Or will you set your sights lower/higher? And if you don’t have an HRIS, will the uncomplicated ATS and onboarding software suffice?

4. Mind the tech gap

Take on software that is easy to customize and straightforward to use. Your tech-challenged employees will thank you. It’s also best if the visual layout is bright and attractive – your new hires must be inspired by the warm welcome they receive.

5. Let’s talk money

Very few have the ability to dismiss a price tag. Figure out how important onboarding software is to you and work out your budget accordingly. Although, as we mentioned earlier, HR onboarding software is worth the expenditure if it increases your retention rates.

Conclusion

Whether it’s remote or in-person, onboarding is a vital element of recruitment that lays the foundation for the new employee’s tenure at your company. Do your utmost to keep them engaged, happy, and fulfilled during their onboarding process with the support of HR onboarding software to perpetuate that good feeling even once the program has ended.

The post Choosing the best HR onboarding software for your new employees appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. Boardon

Boardon’s gamification features make it the perfect onboarding solution for companies focusing on Gen Y employees. You can create your own onboarding content. Interactive quizzes, informative articles, YouTube videos? Check, check, check. Once all the content is in place, simply add your candidate’s details and send an invitation.

The candidate can view a detailed schedule of planned activities and events and an onboarding plan. Boardon is free for one admin member working with one candidate at a time, which makes it suitable for those who onboard less than 20 new employees per year.

2. Wrike

Wrike is so versatile – you can use it for project management as well as employee onboarding. It’s easy and efficient to assign each step of the onboarding process to new employees in the same way you would with a project task. There’s even a free onboarding template to get you started.

HR managers can track progress and save forms, documents, and information as employees move through each step. Bonus: New employees can get familiar with the software they’ll be using daily and find everything they need without opening a dozen apps.

3. WebHR

Use of the WebHR system is free for companies with up to five employees. The onboarding solution allows new employees to complete their paperwork from anywhere, at any time, using any device – so handy for hybrid setups.

Automatic reminders and alerts provide convenience and remind employees to complete the onboarding process to access their personal dashboards.

4. Scribe

Scribe is the perfect tool for quickly and easily creating employee onboarding documents. With its Chrome extension or desktop app, you can capture any workflow you want to document and turn it into step-by-step instructions with screenshots. This makes it easy for HR teams and hiring managers to create professional onboarding guides that you can share with individuals, teams, or company-wide.

Its extension is free with unlimited use but you may want to top up to the Pro plan at $29 per month per user for other features like a desktop recorder and image redaction.

5. Click Boarding

Click Boarding is the perfect tool for creating impactful onboarding experiences thanks to pre-built templates and content. They make it so easy to set up your onboarding flow exactly how you want it and you don’t need major tech or design skills. With the drag-and-drop builder, you can create a completely customized flow.

Plus, you can track employee progress during onboarding and seamlessly integrate with most major HR software platforms.

Final thoughts

When bringing aboard a new employee, it is essential to have onboarding software at your fingertips that covers all the bases from a compliance standpoint. The software sets the stage for success and a positive employee experience from day one. The best free employee onboarding software will help maximize onboarding success and ensure key moments are memorable for all the right reasons.

The post The best free employee onboarding software for 2023 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With layoffs happening across the spectrum – especially in the tech space, most recently with Microsoft announcing 11,000 layoffs and Alphabet (Google) letting go of 12,000 – it’s a question many employers are asking.

In short – no employer likes to go through a period of layoffs. It’s worse for those affected – they come into work one fair Monday morning, and are brought into HR and given their walking papers, and they’re back home in time for lunch but without a job. It can be a real blow to anyone’s ego and confidence.

Those being let go will talk among their peers; those who remain will be wondering how they can carry on or if they’re next on the chopping block. It’s your duty to support them as an employer. Empathy can only go so far.

There’s no “good” way to conduct layoffs, but there are ways in which you can ease the damage it’ll cause for both those who were let go and those who are remaining.

Here are 8 ways in which you can best support your workers after letting them go:

1. Offer severance pay and benefits

When you lay off a worker, you’re basically cutting a core means of survival via their income and benefits. Offering severance pay and benefits to your laid-off workers is a common strategy for many companies – with some severance packages extending to a full year or more.

Severance can be a single lump sum payment, extended health insurance coverage, or ongoing paychecks for a set period as above. Some companies even guarantee pay up to the point the laid-off employee secures a new job.

And Google itself offered a healthy severance package in its round of layoffs, as CEO Sundar Pichai described in an open letter to employees – in short, the package includes 16 weeks of pay plus two for every additional year at Google, plus full 2022 bonuses and remaining vacation time, and six months of healthcare, job placement, and immigration services to those affected in the US.

2. Connect them with outplacement services

Outplacement services are designed to support laid-off employees in finding new employment. These services typically include career counseling, resume writing, and job search assistance. Some companies may even provide outplacement services on-site, which can be more convenient for your employees.

The owner of product review site GadNets.com, Andre Flynn, champions this approach.

“Offering an outplacement service that helps a departing employee transition to a new job or career is a critical component that ought to be included in mass layoffs,” Andre says.

“The majority of the time, outplacement services guarantee a cordial breakup of a working relationship and can be financially and emotionally advantageous for all parties.”

You can likewise provide your laid-off workers with job search resources including job boards, career counseling services, headhunters, job fairs, and more.

Be sure to package all this information beforehand and encourage them to take advantage so they can land on their feet as quickly as possible.

3. Be honest and transparent

When your employees – both past and present – can see the reasoning behind layoffs, it does help. Be honest and transparent about why you’re letting them go, and what steps you’ve taken to mitigate the situation.

This not only alleviates negative feelings and helps protect your company’s reputation in the long run, it also builds trust and understanding among your remaining employees.

Ryan Dunn, the founder and owner of the online custom sticker/apparel venture Custom Stickers, implemented the practice of OBM (Open Book Management) from the beginning, and this has helped in the case of layoffs.

“Every employee kept track of the company’s finances and how to keep up the score. During the financial crisis faced after inflation and due to fewer funding sources, tough decisions had to be taken, like laying off employees,” Ryan explains.

“This matter was discussed […] directly with the employees as they kept track of the finances. Some agreed to be laid off while others accepted a deduction in salary. Laid-off employees were given generous severance pay and the process helped in maintaining the reputation of the company.”

Former HR professional Emily Chipman of Rusman Consulting Solutions also spoke to the value of transparency when layoffs happened at her workplace in the Arizona government in 2007.

“They clearly and succinctly walked through every single step they had taken, how they came to the conclusion that there would have to be layoffs, what options they had considered and weighed, who they had counseled with, etc.,” Emily says.

“The Auditor General spoke with heart, compassion, and yet was succinct and clear in sharing what they were legally required to do, what the budget would allow, and all of the options they had tried to consider to save people’s jobs.”

4. Support their mental health and well-being

Job loss is regularly listed alongside breakups and loss of a loved one in lists of the most stressful life events. Not only does it put people in a financially difficult position, the “rejection” aspect of it can be debilitating for many people.

Providing mental health and well-being support to your employees in the form of counseling services, support groups, gym memberships, and even apps can help alleviate the stress and anxiety of being laid off and help employees move forward to their next chapter with greater confidence and ease.

This also applies to those who are still at your company – they’ve lost their friends and colleagues and may be feeling uncertain about their own professional future with you. This can be mentally challenging when they have work to do. They’ll need your support here as well.

5. Keep in touch

Keeping in touch with your former employees sends a powerful message to them – it tells them that you care about their well-being and that you have valued their contributions to your company.

Inform them of any job opportunities that may come up in your industry or even in your own company in the future, check in regularly with them to see if there’s any way you can help them get back on their feet, and ultimately, make it clear that you are available and accessible as an employer.

6. Give professional references

Layoffs don’t happen due to performance issues. So, it makes sense to give those employees references when they apply for new jobs. Explain to them that you’re willing and able to do that for them as needed, whether it’s in the form of a phone call or a letter, to highlight your former employee’s skills and accomplishments with you.

Not only does this help them get ahead more quickly when being evaluated for a new opportunity, it also reflects well on your company as a supportive and responsible employer that values people.

7. Introduce them to job training programs

Sometimes layoffs happen because of redundancy in an industry or a skill set – in which case, a former employee may need to develop new skills and certifications to stay relevant and competitive in the talent market.

You can support them here by arranging job training or education programs to increase their employability, help them find new jobs in related fields or even transition to new industries. Another aspect of this is identifying existing transferable skills that prove valuable in a new position in a different field – for instance, a journalist’s refined skills in story ideation, interviewing, researching and storytelling can apply to a new career in content marketing.

8. Build networking opportunities

You can also support your laid-off employees by arranging events or online platforms where they can connect with other professionals in their field. Everyone knows someone, so to speak.

It’s no accident that those let go post announcements of their newfound availability on LinkedIn and team managers also share details of their laid-off team members to support them in their next venture.

You can do something similar as an employer, and even encourage and train your managers and executives to create similar announcements to distribute via their own networks.

Support your people

Ideally, you don’t want to have to lay off employees. But, sometimes, you have to to survive as a business. It’s the nature of the beast.

As an employer, there are many ways in which you can tame that beast, and reduce the damage being done not only for your company but also for those you’ve just let go.

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But to do better, we need to pinpoint exactly where we’re going wrong. Ready to pull off the band-aid? Below are four common mistakes teams make when it comes to people data. Luckily, once you target these issues, you’ll start working towards a better employee experience and stronger employee lifecycle.

1. You’re not gathering information during the onboarding process

One of the top reasons candidates choose to accept an open role is the chemistry they have with their prospective manager. The issue there is, in a volatile economy and rapidly changing job market, people move to new positions all the time. The solution? Collect pertinent data in the onboarding process.

Simply put, a robust onboarding process – which includes gathering information to help support new hires in their first 90 days and beyond – signals your values and investment in your people. Furthermore, by tracking your onboarding in tangible ways, you’ll understand why your new hire and manager clicked in the first place, and use that information to create stronger employee experiences across the board. And the better your employee experience, the higher your retention rate.

Alternatively, if you don’t collect the right data during your onboarding process, your new hires could be among the 33% who quit their job within the first 90 days.

While there’s various pieces of information you can collect during the first few weeks of your onboarding process, consider adding the following to your strategy:

Self-ID data

Encourage new hires to fill out self-ID forms (remember, these campaigns should be voluntary) to help measure DEIB efforts across your organization. For example, you can use this information to better plan your employee resource groups and holiday celebrations.

‘How to Manage Me’ forms

When new hires share how they best like to be managed – such as receiving praise or needing help goal-setting – they’re more likely to feel supported by leaders. If your organization sees steady workforce changes, this practice helps reduce risk and uncertainty for your people.

‘Get-to-know-me’ information

Other pieces of information – like t-shirt size and dietary restrictions – help you plan welcome packages, personalized social events, and on-site experiences for new hires.

2. You’re not tracking the right metrics

It’s easy to get bogged down by day-to-day tasks and forget big-picture strategy. But in stressful times, people often work in the business instead of on the business.

When you work on the business, you focus on your overarching people strategy and track metrics to help ensure employees feel supported in reaching their goals. You need to track employee data throughout your entire employee lifecycle to help make the right decisions and plan future initiatives.

Consider collecting the following data, but if this task seems too daunting, determine which part of your employee lifecycle needs the most improvement and start there.

Attraction and recruitment: Track your recruitment efforts to assess how much time, money, and resources you’re investing. In this stage, calculate Time to Fill and Cost per Hire.

Onboarding

The data you collect in this stage isn’t only a reflection of your new hires, but a reflection of your onboarding process. It’s therefore important to calculate time-to-productivity and new-hire-turnover to determine potential changes for the future.

Development

After your employees’ first 90 days, it’s important to collect a variety of data points – such as the employee net promoter score (eNPS), engagement surveys, and promotion rates – to analyze employee satisfaction and areas in need of further improvement.

Retention

In order to keep your top talent, you’ll want to track employee retention rates, turnover rates, and engagement rates to pinpoint any potential risks down the line.

Separation

While people’s reasons for leaving your organization may differ, it’s important to track responses to discover themes to help make your employee experience even better.

3. You’re not using data to develop your people

One of the biggest challenges with data isn’t in collecting it. It’s actually in using that data to make a change.

Therefore, one of the smartest moves you can make is to invest in your greatest asset: your people. To make people-first decisions, use your data to pinpoint areas of weakness and sources of strength. Next, plan initiatives to help create a stronger employee experience and retain top talent.

Some places to start are:

Identifying skills gaps

Many people leave their organization due to lack of development and career advancement – and to use a more specific example, 58% of tech workers cite skills development as their top motivator when choosing a new company. When you understand individual employees’ skills gaps, you can proactively offer professional development opportunities.

Furthermore, understanding the team’s skills gaps helps inform headcount planning scenarios so you can hire the best fit. In the end, you’ll have a well-rounded team, ready to collaborate and tackle any challenge ahead.

Tracking individual performance plans.

If only executives are privy to your people data, you’re missing out on empowering your managers. By granting middle managers certain access to their team’s data, you can enable them to track performance plans and OKR progress to better support their people.

Creating succession plans

You’re bound to experience expected and unexpected departures from your workforce, so it’s best to have plans in place so business is disrupted as little as possible. Luckily, you can use your people data to determine who has or needs the skill sets to become potential successors.

4. You’re not continuously analyzing your people data

You’ve collected the data. You’ve implemented your findings. Now what?

You guessed it: time to dive back into your data, regularly and often. It makes sense. How else would you really know if your initiatives are working or conditions are improving?

However, just because it makes sense doesn’t mean it always happens. In fact, out of 5,000 People leaders surveyed by Sapient Insights Group in 2021, 0% said they looked at diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics monthly. Yes, you read that right. Zero. This, in spite of the moral imperative that drives the majority of businesses according to a Workable survey on DEI also in 2021.

Therefore, in order to make data-driven and people-first decisions, develop a regular cadence to look over your metrics. Once you develop this habit, you’ll see a resounding difference in the impact you make on your entire organization.

Use your people data to create a stronger organization

It’s easy to make mistakes when it comes to your people data. Unfortunately, these errors – not collecting information during onboarding, tracking the wrong metrics, letting them go unused, and looking at data sporadically – put more than just your employee experience at risk.

When you don’t prioritize your data throughout the employee lifecycle, you also jeopardize your organization. And as we know, negative experiences can lead to disengagement, attrition, and missed goals, especially if you find issues in multiple stages of your employee lifecycle.

However, by implementing the tips above, you’ll be on your way to using your metrics effectively and make people-first, data-driven decisions to help your organization thrive.

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We didn’t just experience a societal earthquake two years ago – we saw all changed utterly, to borrow from a Yeats poem. And we had to adapt quickly to survive.

Employers didn’t escape without struggle, either. The working world had to navigate as well. To better understand the impacts of the pandemic on the workplace, we surveyed hundreds of businesses in June 2020.

The result was the New World of Work survey report published in August 2020 with numerous insights on what the work world looked like at that point and what the future of work might look like.

And now, we at Workable conducted the same survey again in June and July 2022 – with a few updated questions. We now understand what anticipated developments from 2020 turned out to be true, and what were way off mark. And what threads from that patchwork remained intact from before, and what new threads are being sewn. Is the future of work based on our 2020 survey a reality? Or does it look different?

This new report has two parts: first, what we learned about the present and future of work from this new survey, and second, how the new survey results compare with those from two years ago. Enjoy the read, and learn what today’s world of work looks like – and what it might look like tomorrow.

Major takeaways include the following:

• Flexwork is here to stay – especially in location. More than four out of five businesses have some form of location flexibility in their work, whether it’s fully or partially remote, or a hybrid working environment.
• Partial remote is booming. Fully remote operations are on the downswing from the early days of the pandemic (52.4% of businesses now, 62.6% two years ago) – and partial remote has nearly doubled since then (59.2% now, 32.3% two years ago).
• Remote isn’t as sustainable as people initially thought it was. Two years ago, one third of businesses said 75% of their workers could work fully remotely without disruption – only half that number think so now (17.5%).
• For those working remote-first, comm tech is a huge unifier. Three quarters of businesses say they’re using communications technology now compared with 52.6% in 2020.
• Employee monitoring is on the rise. Right now, 22.5% of businesses are using time-tracking and / or employee monitoring tools – up from 14.6% two years ago.
• But there’s one benefit of remote: larger talent markets. 53.3% of businesses are now expanding their job postings to other locations compared with just 30.1% in 2020.
• If your in-house recruiting team is strapped for resources, you’re not alone. Reduced in-house capacity to recruit is much more of a challenge to hiring today (27.5%) than in 2020 (14.9%).
• Self-starters are in vogue now. Seven out of 10 businesses (69%) now consider a self-starter mentality hugely value when hiring compared with just over half two years ago (54.2%).
• Money is becoming a more significant driver now than before. 56.2% of employers say compensation is growing in importance now compared with 33.3% in 2020.
• Return to normal? What even is “normal” anymore? Just one in 25 respondents (3.9%) in 2020 said their industry wouldn’t return to normal – that number’s since grown to 22.7% now. And, in 2020, only 3% said their business and operations wouldn’t return to normal at all – that number is now nearly 20%.

The post What does the future of work look like? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Tragic examples, I’m sure, but also not the fun, shareable stories I hoped for. And I wondered why. Did all companies have smooth onboarding experiences? Has the onboarding problem been solved?

I don’t think so. Here’s what I think is going on. Employees don’t know what to expect from onboarding.

My first job was at a fast food restaurant. I’m pretty sure my onboarding experience included filling out tax paperwork that I didn’t understand and then watching a video or two on food safety. Then someone trained me how to run a cash register.

There was no attempt to integrate me into the culture. (Just as well, the management was terrible.) No one bought me lunch to welcome me to the Unnamed Fast Food Restaurant family.

I suspect a lot of onboarding sessions are similar today. Here’s your paperwork; now get to work.

Other companies have extensive onboarding programs with mentors and speakers and planned lunches and follow-ups and it is a BIG DEAL.

But a new hire has no idea what to expect with a new job. Will it be like a fast food job circa 1989, or will it be an elaborate production? And which is better? And how do we know whether an onboarding program was great or a disaster? Just because people like a free lunch isn’t the key to a positive onboarding experience.

So what’s the key, then?

What good onboarding looks like

Of course, you should have paperwork in order (and information sent to the new hires before day one), and IT should have the computer ready to go. The direct supervisors should be available to meet with the person–either face to face or via video conference if it’s a 100% remote job.

We know this.

But for the rest of onboarding, you need to remember the purpose: This is to integrate the new employee into the company and set them up to succeed.

That can vary from company to company. Honestly, all I needed to succeed in a fast-food job was the training I received. (Although I wouldn’t have said no to a free lunch.) But, if I get a new job as an HR director, that won’t do.

Ensuring a good onboarding experience needs three specific things:

Competent paperwork

If a company can’t pull this together, you might as well call it quits. The new hire will peg the “company” (whatever that means) as incompetent and see it through that lens for evermore.

A specific plan

You should not just throw people into a room and hope for the best. You need a plan for how you will help the new hires become part of the team. You need a plan for their technical training and their cultural training.

Follow up

Two days of seminars or one lunch with an assigned “mentor” is not good enough. You need to know how people adjust to their new job before you know if they have the support they need.

And you need to be able to measure success.

This is the hard part. How do you measure if your onboarding programs work? What do you look at?

Measuring your success or failure

The first is the easiest – are people filling out their paperwork correctly? Is everyone’s health insurance correct? Are you withholding the proper taxes? (Although, to be fair, the US government chose to make that form a disaster, so you deserve a pass on that.) Does everyone have the equipment they need?

If you can say yes to all this, pat yourself on the back.

And if you can also say yes to “Do you have a plan?” and “Are you following up?”, then great.

But are those things effective? That becomes a bit stickier.

1. Check your short-term turnover

First, you want to look at your short-term quits. If people leave in less than a year (assuming it’s not a business where short-term labor is the norm), that’s a sign that your onboarding fails to make the grade.

Yes, maybe it was just a bad hire. They do happen! But if you have many people leaving quickly, that’s a huge red flag. Changing jobs is a massive pain in the neck. Why are your people leaving?

2. Survey your new hires

Second, talk to people. So often, companies don’t ask employees what they think and feel about the company outside exit interviews and the occasional engagement survey, which people may or may not answer honestly.

You must make “stay” interviews an important part of an employee’s first six months. What’s working? What isn’t? Does the employee have the support they need? If not, what do you need to do to get it?

If you ask consistent questions over time you can gather the data needed to make necessary changes to your onboarding programs.

3. Talk with the new hires’ managers

Third, talk to the direct supervisors. While new employees may not feel comfortable telling you what they think about their new job, the supervisor will happily open up. A supervisor will tell you if an employee is adjusting, is engaged, and working as part of a team.

If a supervisor repeatedly has employees that don’t adjust, it’s probably a problem with either your overall onboarding program or the supervisor’s abilities. Either way, you can address the problem and fix it.

And fixing it is a key part of good onboarding. An onboarding program that worked perfectly in 2019 is unlikely to be your best bet today. Adjust, review, measure, adjust, lather, rinse, repeat.

So the true horror stories on onboarding gone wrong are slow burning stories. It takes time to see the problems and you need to watch for them. A failed new employee doesn’t always mean you hired poorly – it may mean you onboarded poorly.

The post When onboarding goes bad – and how to fix it appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

First, here’s what the community thinks:

I’m not joking. (I’m in HR, we never joke.) What leadership qualities does Weird Al have that Elon Musk lacks? Here are three qualities the singer has that the businessman could and should learn.

1. Weird Al laughs at himself

Musk is a fantastic troll. But when he had people trolling him by changing their names to Elon Musk, he banned them. He gave a very funny reason for banning comedian Kathy Griffin.

Actually, she was suspended for impersonating a comedian

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022

Hilarious, right? But he’s not laughing at himself; he’s laughing at Griffin. It’s funny, but it also looks like Musk can’t take a joke.

Weird Al? He laughs at himself. Take a look at his interview with the New Yorker.

New Yorker: When you decide what a song is going to be about, do you then do a lot of research to get the details right? And do you enjoy that?

Weird Al: Yeah. I’m very passionate about my music, so I’m going to make sure that everything I write about is researched thoroughly. Some require more research than others. When I did “Living with a Hernia,” I didn’t really know about hernias, so I went to the library and just researched hernias for a week. But, like, “White & Nerdy,” I didn’t need to do hardly any research, because I spent my whole life doing research on that song.

Leadership lesson:

If you can’t laugh at yourself, you will take things too seriously. It’s too easy to get offended. Do you know the No. 1 reason companies end up being sued by employees? It’s not sexual harassment or age discrimination: It’s retaliation.

What’s retaliation? When someone makes a complaint, the company punishes the employee for pointing out a real or perceived problem. This distinct lack of being able to handle criticism costs businesses millions of dollars. Recognize when you’re wrong. Laugh at yourself.

2. Weird Al takes care of his staff

Did you know that Weird Al has had the same “executive team” since the early 1980s? Drummer Jon Schwartz met Yankovic while recording “Another One Rides the Bus” in 1980. Bass player Steve Jay and guitarist Jim West joined in 1982, and the four played their first concert together in March 1982.

And Weird Al’s manager, Jay Levey, has been with Yankovic since 1980.

Compare that with Musk, who’s got an annualized 44% turnover for his executive team at Tesla.

I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes at either Tesla or the recording studio, but I know that long-term employees are a sign of good leadership.

While pay is important, it’s not enough. Tesla’s former head of AI Andrej Karpathy has an estimated net worth of $50 million with a $5 million salary, and he walked away.

I will make an educated guess that Weird Al’s long-term staff have much lower compensation levels – Yankovic himself has an estimated net worth of ‘only’ $20 million.

Plus, by all reports, Weird Al is scandal-free (unlike Daniel Radcliffe’s fictional portrayal of him in his “biopic.”). Musk, on the other hand, has a, ahem, reputation.

Leadership lesson:

Treating people right, not just paying them properly, is necessary for authentic leadership. If your team keeps quitting (or you keep having to fire them), the problem is you, not them.

3. Weird Al is nice

Weird Al has every right not to be humble – he’s an accomplished musician and performer. He’s utterly hilarious. Everyone loves him.

And yet, he doesn’t parody a song without the approval of the original songwriter – even though the law specifically allows you to write a parody without permission. When there was a misunderstanding with an artist, Yankovic apologized personally.

Contrast that with Musk, who former employees say threw “temper tantrums” and who, in a Twitter rage, infamously called a cave diver, working to rescue boys trapped in a cave in Thailand, a “pedo guy”.

Leadership lesson:

Nice is important. Being considerate of others is crucial. It shows that you think of others – and not just yourself. Being nice to people even if they can’t do anything for you (other than, perhaps, buy your product) is the type of person a good leader should be.

While Musk and Yankovic are successful in their own spheres, if you had the opportunity to work for one or the other, chances are your gut would tell you to hitch your cart to Yankovic’s star. Sure, there may be more money to be made with Musk, but in terms of leadership skills, Weird Al wins.

The post The Weird Al leadership playbook: Lessons for Elon Musk appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here are 15 of the best – or worst? – workplace horror stories:

1. When you must never, ever chicken out

A few years ago, I took a marketing position in a UK-based company. After a brief training, I realized that I had to carry a wooden sign in a supermarket every day, and stand there and promote various products. There was no specific time schedule; I could stay there as long as I wanted so long as I reached my sales goals.

At the end of the day, we would all gather at the company’s offices. Our manager would step in while the speakers played the song “Pretty Green Eyes” at maximum volume, and then the show would begin. We would ring a bell and have a cheery round of applause for everyone who reached their goals. But, what about those who had almost reached them? We would form a circle and that person would stand in the middle and act like a chicken – because apparently they chickened out instead of hitting their targets. Oh, and if anyone’s phone rang in the middle of this “show”, they’d immediately have to do 10 pushups.

– M.

Takeaway: While totally unconventional, this was a company’s misguided effort to evaluate and motivate employees. Even if it’s well-intentioned, there are better ways. When you want to assess employee performance, start with the goals that you’ve set. Make sure they’re challenging, but also realistic. And to motivate your staff, emphasize the positives and work together on areas of improvement. Causing fear – or even embarrassment or humiliation – will have the opposite effect.

2. When your colleagues are toxic – or think that you are

When I was working at an embassy, I had a colleague who was convinced I was a Russian spy. We sat across from each other, so I would often catch her looking at me from behind her laptop screen. She also wouldn’t let me touch the mail or go into specific areas of the embassy. She wouldn’t even accept food from me. In fact, when my mother sent me cupcakes for my name day, she demanded that they be X-rayed to see if there was anything inside.

Another time, a colleague asked me to make a copy of a visa applicant’s ID. When she saw me in the copy room, she yelled “I knew it!” and kept asking me where I found that ID and what I was doing with it. She was lucky that I saw the humor in all this – I even greeted her in Russian every morning.

– A.

Takeaway: You don’t necessarily want or need to create a “buddy” culture in the workplace, but you certainly don’t want to have a hostile environment. Employees should feel safe and happy at work. In fact, having friends at work boosts employee engagement, whereas toxic employees hurt morale and productivity. Keep an eye out for unprofessional behaviors and set up strict policies to prevent serious cases, e.g. harassment or violence, from occurring.

3. When the cool company culture turns out to be lukewarm

Years ago I worked for a tech company that loved to brag about how laid back and hip it was. We had the standard industry perks like snacks and drinks, and a pool table in the kitchen. The CEO, convinced that employees were wasting time enjoying these benefits, installed a hidden camera in the kitchen and began sending out company-wide emails calling out individual employees for “consuming more than their fair share” of snacks or drinks, or spending too much time at the pool table.

– R.

Takeaway: The company culture is not what you say you are; it’s what you actually are. You might promote yourself as the “best place to work” when in reality your workplace is toxic. Or, you might have installed a beverage machine and a ping pong table in the office because all the cool companies have them, but in reality your employees hardly use them as they’re always working overtime. If you want to truly build a positive employer brand, focus on what matters: meaningful employee benefits and fair reward systems.

4. When you just want to work legally

In my very first day job, I was hired as a PA to the CEO of a medical company. I had just completed my graduate degree in Communications and was thrilled to find a job in what I thought looked like a really decent company. I was also told that I would take on marketing tasks. I couldn’t wait to dive in! I started off working six hours per day for the minimum wage but that was OK, because I was going to be full time in a couple of months and get a raise. Or so I thought.

I never got a raise and I hardly did any marketing tasks. However, I did end up with a proper working bench, illegally boxing and shipping drugs to patients with long-term diseases. I found out later on that that company was actually laundering money for a big pharmaceutical.

– E.

Takeaway: While this particular company seemed to know exactly what they were doing, make sure that you’re not getting into legal trouble out of ignorance. Consult a lawyer or hire an HR professional with expertise in labor legislation to ensure that your employment contracts and your company policies comply with local laws.

5. When irrelevant tasks take up most of your time

I was working as an intern at a non-profit company where the operations and purpose were a bit shady. The owner, a former politician, usually sat in his office which had only a small glass window looking into the area where we were working.

At some point, he asked me to create a list of investor companies in the United Arab Emirates, find a few economic problems that Serbia was facing, and then call the Serbian embassy to arrange a meeting with their financial director. I did everything he asked, wondering what that was all about. When the financial director agreed to come and meet him, he told me his plan: I was supposed to listen in on his meeting, and each time he mentioned Serbia, I would hold cards with the economic issues I had found in front of his office window so he could appear knowledgeable to the director.

When he mentioned something I didn’t already have, I’d Google it on the spot, write it on a new card and hold it up like the others. He’d also tell the financial director that his company collaborated with all the Emirate investors in the list, in order to earn her trust. I left his “company” shortly after.

– A.

Takeaway: It’s fair to ask employees to create ad-hoc reports, prepare presentations and so on. But make sure they understand the purpose, particularly if these projects don’t seem immediately relevant to their regular tasks. It’s also important to follow up with them and let them know how their project was used, how it contributed to larger plans and what the next steps are – if any. Otherwise, employees might feel that their time gets wasted or, worse, that someone else gets credit for their work.

6. When the employer is playing hard to get

I got a call back from a company a couple of weeks after my application, saying that they really liked my resume and wanted to schedule an interview with me. I responded that I’d be glad to do so and asked when the best time would be for them to interview me, as I was unemployed at the time and was flexible. The lady replied with: “Oh wait, I don’t have the calendar in front of me so to see my availability, let me call you back in a sec”. I’m still waiting.

– E.

Takeaway: You’ve heard it before: candidate experience matters. The way you treat candidates gives them a hint about how you’ll treat them as employees. Changes in the middle of the hiring process can happen and, while they’re not ideal, don’t keep candidates in the dark about them. For example, if you decided that it’s not the right time to open this position, be honest and don’t put candidate on hold for no reason. Poor candidate experience leaves a bad taste in the mouth and that has a long-term effect on your employer brand.

7. When work looks like Big Brother and Survivor at the same time

I worked at a company where they had cameras, mics and speakers installed all over the place, even in the kitchen. If you spent two extra minutes at lunch, the wife of the business owner was screaming at you through the speakers. She would also get her manicures and pedicures in the office and, afterwards, ask employees to empty the bucket she used to soak her feet in.

– L.

Takeaway: Lack of appreciation and lack of trust toward your employees will only hurt your reputation and cost you great professionals. And while this example might sound extreme, there are several, more common, signs that employers mistrust their staff. Think of time-tracking tools, micromanagement and meetings behind closed doors. Even if your company is a career stepping stone for most employees (e.g. because you only offer entry-level roles), make sure that their time with you is not wasted and that they acquire useful skills without making them feel under the microscope when doing so.

8. When your boss is getting inappropriate

I was working as a call center agent. One day, my boss called me into his office to discuss my performance. He had noticed that some of my performance metrics were not up to expectations. But, instead of advising on how I could improve, he started making some comments like, “That’s a shame. You’re such a sweet girl.”

I thanked him for the feedback, saying I’d try to get better, and quickly left his office out of fear that things might get worse. I wasn’t sure whether I could share this incident with anyone, but luckily he was soon transferred to another department. Although his comments might have been well-intentioned, he definitely made me feel uncomfortable and didn’t give me any real feedback, so I was relieved that I didn’t have to work with him again.

– G.

Takeaway: Sexual harassment and all types of inappropriate behaviors are completely unacceptable. At work, it’s the HR department’s responsibility to ensure that employees feel and are safe. No matter how healthy your work environment looks, you need to implement anti-harassment policies and define how employees can speak up if they face or suspect harassment.

9. When the job title is slightly inaccurate

I took a job in student accommodation as a Service and Sales Advisor. On my first day, I was looking forward to seeing the office where we would welcome students, and getting comfortable at a desk. Instead, as soon as I arrived on campus, the manager pointed out a mattress to me. Unfortunately it was not for a power nap after lunch. I actually had to carry this mattress on my back, plus a few dozen more over the next few weeks, and deliver them to students’ rooms. I have to admit; this was not the kind of assistance that I’d thought I’d provide!

– T.

Takeaway: The first weeks at a new job – sometimes even the first few days – are critical. It doesn’t make sense to oversell a job just to “hook” good candidates. Sooner or later, they’ll find out what the exact role is and not only might they leave, but they’ll likely share this negative experience with others as well. If the position you’re offering is not the most attractive one, be honest about that and try to make up for the less exciting tasks with perks. You can also engage candidates by describing how their role can evolve in the future – taking care not to promise things you can’t deliver on.

10. When everyone’s making fun of the newbie

I was offered an administrative job at a real estate agency on a trial basis. During my two weeks there, I got zero training because the person doing the same job was reluctant to cooperate; the fact that the company decided to hire a second employee for that job meant that she would go from full-time to part-time employment, and for some reason she wanted to punish me for that.

Also, on a regular basis, one of the co-founders kept asking me to make him coffee and then the other co-founder would notice that I wasn’t at my desk, so she’d call my internal phone demanding I return to my workstation. As a result, I kept running from the kitchen to my desk and vice versa, something that I guess made me look like Charlie Chaplin. On top of that, my other colleagues would make prank phone calls on me multiple times per day. Oh, did I also mention that this probation period was unpaid?

– C.

Takeaway: The onboarding process can make or break your employer brand; you can help your new hires feel immediately at ease, or make them want to run away as fast as they can. Don’t be the latter. Get their workstation ready before they arrive at the office, help them out with the necessary HR paperwork and build a detailed training plan for their first week, month and beyond. Also, check in with them regularly to see if they need any further help. And if it wasn’t clear already, don’t turn them into your own personal entertainment.

11. When your new colleague gives you a headache

We hired a new project manager at the tech company where I used to work. From the very first day, he showed how talkative he is. But not in the friendly, “I want to meet my new colleagues” way that you may imagine. Quite the opposite. He would not stop talking – about things irrelevant to work – even when we were all obviously rolling our eyes with frustration. I remember one day where I could not bear listening to him anymore, so I left my desk and went to another room to focus on work. About an hour later, I returned to my desk and guess what? He was still talking about the same topic…

– S.

Takeaway: The debate never ends between those who prefer open spaces to those who’d rather the privacy of cubicles. There’s no wrong or right; both workspace designs have their pros and cons. It’s up to you, though, to make sure that your own work environment boosts productivity and eliminates distractions. Open plan offices can still be quiet as long as employees have separate rooms where they can have their meetings and common areas where they can have a break, grab a coffee or have lunch together.

12. When the employer wants you to go off script

A few years ago, I was going to edit people’s resumes and cover letters as a quick way to make some extra cash. At least that’s what I thought I’d be doing. It turned out that the company wanted me to fully write resumes and cover letters from scratch without ever even speaking to the person. This was very short-lived and felt totally unethical.

– J.

Takeaway: The obvious breach of ethics aside, being honest about the job should happen during the hiring process, not after the person is already hired. This is fair for the employee, and also helps you ensure that you choose the right person for the job. Otherwise, you risk hiring someone who doesn’t know how to do or doesn’t want to do this particular job. In some cases, things could change between the moment you offered the role and your new hire’s first day, e.g. due to organizational restructuring. If your new employee’s job duties are not exactly what you had discussed, make sure to explain what happened and provide proper guidance so that they don’t feel everything has changed.

13. When your CEO is way too distant

In a previous job, the CEO that we had was not the typical “leader”. He had zero involvement in almost all of the current projects. Even worse, he didn’t want us to tell him when things didn’t go well, because he said he was getting really stressed out. He preferred that teams would talk to the clients directly and fix the issues on their own.

When the CEO told my manager, who was one of the team leaders, that he didn’t know what’s going on in the team, my manager suggested he [the CEO] should speak more with the employees. The CEO thought that this was a good idea and asked my manager to remind him to talk to the employees once a month.

– S.

Takeaway: It’s one thing to value your team members’ skills and, rest assured, that they can handle things on their own, and another thing to be totally and even deliberately ignorant. Employees want to be trusted by their CEO (and their manager or team leader as well) but, at the same time, they expect some guidance and support. A good CEO needs to find a healthy balance between the two extremes of being the sole decision-maker and being an absentee boss.

14. When the breakup is not smooth

I was working at a private school and, right before summer break, I informed the owner that I didn’t want to renew my contract in September when school would be back in session. The owner was quite bitter seeing me leave, but I reassured her that I’d prepare detailed manuals for all my job duties and I’d clear up all school folders before my last day. And I did so. I also told her that she could contact me when the school opened again in case my replacement had any questions. I had no idea I would soon regret that.

In September, as I expected, the owner of the school indeed called me with some questions. I had already organized everything so well that the questions were unnecessary, but I kindly replied to let her know where she could find the files she was looking for. But then the phone calls became more and more frequent. She would call me every day for the tiniest detail and she would email me very long lists of questions she had. All of these were things that she could easily find on her own in just a few seconds just by looking at my notes or doing a simple search on the computer.

One day, I didn’t pick up the phone (because I was at my new job) and she sent me a blunt text message: “Why don’t you answer??” That’s when I realized I should probably stop being so kind.

– X.

Takeaway: Often, your biggest ambassadors – for your consumer and employer brand – are your former employees. Regardless of the reason why they left your company, don’t hold grudges. If you end your work relationship on good terms, the departing employee can refer some great candidates in the future, leave a positive review online or simply encourage others to apply for open roles at your company.

15. When meetings get awkward

I was working at a project with fellow developers, senior managers and team leaders. One day, we had a meeting, so we all gathered in a meeting room and logged in a video call because one of the developers is working remotely. To our surprise, the moment the remote developer joined the call, one of the senior managers walked out of the room without even saying a word.

We knew he disliked our remote coworker, but this was so awkward. Especially since we saw that he was pacing around outside of the meeting room, trying to listen in for the end of the video call. When the call was over, he re-entered the meeting as if nothing happened, leaving us all wonder how this project will go on.

– N.

Takeaway: Meetings are often dreaded by many, but they shouldn’t be a waste of time. It’s an opportunity for coworkers to sit together to discuss a project, make some decisions, build out plans, share updates or solve issues. Disagreements may arise, and that’s natural, but personal differences should not impact meetings and collaboration in general.

Don’t be in this list

As you’ve noticed, we didn’t disclose any of the companies, but don’t rest assured that these (along with many, many more) workplace horror stories will be buried in anonymity. When people talk to their friends and families and when they post reviews online, they most certainly name names. So, work your best to create a healthy and motivating work environment; not because you’re afraid of being called out, but so that your employees can thrive and be happy working with you.

Not getting enough sleepless nights, and interested in even more terrifying HR content? Read 15 job interview horror stories and a chronicle of the worst interview ever.

The post Workplace horror stories we wish were not real appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We didn’t just experience a societal earthquake two years ago – we saw all changed utterly, to borrow from a Yeats poem. And we had to adapt quickly to survive. There were many adaptations as we quickly learned, particularly in the workplace – the surge of remote work, the incorporation of digital technology, and a mountain of concerns around employee engagement.

What about now in 2022? What does that new world of work look like and did all those predictions from the first time around ring true? Or were they much ado about nothing?

We decided to go and find out for ourselves, by sending out the same survey again in July 2022 – albeit with a few updated questions. The social patchwork that was so rudely ripped apart throughout 2020 has been somewhat stitched together in new ways. We know now what threads from that patchwork remained intact from before, and more so, what new threads are being sewn.

This new report comes in two parts – first, our learnings from the new survey, and second, how the new results compare with the results from 2020. The findings are remarkable. Enjoy the read and do join our conversation on the topic in the Workable Community.

Meanwhile, the major themes are as follows:

Hybrid is the new agreement

The oscillatory negotiation between return-to-office and full remote work may have settled on a new trend: hybrid. Is this a new stopgap measure or is it the way forward?

Jobseekers have the upper hand

The rise of compensation, benefits and opportunities as top value props shows that jobseekers have leverage in what they can get out of a job beyond “getting” the job.

Nothing is ‘normal’ anymore

The majority of businesses are moving on to the “next normal” in terms of working environments and business processes – and there’s no going back to the way things were.

Long-term remote problems

The long-term challenges of remote work are surfacing in the form of tech stack considerations, asynchronous issues and lingering anxieties both for businesses and their workers.

When there are setbacks and disruptions, there are adaptations and adjustments. And now, we’re presenting those in this comprehensive new survey report from Workable, titled The New World of Work, two years on: A 2022 Worker Survey.

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What is an alternating four-day workweek?

The idea of a four-day workweek is nothing new, and it’s something some companies have been offering as an option – or even a required schedule – for years. In most cases, this means that the employee works 10-hour days instead of eight, so the standard 40-hour workweek is completed in just four days. That way, instead of two days off per week, the employee gets three.

An alternating four-day workweek is a little different. With this plan, the employee works five days one week, and four the next. The day off could be Friday to allow for a three-day weekend every other week, but that is up to the individual employee and employer. Those additional days off provide the employee with tremendous flexibility to take extra trips, engage in their favorite hobbies, or whatever else they’d like to do with their spare time.

Why an alternating four-day workweek?

When the pandemic hit, we had to transition our team from being in-office to being a fully remote workforce. It was really all hands on deck to help the company come through the pandemic unscathed, and our team hunkered down and helped us figure out how to make our day to day operations more effective as a remote workforce. This meant lots of retooling and new process development … and long hours.

Working remotely can make work-life balance challenging and increase risk of burnout. A recent survey discovered that 69% of remote workers are experiencing burnout symptoms and 59% of remote workers are taking less time off than normal. Another survey stated that burnout at work doubled from March 2020 to April 2020.

Our hypothesis was that implementing this new perk would help prevent burnout, increase employee job satisfaction, and make our team feel more rested and ultimately, more productive, at work.

Our main concerns

My primary concern was ensuring that our clients and customers still had the level of support that they have come to expect from us. At the same time, I didn’t want this effort to make it harder on our support team as a result of any client frustrations or support ticket backlog. It was important to me that we still had adequate coverage for all teams and for all departmental responsibilities.

My secondary concern was making sure that this new schedule wouldn’t prevent anyone from being able to do their job. I didn’t want this alternating schedule to create any unnecessary stress for employees that couldn’t get something done because a key stakeholder was out of the office. But, all of these concerns can be prevented with proper planning.

How it’s been going so far

We piloted this new program from April to June 2021, a full quarter. We then said we would ressas with leadership, and see if this is something we would want to implement for the long term. Once the pilot was nearing the end, we sent a survey around to our team to get their feedback on this new work schedule.

Here are a few key takeaways:

• 100% of employees said that they wanted us to continue offering this benefit
• 93% of employees have said their productivity has improved, while the other 7% said their productivity has been the same
• 85% of employees said they feel more rested and happier at work

Anecdotally speaking, we also had a few key learnings, including;

• It really enabled better habits when it came to time management and meeting scheduling. For example, everyone seems to be more thoughtful about scheduling meetings in general, so as to not waste time.
• Many of the team members use Fridays for “deep work” days, with no meetings or interruptions.
• This has been a great perk to mention to job candidates during the hiring process, and has been a deal breaker for some of our recent hires.

Four-day workweek tips for you

If this is a concept that you are considering for your team, here are a few things to consider and tips for implementation.

1. Try it as a pilot program first

I highly recommend you “try it on” by first implementing it as a pilot or trial program, with a specific start date and end date, to see how your team and customers adapt to this change. This gives you the flexibility of trying it out before having to fully commit. You may learn that it’s great and everything is fine to move forward with it long-term, or you may learn that you need to tweak a few things.

2. Make any special conditions very clear

Ensure everyone is aware of any special conditions or restrictions to this process to set the right expectations. For us, we didn’t require longer hours during the week of their Friday off, but other companies do. So, if there are special conditions, make them very clear from the start.

3. Make the schedule transparent and visible

Meet with your team leads and schedule out everyone’s Friday off in advance. Make sure it’s clear and visible in a shared calendar so everyone is aware of who is and who isn’t “in the office” on a given Friday. This also helps the team think in advance about any vacation days that may overlap or big events or meetings that need planning around.

4. Ensure your leaders lead by example

Leading by example is essential not only because leadership also needs time to recharge, but also because failing to follow through with the process can send mixed messages to employees and could cause anxiety on whether or not they should take the time off.

Matt Buchanan is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Service Direct, a technology company that offers local lead generation solutions for service businesses. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University. He has 15+ years of expertise in local lead generation, sales, search engine marketing, and building and executing growth strategies.

The post Implementing an alternating four-day workweek: how & why appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What is employee onboarding?

Onboarding new hires is the process companies go through to welcome and integrate employees into the workplace. This very definition suggests that the employee onboarding process extends far beyond the first day of a new hire – it continues until they’ve fully adjusted to their role and team.

And this is the main difference between onboarding and orientation. The employee onboarding definition refers to any action that helps new hires understand how things work in their new work environment, get acquainted with the company culture, and feel welcomed and valued in their team.

Employee orientation, on the other hand, is the first step of onboarding. It’s when new hires learn the basics of their environment: for example, they might familiarize themselves with the office building and company policies, understand their new job duties and get introduced to their colleagues.

Why is onboarding important?

Think back to your first day in any job – chances are you were excited but nervous. If you don’t receive enough attention and instruction, that may not bode well for your mood or your motivation to get up to speed in your new capacity.

This may be one of the reasons that more than 25% of new hires quit their jobs after their first three months. And this is a huge loss for a company that must repeat a costly hiring process to find a replacement so soon – not counting the resources spent to train or compensate that new employee during their time with your company.

So onboarding new employees effectively can improve your company’s employee retention.

Another benefit of a good onboarding policy is that new hires reach full productivity faster. If they don’t receive adequate help from HR or their manager, and they’re just trying to make sense of everything on their own, your company loses potential revenue this employee would otherwise bring. If new hires go through a well-developed onboarding process, they’ll be quicker to settle in their role and start producing value for their team.

And an effective process is even more imperative when you’re onboarding remote employees (who have extra difficulties in connecting with their colleagues due to distance) or interns and graduates (who are new to your company and also to the world of employment).

Why it’s crucial to welcome new hires

Employee onboarding shouldn’t stop at company policy, benefit enrollment, job training, and tech logins — the way your company makes employees feel is a significant part of company culture, which is an essential ingredient of attracting and retaining top talent in today’s job market. It also goes a long way in building lasting employee engagement.

There should be two main components involved with a successful onboarding strategy: making sure new hires are prepared with all of the necessary information to work within your organization and creating a positive, comfortable environment where everyone feels supported and included. A fully optimized onboarding experience should welcome a new hire in a way that leaves them feeling prepared to perform their role and excited to be part of your team.

Additional resources for welcoming a new hire:

• How to Welcome a New Hire

Onboarding process steps

When designing the onboarding process, there are many things you can do to help new hires, like sending them a welcome package with company swag, arranging a team lunch or dinner with colleagues, or preparing a presentation. Whatever you include in your own process, there are several onboarding best practices that you could follow:

1. Communicate with new hires regularly

If your new hire’s start date is more than two weeks away, make sure to keep communicating with them and show that you’re looking forward to having them on board. You can prepare a welcome package with company swag or send them your employee handbook in advance. You could also ask the new hire’s prospective manager to send an email welcoming their new team member.

2. Plan the new hire’s first week

When the new employee first arrives for work, they will be uncertain about what their day will be like. It’s up to you to show them that you’re fully prepared to welcome them properly. So, prepare a plan for their first few days on the job and check all the important boxes (like setting up their workstation or informing the front desk employees about the new hire’s arrival).

3. Welcome them with open arms

Be enthusiastic, friendly, and positive from day one. Give the new hire a company walkthrough and introduce them to their co-workers at nearby desks first. Schedule a team lunch for them to get acquainted with others on their team and make sure their manager meets with them regularly throughout this crucial first week. It’d be useful to provide the new employee with a checklist or schedule with all the onboarding activities you have planned.

4. Keep it up

The onboarding process doesn’t end after the first week is over. You need to ensure your new hire has enough basic yet meaningful work to do almost from the beginning to help build confidence. Their manager should have a plan to assign that work and also support their smooth integration into the team. Check in with both the new hire and their manager after two weeks and at the end of the new hire’s first month and give them any support they might need.

A well-thought-out employee onboarding program – taking into account these four steps – could make all the difference in successful employee retention and engagement. It’s imperative both to employee retention and engagement that new hires know that your company values them right from the start.

Additional resources for creating an onboarding process:

• Onboarding Process Survey Questions Template
• How to Build a New Employee Onboarding Process

Why an onboarding checklist is important

There are a lot of moving pieces to a comprehensive employee onboarding strategy and starting a new job is already a situation that can inspire feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, or information overload. Remember the first day of school? It’s like that, but with even more at stake.

An onboarding checklist provides a loosely-structured schedule that prioritizes the most important aspects of welcoming a new hire while also helping them gain confidence about their new role and environment. Onboarding is your best chance to make a strong first impression as an efficient, organized, and thoughtful place to work and a new hire checklist is the ideal tool to help you do it.

Improve the initial employee experience by providing them with a copy of the list so that they know what to expect.

Additional resources for creating an onboarding checklist:

• Onboarding New Hire Checklist
• Remote Employee Onboarding Checklist
• IT Onboarding Checklist
• Onboarding Checklists Templates
• Onboarding New Managers Checklist

Remote onboarding

The rise of remote work has added new obstacles for HR professionals to consider. It’s even easier to feel lost, overwhelmed, or confused if you can’t check in with a friendly face nearby. How do you make a new hire feel welcome and supported from a distance?

It’s extremely important to streamline the formal onboarding workflow and communicate the process and all information involved as clearly as possible for remote workers. Help them get comfortable with company communication tools as quickly as possible, set up some video calls or virtual meetings with relevant managers and team members, and consider assigning them an “onboarding buddy” to reach out to with any questions.

Onboarding software is an ideal tool for organizing the process and a friendly colleague can help personalize and support the experience.

Additional resources for remote onboarding:

• Remote Employees Onboarding Checklist
• Working, Hiring, and Onboarding in the New Normal
• Remote Onboarding FAQs

Employee onboarding tools and software

Hiring a new employee involves a significant investment of time, money, and resources. From interviewing to onboarding, it’s important to be thorough and organized each step of the way — not only for logistical reasons, but also because making a positive impression is a key component of acquiring highly-qualified talent in a competitive job market.

Using employee onboarding tools and software can help streamline communication, facilitate training, ensure compliance, and manage necessary paperwork, among other things. It can also make the entire process easier for human resources professionalwhat is s by incorporating automation and notifications into the workflow to ensure all tasks are completed in a timely manner.

Creating and implementing a consistent and comprehensive onboarding strategy improves the efficiency and productivity of your organization as you empower new hires to step into their new position with comfort and confidence.

The post What is employee onboarding and how to get it right appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In fact, some surveys tell us that as many as 54% of all members of Gen Z want to become freelancers or start their own business. The number of self-employed people in 2021 was up 34% from 2020 to a staggering 51 million people in the United States. That’s roughly 15% of the entire population in the country working for themselves.

Cultural factors such as the rise of side hustles and part-time employment opportunities available through the Internet and social media are contributing to these numbers. More than two-thirds (68%) of those who began freelancing in 2021 were either millennials or Gen Z. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that self-employment is due to rise quicker than average employment growth over the next 10 years.

Employers need to catch up

During the pandemic and this challenging employment market, employers must reckon with these trends and consider how to incorporate this cultural shift into their recruitment policy.

During the pandemic and this challenging employment market, employers must reckon with these trends and consider how to incorporate this cultural shift into their recruitment policy.

While some effects of these trends can certainly be traced back to timing and the pandemic, the broader move towards virtual work and self-employment is a permanent one.

Those who choose the freelance and self-employed route are doing so for a variety of reasons. Employers need to understand what those are, and think about how to replicate them in their own workplaces if they want to remain competitive in the talent market.

There are, of course, benefits and drawbacks to self-employment and business ownership. Let’s first look at the main benefits:

What are the advantages of being self-employed?

1. Flexible schedule

Our collective understanding of work-life balance is changing to prioritize more time with family and better mental health. One of the themes we saw over and over again in the research we shared in our Great Discontent report was that candidates increasingly value a flexible work schedule.

This trend is reflected in candidates’ preferences – and often, their need – for jobs that allow them to work when it’s most convenient for them.

Flexible work, of course, is one of the hallmarks of self-employment. By definition, the contractor/client relationship prohibits clients from dictating how and when the contractor does their work, as they do for their employees.

2. Remote work

Despite some predicting that remote work would end en masse as soon as the pandemic did, we haven’t seen that occur. Instead remote work, like COVID-19, appears here to stay.

Candidates in our recent survey responded that, like flexible work, remote work options were very important when making the decision on where to work. Many are flat-out turning down jobs that are requiring employees to return to work in-person. And as is also the case with flexible work, countless self-employed people choose to work remotely.

Remote work also reduces or eliminates time spent commuting – we found that to be a perk in the Great Discontent survey as well. It’s also a benefit in other areas, as commuting is bad for our mental health, our finances, and the environment.

3. Better balance of caretaking/parenting challenges

Self-employed people can choose to work when and where they please. This is a bonus when it comes to caring for other family members – especially parents of young children.

They can take time off to take children to doctor’s appointments, or for a leisurely lunch with a friend, without needing to justify their actions.

4. 100% ownership of your business

Freelancing allows individuals the chance to create and retain their business’ value. This compared to a full-time employment scenario, in which a person rents out their labor to build value for a company, but retains no ownership stake or long-term financial investment in the company’s success.

The self-employment model potentially offers more financial stability and opportunities for wealth generation in the long term than traditional full-time employment. In fact, in a recent Upwork-commissioned study from September 2020, 60% of freelancers said they make more than they would in a traditional full-time job – and that percentage is up seven points from 2019.

5. No red tape or corporate politics

Excluding the red tape associated with handling your own business affairs like taxes, self-employment is refreshingly free of the red tape and politics associated with the corporate world.

When you’re outside of the corporate hierarchy, the contortions that full-time corporate employees must go through to manage social expectations, coworker relationships, and bosses are none of your concern.

This can be remarkably freeing, especially for introverts or others who are averse to the petty politics that often govern an office’s social structure.

6. Uncapped earning potential

Very few traditional full-time professions offer the benefit of uncapped earning potential, though this is one of the coolest and most convenient benefits of freelancing.

Freelance work, and therefore one’s income, can be scaled up or down depending on a person’s income targets for a given month. Your nanny is on vacation so you need to focus on taking care of your three children this month? Scale down for less responsibility and more free time. Looking to save for a down payment on a home? Scale up by looking for more, or higher paying, clients.

7. Ability to do work you’re passionate about

For many, self-employment represents the opportunity to do work they’re deeply passionate about. Often we are skilled in areas that we’d enjoy working in but in which there are no real full-time jobs available. Freelancing can give individuals the opportunity to combine their unique skill sets and pursue work they’re uniquely qualified for.

We see this play out in the arts industry specifically, where rates of self-employment are significantly higher than of all other professions – with 30% of artists working in freelance, according to a report from the National Endowment for the Arts. Full-time, profitable jobs in the arts are few and far between, but working as a freelancer can offer a better income and more job opportunities.

8. Freedom and control over one’s own career

A freelance career offers complete freedom. Lost interest in accounting and instead prefer to start a business doing wedding floral arrangements? Go for it! Want to cancel all your Friday meetings and go to a spa? No one’s stopping you!

It’s never been easier to start freelancing with zero startup capital, making this an open-source opportunity available to anyone with a solid internet connection and a willingness to work hard.

9. Pride in a job well done

Freelance work offers rewards based on a job well done, rather than simply showing up to work every day. Because it’s so results-focused, freelancers feel a sense of pride and ownership when they complete a project.

Got all that? Good. Now, let’s look at the main disadvantages of running one’s own operation.

What are the disadvantages of being self-employed?

1. Lack of insurance/benefits

One of the most difficult (and expensive) issues to navigate as a freelancer is finding benefits. With the widespread prevalence of employer-offered healthcare in the United States, leaving one’s job and finding healthcare on the open market can feel scary and risky. Self-employed people often end up paying more for healthcare.

Self-employed people also miss out on other financial benefits offered by employers, like 401K matching, stock options, temporary disability insurance, and vision/dental care.

2. Fluctuating income and work load

This one is a double-edged sword. While a variable work schedule can be harnessed for benefits like scalable workload and uncapped earning potential, it can also be difficult to cope without financial literacy, a healthy emergency fund, and the tenacity to get through some lean months.

3. Risk and stress

Likewise, some find that the risk inherent to business ownership, innovation, and self-employment is simply too stressful to cope with. That’s okay! What works for one person doesn’t work for everyone, and we all have different levels of risk tolerance depending on our financial situation.

While risk is to some degree a key component of any business venture, many self-employed people testify that they actually feel freelancing gives them financial security they never had while working a traditional full-time job. No one client makes up the entirety of a freelancer’s income, and should one client go under, they are easily replaced.

4. Loneliness and isolation

Psychologically, working for yourself is quite challenging. To use a common phrase, the buck stops with you. If something needs doing, you’re probably the one who does it.

While you can pick up many unique and helpful skills in this situation, it can also be lonely and isolating to deal with everything about your business on your own. There’s no one to hand the reins to when you want a break.

5. Tax disadvantages

There are financial advantages to traditional employment that employees take for granted. For example, employers pay half of the payroll tax due for their employees. The other half is generally automatically withheld from an employee’s paycheck. But self-employed people pay both parts themselves in the form of self-employment tax. The difference? Freelancers pay an additional seven percent of gross revenue to taxes, or 15.3% in total. That’s a major financial disadvantage.

Self-employed people also have to manually withhold their own taxes and pay them quarterly throughout the year to the IRS and their state’s department of revenue.

6. Added burden of business development

Freelancers must regularly spend time marketing their services to other businesses. This can add to your workload, but without it, it may be difficult to find new clients. Some find this cycle exhausting.

Use this to your advantage

As mentioned above, a key talent attraction opportunity for employers here is to incorporate the benefits of self-employment, and emphasize the things they can offer in a job that self-employment does not.

Employers suffer when they struggle to hire or retain great people, and employees suffer when their employers don’t respect their full lives and personal responsibilities. Creating a more balanced working relationship benefits everyone involved.

Employers suffer when they struggle to hire or retain great people, and employees suffer when their employers don’t respect their full lives and personal responsibilities. Creating a more balanced working relationship benefits everyone involved.

How employers can attract candidates with the benefits of self-employment

1. Fast-track the hiring process

Getting rid of unnecessary red tape is an easy way to emulate the freedom self-employed people enjoy. And furthermore, everyone hates it when the hiring process takes too long.

2. Support a collaborative culture

The managerial hierarchy of large corporations can be exhausting, confusing, and demoralizing. Creating a more collaborative culture, where employees of all ranks feel listened to, can give a taste of the creative freedom self-employed people enjoy.

3. Offer ownership stake in the company

Partial or full ownership of the fruits of your labor is a key element of financial freedom, and while small business ownership offers this in spades, traditional employers typically do not. But they can. This desire for ownership stake is a significant reason people work at startups – because they offer the chance at partial ownership which can become extremely profitable down the line.

There are also other methods of sharing ownership for companies that aren’t public, like tying bonuses to company performance.

4. Compensate fairly and competitively

With record inflation this past year, employees across the country are hurting financially. Finances are one of the most commonly cited reasons employees give to explain why they’re switching jobs. Reevaluate your compensation structure to make sure it truly is fair and generous in today’s environment.

Unpredictable finances are a major factor that drives people to leave freelancing and seek traditional employment. You can take advantage of this angle by offering a generous, regular paycheck.

5. Give flexible work and remote options

Flexible and remote work are now the norm for most white-collar workers, and if you don’t offer these perks, you’re falling behind. Keep in mind, too, that many people become freelancers because they can’t cope with the rigid work schedule most employers require.

Whether because they deal with a chronic illness or because they have young children to care for, flexible work is the answer for many who struggle to balance personal and work responsibilities. If you already offer flexible or remote work options, sweeten the deal with a home office stipend or student debt repayment assistance.

6. Encourage creativity and independence

Creative or entrepreneurial employees often leave to start their own businesses in part because their unique contributions go unappreciated or ignored within the narrow-minded managerial structure.

If you can show employees that those qualities add value to the company and are appreciated, you’re more likely to keep them. Everyone likes to have autonomy and agency at work.

7. Create purpose and engagement

What does your company serve? Whose lives do you benefit? Do you manufacture products that destroy the environment or rely on inhumane, cheap labor?

People are highly motivated to give their time and energy to causes they believe in. Emulate the feeling of purpose and pride a person feels when they do work they know will make a positive impact.

8. Foster community and team building

Many self-employed people struggle with feeling isolated. There is nothing quite like working on a team of intelligent, hard-working people to collaborate on a common goal. Present your company culture as a real employment benefit – because it should be.

9. Give praise where it’s due

Self-employment is often thankless. Retain your employees by showing them that you support them, financially and personally. Spotlight employees who are doing great work and offer opportunities for growth and higher education for everyone.

If your organization is struggling to find candidates right now, as so many are, take note of the trend towards self-employment. There are real cultural and economical factors driving many highly qualified candidates to choose self-employment right now. If you want to work with them but aren’t willing or able to do so on a contract basis, you can use this insight about advantages of self-employment to tailor your recruiting messaging for today’s labor market.

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Want to see all the data in one place? Jump to the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

The challenges

Those in the 21-29 and 40-49 age groups are much more likely to say they’ve experienced challenges affecting their work dating back to pre-pandemic times.

And those above 50 are far more likely to say they haven’t experienced mental health struggles that impacted their work.

And as for getting better or worse, those above 50 are much more likely to say it’s getting worse for them.

The conversation

When it comes to talking about the topic of mental health at work, those below 50 are more likely to be not comfortable talking about it at all.

And younger populations prefer to go to HR or to their direct manager, while their older counterparts feel they can openly discuss their concerns and challenges with their colleagues.

The community

When we seek support for mental health, we have a choice of resources. Our survey found that younger people are much more likely to use the existing services in their company, while those above 40 usually procure their own support outside of their place of employment.

And those above 50 are more likely than their younger counterparts to not seek out professional help for mental health.

Interestingly, those above 50 are also far more likely to say that their company’s existing resources and services are satisfactory for their needs. Younger populations, on the other hand, say they still need to ask for it.

The change

Finally, what does the trend look like in terms of the conversation around mental health at work? The youngest age group – 21-29 – is most likely to say it’s getting better, while those above 50 are much more likely to say there’s been no change at all.

The conclusion

There’s no real verdict – this isn’t a court of law. But there are indicators here:

• Older populations are more freely able to talk about it with their colleagues but also don’t see much change from before – plus, they’re more likely to say they don’t experience mental health challenges.
• Younger populations prefer to be more discreet when communicating those challenges – but they do say their challenges are getting better.

What does all this mean for you as an employer? When building your diversity, equity and inclusion strategy, don’t focus solely on race or gender – think about age as well.

That also applies to your mental health action plan – and not just in the resources you offer your workers. It’s also the way in which you communicate, the way in you share information, the way in which you establish safe spaces, and more.

Different groups act and respond differently. We live in a richly diverse society, and our response should be richly diverse as well.

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We can no longer afford to ignore this opportunity to put big data into action.

We agree on the What and Why. Now — and for the foreseeable future — it’s about the How.

Armed with ample data and science on human behavior, we can thoughtfully design work experiences that fit today’s employees through clear, dedicated systems that preserve culture and wellbeing.

By integrating these nine dimensions into talent acquisition, onboarding, retention, performance rewards and values — to name a few — we can shift our mindset on what is truly possible in the modern era of work.

What is ‘culture’?

From a behavior analyst’s point of view, we know that we cannot change or measure what we cannot define. A first priority is to understand what exactly we mean when we use this term.

Culture is defined in terms of the environment in which an individual or group of individuals behaves, and the experiences that shape these behaviors over time. The environment includes policies, practices, daily experiences and leaders to ground-level employees.

How it’s created

For example, if a company states that it values wellbeing but does not allow employees to use their vacation time, this creates tension, confusion, stress and resentment. It also shifts the culture from what was originally told to employees and new hires (i.e., company values wellbeing) to what is experienced (i.e., the company does not, in fact, value wellbeing).

This leads to resignations, lost productivity and even an increase in lawsuits from employees. Research shows that employees who feel valued and cared for choose mediation over arbitration.

Culture is fluid

Group behavior shifts from one month, one hire, one merger to the next, which is known as behavior drift. Because these shifts are normal, it is imperative that companies are designed to hold culture and wellbeing strategies in place, with purpose, just as they approach business strategies, performance metrics and the like.

With these guiding categories in place, HR teams and leaders are exponentially better equipped to create and maintain cultures of care.

The Nine Dimensions of Culture

Let’s start by looking at the nine dimensions of workplace culture as defined by W3RKWELL:

1. Leadership

There exists a giant interpersonal gap between leaders and employees due to hierarchy, knowledge gaps, and archaic narratives about where leaders actually operate.

According to research from Stanford University, one of the top 10 variables that negatively affects employee wellbeing is perceived unfair decision-making at the top. Younger generations are demanding leaders who care about people and planet over (or as much as) profit.

“Strength” is experiencing a critical renaissance, changing ever so slowly from command-and-control to empathy, compassion and showing emotion.

In today’s world, leaders are no longer hidden away in ivory towers, protected by privacy and anonymity. Leaders are more visible than ever, and so are their actions, opinions and leadership moves.

Younger generations want to work for people to whom they can relate. They want to feel cared for, especially after a tumultuous few years of global strife and anxiety. Period.

Leadership Starter Checklist

• Are transparent systems in place to ensure that everyone, especially leadership, is held accountable for their actions?
• Do hiring and promotion metrics visibly outline qualifications for leadership roles, and do those metrics include measurable acts of empathy, value-alignment and service to others?
• Has your company developed systems to remove those who exhibit toxic or unethical behaviors in zero-tolerance moves?

Behavior trickles down – good, bad and ugly. By putting formal procedures into place, you can better ensure that future leaders will possess the values and behaviors employees want and need, instead of repeating ineffective, harmful behaviors from years past.

2. Autonomy

With office life disrupted during the pandemic, numerous studies took place to determine the extent to which productivity was affected while people were solely working from home. While remote work does possess its own set of distractions, these studies did not show a significant decline in performance.

In fact, some research showed the opposite, and it is hypothesized that control is the answer.

The Stanford research on wellbeing above also cites “lack of autonomy” as a top factor affecting employee health, which was confirmed with soaring societal stress when people were forced back into the office. Other research shows that increases in job strain were mediated with additional autonomy and control over task completion.

When we question whether remote or office work is best, the answer has more to do with work flexibility. The location matters less than the autonomy within those environments. If we are asking employees to be creative, work hard and find flow, we must create uninterrupted time and space for them to do so.

Essentially, the environment must support the behaviors we are encouraging.

Autonomy Starter Checklist

• Do remote or hybrid models allow employees the authority and freedom (also wellbeing influencers) to make choices about what environments produce optimal work?
• Has your company embedded behavioral nudges to keep employees asking “what do I need to create my best outcomes?”.
• Have moves been made to normalize away or OOO messages for employees doing focused work to avoid attention-crushing disruptions, reduce stress and increase the quality and quantity of work?

Organizations can take a hint from the Copenhagen company, Krukow, who designed a client’s office furniture to be lifted to the ceiling at 6 pm every day, or the dozens of companies currently experimenting with a four-day work week (current research is supportive).

Resource for additional information: Deep Work by Cal Newport

3. Performance and Growth

According to research from 2018, 86% of employees don’t feel trained to fluency in the jobs they’ve been hired to do. Moreover, if company culture does not adequately train its people, employees can face stressful lose-lose punishment contingencies.

This means that they receive negative feedback for jobs they were not adequately trained to perform in the first place, and the environment may also signal that with mistakes comes punishment. Employees then do what all humans do — they stay under the radar, avoid speaking up and continue to fail to meet expectations.

Many companies lack objective competency models and metrics for promotions that consider all skills, attitudes and responsibilities employees will face when performing their current role, or moving into their next role.

This adds a component of confusion to how, exactly, employees are to succeed. Failure to grow and succeed, or basic inertia, becomes one more stressful, though avoidable, variable to workplace culture.

Poor training and little opportunity for development then becomes a retention issue, as growth is consistently ranked as highly desired within the millennial and Gen Z workforce. Moreover, a sense of mastery at work has been correlated with positive health outcomes.

Performance and Growth Starter Checklist

• Has your company embedded science-supported learning strategies into training and development programs?
• Are employees are not only aware of and exposed to information, but can they demonstrate working with fluency — defined as accuracy plus speed minus hesitation?
• Are company pipelines in place to train and promote individuals or groups based on future roles (some organizations begin these pipelines the first week of onboarding)?

Fluency is shown to increase an individual’s feelings of competence and value, and can ensure your employees are under less stress at work. This model also integrates with performance issues. If employees have been trained to fluency but still struggle to meet goals or complete tasks, you can be more certain that the employee is experiencing a performance deficit (i.e., motivation issue or life challenges outside of work) rather than a skill deficit (i.e., being motivated but unable to carry out tasks at expectation).

4. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

This dimension has sub-dimensions – legal, moral, organizational and societal – that go beyond the scope of this article, but this is one of the most necessary and critical in the wake of the BLM movement, #MeToo, abortion rights and the rise of Asian hate crimes during the pandemic. In addition, the LGBTQ+ community has greatly contributed to the conversation of the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The last few years have unapologetically and energetically brought to light the harmful implicit bias, racism, sexism and homophobia that still exists in the workplace, despite larger acceptance and encouragement from parts of society.

According to a recent Bloomberg article, “the vast majority (86%) of employees feel people at their organization are not heard fairly or equally — and nearly half (47%) say that underrepresented voices remain undervalued by employers.”.

Paired with tokenism, an event in which a minority individual feels responsible for representing their entire group, this has serious health effects. According to an article in Health, tokenism and other forms of exclusion lead to high levels of stress, anxiety and depression.

Research tells us diversity, equity and inclusion leads to greater connection, morale, creativity, problem-solving and health, among other benefits – even for companies’ bottom lines. Millennials and Gen Z employees, along with many of their older peers, are looking for companies with diverse boards and workforces.

Companies must design mindful hiring practices, and reward systems and culture to honor this equitable evolution.

Related: Time for a DEI action plan: We’ll help you get there

DEI Starter Checklist

• Does your company avoid making assumptive, cringe-worthy decisions on how to honor diversity in your company and instead create spaces for open, honest communication?
• Are the viewpoints and experiences of diverse employees honored in meetings through asking, learning and understanding? What is done with this information?
• Are spaces available to source opinions and gather viewpoints on the work experiences, suggestions, unique barriers and cultural practices of diverse employees?

Have all teams – HR to finance to operations- educated on sensitive, respectful approaches to all groups represented at the company?

If your company is struggling for a starting point, consider a network dedicated to how the work environment may be modified for differently-abled or neurodiverse individuals, or how Black or LGBTQ+ individuals prefer to celebrate dedicated holidays like Juneteenth or Pride month.

5. Social Impact

More than 70% of millennials want their employers to focus on supporting societal or environmental issues.

As Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, stated in a past annual letter, “Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers and the communities in which they operate”. Purpose and meaning, along with mission-centered impact that serves the greater good, have been positively correlated with engagement and positive emotions at work.

Social Impact Starter Checklist

• Do employers work with leadership to gain information on truthful, active charitable contributions, volunteer days, service-oriented projects or company-wide preservation projects?
• Does the company contribute in some way to people or planet, such as using compostable utensils or partnerships with climate change organizations?
• If these efforts exist, are they mentioned during interviews? Are opportunities for involvement present in marketing, on social media, etc?

Belonging and connection (additional wellbeing influencers) are fostered here as well, contributing to employee loyalty and happiness.

6. Risk for burnout

This previously cloudy phenomena is now clearly defined in three components: physical exhaustion, performance decline and cynicism.

Behaviors that lead to burnout include working longer hours than desired for weeks or months, working outside expected working hours, failing to use entire allotted PTO, missing personal commitments to meet work expectations, and not taking advantage of flexible work arrangements (presumably because the environment demands an in-office hustle culture despite the lack of evidence supporting this).

This year, 63% of employees and 73% of C-suite executives said their companies do not allow time to disconnect or take their entire earned vacation time. This works against what we know to be true about retaining and preserving the wellbeing and performance of a company’s most precious resource — it’s people.

Burnout Starter Checklist

• Do the vast majority of employees take their full earned vacation time? If not, might there be underlying punishment contingencies that prevent people from doing so, such as the fear they will be perceived as less dedicated?
• Are systems in place that measure and immediately address burnout, such as a weekly survey? Consider: what is done with this information?
• When an employee experiences a significant level of one, two or all three burnout components, are they directly served and supported in a systematic, predictable way?

The typical reaction to these benefits – that employees will unnecessarily take advantage of them – has not been proven true in the research. In fact, it is mostly shown that employees who have access to these types of wellbeing supports perform better and remain at the company for longer than those who do not.

Research from Project Time Off also showed that the majority of people who earn promotions take at least 10 days of vacation a year, surpassing their peers who do not get promoted.

7. Authenticity and Psychological Safety

Psychological safety has soared to the top of company culture discussions as we more closely discuss harmful leadership behaviors, authenticity and workplace mental health.

Employees are showing up in droves to share that they do not feel safe at work due to harassment or a toxic work culture. When we synthesize this anecdotal data, the bottom line is clear: the modern workplace must embrace and encourage feelings of safety, belonging and acceptance.

This has become a zero-tolerance issue driven by younger generations who have a high sense of justice, and seemingly avoided by older generations who entered the workforce with a more staunch boundary between personal and professional.

Authenticity and Psychological Safety Starter Checklist

• Are visible efforts made to identify and remove narcissistic leaders and/or end overt and covert cultures of bullying and exclusion?
• Does the company represent and include all individuals represented at the company (i.e., pronouns, gender, sexual orientation, etc)?
• Do explicit company messaging and practices exist around psychological safety, including content from the experiences of current employees, and is this included during the interview and onboarding process?

This piece of culture is important to get right from the beginning, as it is extremely difficult to rebuild trust once employees feel insecure in their work culture.

8. Stress

This is an obvious category in regards to organizational culture and employee wellbeing. However, the numbers are shocking.

73% of employees regularly experience psychological symptoms caused by stress. Companies spend more than $300 billion per year on healthcare and work days as a result of workplace stress.

In a recent Deloitte study, nearly 70% of C-Suite executives are considering leaving their jobs for one that better supports their wellbeing. According to a Gallup report, 85% of employees state they are not engaged or actively disengaged at work.

Stress Starter Checklist

• Does the daily environment make modifications to reduce unnecessary stress (e.g., scheduled break times, nixing signs of hustle culture, open space in the day to take advantage of company benefits)?
• Does the company place the burden of stress management solely on the shoulders of employees (e.g., asking people to spend valuable time and effort on ameliorating the pressures their own workplaces have evoked)?
• Is the company riddled with chaos and unrealistic expectations, expecting employees to “just keep up”?

The pandemic era has undoubtedly propelled stress and anxiety to historic levels. However, this has provided a silver lining opportunity for companies to make meaningful moves, showing employees they are seen, heard and cared for.

9. Meaningful Relationships and Connection

Despite most post-pandemic studies showing the decline of mental and physical health across industries, the same or complementary studies show that we grossly overestimate how everyone else is doing.

The belief that “personal is not professional” is unfortunately still holding strong among leaders and managers, and many feel ill-equipped or hesitant to truly connect, receive and listen to one another while at work.

However, research shows that when leaders encourage and embrace the emotions each of us inherently possess, it can lead to improved team relationships and connection.

The longest-running study on health and happiness, the Harvard Adult study, consistently shows that meaningful relationships (i.e., quality, not quantity) is the single biggest predictor of health and happiness as we get older.

Meaningful Relationships and Connection Starter Checklist

• Is guidance provided to help managers and leaders feel comfortable showing empathy, vulnerability and compassion in daily behaviors, while also preserving their boundaries?
• Are top leaders present beyond yearly retreats or annual meetings?
• Is there space set aside for employees at all levels to truly connect, beyond Zoom happy hours or other outside-work events?

Consider what it would mean for your people to be more genuinely connected. Go deeper into what truly beings us together. Creating connection does not necessarily mean spending resources on retreats and events, it simply means relaxing into the new way of work and valuing it instead of siloing our human sides away — while we all fake a professional smile.

Build a healthy workplace culture

Culture is complex but, as we can see, not impossible to tackle. A strong purpose and dedicated team on the front end is very likely to lead to effective, sustainable, even profitable results in the long-term. We simply have to be willing to take what we know, and use it.

For more information on how to measure the nine dimensions of culture, visit W3RKWELL’s website.

Gianna Biscontini is a behavior scientist, lifestyle design coach, author and founder of the cultural analytics company, W3RKWELL.

The post 9 types of workplace culture: evolve your company mindset appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

This is almost always the wrong decision, and yet our desire to put something off overwhelms logic, reason, and experience, resulting in a hurried morning where you curse yourself for not getting gas last night.

This is a minor example of what happens when you don’t tackle problems as soon as they arise. While getting gas on the way to work is a minor annoyance, it’s a small example of what happens when you don’t proactively tackle problems.

If you engage in this pain procrastination at work – not just on the way home from work – you’ll end up suffering the consequences. Here’s why proactive management is crucial to your success.

Proactive problem-solving saves pain in the long run

Let’s say you run a retail business. If you say that your doors open at 8:30, then you need employees to be there by 8 at the latest – otherwise, you can’t get everything done on time and get the doors open at 8:30.

You have a new keyholder who shows up at 8:05. You say nothing. Then it grows to 8:10. Then some days, she’s showing up at 8:25, and you finally crack and angrily tell her she has to be on time. She is now resentful – after all, why did you have to yell? The non-keyholding employees are annoyed because they have been standing outside, waiting for her to show up, and as such, they’ve started coming in later. Your employees’ morale drops.

Now, what would happen if you gave a brief reminder to your late employee that she has to be on time? If that didn’t fix it, you could work with her to find a solution. Maybe she has a child who must get on the school bus before she comes to work, and the bus has been late. Perhaps she’s just hitting the snooze button. You can’t solve the problem until you address it head-on.

But ignoring the problem can make it worse than just unhappy employees and a late opening. It can lead to a lawsuit.

Let’s look at this situation again. The keyholder starts coming in late, causing you problems. You’re non-confrontational and just drop hints that she must be on time. Finally, you can’t take it anymore, and you tell her if she doesn’t start coming in on time, you will have to terminate her.

She responds, “You’re punishing me because I’m pregnant!”

You can sputter that you didn’t know she was pregnant, or even if you did know, this is purely a decision based on bad behavior. But, without documentation and early correction, it looks like you’re only upset because she’s pregnant. Just imagine her attorney saying, “You never said anything about her timeliness before. Why did it only become a problem once she was pregnant?”

You can prevent a lot of minor problems.

Correcting people is not only time-consuming, but it can also be awkward. If you’re conflict avoidant, it can be almost painful to tell someone they’ve done something wrong. But, never fear! It turns out you can avoid a lot of problems by being proactive.

Here are a few things you can do when managing proactively.

1. Set very clear expectations

Mistakes go down when you tell your employees exactly what you want them to accomplish. Please note that this is not micromanaging. You set expectations and let them work it out themselves.

2. Give proper training

You might assume that everyone knows you should answer a business phone with, “Thank you for calling [Business Name]. This is [name].” But did you tell all your employees that? Or do you just get annoyed when someone answers the phone wrong?

3. Answer questions cheerfully

If you respond to a “Hey boss, what do I do about this?” with annoyance or anger, your employees will stop asking you and start guessing. If they start guessing, they will make mistakes and cause problems. Make yourself available, and tell your team that you’re available and willing to support them – especially your new hires.

4. Zero tolerance for bullies

By the time bullies reach employment, they’ve spent a lifetime perfecting their bullying skills and flying under teachers’ radar. How can you be expected to root them out? Well, the first thing is prevention. Don’t listen to gossip – the tool of the bully. Setting a standard of treating people fairly will help prevent bad things.

5. Communicate

If people know what is going on, they are far more likely to do the right things. If people have to guess? Well, sometimes they will guess wrong, and problems will result. This is especially crucial when working with distributed teams.

Get your procrastination under control

Mark Twain famously said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Identify your live frogs – the things you absolutely do not want to do and do them first.

If you take care of those right away, they don’t fester and get worse. And they don’t hang over your head. You eat those live frogs, and then, whew! They aren’t there ribbitting at you anymore.

If you start with the most challenging, terrible things, you also discover their problems before they get out of control. This proactive management approach will save you time and anxiety.

What about “wait and see?”

Sometimes this is a great strategy. But you need to choose it. If you actively say, “I am not tackling this problem because it may resolve on its own,” that’s fine – as long as you can articulate how it might resolve. If you can’t, you’re not “waiting and seeing”; you’re avoiding.

Be proactive. Take control and take care of those little things immediately, and your life will be much easier in the long run.

The post Get ahead of the problem: establish a proactive management strategy appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Is there any way to reduce the political tension in the office?

Yes, and it starts with leadership.

First, it’s vital that you know the facts surrounding Dobbs v. Jackson (the case that overturned Roe v. Wade). Your employees may or may not care about the facts – today, people seem to prefer whatever creative meme appears in their social media feed. But here are the facts.

Dobbs did not outlaw abortion. It returned the decision to the states, so every state is now subject to its own laws.

• Only 5% of people report abortion as their top concern when it comes to voting
• 40% support the Dobbs decision
• 56% oppose the Dobbs decision
• 4% are unsure
• Support swings strongly based on political affiliation
• 88% of Democrats oppose the decision
• 70% of Republicans support the decision
• All 50 states allow abortion when there is a threat to the mother’s health
• There are currently more than 100 bills in various state legislatures – expect change

If your business operates in multiple states, you could have employees with very different situations. But it’s important to consider that even if you operate in the bluest of blue states or the reddest of red states, you likely have people working together from each side.

Now that you know the facts, let’s devise a solution for making things less tense at work.

Treat your employees like kids

This may seem like odd advice, but schools try to teach their teens how to communicate with each other when there is a contentious subject. You can easily transfer the principles that teenagers learn to your business.

Train your employees to remember the following things:

Don’t make it personal. While your employees may have personal experiences with abortion, try to focus on the policy implications rather than the personal ones. You’re mad/happy at what the Supreme Court did, not what your coworker did.

Avoid putting down the other person’s ideas and beliefs. You may have very strong feelings one way or the other, and you may be 100% convinced that your opinion is the right one. People on the other side feel the same way. Assume everyone came to their opinion out of the best of intentions. Never say, “you just want to control women” or “you just want to kill babies.”

Use “I” statements to communicate how you feel, what you think, and what you want or need. “I think that our state should implement X policy because…” is a much better way to approach this than, “you are just trying to [do a terrible thing] by creating this policy.”

Listen to the other point of view. Remind your employees that before they move on in the discussion, they need to be able to restate the other person’s position to their satisfaction. This keeps you from operating on your assumptions and makes you stay in reality. Remember, your coworkers are humans and not just talking points like politicians.

Stay calm. This is the most important thing you can do to keep a conversation. The louder you get, the less people listen to you. If you can’t stay calm, it’s time to exit the conversation.

Tell everyone to get back to work

Employees don’t have the right to discuss politics at work! In fact, with a few exceptions, employees in the private sector don’t have free speech while on the clock. You can tell them to leave the discussion for after work.

This can be a bit harsh, though. Rather than banning the topic, I recommend redirecting them back to the task at hand. “We’re never going to finish this report on wastewater if we keep focusing on politics.”

Remember state and federal laws

While employees don’t have the right to free speech at work, they have the right to be free from discrimination based on religion or lack of religion.. So, you can’t fire or discipline someone who disagrees with your position (or the company’s) if their objections are due to religion – yours or theirs – unless it would cause an undue hardship on the company.

For instance, if your company is one of the many that said they would cover the costs for an out-of-state abortion and your payroll person says it would violate her religious conscience to process the payments for that, you’d have to prove that having someone else do that task would be an undue hardship on the business before you could take negative action.

Likewise, if your company adopts a pro-life stance and wants everyone to stand in a picture proclaiming that your companies support life, you’d have to prove it was an undue hardship to the company to have someone not in the picture if she can argue that this stance is based on your religious beliefs. You can’t punish someone for disagreeing with you based on religion.

Some state laws go further and protect not only religious views but political views as well. For instance, California prohibits discrimination based on political views while North Dakota and Colorado outlaw discrimination against any lawful activity done outside of work. And Louisiana? You can’t discriminate against political views including your employee running for office.

So, if your loud-mouthed employee is leading marches in the street, as long as the march is legal, Colorado and North Dakota employers have to ignore it and ensure there is no retaliation.

If you want to take any disciplinary action against someone because of their views on the Dobbs decision, please consult with a local employment attorney to make sure you aren’t violating the law.

Related: Can we discuss politics or other controversial topics at work?

Set an example

The most important thing here is for HR and other leaders to set an example. If you’re rude, tear people down who disagree with you, or can’t focus on your work, then the rest of the company will follow. If you’re polite, disagree without being disagreeable, and focus on your work, everyone else will follow.

And while abortion is the hot topic right now, the midterm elections are heating up, so setting a good standard for political discussions now will benefit your company through the November elections.

Have an HR or workplace-related question for the Evil HR Lady? Email contact@workable.com with “Evil HR Lady” in the subject heading and it may be featured in an upcoming article!

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Employees want skills development, growth opportunities, and connection

The pandemic was an “awakening” for many people. Most welcomed remote work with open arms. Unsurprisingly, a majority of office employees would prefer remote work to continue in some form, with 68% preferring a hybrid remote working model, according to a Slack survey.

And nearly a third of workers in Workable’s Great Discontent survey put considerable value on remote work.

Integrating work and home a top benefit of working remotely in US

The idea that work could be done remotely was not the only thing employees realized and latched onto. Multiple surveys have revealed that the pandemic caused many people to rethink their career paths. Now, people see upskilling and career pathing as an even greater priority. In fact, BCG found that 50% of U.S. employees are happy to reskill for new roles.

We’ve seen this play out at our own organization. MentorcliQ recently hired a Client Partner from outside of our industry. During their interview process, the candidate proactively asked what resources were available to learn more about the HR space. After hiring, we paired them with an experienced Client Partner through our functional onboarding program who helped them come up to speed in a new space.

Employee needs now go beyond remote work and skills development, however. The pandemic has dramatically increased feelings of loneliness. Even as people demand more remote work and upskilling opportunities, they’re also seeking more options to connect with their colleagues.

Finding ways to foster those types of connections is critical, as loneliness at work increases the risk of turnover. And that’s not lost on employers, who say building connections is a major priority when onboarding new employees remotely.

Mentoring programs offer a solution for all of these challenges. They’re easily adaptable for 100% virtual work environments, in-person workplaces, or remote hybrid workplaces. Your company can also create multiple types of mentoring programs that serve different needs, such as functional skills training, onboarding, or interest-based group mentoring to help employees form deep and lasting connections with their colleagues.

Candidates want to see what you’re doing for DEI

Many companies have been slow to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. That’s a serious mistake. If you still think DEI is a fad, it’s time to change your thought process. Studies by McKinsey and many others have shown that, on average, companies that are more diverse have better financial performance than their non-diverse counterparts.

While that’s an important business case for DEI, diversity is also a priority for potential new hires, especially those from the Millennial and Gen Z generations. A 2020 Glassdoor survey found that 76% of employees use available diversity metrics to evaluate whether they even want to apply to a potential job. Putting your DEI cards on the table is a distinct advantage.

Consequently, that means if you have mentoring programs that focus on DEI, as well as data to back up the value of those programs, you should make that information available. That can include reverse mentoring programs, talent networks for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ employees, and employee resource groups (ERGs).

Importantly, don’t just say that you have these programs; be willing to give potential hires the freedom to speak to employees who utilize and benefit from these programs.

All good relationships are built on trust. Better quality candidates will be attracted to your company when they feel like you aren’t holding back information that’s critical to their decision to work for you. Show them how you’re using mentoring to increase and foster DEI and they’re more likely to find that your company aligns with their value

Replicate what’s already working to attract better candidates

Hiring managers often feel pressure to get innovative and creative to attract talent. Sometimes, however, the best thing you can do is to see what successful companies are doing and apply those strategies to your own organization.

Recently, MentorcliQ found that 84% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies have mentoring programs. That number goes up to 100% among the top 50. The reason why so many of these companies offer mentoring programs is fairly straightforward: through trial and error, the most successful companies in the world discovered that mentoring works.

Consequently, during the economic upheaval of 2020, Fortune 500 companies with visible mentoring programs experienced year-over-year profit changes that were 53% better than Fortune 500 companies with no known mentoring programs.

What you’ll find is that most of these companies also proudly advertise their mentoring programs on their company websites, in job advertisements, and throughout the hiring process. They want potential applicants who research the company to see exactly what perks they offer, and they recognize that most applicants will be attracted to mentoring as one among many perks they look for.

Source: Hilton careers page

Mentoring is versatile; that’s why it works

If your company already has mentoring programs in place, consider leveraging those programs across your public-facing presence and prominently within your hiring process. Make it obvious that you offer mentoring programs so that it’s not a mystery, and ensure that potential applicants know what type of mentoring programs are available.

Don’t have mentoring programs at your organization? It’s never too late to start. Many companies use their existing ERGs as a launching pad for structured mentoring programs. Even starting with an onboarding mentoring program is an easy way to step into mentoring with a huge potential value-add to your organization, both in reducing turnover and attracting talent.

The great thing about mentoring programs is that they’re highly versatile. Understand what your potential applicants are looking for beyond just the salary. Then, speak to that by focusing on the perks that you offer, including how your mentoring programs support personal and career growth, connection, DEI, and/or overall well-being. That’s an investment with high value and return both for you and for your employees.

Lora Zotter is vice president of people operations at MentorcliQ, a mentoring software solution that helps organizations launch, support, and grow high-impact employee mentoring programs. Lora leads MentorcliQ’s global People Ops team with a focus on optimizing every aspect of the employee journey from hiring & onboarding to comp & benefits to internal mentoring & professional development, all while maintaining a fun, engaging, and inclusive culture.

The post Invest in your employees: It’s worth it for both you and them appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

My mind won’t stop freaking out. Day and night, the constant mental chatter and energy drain of trying to support my teams as the world continues to be tremulous and precarious has taken a toll. My mind is sizzling and is omnipresent. I know I am not alone.

It’s not easy – but there’s a better way

I also know that our nervous system is ridiculously under-developed for the tasks at hand. We have essentially brought a fruit roll-up to a knife fight. The world needs us to be responsive, adaptive, nimble while also being compassionate, kind and productive.

While there will always be those who seem to be able to rise to the challenge of adversity and uncertain times, this is not the norm. Most people are reeling from years of micro and macro traumas, all while trying to hold the course of business as usual.

This is not business as usual. We are in a stress season that has lasted longer than anyone could have predicted yet we persist. Because that is what we do.

Stress is everywhere – including at work

Although stress permeates absolutely every part of our lives, we don’t get training on how to navigate stress effectively. Most people model how to ignore, avoid, or ward off stress. Society offers an infinite number of maladaptive ways of escaping stress to no avail. Just as telling an upset person to ‘calm down’, which has never in the history of the world worked, telling someone not to stress is equally ineffective.

Stress is inescapable because it originates inside of us. Trying not to stress is like endeavoring to run away from your own feet. There is an interplay between our reflexes and our reactions. Your body often will react before you are consciously aware of the threat. The faster you react, the safer you are.

Unfortunately, the threats aren’t just coming from one place. We are being peppered in every facet of our lives.

This is why so many people feel such a deep sense of urgency about everything when they are stressed. Stress tells us that everything needs max attention, immediately. It can’t wait.

The response is natural – but it’s not always helpful

Unfortunately, most of the things we are stressing about are not life and death, but our nervous system doesn’t know that.

‘Fight or Flight’ are commonly known stress reactions, but there are actually two others: freezing and fawning. Freezing is a stunned response. Instead of escaping or preparing to have a scuffle, you do nothing. You just stand or sit there. A common example: you watch Netflix so long, the ‘Are you still watching?’ prompt pops up, and despite having a report to write, the next episode starts, and you do nothing to stop it.

The fawning response is when someone is triggered, they acquiesce. Like a little, helpless fawn, when threatened, the person becomes soft, gentle, kind, or accommodating. They exhibit any behavior needed to ward off the enemy by showing that they are not a worthy opponent.

Fawning can take many forms. It could be staying stuck in toxic relationships, to taking on more work, to inviting relatives to a family gathering simply to keep the peace.

The fawning response unpacked

Psychotherapist and trauma expert Pete Walker, who authored Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, introduced the term and explained it is when people seek safety by appeasing the needs and wishes of others in a self-sacrificing way. It is often associated as a trauma response, but people can fawn without necessarily having experienced trauma.

It is important to note that this is an automatic. All stress reactions happen to us. We don’t get to pick which stress reaction to experience. If we could, that would be helpful. Your physiology, biology and the oldest parts of your brain take over. Your body and mind, without giving your higher-order thinking time to process, are making decisions on your behalf.

With fawning, the evolutionary part of your brain, the one that knows how to survive, reads the situation, and reacts by placating and appeasing. You placate because that is your best option for survival in that moment.

When you fawn, you’re giving yourself up

When you are fawning, you are erasing yourself. You push aside your own needs, feelings, and even thoughts. The reptilian part of your brain cannot even consider speaking up, setting boundaries, or being honest in that moment. It doesn’t have that capacity at all.

Also, even if the more advanced parts of your brain start to engage, you wouldn’t say anything anyway. That would be self-damaging. On some level you might be aware of your needs and feelings, but it is extremely scary to express them, so you become monotropic. You focus only on the other person.

Fawning in the work environment

This fawning response is running rampant in most organizations and companies, yet few are calling it what it is.

A colleague recently shared with me that they were leaving their job. They were having the HR meeting the next day. The exit plan was ready. We planned a call to debrief, unpack, or cry – whatever they needed. With deep frustration, not only did they not resign, they accepted a promotion! This strong, fierce, proud scholar – who studies this very area – fawned.

We cannot control the stress reaction we are going to experience but we can make decisions on how to respond to the reaction. Learning to work with your stress reactions takes insight, work, and a heck of a lot of practice. And still sometimes, nature wins. That’s okay. Your fawning response has kept you safe up to this point. Practice makes better.

What to do about fawning

Here are some researched informed practices that help with fawning and can also serve as critical insights for those working in HR to see the signs.

1. Create spaciousness

Make a rule for yourself not to respond to anything in the moment. Try saying, “I will look into that’, or “I will get back to you by EOD’. This allows enough time for you to shift from stress reaction to thoughtful consideration. You can even put a post-it note on your computer or your phone to remind you.

For leaders and managers: knowing your teams are weary is paramount. Build in this spaciousness. Try not to put people on the spot or add to artificial urgency of needing to know now.

2. Recognize the ’Disease to Please’ factor

Having someone upset or disappointed with you creates discomfort. Be compassionate with yourself and recognize how this behaviour creates a false sense of safety. Realistically, you cannot please everyone, and if you are trying to, you are already not meeting your own needs.

For leaders and managers: it is helpful to notice. Notice who you ask and why you continually ask the same people. To protect team morale, holding everyone accountable is a must. A person who is fawning is likely to take on more than their fair share of the workload.

3. Ensure what you do is aligned with your values

Knowing who you are and who you are not, is critical. Are you betraying yourself in making this decision? Know and hold your boundaries. Your boundaries are your life-enhancing systems, protect them.

For leaders and managers: be aware of who is establishing boundaries and who is not. Notice when emails are being sent. If you see work happen at all hours of the day or even when someone is on vacation, call it. Unfortunately, many people on the team benefit when a fawner doesn’t hold their own boundaries.

4. Embrace all of it

Feelings are fickle friends. We welcome the good things and go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the bad ones. Learning how to sit with all your emotions is a needed skill. And feelings do have a place in professional spaces.

The idea of siloing one’s emotions at work contributes to stress and overwhelm. Of course, we still hold ourselves accountable to being professional, yet we honour the whole person.

5. Be aware and practice your responses

Here is a simple tool that yields tremendous results. It is simply slowing down a wee bit to allow our consciousness to catch up.

• See it: Notice the feeling or behaviour
• Place it: Where is this likely coming from?
• Name it: ‘I am fawning. I am trying to stay safe, but I can choose another way to respond’
• Action it: Do something about it. Let it go. Move on. Try again.

Fawning has its place – but you can learn to manage it …

Fawning is an effective defense mechanism that has served many of us well in our lifetime. And it is totally reasonable to want to reclaim how we react in stressful situations moving forward. Knowing about fawning is an excellent start. Practicing self-compassion is needed.

Thankfully, despite it feeling like everything is coming at us all at once, the reality is we can only react to one thing at a time. If you don’t like how you are showing up, choose again.

… and to lead through it

Leading is not for the faint of heart in normal circumstances. Leading and supporting teams through the last few years requires enhanced strategies. I challenge you to have the courage to intervene when you see fawning behavior. Fawning leaves people feeling alone and disconnected.

Having your leader show up and help hold the line for you, when you need it most, is likely the most effective retention strategy available to us in this great talent resignation. Our top talent isn’t leaving because they have better offers, they are leaving because they no longer feel efficient and capable in their jobs. They are fawning or bowing out. That is the stress talking.

Remember you cannot outthink stress, but you can feel your way through it, especially when you have someone in your corner who gets it.

Be that leader who gets it. You will see first-hand the transformation of what is possible when we create awareness and respond through the lens of psychological safety.

Resilience expert, author, speaker, mom, and multi-award-winning education and psychology instructor Dr. Robyne Hanley-Defoe believes that now more than ever, the fawning response is causing burnout in women who we asked too much of even before the pandemic. In her book Calm Within The Storm: A Pathway to Everyday Resiliency, Dr. Robyne shares her kinder and more sustainable approach to taking on the challenges of life and developing authentic self-alignment and balance using resiliency.

The post Call it what it is: ‘Fawning’ – and have the courage to intervene appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

It does, however, raise questions about toxic culture among small- and medium-sized businesses, who aren’t covered in this research.

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways from MIT/Sloan Research

1. Resignation rates vary greatly, even within the same industry
2. High turnover isn’t confined to blue-collar workers
3. Company culture a bigger factor in attrition than salary
4. Innovative companies have a harder time keeping their employees

What Makes a Toxic Work Culture?

• CEOs and the cult of personality
• We’re a family… an unhealthy family
• The microscope effect
• Small business, little support
• Along for the ride

Fighting toxic culture within SMBs

1. Leaders set the tone – for better or for worse
2. Accountability is key
3. Employee training
4. An HR guru to diagnose and heal
5. Clear communication
6. Small but mighty

But before we get into that, let’s go over the highlights of MIT/Sloan’s findings.

Key Takeaways from MIT/Sloan Research

1. Resignation rates vary greatly, even within the same industry

For all the talk about The Great Resignation, we haven’t much discussed the role that company culture plays in employee retention. Some industries simply have greater rates of toxic work culture, and allow for less work/life balance among their employees.

But that’s not all. As the MIT/Sloan report tells us, resignation rates can vary by as much as ten percentage points even within the same industry. This discrepancy may be due to certain companies’ toxic culture falling short compared to the healthy, creative work culture of their competitors.

2. High turnover isn’t confined to blue-collar workers

In the past, when speculating about causes of the Great Resignation, many pointed to a mass exodus of workers from lower-paying jobs as a cause of high resignation numbers. But while many blue-collar workers did resign, whether in search of better pay or a job with less COVID-19 exposure, this research shows that white-collar workers seemingly resigned in equal numbers.

Though several of the industries with the highest rates of employee turnover employ primarily blue-collar workers (apparel retail, fast food, and hospitality), a number of primarily white-collar industries also rank among the highest in employee turnover (management consulting, internet, and enterprise software).

3. Company culture a bigger factor in attrition than salary

“Corporate culture is a much more reliable predictor of industry-adjusted attrition than how employees assess their compensation.”

In a survey of language used by former employees in over one million reviews on the employer survey site Glassdoor, toxic company culture was the number one most powerful factor in each person’s decision to leave their employer. Toxic culture vastly outranked other reasons such as pay, lack of opportunities for recognition, and concerns about COVID-19 risks.

4. Innovative companies have a harder time keeping their employees

This research found that companies well-known for their creative and unique corporate culture actually often had significantly higher rates of turnover than more traditional employers within the same industry.

It appears that while this innovative quality may be appealing to many workers, and may carry some real benefits to business performance, it can have a negative impact on employee retention in general.

Companies with creative or disruptive cultures tend to have higher rates of turnover than their peers in the same industry.

The MIT/Sloan research focused on data from employees and former employees of the Culture500, their name for the group of 500 of the largest, most culturally influential companies in the United States.

But toxic workplace culture is not limited to large corporations, and in many cases, the human resources support and bureaucracy of these large companies serves to address instances of toxicity.

Though it may not manifest in the same way as it does among the large businesses that MIT/Sloan’s study explored, it does exist, and its repercussions impact the lives of the millions of people who work at SMBs around the country. So what does toxic culture look like at SMBs?

What Makes a Toxic Work Culture?

Here are some common elements found in what we’re calling toxic work culture.

• Verbal abuse.
• Harassment and discrimination.
• Lack of accountability.
• Disparity between publicly stated values and reality.
• Lack of work-life balance.
• Extreme stress and uncertainty among employees.
• Silencing of dissenters.
• Lack of professionalism, kindness, and courtesy internally and externally.
• Normalization of immoral, illegal, or unethical conduct.

Toxic Culture at SMBs

CEOs and the cult of personality

Toxic workplace culture is, at its core, the responsibility of a company’s leaders. Though employees of all levels can work together to create and maintain a healthy, collaborative, and supportive work culture, their goals, tone, and workplace norms are inevitably set out by those with the most power – upper level management and CEOs. Toxic individuals in power, whether they be power-hungry CEOs, sexist CIOs, or managers who verbally abuse the people on their team, together doom a workplace’s culture to negativity and meanness.

You’d think that the effects of poor upper management can be observed most acutely among the large businesses that MIT/Sloan’s study followed – and this may be true. But the opposite may actually be the case. Though CEOs and other powerful individuals always set the tone for corporate culture, in a larger company, teams and small groups may be able to carve out healthy group dynamics within this larger toxic environment.

But in a small business, such as a 20-person landscaping company, there can be no such subgroups. In smaller businesses, CEOs and other powerful leaders have an even greater effect upon the culture of a business, because they interact directly with most of their employees day in and day out.

Why do so many CEOs have this negative impact on their business’ workplace culture? It may have something to do with the personality type and hard work necessary in becoming a successful owner of a small- or medium-sized business. There is a certain amount of audacity and, some might say, arrogance, necessary to believe in your own ability to create and run a profitable small business. These traits that make SMBs possible may also contribute to the toxic culture often found in those workplaces.

It may also be related to the power these individuals hold within their business. As the saying goes: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. SMBs often lack the HR infrastructure for reporting incidents of workplace abuse and toxic culture that are standard in larger companies.

We’re a family… an unhealthy family

SMBs often describe their workplace culture as if they are one big family, with everyone cooperating in harmony for the good of the business. While this may be true in the rare odd business, it can also be an indicator of a number of aspects of toxic culture.

For one thing, businesses aren’t like families, no matter how much we might imagine them to be so. Business decisions must prioritize profitability over employees’ preferences. Hard choices must be made, like layoffs, budget cuts, or reorganization. To characterize a small business like a family is to attempt to take advantage of employees’ emotional response to such language, without offering them the unconditional love, support, and comfort that characterize happy families.

It’s tempting to imagine our coworkers as extended family members, and the company we work for as a collaborative, shared cause, but work at its core is transactionary. Also, when we buy into this idea, toxic leaders can use company loyalty and feelings of fondness for coworkers to silence dissent and honest criticism – two factors which are key in the functioning of a healthy family and, for that matter, a healthy workplace.

The microscope effect

The microscope effect is the experience of feeling constantly watched and evaluated at work, and among SMBs, when employees and their managers constantly interact and upper-level management often micromanages, it is all too common.

In a workplace in which there is so much crossover between employees at different levels of the business, employees, especially lower-level employees who hold less power and sway, may feel constantly judged.

There’s nothing wrong with employee assessment. But in SMBs, this feeling of being under a microscope constantly can become deeply unhealthy – especially if the managers observing are prone to micromanagement, abuse, and other toxic workplace behaviors. We see a version of this trend of employee surveillance among large companies, too, who are increasingly engaging software companies to spy on their employees at work and at home.

Innovation and creativity require a safe and predictable environment – one in which employees feel supported in taking risks, exploring, and making mistakes. When employees are constantly observed and the details of their behavior are nitpicked, toxic managers are killing any chance of real progress and innovation.

Small business, little support

SMBs tend to have fewer resources than larger companies. When it comes to Human Resources, there may be just one designated person at the business to deal with those matters, or no one at all. Perhaps that person tasked with HR duties has no real HR training, or perhaps they have other responsibilities that take priority in their day-to-day.

Though an HR department alone can’t fix a toxic work culture, especially one perpetuated by poor leadership, they can push back against these trends. HR represents personal and legal accountability for those who would abuse their power in the workplace, whether to bully their subordinates or to belittle employees with inappropriate or unprofessional remarks.

Without an HR department, those who experience sexism, racism, ableism, or other forms of harassment and discrimination in the workplace may feel they have no recourse. This not only impacts employee morale and well-being – it also opens employers up to serious legal liability.

Along for the ride

Most employees share the experience of feeling powerless at some point in their career, no matter their role in the business or the amount of power they have. But among SMBs, where toxic culture can often be deeply ingrained and perpetuated by top leadership as opposed to departmental or team-specific toxicity, the feeling of powerlessness can be far more common. This feeling reduces employee engagement, and it’s often a deciding factor for employees thinking of quitting and finding a new job.

Fighting Toxic Culture Within SMBs

Now that we’ve discussed how toxic culture manifests itself within SMBs, how can we work to remedy this epidemic of unhappiness and workplace abuse? It may be that many of the qualities that make SMBs thrive can also contribute to problems of toxic culture. We can’t simply accept that, however. Growth and accountability can happen in tandem without compromising company performance.

Here are a few ideas for how SMBs can fight toxic culture internally, as well as within their industry.

1. Leaders set the tone – for better or for worse
2. Accountability is key
3. Employee training
4. An HR guru to diagnose and heal
5. Clear communication
6. Small but mighty

1. Leaders set the tone – for better or for worse

Simply put, fixing toxic work culture is always the responsibility of company leaders. Whether a given leader created the toxic culture or not is irrelevant. Employees take their cues from, and operate within, the standards set by their managers. Poor management will lead to poor workplace culture without fail.

It’s important that we communicate this because employees often face blame for toxic work culture – as if it’s their fault that their leaders set a poor example, expect the impossible, and permit toxic behavior in the workplace. Certainly everyone is responsible for their own actions, but it’s SMB leaders who have the true power to reframe work culture, set new healthier boundaries, and recenter the employee experience.

It’s SMB leaders who have the true power to reframe work culture, set new healthier boundaries, and recenter the employee experience.

For this reason, when it comes to fixing toxic work culture, leaders must understand the power they hold within their organization and learn to wield that power judiciously. This is no easy feat – which is part of the reason toxic culture often continues unchecked in SMBs, where leaders can intentionally cultivate an environment that punishes naysayers and roots out accountability measures.

2. Accountability is key

Accountability, or the requirement to answer and be held responsible for one’s own actions, is one of the functions of a healthy work culture. Toxic culture punishes those who take responsibility for small, harmless mistakes and promotes blame and overcompensation. A truly healthy work culture rewards honesty, holds employees responsible for their mistakes, and allows individuals room to grow.

Crucially, this accountability must be present at every level of the business. Employees must buy into a system of accountability in order for it to be truly effective, and if they have the sense that their managers are not also held to rigorous standards, they’ll lose faith in the process.

3. Employee training

Employers set the tone of the workplace, but employees reinforce that tone with every tiny interaction. Leaders can remedy a toxic work culture not only by holding themselves to a higher standard, but also by encouraging education and personal improvement.

Employee training for employees of all levels encourages a healthy, inclusive environment. It also sets clear expectations for employee behavior. If you don’t already have a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment, racism, and verbal abuse, don’t wait any longer to create one.

4. An HR guru to diagnose and heal

Human Resources can’t fix everything. But the presence of an HR person within an organization, regardless of its size, represents an employer’s commitment to treating its employees with fairness, respect, and equality.

Even if all you can afford is one HR person, or a part-time HR representative on call for when problems arise, something is better than nothing. Human Resources professionals are trained to recognize and address toxic work culture, and they offer unique insights into problems that may not always be obvious to an organization’s leaders.

5. Clear communication

Does your organization have an internal communications strategy? Do you have a plan for how to fulfill the commitments you make to your employees about committing to anti-racist causes and taking meaningful action? Without clear, straightforward communication and a pattern of concrete action, you can’t expect true change within your organization.

Use your communication tools to make sure everyone is on the same page about conduct and behavior standards. If you want to create an environment with more accountability, clear communication is central, so your employees understand the standards they’re to be held to.

6. Small but mighty

For all that SMBs are vulnerable to unique symptoms of toxic work culture, they aren’t alone in the experience. Large companies also have toxic work cultures. In the same way that SMBs have a different experience of toxic culture, they also have different opportunities for addressing that culture. Many of the factors that can contribute to toxic culture in small businesses can also be strengths in the right circumstances.

Small- and medium-sized businesses face unique challenges when it comes to addressing toxic work culture, which research shows is widespread among workplaces today. But there are concrete steps leaders can take to tear down toxic work norms and rebuild a work culture based on mutual respect, decency, and good ethics.

The post Toxic culture in SMBs: 6 ways to address it 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.”

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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.”

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This kind of attitude is familiar – “If it doesn’t affect me, it shouldn’t affect you”. After all, you aren’t personally involved in the crisis. Whether it’s a war in Ukraine, a terrorist attack in West Africa, or even a terrible car accident on the freeway, people often assume that it’s no big deal unless you yourself were there.

They are wrong. And as managers and HR people, we need to be aware of the world and local events and understand that even people without obvious connections may be shattered by what goes on elsewhere. You need to support your employees during crisis. Here’s why, and what you need to do.

Everywhere is more global than you realize

I went to high school in St. George, Utah, with Michelle Truax. She was the high school orchestra concertmistress, and I was a very bad cellist. If you know anything about St. George in the 1980s and 1990s, you’d know it was not a very diverse place.

And yet, today, Michelle is the mother of seven children, three of which she and her husband adopted as teenagers from Ukraine. Her children remember their Ukrainian families and keep in touch, and so, why you might see Michelle as a woman from Southern Utah, she’s also a mother of Ukrainian children, and you can bet that this war affects her life.

Also, 13.7% of people living in the United States immigrated from another country. They, most likely, still have friends and families in their countries of origin. Their American-born children are likely still deeply connected as well. And Ukraine isn’t the only country in crisis. Just because you haven’t heard about a particular tragedy doesn’t mean it doesn’t profoundly hurt your employee.

And it’s not just the United States that has a diverse population. Here are the top 10 countries based on foreign-born residents:

1. United States — 50.6 million
2. Germany — 15.8 million
3. Saudi Arabia — 13.5 million
4. Russia — 11.6 million
5. United Kingdom — 9.4 million
6. United Arab Emirates — 8.7 million
7. France — 8.5 million
8. Canada — 8.0 million
9. Australia — 7.7 million
10. Spain — 6.8 million

So how do you react to this information? When tragedy strikes, assume someone in your organization is closely connected to that country. If they are stressed or concerned, listen. Do what you can to support your employees.

1. Do something

If you have employees in Poland, they may well be housing Ukrainian refugees. But your employees in Boston are far less likely to be taking strangers into their homes. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do something to help.

You can organize a fundraiser or join a reputable organization to raise funds. This can support your employees during a crisis and helps your employees feel like you care. Doing something, no matter how small, makes people feel like they can make something a little bit better.

You may even have employees in Ukraine or Russia who are affected firsthand by the war. Many companies in this situation are reinvesting their resources and are actively working to move these employees to safety.

With a big crisis like the Ukrainian invasion, there are obvious ways to help. With smaller or local problems, it might not be so obvious, but there is always something your company can do.

2. Compassion is better than sympathy

You can be sympathetic, and it can still come across as cold, even though you don’t mean to. Harvard Medical School Psychologist Susan David breaks down the differences in how you react to someone else’s problems and pain. Here are her three examples:

• Sympathy: I’m so sorry you’re in pain. (Distant)
• Empathy: I can imagine what this pain feels like. (Shared)
• Compassion: You are suffering, and I will do what I can to help. (Connected and Action-oriented)

Compassion is the best way forward when an employee struggles, whether from a personal problem or a global tragedy. What you can do will vary from person to person and from job to job, but doing what you can and asking your employees what they need is genuine compassion.

Don’t assume based on what you think you would need – ask. And keep in mind that sometimes, your well-meaning suggestions may sound tone-deaf. For example, if an employee comes to you and says the war in Ukraine is very stressful because her relatives live there, and you respond, “Remember, self-care is important. Why don’t you take a day off to relax?”

You may be trying to be nice, but your employee may respond; “How on earth can I relax when they are hiding in the basement of their apartment building?”

Focusing on compassion is never a wrong way to support your employees during a crisis.

3. Remember your Employee Assistance Program

You probably have an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) that comes with your insurance – and if not, look into getting one. The EAP can be like magic in times of crisis. They have access to resources you wouldn’t think of, and your employees might not know what they need. Remind your employees that they can call, and you won’t even know they did. (Your EAP should report only that someone used their services and not identify the person.)

It’s not the first thing that comes to people’s minds in times of crisis, so remind people that it’s there. Post the details in the break rooms or distribute them via online channels such as Slack. Let people know that you want them to call if they need help – and emphasize the privacy to support those employees who may be otherwise hesitant during a crisis.

4. Be as flexible as possible

When an employee suddenly finds their cousins will be arriving from a war-torn area or following a natural disaster, your employee will need time and money to prepare for their family members. If you can offer extra time off, allow your other employees to donate their days, or put out a call for beds and dressers, it can be a tremendous help.

If someone needs to travel without much notice, even if it’s your busy season, remember to be compassionate – this is something you can do.

If someone needs time off because of stress or anxiety, it’s possible that FMLA or ADA can cover that. Send them to their doctor. And if not? Be proactive and give it anyway. Remember, it will take you far longer to replace an employee that quits because you couldn’t be flexible in times of trial than it would to give them the time off and show that you’re thinking about them.

The war in Ukraine won’t be the last tragedy that befalls us, so even if this doesn’t affect your employees directly, the next thing might. Prepare now for the next problem.

The post How to support your employees during a crisis appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

While Ukrainians are obviously directly impacted, the lives of Russian workers are also being altered – albeit differently. The mass exodus of companies from the Russian economy is growing by the day, and for those that remain, continuing to employ Russian workers carries enormous risk.

Many companies are working day to day to support their workers in both countries, in a number of ways. We have anecdotes from three companies all of which have presence on the ground in both Ukraine and Russia. They are:

• Symphony Solutions, a Dutch-based IT company with more than 500 employees, 70% of which are based in Ukraine
• Company Folders Inc., a Pontiac, Michigan-based company, specializing in custom-printed folders for businesses worldwide, with seven Ukraine-based software programmers, graphic designers and quality assurance engineers
• Estateza, a Chicago-based property technology company working countrywide and has seven contracted employees in Russia

All three are supporting their employees in a multitude of ways. Let’s take a look at what those ways are:

1. Proactive support

Even before the invasion, companies were already proactively getting ahead of potential problems – including Symphony Solutions.

Tetiana Mykhailyk, who works remotely as a marketing manager for Symphony Solutions from her home in Kyiv, shares that her company had already provided its Ukrainian staff with a crisis management team prior to the invasion. It was ready to help at any moment, with contingency plans for any potential scenario.

Meanwhile, when Company Folders co-founder Vladimir Gendelman – himself a native of Kharkiv who immigrated to the US as a teenager – saw that an invasion was forthcoming, his company quickly stepped to action.

He started by working with a former US Army colonel to work out what to do with his Ukrainian colleagues, who he describes as talented and hard-working.

“Between [the former US Army colonel’s] expertise in tactics and understanding of strategic targets and my knowledge of the country, we were able to advise the team on how to get to the safest place possible,” Vladimir adds, “away from larger cities, bridges, airports, and other areas the Ukrainian army may need to protect, or the Russian army may attack.”

2. Evacuation support

Estateza’s cofounder, Jacob Zimerman, is focused on evacuating the seven contracted employees in Russia out of the country before they’re called in for military service.

Jacob tells us that Estateza is putting in hours and resources to move them out via a domestic flight and train to a neighboring country.

“From there, we will fly them to Southeast Asia where we have other staff there who can provide them with money,” he says, adding that the employees’ access to finance in Russia has been entirely shut off and their normal means to get payment, including Visa cards, Apple Pay and PayPal, have been stopped.

Symphony Solutions, meanwhile, is also working to get employees and their families across the Ukrainian border to Poland to temporary apartments or even permanent relocation.

“Our Poland offices in Kraków and Rzeszow are in the process of being turned into safety shelters and will be welcoming people at the nearest time,” Tetiana says.

Vladimir was also able to help one employee get to Poland before martial law was declared, and four other Ukrainian employees to relatively safer grounds in Ukraine’s western region.

And, he adds, “another team member who was living near a strategic railroad bridge over the Dnipro River left just in time to avoid it being targeted for a diversion.“

3. Humanitarian support

Symphony Solutions also turned to humanitarian means, transforming its Lviv delivery center in western Ukraine into a shelter for those displaced by the war, Tetiana tells us.

“Close to 100 people who are our employees, their families or friends, from Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other Ukrainian cities have stayed there,” she says, “and were provided with a comfortable bed, hot food, and all the necessities.”

The company’s support of Ukrainians is not limited to its employees. Tetiana describes another initiative called Stand With Ukraine which supports the Ukrainian Army and a number of non-profit initiatives to provide humanitarian and emergency aid to Ukrainians affected by the war.

4. Provisional support

Meanwhile, Estateza is working closely with another tech company to supply Ukrainians with provisions including generators worth $800-$1,000 apiece to Kyiv, oil, and equipment such as solar power banks, medical supplies, tactical backpacks, oil, generators, walkie-talkies, and more.

Jacob says that this company has a connection with a history of charitable work in the area looking to support underprivileged people by bringing them on as drivers who can take on the arduous 15-hour journey into Kyiv.

5. Financial support

According to Tetiana, Symphony Solutions covered all costs related to internal relocation – including transportation and rental costs for a month.

And Vladimir assured his Ukraine-based colleagues that regardless of how their personal situation is impacted, they’ll continue to be paid. They are also being provided with funds for gas, food and lodgings as needed.

“We are also providing additional funds if needed to get to safety,” he says. “We don’t want anyone missing a chance to get to somewhere safer because they don’t have the money.”

6. Moral and emotional support

Meanwhile, Symphony Solutions also provides 24/7 mental health and HR support, as well as daily and weekly calls within internal teams – with regular updates from the CEO on the latest developments.

“At these kinds of meetings our colleagues from other countries support us a lot during this time,” says Tetiana. “And you feel like a big family.”

Vladimir is also in daily contact with each of his employees in Ukraine, keeping numerous communication channels open including Slack, Skype, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp to ensure constant contact in case one channel fails.

“I speak to them at least once a day and exchange messages from the time I get up in the morning until I go to sleep,” he says.

“I am concerned about their emotional well-being as much as their safety and I continually encourage them that this will end and reassure them that we will do whatever is necessary to help in the meantime.”

Vladimir also sees them as more than just colleagues.

“Many of these employees have been with me for over 10 years and they are like a family to me.”

7. Leadership support

None of this happens without a company’s top brass leading by example. It’s not only powerful for the morale of that company’s Ukrainian employees – it’s also an incredible statement of support overall.

Jacob at Estateza is an example of active allyship, stepping up and saying that what the company’s Russia-based workers are going through is something that needs to be shared with the larger community.

”Our employees want their stories heard,” he says. “They have lost substantial money due to the ruble collapsing.”

And the leader of Symphony Solutions actively stepped forward as well.

“Our company founder and CEO, Theo Schnitfink, decided to donate all profits generated in Ukraine to all these needs mentioned above,” Tetiana says. “And this really supports us and warms our hearts and beliefs.”

Vladimir, of course, is doing no less than the others as a leader looking to help his compatriots be safe and secure whether it’s in Ukraine or Poland.

Safety and security above all

While businesses still need to be run, it’s obvious to all three companies that this takes a backseat to these other, more pressing needs.

Estateza has invested resources in its humanitarian efforts in Russia and Ukraine. Symphony Solutions turned its company facilities in Ukraine and Poland into makeshift shelters. And Company Folders is actively supporting its Ukrainian workers on the company coin.

Vladimir adds that Company Folders has dealt with setbacks in the past and he’d rather focus on the people that make up his business, not on business itself.

“It is horrible to see people I care about in danger, and it is my number-one priority and the number-one priority of the company to ensure the safety of our friends in Ukraine.”

And Jacob at Estateza was explicit in condemning the invasion.

“Overall, this has been stressful and we are hoping for the best on both sides.”

The post What companies are doing to support Ukrainians and Russians appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And there’s a lot of work to be done yet. One of Amy’s core objectives going into 2022 is to maintain employee retention and engagement while at the same time tripling the size of the business throughout the year.

In her words: “We’re going to have some enormous growth.”

In the midst of all of that is keeping her team members – both current and future – motivated.

This means, she says, “investing in all of our people to ensure that our culture is one that everybody’s super excited to be a part of and where they can grow their careers and do some of the best work of their lives, and have a lot of fun in the process.”

Doing that in a high-volume tech hiring space is a big undertaking – but she’s succeeding in the venture with a combination of expertise and street smarts.

On surviving the Big Quit

One of the significant developments of 2021 is, of course, the Great Resignation in the United States. Quit rates in the country are at an unprecedented high – reaching as high as 3% of the total working population with upwards of four million workers handing in their notice every month from July 2021 to November 2021.

Add to that an increasingly loud voice among younger workers about their disillusion with current work culture – so succinctly and blatantly on display in Reddit’s Antiwork community (which employers do need to pay attention to).

While obvious, this does signal a clear shift in the talent market. The onus is no longer on candidates to prove their worth to an employer; it’s now on the employer to position themselves as a place where people want to work. So, the question bears asking: what’s the employee value proposition that you can offer to make your job opportunity more attractive to a prospective employee?

For Amy, that value prop includes the working environment that you’re creating for them.

“I think the trend in 2022 is that people are going to look for companies that want to invest in them,” Amy says. “They’re going to look for companies that are flexible and aren’t going to require that they go into an office that they don’t want to go into, that will continue to afford them the flexibility that they’ve all grown to appreciate.”

And this isn’t going to end anytime soon. In fact, it marks a paradigm shift that employers need to adapt to. The Great Discontent report released in mid-2021 shows that flexible work options is high up the list of things that candidates value in a job, with 37.5% of US workers saying it’s one value proposition that would attract them to a new opportunity.

And SMBs that think about their employees first are the ones that’ll get ahead in the new talent game, says Amy.

“Companies are starting to realize how important engagement and investment is in their people,” she explains. “And those are the companies that are winning. And so if you were to talk to those companies, they would probably report lower than market averages in terms of loss. And the reason is because they have the formula. They understand what they need to do.”

Amy does offer a caveat – this needs to be done in a way that supports both ends of the equation.

“[Employers] have to create a trusting environment and a supportive environment and still be able to drive productivity and all the things that are core and critical to the business in an effective way. So I realize that there’s a balancing act here. Employers want to be able to maximize the return from the people.”

There’s tangible proof of the ROI in all this. A 2017 Gallup study finds that highly engaged employees lead to a 17% increase in company productivity, and 24% less turnover in companies in high-turnover sectors.

Amy doubles down on that message – because of that clear ROI, companies need to put in the work to meet those new expectations in the talent market.

“[That’s the] balancing act for 2022 that people really have to figure out.”

On investing in your workers

So how exactly do you ‘invest’ in your people? One area surging in popularity in 2022 is learning and development. In a survey commissioned by Workable and TalentLMS, 91% of tech workers want more learning opportunities from their current employers and 58% cited “skills development” as one criteria in choosing who they want to work for. It’s also a top motivator for tech employees.

And there are other ways to attract and engage employees – Amy shares a few more with us.

The value of connection

Amy stressed several times the importance of ensuring that workers feel connected to the company, whether that’s in a remote environment or otherwise.

“First of all, you have a full-time person dedicated to building the community, whether it’s different activities, whether it’s different communication strategies; there’s a number of different things that have to happen in order for that to be done effectively.”

We’re humans after all – the sense of community in the workplace can be a powerful thing.

The value of compensation

In the above-mentioned Great Discontent worker survey, 63% of workers cited salary as the reason why they’re looking elsewhere for a new job – and 62% say it’s the top factor in their decision to move to a new job.

It’s clear: companies must think about compensation in their value proposition.

“I do think you have to pay people competitively for the market, for their job. And so if you’re underpaying people and you’ve gotten away with it so far, you probably won’t continue to get away with it because people are starting to realize what they’re worth because of how hot the market is.”

This doesn’t mean giving raises across the board, she cautions. It’s more about fair market value.

“You have to pay people what the market suggests they’re worth or they’ll find a company that will.”

The value of people

Ultimately, whether it’s salary, learning & development, or connectivity, what people officers need to be thinking about is the ‘people’ factor. Employees are people too.

“If you’re treating people the way they want to be treated and they feel connected to your mission and connected to the business, they aren’t leaving. People that are leaving because they don’t feel connected. They don’t feel appreciated and they feel like there’s better opportunities for them.”

When your employees take pride in what they do and feel part of a larger mission, that can be even more motivating than a straight-up higher salary – if you’re one SMB that may be challenged in your ability to offer higher wages, this can be a good workaround.

On proactively sourcing candidates

Now, let’s get to the other challenge of the Great Resignation – the dwindling number of candidates that we’re seeing in our Hiring Pulse data and elsewhere. When you take a month’s candidates per hire and compare it with the average CPH of the previous three months, there was a negative trend in that data every single month in 2021:

It’s doubly a challenge for companies like the one Amy works at when high-volume hiring is part of the overall company strategy.

“We don’t have much of an employer brand [because] the company’s only three years old. And so our lower candidate pipeline, I would attribute to not having a strong employer brand because we’re a new company.”

But that means the work is cut out for Relay Payment’s recruitment team, which has resorted to fresh strategies to bring new candidates into the hiring process under Amy’s leadership – at high volume too.

“We get a lot of hires from referrals. I would say 30% of our hires in 2021 were referral-based,” Amy says, adding that they offer bonuses to team members who have successfully referred a candidate who ultimately gets hired.

The lack of a strong, recognizable employer brand is a challenge facing many SMBs, and Amy is well aware of that. She has ways to get around that.

“Our recruiters have had to work really hard to source candidates proactively because people don’t know us well enough to have a big application pipeline.”

So how do you do that? A ton of stuff, says Amy, who cites LinkedIn Recruiter – which she admits is expensive – as a tool to get the word out about a job, and external recruiters when they need to make a niche hire or when time is of the essence. Searching for candidates in Google using related keywords is also an effective strategy.

On growing the team that grows teams

But that’s a lot of work, of course. Amy has a solution for that: Hire more recruiters.

“I actually just doubled the size of my recruiting team in the last week,” she says. “I hired my first dedicated recruiter last summer. I hired a second recruiter in October [2021] and I just hired two [in early January 2022] that will start [in February]. So I’ve gone from one recruiter to four in like eight months.”

The reason being – if you have more team members dedicated to the specific goals in recruitment, you’ll draw more applicants for your open roles.

“The volume of people that you’ve got building your brand and sourcing and building pipelines will also help generate an enormous amount of activity as compared to having fewer people.”

“The volume of people that you’ve got building your brand and sourcing and building pipelines will also help generate an enormous amount of activity as compared to having fewer people.”

Anyone in sales and marketing will understand Amy’s thinking process here. If you want to see increased conversions (i.e. hires), you not only have to bring in the right kind of candidate via referrals and online search – you also have to bring in more candidates.

“For us, it’s about bigger pipelines. We want bigger top of funnel. So how do you invest to get your top of funnel big enough, such that if you have 90 of a specific type of role that you want to hire in a year? [This] is what we’re doing with our AE team. We’re going to add 90 AEs [in 2022].”

And even with the candidates-per-hire metric steadily dropping month over month in 2021 and 2022, any SMB worth their salt – including Relay Payments – will want to have a healthy selection of candidates for any given role. Amy is vividly aware of that.

“If you do the math to back into 90 hires, what do you need your funnel to be? It’s gotta be enormous.”

That’s hiring and retention at scale in Amy’s world. What’s yours? Share your workplace story with us and you may see it get published!

The post Hiring at scale in tech for 2022: A top CPO shares her tips appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here, in a nutshell, are the rulings on each case:

In Biden v Missouri, the Supreme Court held that the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) does have the authority to require all health care workers at institutions that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding to get COVID-19 vaccinations, unless they get medical or religious exemptions. If they fail to do either, then they could be fired.

Perhaps the more talked-about case, National Federation of Businesses et al v Department of Labor, Occupational, Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) et al, led to the opposite conclusion. The OSHA mandate required that employers with at least 100 employees had to require their employees to either receive COVID-19 vaccines or test weekly and wear masks.

Why such diametrically opposite rulings for such similar mandates? It all came down to whether the entity in question had the authority to mandate the vaccine. Regarding the OSHA mandate, the Court ruled OSHA did not have the authority, because, the Occupational Safety and Health Act (which created the OSH-Administration) “empowers the Secretary [of Labor] to set workplace safety standards, not broad public health measures.”

The Court further reasoned that “Although COVID-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most … COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather. That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases.”

Therefore, per the Court’s reasoning, the OSHA mandate would “significantly expand” OSHA’s authority beyond the limits set by Congress in the OSH-Act.

While multiple states argued that DHHS did not have the scope to issue such a mandate, the Court noted that “healthcare facilities that wish to participate in Medicare and Medicaid have always been obligated to satisfy a host of conditions that address the safe and effective provision of healthcare, not simply sound accounting.”

How then, does the US Department of Health and Human Services have the authority to issue and enforce a similar mandate? In this case, the Court cited funding requirements. The hospitals in question receive Medicare and/or Medicaid funding. The DHHS has always had authority to set conditions both for funding and for “the safe and effective provision of healthcare”.

So what do you do as an employer now?

What do these rulings mean for employers? Unless your business is a hospital receiving Medicare or Medicaid funding, the ruling in that case (Biden v Missouri) will have no impact.

Similarly, if your business has fewer than 100 employees, neither ruling impacts your business.

If you are an employer with more than 100 employees, then your business is no longer subject to the OSH-Admin mandate.

That does not mean that you do not have an obligation to take reasonable steps to protect your employees from COVID exposure. Vaccination or other safety protocols might well be necessary to achieve those ends, in which case you might still be obligated to take the same measures, but OSHA will have to jump through more hoops if it wants to take action against your company on that basis.

Need more support? Check out our mandatory vaccination and workplace safety policy template, which is free for you to use and customize for your own organization.

Janette S. Levey, ‘The Employer’s Lawyer’, has over 20 years of legal experience, more than 10 of which she has spent in Employment Law. She is licensed in NJ and NY and also works with employers anywhere in the country on any federal employment law issues to ensure that employers are in the best position possible to avoid litigation, audits, employee relations problems, and the attendant, often exorbitant costs. Feel free to visit Janette’s website or to contact Janette by email, janette@janetteleveylaw.com or phone, 732-902-0728. 

The post US Supreme Court’s mixed ruling on vaccine mandates: What do you do now? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Let’s look at the 11 main takeaways:

1. The shakeup of the work environment
2. We’re social animals; we have needs
3. Surviving the Big Quit
4. Healthy minds and bodies mean healthy outputs
5. Look for the silver lining in all of this
6. Think about your employees first
7. Technology will pave the way ahead
8. Work be nimble, work be quick
9. Increase your range of motion
10. Don’t be a manager – be a leader
11. Change in hiring strategy

1. The shakeup of the work environment

Early in the pandemic, we learned via the New World of Work survey that more than 70% consider the shift to remote work to be the biggest paradigm shift as a result of COVID-19. So, it’s really no surprise that one of the biggest lessons of 2021 according to SMB employers continues in this vein: the shift to hybrid, remote, and asynchronous work.

But the real challenge is found in the logistics and feasibility of this shift.

CEO Amy Wampler of Indiana-based HVAC firm Spartan Mechanical found that a hybrid structure was the best way to go for her company, but remained skeptical that a completely remote environment could work.

“I believe that man is a social animal – and does require a level of human interaction rather than slaving behind on a screen.”

Because of that, Amy wants her employees to get the full hybrid experience.

“Therefore, I intend to introduce an efficient hybrid working model, where rotations of staff will be done in order to make sure that all employees get a taste of both types of situations!”

Giving employees a choice

Meanwhile, Lovebox founder and CEO Jean Gregoire is giving employees the choice of where they want to work.

“Right now, 5 of our employees are permanently teleworking from Lyon, Brest, Sydney, Paris, and Barcelonnette while the rest of the team is in Grenoble, France. The Grenoble team members have a comfortable office they can go to, but for the moment there is no obligation.”

But as the top boss at his tech-driven international love note messenger service, Jean does subscribe to Amy’s dictum that there needs to be some in-person exchange.

“We are thinking about setting up one or two mandatory days on site (for those who live near the office) to facilitate exchanges between the different divisions. This is a subject that is being discussed collectively to make sure it does not become a burden for anyone.”

Ultimately, he did find that his employees are happiest when given the choice of how and where they want to work.

The connectivity challenges of hybrid

On the other hand, founder Eden Cheng of software company PeopleFinderFree in Singapore found hybrid to be her top challenge of 2021, due to the management challenges.

“I discovered that managing both in-office and remote teams is a job that requires a significant amount of emotional intelligence, as it’s all about the ability to successfully build interpersonal connections and maintain them.”

It’s something that Eden’s especially mindful of with so many employees quitting during the Great Resignation.

“This meant making an effort to connect with each staff member on a more individual level through frequent dialogue, in order to ensure that they are satisfied with their current work environment and that they have what they need to deliver on the results.”

VP Logan Mallory also considers hybrid to be the biggest challenge faced at Motivosity, a company that helps employees stay engaged both in office and remotely.

“We had to find the right methods of communication to ensure that no one was ever left out of the loop due to their choice of working location,” says Logan, “as well as making sure that we had frequent enough check-ins with our employees.”

Remote work struggles – even now

Devin Schumacher of SEO agency SERP points to the lack of experience of workers in a remote working environment, calling it a relatively new concept for many and therefore the value isn’t readily evident for them.

He says his company, which is fully remote, bears the responsibility to ensure success in remote work.

“I help my new hires grasp the long-term employment possibilities at my company through extensive onboarding procedures and coaching sessions. My goal is to emphasize the full potential of remote work. I explain the handsome compensation package, offer competitive company benefits, and, of course, reassure new hires that they’ll have several career growth opportunities.”

There is a unique value in working from home, however, says CEO Nicholas Vasiliou of health supplement product company BioHealth Nutrition:

“While working at home you often have to find your own solutions, so employees are constantly in a state of innovating whether they realize it or not. Our biggest goal is to further recognize and reward employees because we realize these efforts are not easy.”

Mark Pierce, the CEO of Cloud Peak Law Group in Wyoming, points to added nuances in remote management.

“It took a bit of time to find the right balance of checking in with employees so that they didn’t feel over-managed or like they were being ignored.”

Time is of the essence

One significant challenge of remote work is teams working across different time zones, noted Stefan Ateljevic of PlayToday, an online gambling resource center.

“I think we struggled most with combining asynchronous and synchronous types of communication between team members, in order to function seamlessly.”

That was one lesson tech CEO Nate Tsang wishes he had learned earlier so he could have gotten ahead of the challenges associated with asynchronous work.

“I’d like to have started the conversation around asynchronous work sooner. There was a bit of hesitancy to move away from the 9-5 synchronous model of work, where everyone’s online at the same time of day, more or less,” says Nate, who runs WallStreetZen, a stock research and analysis site.

“Employees know which parts of their work need to be handled this way, but deciding what kinds of work can be staggered is often a process of discovery. You have to be looking for asynchronous opportunities to make them a reality.”

2. We’re social animals; we have needs

Amy at Spartan Mechanical pointed to the importance of social interaction – and we found that many SMB employers would agree.

For instance, Zoku International Co-Founder Hans Meyer in Amsterdam found from his research that the future of work needs human connection.

“Companies must facilitate in-person employee relationships in 2022 in order to keep individual talent and teams engaged, aligned and productive in this new era of remote work.”

This was also John Gardner’s lesson from 2021. He’s co-founder and CEO of Kickoff, a remote personal training platform based out of New York.

“[It’s] the importance of engaging our employees and using strategies to increase effective communication, share company culture and boost employee productivity despite the remoteness of the work.”

John shared one of his company’s tactics to ensure engagement.

“We started implementing a strategy where we create fitness challenges on social media. Each month, one of our trainers starts a fitness challenge video where they choreograph fitness movements to a video. The challenge is that the next person who does the challenge has to add on an extra movement, so the faster you participate, the less you do!”

He found this tactic worked, too.

“The videos are a lot of fun, people and teams do them together when they can and it really encourages employee productivity as well as shares a positive, fun environment and culture at the company.“

3. Surviving the Big Quit

If the mindset of employers could be summed up in one phrase, it would be from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, where one of the Wild Things exclaims to a departing Max: “Oh please don’t go – we’ll eat you up – we love you so!”

That’s the spirit in the Big Quit environment, where employee retention is lauded as one of the biggest accomplishments of 2021 for many SMB employers.

Sally Stevens of FastPeopleSearch.io in Los Angeles is one of those employers – even going so far as to learn from others in the same situation.

“To think of it, the employee retention challenges faced by other companies have been big lessons for our business. We’ve had to change a lot in order to retain our employees. Ending the year with most of the employees we started with is certainly a success for us.”

It was a hard lesson for Sally’s small business, however.

“Lacking an adequate number of hands when you’re growing the business may be debilitating in many instances. That period almost crippled us. We had to hold back on some facets of our scaling process because we simply couldn’t find someone to deal with it.”

Show them you love them

Jeff Johnson, a real estate agent and acquisition manager at Simple Homebuyers in Maryland, resorted to tangible measures to retain employees in his company.

“We had to give out weekly bonuses, paid time off and subscriptions to mental wellness applications. This helped us manage and retain our existing talent.”

“We had to give out weekly bonuses, paid time off and subscriptions to mental wellness applications. This helped us manage and retain our existing talent.”

Steve Anevski’s own experience was not so much mitigation of turnover as it was actual improvement of retention – and this was a result of initiatives implemented prior to 2021.

“In 2021, my biggest accomplishment was increasing my company’s retention rate by a whopping 15%! Throughout 2019 and 2020, the rate was hovering between 70 and 75%, which I felt was relatively low and needed significant improvement. I worked on this and introduced a few attractive perks and benefits in late 2020 to great effect. Throughout 2021, my retention rates remained firmly between 85 and 90%.”

And in his work as CEO and co-founder of staffing platform Upshift, Steve says you have to really think about what your employees expect – and go higher than that.

“My biggest learning from 2021 in terms of employee retention is that if you go above and beyond in meeting the expectations of your employees, they’ll become more loyal to your company. It’s not just the financial rewards that compel employees to stay at an organization; they also seek non-monetary rewards like appreciation, autonomy and career advancement.”

And if the tangible parts of all this cost a lot of money, that’s fine, says CEO and founder Nick Drewe of WeThrift, an e-commerce and coupon site based in California. That’s because the ROI is obvious.

“Overall, it doesn’t matter if I get a bit generous with salaries and company benefits because employee retention still costs less than training new hires,” Nick explains. “They also produce better output. Better quality management ensures that my customers get the service they deserve.”

Keep your workers front of mind

Stefan at PlayToday also pointed to retention as his company’s biggest win in 2021, and that was because they adjusted the working model to be more employee-first.

”We followed their inputs and requests and made sure to make their workday as seamless as possible. This is how we opted for hybrid work and flexible schedules, but also included some perks such as childcare and home office stipends.”

And Logan at Motivosity points to the importance of a healthy, thriving, and inspiring work culture as the reason for his company’s 10% turnover rate.

“Every single one of the employees who left did so on good terms,” he says. “We attribute this to the fact that we truly live our workplace values and make our company a place where everyone is respected, employees are recognized and rewarded for their accomplishments, and flexibility is the norm.”

4. Healthy minds and bodies mean healthy outputs

Ahmed Mir, founder and editor of the self-proclaimed online coffee mecca Sip Coffee House, says one of his biggest plans for 2022 would be to emphasize a healthy interest and curiosity in work – but that overall health always comes first.

“I want my team to be comfortable enough to come to me whenever they feel overwhelmed so that we can find a solution that works for everyone. Nowadays, people often feel the need to overwork themselves, especially those who are working remotely, and I want to help ease them out of that mindset as productivity and the quality of work increases immensely when the people working on them are happy and healthy.”

Rather than looking at the raw math of employee retention as his company’s biggest accomplishment in 2021, co-owner Dan Barrett of Pacific Precious Metals pointed to mental health in employees that enables them to “work efficiently without pressure”.

Dan, who operates a chain of precious metal stores in and around San Francisco, says his biggest challenge “lay in the unpreparedness of the employees to take on challenges and the inability of many to contribute owing to their mental health.”

Gabriel Dungan of Charlotte, NC-based sleep company ViscoSoft aligns his employee health with his company’s product.

“As a company that sells sleep products, we have always encouraged people to take their sleep and self-care seriously, but it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that we truly realized how important this was for our team as well. This could be anything from weekly check-ins with members of your team, or even a team-wide virtual yoga class.”

5. Look for the silver lining in all of this

Albert Einstein once said: “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.”

That was also the mindset for many SMB employers throughout 2021.

Kamyar K.S., the CEO of business consultancy World Consulting Group in Florida, found that the skills gap faced by his business was an opportunity to try something new – such as offering more training and skills development for existing employees rather than simply trying to find new workers.

“In turn, that leads to a bigger pool of candidates with relevant skills and makes it easier for us to find them.*”

Nate at WallStreetZen ensures that new workforce additions have benefits beyond just backfill.

“We want to make sure additions to our workforce really create opportunities for other staff members. If it’s just about reducing workloads and taking tasks off someone’s plate then we can do that more quickly and easily with freelancers,” says Nate.

“When we need new know-how and outside experience to augment a team, that’s when you hire. Knowing the difference is tricky but it’s something we’re trying to improve.”

Dan, meanwhile, says he would have emphasized skills development in his existing worker base if he could do the year over again.

“If I had the chance to meet with my team in 2020, I’d have trained them into becoming a multi-skilled workforce. In addition, I’d have taught them resilience, fearlessness, and the ability to take on change.”

6. Think about your employees first

Notice a trend in what contributes to employee retention? Exactly – it’s the greater emphasis on employee well-being through benefits, compensation, development, and all the other stuff.

NY-based CEO Alex Mastin of the DIY barista resource site, Home Grounds, highlighted the importance of that.

“Try to provide your workers with opportunities for growth,” Alex says. “If they’re happy in their job and they know there are opportunities for advancement, they’re going to be more likely to stay with you.*”

CEO Mike Nemeroff of custom apparel brand Rush Order Tees in Philadelphia will take that employee-first mindset as well going into the next year.

“We’ve been working on a new strategy to help employees feel their importance and that they are the most important asset of our business and it has been working great so far.”

Get them involved

A two-way communication street is at the core of that strategy.

“This is by encouraging employees to share their opinion, propose new strategies and innovative ideas that can help improve the business,” Mike says. “Every month, we invite employees to come up with a new idea or a strategy that can improve our workflow and post it anonymously. During the month, we share these ideas and everyone in the company votes for the idea they think is best.”

And there’s incentive in it as well.

“Whoever wins is in charge of leading a team to implement their idea and give it a shot. This allows employees to feel trusted to be given a chance and trust that the company and employers believe in their skills regardless of their age, position, gender or experience.”

Lisa Richards, CEO and creator of The Candida Diet, which supports individuals with candida, is in the same boat and also plans to invest tangible resources to boost the experience of her team.

“Happy employees contribute to a company’s resilience and adaptability,” she says. “For this reason, a bigger portion of our annual budget will now be going towards maximizing employee satisfaction. It’s also important to ensure that the resources provided are compatible with the direct needs of the employees, so that they have the biggest impact on employee satisfaction, retention, and employee experience.”

Show confidence in your people

Michael Knight is co-founder and top marketing boss at business incorporation service Incorporation Insight in Salt Lake City. His 2022 will also include greater flexibility and a more employee-centric work model because, he says, there are clear benefits.

“An organization that is steadfast in prioritizing its employees’ satisfaction through generous and guilt-free PTOs and complimentary assisted access to mental healthcare is the goal.”

“An organization that is steadfast in prioritizing its employees’ satisfaction through generous and guilt-free PTOs and complimentary assisted access to mental healthcare is the goal.”

Jared Stern, who heads a team of 20 employees at Uplift Legal Funding in Santa Monica, California, also knows the value of employees in a business, highlighting their well-being as crucial.

“Employees are the linchpins of any organization,” says Jared, whose company provides legal loan services to clients. “We have braved through the past year, as we had committed employees. We want that to continue for us. We are taking all measures from our side to ensure they are prepared to tackle any adversity.”

Nate looked at output to identify opportunities to standardize and streamline the work his employees put in – with employee experience front of mind.

“We got serious about data productivity tracking for staff in early 2021. By mid-year we had a much stronger sense of where the gaps were and how to use automations, outsourcing, and freelancers to fill in the slack. Amid highs and lows, lulls and busy periods, our full-time staff have been able to remain steady and avoid burnout. That’s been a huge accomplishment, especially given the state of the world.”

Find out what they need and want

Meanwhile, Nicholas isn’t just taking initiative or planning strategy for employee happiness at BioHealth Nutrition. He’s also asking what employees themselves want.

“We’re currently conducting a survey about our work culture, team structure, and other company initiatives. We will accumulate all of the feedback at the end of the month and share a report with updates we plan to implement in 2022,” Nicholas says.

“We want employees to know that we take their feedback seriously and that their happiness is a priority. It’s really important for companies to embrace this mentality now if they haven’t already.”

Childcare was one of the biggest concerns voiced by employees throughout the pandemic, and Marina Vaamonde heard that as well from most of her employees at HouseCashin, an off-market house marketplace in Houston, Texas.

“Working parents are struggling to find decent and affordable childcare and need my help with it. Without childcare, the labor force will struggle because people will be forced to choose between working and quitting their jobs and staying home.”

7. Technology will pave the way ahead

Digital transformation was a significant development during the pandemic, with the shift to remote requiring more technology to succeed. But there’s more, says Kamyar at World Consulting Group.

“If you’re meeting with members of your team right now in terms of planning your workforce for 2022, this is the time to consider the impact of artificial intelligence, robotics and automation on what will be left for humans to do.”

Kamyar’s not concerned about the so-called rise of the machines, suggesting that it be embraced rather than feared.

“You can’t stop technology. It’s going to happen anyway. What you can do is prepare for it by planning for the time when your company won’t need as many human workers,” says Kamyar.

“What are the jobs that will be replaced? Will they all be replaced? What new positions will emerge? How do you train your workers of the future? How do you prepare them to stay ahead of the curve and avoid being replaced by a computer or a robot or an algorithm? You have to ask these questions now, not wait until 2027 — that’s too late.”

Nicholas highlights the importance of skills development in the workplace to accommodate the trend towards greater digital capabilities.

“Technology use is prime, and people need the internet more than ever. So, getting familiar with the new work approaches is key to success.”

“Technology use is prime, and people need the internet more than ever. So, getting familiar with the new work approaches is key to success.”

But finding the right tech to meet collaboration needs in the digital-first world was the single biggest challenge cited by Ruben Gamez, CEO and founder of SignWell, a B2B SaaS tech company helping businesses with contracts and legally binding e-signatures.

“Initially, we were experimenting with different tools,” says Ruben, who manages a team of 10 employees out of Portland, Oregon. “This led to scattered data. We then used one common tool to integrate all processes. It was very challenging to find the right tool.”

Challenge or not, Michael at Incorporation Insight says tech is core to his business going forward.

“Adopting more updated automation is also an objective that can potentially increase our efficiency both productivity-wise and operating cost-wise.”

And HR will be part of that

And this isn’t just the case for overall business operations and workforce management, according to Lynda Farley, the co-founder of reverse phone number lookup service NumLooker. While AI became accessible in 2021, she says, 2022 onwards will see a lot more of that in HR specifically.

“From 2022 onwards, there will be an increased adoption rate in social HR platforms. The reason for this development is the loss of trust between humans and machines. I’m not saying that AI will become our parents, but it can definitely help us in some aspects of our life. By 2022, there will be a lot more to come as a part of the digital revolution.”

8. Work be nimble, work be quick

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen,” said Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

That quote definitely holds true for the last couple of years especially for SMBs who have had to adapt regularly to a seemingly relentless barrage of unexpected developments during pandemic times.

CEO Ian Sells is clear on the importance of nimbility, as one of the biggest lessons at coupon/cash-back website RebateKey over the last two years.

“What we’ve learned from 2020 is to learn to be flexible and continuously adapt our processes based on what works,” says Ian, who heads up a team of just under 25 workers working full- and part-time, as well as per-project, in Wyoming. “Do not be afraid of changes and transitions.”

And there’s opportunity in that, Ian points out.

“Our team has experienced a lot of transitions and have done well not only to adapt to changes but to thrive in them. Scaling is always difficult, but is a crucial and necessary step for the continuous growth of any business.”

Flexibility took place in a different form for Gregory Rozdeba, president of digital insurance brokerage Dundas Life in Toronto. He called the COVID-affected year the most challenging of his managerial career, having to let go of a leadership team member.

Instead of having to go through that again, Gregory took on a different strategy – including moving some functions to remote and freelance.

And this includes employees too

A more agile approach also means encouraging more adaptability in employees – including tackling sudden and steep learning curves, says Dave Ericksen, the founder of WaterZen.

“Due to the crisis that the pandemic brought, a lot of our best performers were given additional responsibilities to help keep operations going,” says Dave.

That ultimately had a silver lining for his Utah-based company, which promotes awareness and shares information on accessibility to drinking water.

“Later, we discovered that some of them were more fit for their new responsibilities,” he says. “We’re changing our employee structure to give these gifted employees a role and title fit for their skills.”

Prime your people for success

Adjusting onboarding and training processes both for new hires and current employees was the biggest challenge of 2021, especially due to the volatility of the environment, says Gabriel at ViscoSoft.

“The pandemic required a lot of sudden pivots, so consistency in overall operations was kind of thrown out the window. You had to be malleable and adaptable. Because of these, developing any sort of training for your employees was very challenging,” he explains.

“You want to set up new hires for success by clarifying roles and encouraging relationship development, but when a company is dealing with constant shifts and transitions that can be very difficult.”

And forget about thinking back and looking forward, says Jared at Uplift Legal Funding.

“The biggest learning from 2021 was to be in the moment. We made grand plans in 2020, only to watch them fail. We have learned to become more agile and dynamic. We intend to make plans, but we have also known how to pick ourselves up if things go south. We are planning to continue the same in 2022.”

“The biggest learning from 2021 was to be in the moment. We made grand plans in 2020, only to watch them fail. We have learned to become more agile and dynamic. We intend to make plans, but we have also known how to pick ourselves up if things go south. We are planning to continue the same in 2022.”

And that mindset – with teamwork – can get us through it all, he adds.

“I’d say, here’s a chance to think on our feet. Let’s try to be more open-minded and adaptive. Let’s also remember to stick it out for each other. That’s the only way we will get through this madness.”

9. Increase your range of motion

Gregory at Dundas Life pointed to the diversity that comes with the global talent market as a huge bonus for companies.

“Diversity and inclusion is one critical insight in 2022 to manage an employee base. Companies worldwide should learn to diversify their employee retention this year as a workforce with unique skills is invaluable. It makes the potential of growth for each employee scalable, and they can learn new skills from their peers along the way.”

As CEO of secure e-sign service CocoSign, Stephen Curry also found the value of having workers from different decades was a crucial lesson picked up from 2020 and 2021.

“You’re able to capitalize on their unique experiences in different decades and accurately gauge the sorts of issues they’ll help you overcome in whatever decade you’re trying to make your mark,” Stephen says.

It all comes down to experience.

“Say, for example, an eighties employee helps you run a successful business in the nineties. That’s good. But if a fifties employee helps you run a successful business in 2022, that’s even better, because fifties employees have been through all this once before, so they’ll help you steer away from the mistakes of the past and point out things that worked best for them during the first time around.”

Paul Sherman is CMO at auto warranty service Olive, which employs more than 50 people in Chicago. He learned the value of age diversity the hard way.

“Many of my team members retired early in 2020 and 2021. While many companies tend to be ageist and prefer younger employees, I lost a wealth of experience and wisdom through the retirement of these workers.”

10. Don’t be a manager – be a leader

SMBs also took a long hard look at employee management styles, again as a result of developments during the pandemic.

Eden at PeopleFinderFree suggests breaking down the traditional structure of top-down leadership, saying it’s part of “preparing for a long-term eventuality”.

“From a leadership standpoint, it will be best to just get rid of hierarchical structures and instead, focus on implementing multidisciplinary and autonomous teams that are able to operate without micromanagement. In other words, place more of an emphasis on shifting your current management responsibilities and distributing them throughout the organization.”

Gabriel wishes he and his team had taken on a more collaborative approach to work.

“The pandemic has meant having to make constant decisions without really being able to predict the outcome. Having a collaborative and supportive team not only makes for a fantastic workplace culture, but makes those difficult decisions much easier.” Gabriel says. “Remember, there is a way for employees to have autonomy over their work, while still working closely and collaborating with others.”

And the irony is that Gabriel sees this as a top-down initiative.

”I would tell myself that as a leader, it is up to me to set the precedent. A collaborative workplace needs to be fostered.”

”I would tell myself that as a leader, it is up to me to set the precedent. A collaborative workplace needs to be fostered.”

And empathy has huge, huge value

Meanwhile, one of the biggest lessons from 2020 for Sally of FastPeopleSearch.io was the need for empathetic leadership in the workplace – it’s something that can’t be overlooked.

”Quite often, business leaders get lost in the hustle and forfeit the personal connection between them and the employees. This plays a huge role in lowering team morale and decreasing productivity within the workplace.”

Being empathetic also makes her a better manager and enables her to bring more out of her workers.

“Practicing empathetic leadership over the past year has taught me valuable lessons in soft-skill management, and how employee morale plays a crucial role in creating a vibrant culture within the workplace.”

11. Change in hiring strategy

One of the big developments of 2021 is, of course, the Great Resignation. Quit rates are through the roof – and companies have had to adapt quickly to the sudden onslaught of vacancies and need for backfills.

This meant an update in hiring strategy for many businesses, including CEO Dragos Badea of Yarooms, a hybrid work management software.

Dragos’ plan? “Hire for all positions as early as possible, as we’re going to be experiencing a bit of a shortage of qualified personnel!”

The reason being, as the adage goes, ‘done is better than perfect.’

“Even if you hire a specialist that might be working at 50% capacity initially,” says Dragos, “just having more hands on deck when opportunity comes knocking is incredibly valuable.”

Christiaan Huynen’s hiring approach as the CEO of DesignBro is similar.

“Hiring a perfect candidate is like finding a needle in a haystack. Oftentimes, the closest thing that you can find to a needle is a bobby pin and you just have to go with it. Try to keep the candidate pool small and set a technical interview as a prerequisite to avoid unnecessary traffic.”

But there’s a danger in quick backfill for stopgap purposes, as Dave at Waterzen learned.

“One of the biggest challenges we’re going to be facing in 2022 is getting rid of pandemic hires,” says Dave. “The labor supply shortage caused us to hire people who weren’t the best for the job. We were in need of employees and hired those that just fit the bill. In 2022, when the shortage will finally end, we’ll have to let go of staff who cannot meet expectations and rehire for those roles.”

Add new channels to the pipeline

One potential solution is internal mobility, according to Ian at RebateKey.

“We’ve scaled so much as a company this year and required new roles to be filled. However, instead of hiring an outsider, we opted to look for potential applicants from stellar members from our current team, who have at least some working knowledge, interest, and bandwidth to take on new roles.”

Ian, incidentally, also turned to less traditional methods of finding talent when looking outside of his organization.

“Instead of the known job boards, we’ve ventured into using Slack and Discord groups, and more importantly FB niched groups. These places are teeming with potential. Many applicants do not want to use regular job boards because they lowball employees, not to mention having very high competition.”

Jared also turned to these channels as a solution.

“Our single biggest accomplishment was recruiting new employees using social media as one of our primary recruitment channels. We’ve heard about social media recruiting as a strategy, but we were skeptical if it would work. Using multiple channels on a trial and error basis has been the quickest way to employ a diverse pool of talent.”

And Paul at Olive went directly to the source of new talent.

“Our biggest achievement was to partner with the marketing department of a local university. This partnership creates a pipeline of talent from the university by creating internships and permanent positions for graduating students with marketing degrees. This way, we’re less vulnerable to the labor market shocks like those we see with the Great Resignation.”

A deluge of talent

Dan Barba, who provides writing and editing services at DanBarba.com, had the opposite problem – that of too many candidates.

“When I posted job openings throughout 2021, it wasn’t uncommon for me to receive multiple hundreds of applications from people looking for freelance work. With so many applications to sift through, these hiring rounds would take up a lot of my time and pull me away from revenue generating activities,” he says.

And he had a solution: giving candidates the opportunity to screen themselves in or out.

“Through the lens of hiring and human resources, my biggest accomplishment was finding a way to make these applicants ‘pre-qualify’; in other words, making sure that only the top 1% of the talent pool apply.”

To do this, Dan rewrote the job copy he was using.

“My first version was too vague in terms of expectations and day-to-day responsibilities, so I focused on going into greater detail and getting clear on the skills and experience that candidates must have before applying. I didn’t list desirables, just must-haves and deal breakers.”

“My first version was too vague in terms of expectations and day-to-day responsibilities, so I focused on going into greater detail and getting clear on the skills and experience that candidates must have before applying. I didn’t list desirables, just must-haves and deal breakers.”

And it made a difference.

“By giving applicants this kind of context, they were better equipped to evaluate their own ability against the standards that I laid out. As a result, the quality of my hires shot up in Q4, as did their rate of output and productivity.”

Glen Bhimani owns and operates BPS Security, a security firm in San Antonio, Texas. He also pointed to the importance of a well-crafted job ad.

“I have found that thinking through the kind of person we want to hire and crafting job postings that appeal to that kind of person is extremely effective in cutting down the time we have to spend searching for guards,” says Glen, whose firm employs just under 30 employees.

“Different people respond well to different kinds of English [and other languages], so designing a job posting inside the communication style of our ideal employee helps raise the success rate of job postings.”

The digitization of hiring

One huge aspect of recruitment is the incorporation of tech into the process, says Michael.

“Technology played a significant role in helping us efficiently screen candidates and onboard new members without being physically present. It was another milestone to now permanently integrate advanced tech into our hiring process in place of our traditional recruitment practices.”

Jeff at Simple Homebuyers pointed to changes in his recruitment process as his single biggest achievement of 2021.

“Many companies take years to change how they recruit talent, but we were forced to do it overnight. Budget constraints made it hard for us to retain current employees, so we opted to recruit talent worldwide, proving to be significantly cheaper.”

And yes, tech supported this.

“[That] included virtual interviews, global recruitment, and asynchronous working hours. This proved to be vital as we had access to talent worldwide.”

Technology also benefited Logan at Motivosity, who found an innovative solution in identifying the potential of a candidate for a job.

“A hiring hack that’s been helpful for us is: Asking candidates to record an introductory video in lieu of a cover letter. This helps us see a candidate’s personality, and it allows them to share more about themselves than they’d be able to just by writing a cover letter. It also helps us weed out candidates who haven’t fully read the job application.”

You know what to do going into 2022

There you have it. Myriad challenges of 2020 and 2021 being overcome with innovative solutions and strategies – that’s the spirit of entrepreneurship.

And it’s always good to have a well-thought-out strategy going into 2022, but leaving room for quick pivots in that strategy as needed, because who knows what might happen.

Want to share your own story of what you’ve learned over the last couple of years and what you think will happen in 2022? We want to hear it – and share it with our millions of readers. Submit your pitch and you may see your name – and your company’s – in lights!

The post Employers’ top wins and lessons of 2021 – and what they’re planning for 2022 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Note: Workable’s Hiring Pulse also identifies a drop in candidates per hire:

Some companies and industries are certainly faring better than others, but the hundreds of customers and HR leaders I’ve talked to throughout this year all agree – this job market is unlike anything they’ve seen before.

Fortunately, after a year of this upturned hiring market, there may finally be some glimmers of hope. No, it’s not that employees aren’t going to stop quitting. The latest quit numbers are still at record highs and those types of numbers don’t just fall off overnight.

An opportunity for employers

There might just be something like a “Great Return” in our future. Meaning, the tide will turn – at least somewhat – back to employers’ favor and a portion of those millions of workers who quit are going to come back to their old jobs, industries, and careers.

That’s what I and other company leaders are thinking – and hoping for – right now. And while it’s too early to know for sure how it’ll happen, lots of employees who quit this year will return (or be willing to return) under the right conditions. Most of those conditions have to do with aspects of the employee experience that were already outdated or broken.

So, based on what I know about the employee experience and how it’s played a role this past year, these are the three conditions I can see bringing talent back after the Great Resignation:

1) Company culture issues are being addressed

First off, the company culture issues that drove employees away in the first place have been addressed.

Health concerns, toxic team members, poor management, low pay, employee burnout, lack of career growth, lack of diversity and inclusion – these are all top reasons workers have been quitting their jobs during the pandemic. Notice that these are all factors that companies can change and improve as long as they make a real effort.

Whether that means creating new systems and policies, investing in management and skills training, and/or letting go of toxic team members, now’s the time to face these issues head on or else continue to experience talent struggles.

For employees who were otherwise satisfied with their role but “rage-quit” due to one of these culture issues, you can likely lure them back by focusing on fixing what was broken and creating a positive culture where they can thrive. Employees who haven’t completely abandoned their careers might find their way back.

2) Work-life flexibility is now supported

Secondly, employees are getting the work-life flexibility they need in their lives, in location and schedule.

The shift to remote work last year turned out to be a really great setup for many workers and just as productive as in-office work. Employees got so accustomed to it that many decided to quit instead of give up working from home.

It’s important to note though, that it’s not that people wanted to trade in office life with working at home in their pajamas. What they really wanted was the flexibility and freedom that remote work affords them. No more long daily commutes, more opportunity to be with and care for loved ones, choice in where, when and how they work, all while saving money and escaping from office distractions and micromanagement.

Companies that give employees this freedom and flexibility (and set employees up for success through things like remote-friendly internal processes and a remote stipend) will definitely see more workers returning and staying than those that don’t. You can already see companies recognizing this by the uptick in remote jobs and companies going fully remote or hybrid.

3) Comp is now more attractive

And finally – compensation packages and perks are actually competitive and enticing for employees, as well as meaningful and inclusive.

Being underpaid and given odd random perks like ping pong tables and gift cards (or nothing at all) were sadly the norm before the pandemic. And since employers have long held bargaining power in the job market, workers had no choice but to accept it.

Well, the tables have completely turned and candidates now have the upperhand. Demand is so high for workers nowadays that there’s a growing trend of candidates ghosting companies because what companies are offering – in pay, benefits, hours, or other conditions of the job – simply isn’t competitive.

To get workers to return, it’s time to offer pay that actually goes above and beyond market rates and give personalized perks that employees would actually enjoy.

How to offer competitive pay doesn’t need explaining, but perks are more complicated since every employee has unique needs and preferences. A great solution is to offer one or more flexible stipends to help set your company’s compensation package apart.

For example, you can offer a monthly health & wellness stipend that employees can use however they want to support their own wellness journey from emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, etc. This variety of health support is crucial in times like these and leading companies like Microsoft, Webflow, EventBrite, and Investopedia all offer wellness stipends to their employees.

Another idea is to offer a remote stipend that covers employee costs for everything employees would get in an office such as food, internet, technology, productivity, and learning, where they get to choose everything themselves. With more employees working remotely and expecting the company they work for to be fair and inclusive, this would both surprise and entice workers who are searching for greener pastures.

Conclusion

There’s no denying that we’re in an era where employees are seeking change in their work lives and are more than willing to pursue it. For many employees who have decided to leave their jobs for different career paths or for early retirement, that’s exactly the right move for them.

However, I’m willing to bet that for the large number of workers who quit that don’t fall under those two categories, many will make a return to what they left behind under the right conditions.

If your company addresses these three conditions above, you’ll be a top contender in recruiting the talent that’s so difficult to hire these days and also be more successful at keeping the talent you already have.

Amy Spurling is the CEO of Compt.io, an employee stipends platform that offers flexibility in perks and benefits for employees.

The post A ‘Great Return’? 3 conditions that may bring talent back appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But how do you get them to apply to your open roles? As anyone in sales knows, getting someone’s attention is easy enough. But getting them actively interested is another thing altogether.

Once you have an interaction with a passive candidate lined up, you need to first understand what would excite them about a job in your company. We’ve already done that research for you. Let’s dive in!

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

The law of attraction

Think about passive candidate attraction in terms of magnets. For them to move to you, your company’s “magnet” needs to be stronger than their existing company’s magnet.

So, what are the primary properties of a company magnet that would pull a passive candidate into a new direction? Let’s take a look.

Job attractors

Passive candidates in the UK would be very attracted to jobs that offer work flexibility and competitive compensation. If they care about training, they’re likely already actively looking.

Employer attractors

And what about companies themselves? Passive candidates are interested in companies that have a strong moral and social foundation – company mission / vision / values and social / environmental / DEI engagement and action rank very high among passive candidates. Company culture is big as well.

The law of retention

Now, let’s look at their existing company’s magnetic qualities. Not everyone wants to move to a new job. They’re fine with where they are, but there are some “nice to haves” that would boost their loyalty to a company.

Here’s your opportunity: when talking with passive candidates, highlight those “nice to haves” and promote them as already existing in your own company, and you might attract them to your open roles.

So what are those “nice to haves”? Let’s have a look:

Job retainers

If your company promotes the potential for advancement within its ranks, that’s a huge attractor for both passive and active candidates – but the biggest difference is seen in those who cited compensation as something that could be better in their existing job.

Employer retainers

Passive candidates aren’t loving their current company’s level of transparency or responsiveness to individual worker concerns. The same holds true for overall company culture, executive leadership and social / environmental / DEI engagement and action, all of which could play a role in attracting them to your own company.

We hope these insights are helpful to you. You can also read more about passive candidates and how to source them. Personalizing your outreach is very important as well.

Also consider updating your careers page and fine-tuning your job descriptions so they engage a potential candidate’s best interests.

Check out our other infographic to understand who these candidates are and where they’re actually working. And what about passive candidate attraction in the UK? We have that covered too.

In the meantime, you can save time and resources using powerful AI-driven tools to source the best candidates for your company. For instance, Workable’s AI Recruiter automatically sources the best 50 candidates for every job from a diverse pool of 400 million-plus potential jobseekers worldwide.

The post INFOGRAPHIC: How do you pull passive candidates in the UK? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

And there’s a lot of them out there. Our recent Great Discontent survey of UK workers found that 45.1% are passively open to new opportunities.

But, before reaching out to passive candidates, let’s first understand who they are so you know who you’re dealing with.

So who are these passive candidates?

Passive candidates by sector

Let’s start with where they’re working. If you’re hiring in tech, logistics / supply chain, education, or healthcare, passive candidates are your opportunity to get ahead.

Interestingly, no sectors showed more active than passive jobseekers in the UK.

Passive candidates by company size

The larger the company, the more likely they’ll have far more passive than active candidates. Although all company sizes showed more passive than active candidates, those in the 500-999 FTE range showed the most even balance between both.

Now, let’s look at their actual jobs:

Passive candidates by function

Those working in product, service / customer support, and operations are more set in their roles but they’re open to talking about a new job.

Those working in recruitment are the polar opposite – they’re very much actively looking!

Passive candidates by job level

If you’re hiring for senior positions – especially VP level – the majority of those are actively looking, as well as those at the entry level. Managers, directors, individual contributors, and executives are much more passive.

That last group also includes owners – perhaps they’re happy to take on a job rather than deal with all the hassle of running a company, but not actively looking (yet)?

Passive candidates by job status

Full-time workers and those working for themselves are the most passive of all job statuses – likely because they’re in a good situation at the moment.

But to the previous point about owners, perhaps those working for themselves are likewise open to taking on a full-time paid position so they don’t have to run their own operation.

And finally, their demographics:

Passive candidates by age

The most passive age group in the UK job market is in the 50-59 year range – in other words, those likely to be already established in career and life and nearing retirement, but perhaps still open to one more job jump.

Meanwhile, the youngest adult cohort is more actively hunting for new work opportunities.

Passive candidates by minority status

One of the demographic questions we asked in the survey was; “Do you identify as a member of a minority group (be it race, ethnicity, language, religion, country of origin, sexual orientation, gender, or another characteristic)?”.

We found that those identifying as a non-minority are more likely to be simply curious about other jobs but not outright applying. And those identifying as a minority are more actively looking and far less settled in their existing roles – perhaps because they’ve decided their current situation is no longer acceptable or tenable.

Passive candidates by gender

Those identifying as male are far more likely to be passive than active candidates than their female counterparts. Females are either more actively looking or not looking at all.

And importantly, the reason why they might be open to new work:

Workers who are looking for a better balance between their work and home lives are far more likely to be passive candidates. The same rings true for those interested in career progression and those who see more work opportunities out there than in hte past.

The opposite is true for those who need more support in their work – those candidates are much more likely to be actively looking.

We hope you found these insights helpful. You can also read more about passive candidates and how to source them. Personalizing your outreach is very important as well.

Check out our other infographic to understand what would attract these candidates to a job with you. And what about passive candidate identities in the US? We have that covered too.

In the meantime, you can save time and resources when utilizing powerful AI-driven tools to source the best candidates for your company.

The post INFOGRAPHIC: 45% of UK workers are passive candidates. Who are they? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But how do you get them to apply to your open roles? As anyone in sales knows, getting someone’s attention is easy enough. But getting them actively interested is another thing altogether.

Before interacting with them, you need to understand what would excite them about a job in your company. We’ve already done that research for you. Let’s dive in!

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

The law of attraction

Think about passive candidate attraction in terms of magnets. For them to move to you, your company’s “magnet” needs to be stronger than their existing company’s magnet.

So, what are the primary properties of a company magnet that would pull a passive candidate into a new direction? Let’s take a look.

Job attractors

Passive candidates would be very attracted to jobs that offer work flexibility and have plenty of day-to-day logistical support. Oh, and compensation is big as well. They don’t care as much about training – if they do, they’re likely already actively looking.

Employer attractors

And what about companies themselves? Passive candidates can be attracted if your company is transparent with employees, possesses a healthy company culture, and has great leadership.

The law of retention

Now, let’s look at their existing company’s magnetic qualities. Not everyone wants to move to a new job. They’re fine with where they are, but there are some “nice to haves” that would make a difference in their loyalty to a company.

You do have an opportunity here: when talking with passive candidates, target those “nice to haves” and promote them as already existing in your own company, and you might attract them to your open roles.

So what are those “nice to haves”? Let’s have a look:

Job retainers

If your company actively supports its employees at work and offers job security and advancement potential, that’s a positive attractor as many passive candidates wish they had those in their existing role. Salary, perks and benefits are of course big as well.

Employer retainers

Passive candidates aren’t loving their current company’s social and environmental positioning, or even reputation. They’d also like to see better leadership, transparency and overall company culture where they currently work.

We hope these insights are helpful to you. You can also read more about passive candidates and how to source them. Personalizing your outreach is very important as well.

Also consider updating your careers page and fine-tuning your job descriptions so they engage a potential candidate’s best interests.

Check out our other infographic to understand who these candidates are and where they’re actually working. And what about passive candidate attraction in the UK? We have that covered too.

In the meantime, you can save time and resources using powerful AI-driven tools to source the best candidates for your company. For instance, Workable’s AI Recruiter automatically sources the best 50 candidates for every job from a diverse pool of 400 million-plus potential jobseekers worldwide.

The post INFOGRAPHIC: How do you lure passive candidates in the US? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We’re seeing unprecedented quit levels in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means a lot of backfilling – perhaps for roles with you as well.

But there’s one potential solution. Have you considered reaching out to passive candidates? They may not be actively looking, but they’re open to a conversation. More so, they may not even know they want to work for you until you talk with them first.

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

And there’s a lot of them out there. Our recent Great Discontent survey of US workers found that 37.3% are passively open to new opportunities.

But, before reaching out to passive candidates, let’s first understand who they are so you know who you’re dealing with.

So who are these passive candidates?

Passive candidates by sector

Let’s start with where they’re working. If you’re hiring in accounting, education, retail, or healthcare, passive candidates are your opportunity to get ahead. Supply chain, tech and design have the most active jobseekers.

Passive candidates by company size

The larger the company, the more likely they’ll have far more passive than active candidates. But the sweet spot for candidates in general are in the 100-999 FTE range.

Now, let’s look at their actual jobs:

Passive candidates by function

Passive candidates by job level

If you’re hiring for senior positions – especially VP level – the majority of those are actively looking. Managers, directors, and individual contributors are less active.

Passive candidates by job status

Unsurprisingly, full-time workers are the most passive of all job statuses – likely because they’re in a good situation at the moment. That doesn’t mean they’re not open to a new opportunity though.

And finally, their demographics:

Passive candidates by age

The most passive age groups in the job market are in the 40-59 year range – in other words, those likely to be already established in career and life – whereas the youngest adult cohort is very actively hunting for new work opportunities.

Passive candidates by minority status

One of the demographic questions we asked in the survey was; “Do you identify as a member of a minority group (be it race, ethnicity, language, religion, country of origin, sexual orientation, gender, or another characteristic)?”.

We found that those identifying as a non-minority are more likely to be fine where they are, but open to conversations about other jobs. And those identifying as a minority are more actively looking and far less settled in their existing roles – perhaps because they’ve decided their current situation is no longer acceptable or tenable.

Passive candidates by gender

Among those who consider themselves available for new jobs, those identifying as female are more likely to be passive than active candidates. There are studies finding women to be less aggressive in applying for new opportunities, which may be a factor.

And importantly, the reason why they might be open to new work:

Interestingly, those who see more work opportunities out there than in the past are also more likely to be passive candidates. That’s also the case for workers who need more balance between their home and work lives.

We hope you found these insights helpful. You can also read more about passive candidates and how to source them. Personalizing your outreach is very important as well.

Check out our other infographic to understand what would attract these candidates to a job with you. And what about passive candidate identities in the UK? We have that covered too.

Most of all: you can save time and resources when utilizing powerful AI-driven tools to source the best candidates for your company.

The post INFOGRAPHIC: 37% of US workers are passive candidates. Who are they? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Also, when recruiting, you’re not only competing with other companies for candidates. You’re also competing with candidates’ life priorities. People now want work that aligns better with their personal lives – whether that’s family, passion projects, personal plans and ambitions, or something else outside of the daily grind.

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

Yet, many employers don’t seem to be especially attuned to this. A Future Forum Pulse survey in Oct. 2021 finds a major disconnect between decision makers and employees when it comes to return-to-office plans.

This is especially true for those identifying as a woman:

Or as a minority:

But it’s not as simple as offering flexible work arrangements as a company policy. Well – it is that simple, but the idea of flexible working itself is a little more nuanced. Flexible work is actually comprised of two very different things under one umbrella: flexible work schedules and flexible working by location.

And one can exist without the other. As it happens, both are valued – but one much more than the other:

Now here’s where it gets interesting. A significant chunk of respondents in the US think their employer will return to the way things were before the pandemic.

Are you one of them? Perhaps there’s a need for on-location work or on-time work in your industry or sector – which is fully understandable. But perhaps there isn’t – and the only thing holding you to the traditional on-location, 9-to-5 grind is because you’ve always done it that way.

When you have workers who do think they can do their jobs remotely or on their own schedule, perhaps it’s time to evolve your value proposition as an employer.

So, is there a candidate shortage? Maybe not. There’s potentially an employer shortage – in that not enough employers are offering flexibility in the workplace.

This is your opportunity. Adapt and update your policies to support your employees to bring their full selves both to home and the workplace, and you’ll find more candidates knocking at your door.

We hope these insights are helpful to you. You can also learn how to implement flexible work schedules into your workplace and use our flexible working hours policy template to get started.

Also consider updating your careers page and fine-tuning your job descriptions so they engage a potential candidate’s best interests. 

The post INFOGRAPHIC: Flexible work arrangements and US priorities appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Also, when recruiting, you’re not only competing with other companies for candidates. You’re also competing with candidates’ life priorities. People now want work that aligns better with their personal lives – whether that’s family, passion projects, personal plans and ambitions, or something else outside of the daily grind.

Want to see all the data in one place? Check out the full infographic below or download it for your own files.

Yet, many employers don’t seem to be especially attuned to this. A Future Forum Pulse survey in Oct. 2021 finds a major disconnect between decision makers and employees when it comes to return-to-office plans.

In all of this is an emphasis on flexible working in the UK. UK workers want it, according to Workable’s Great Discontent survey:

This is especially true for those identifying as a woman:

But it’s not as simple as offering flexible work as policy. Well – it is that simple, but the idea of flexible work itself is a little more nuanced. Flexible work is actually comprised of two very different things under one umbrella: flexibility in schedule (working hours) and flexibility in location (remote work).

And one can exist without the other. As it happens, both are valued – but one much more than the other:

Now here’s where it gets interesting. A significant chunk of respondents in the UK think their employer will return to the way things were before the pandemic.

Are you one of them? Perhaps there’s a need for on-location work or on-time work in your industry or sector – which is fully understandable. But perhaps there isn’t – and the only thing holding you to the traditional on-location, 9-to-5 grind is because you’ve always done it that way.

When you have workers who do think they can do their jobs remotely or on their own schedule, perhaps it’s time to evolve your value proposition as an employer.

So, is there a candidate shortage? Maybe not. There’s potentially an employer shortage – in that not enough employers are offering flexibility in the workplace.

This is your opportunity. Adapt and update your policies to support your employees to bring their full selves both to home and the workplace, and you’ll find more candidates knocking at your door.

We hope these insights are helpful to you. You can also learn how to implement flexible working hours into your workplace and use our flexible working hours policy template to get started.

Also consider updating your careers page and fine-tuning your job descriptions so they engage a potential candidate’s best interests. 

The post INFOGRAPHIC: Flexible working and talent priorities in the UK appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Hiring managers need to get creative to solve this staffing problem. By doing so, they can solve today’s crisis and address lingering, systemic inequalities in our employment system.

• Look to women to solve the hiring crisis
  • Women are an undertapped resource for hiring teams
  • The unique social and economic burdens on women
• The economic impact of the pandemic
• Women as an undertapped resource
  • 1. Part-time work
  • 2. Flexible and/or remote work
  • 3. Salary
  • 4. Child-care benefits
  • 5. Parental leave programs
• Case study: Working mothers in education
• Why are so many teachers women?
  • 1. School schedules
  • 2. Parental leave policies
  • 3. Benefits

Look to women to solve the hiring crisis

Women are an undertapped resource for hiring teams

Women have overwhelmingly borne the worst of the economic and occupational impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has only worsened existing structural inequalities. Hiring teams have a unique opportunity to tap into this group, which has been largely overlooked as a potential solution to ongoing staffing difficulties. Companies that address barriers to female success at work can take advantage of all they have to offer.

The unique social and economic burdens on women

Women have been economically oppressed for centuries. Only in the last hundred years have women’s rights truly begun to expand: to education and literacy, work, and voting rights. Even when women’s rights began to expand, women of color faced barriers to equality. The effects of these historical inequalities are, in many ways, still felt today:

• Women earn less than men in every professional category tracked by the Department of Labor, including in education, an industry in which women are more than twice as likely than men to work.
• And while women as a whole earn about 82% of men annually, that number is even lower for women of color. Black women with a bachelor’s degree only earn about 65% of what white men with the same education earn.

Under U.S. federal law, women have the right to 12 unpaid weeks of maternity leave, but paid maternity leave varies drastically by employer. Poor labor provisions for new mothers as well as the exorbitant cost of daycare for young children lead many new mothers to exit the workforce completely, often for years at a time.

Working mothers must balance their full- or part-time work with taking care of children and the unpaid labor involved in running a household. Women spend between two and ten times more time on unpaid labor than men.

The economic impact of the pandemic

These were the factors at play when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in March of 2020. The effects the pandemic has had on gender equality at work are downright chilling. Women’s labor force participation rate, meaning the percentage of adult women who choose to work, fell to an astonishing 55.8%. The last time the number was this low? 1987.

As school went virtual for much of the country, working mothers were put in an impossible bind: find a way to guide their children through virtual school while somehow still working full-time, or quit their jobs. Many chose to leave work, finding maintaining the balance impossible.

Our research found that American women are more than twice as likely than men to cite family duties as the reason they’re not working. In the U.K., women are more than six times (41.7%) as likely as men (6.7%) to say that family priorities keep them from working.

Women lost 5.4 million jobs during the pandemic, compared to 4.4 million for men. This is largely due to so-called ‘pink-collar jobs’; women hold many of the low-wage positions in the United States. In fact, in 2018, 46% of working women were employed in low-wage jobs. A quarter (25%) of working women are mothers of a child under the age of 14, but many of those women struggle to find affordable childcare, with childcare for toddlers averaging $900 per child per month. To learn more about the ways the pandemic is affecting working women, check out our article and infographic.

Jump to the full infographic – or download it for yourself here.

Women as an undertapped resource

This much is certain: our economy is not making use of women’s labor the way it could, and when it does, women are not fairly compensated for their work, experience, and education. The pandemic has worsened existing disparities along racial and gender lines, and hiring professionals in general seem to be overlooking the under- and unemployment of women as an opportunity for recruitment.

But simply recognizing the way that women have been unfairly impacted by the tumultuous work conditions of the pandemic is not enough to execute a solution to ongoing staffing issues. The largest barrier, perhaps, is the fact that for many of the nearly three million women who have left the workforce over the last year, they have no intention to return to the workforce anytime soon.

Even among women who are still employed, a survey from Deloitte found that 60% are planning to leave their jobs in the next two years.

Why? Lack of work-life balance was the number one cited reason that women are planning to leave their jobs.

In order to hire women, companies are going to have to incentivize them to return to work. What will it take to get women to consider rejoining the workforce? Let’s discuss some of the benefits you can offer women to encourage them to join your organization.

1. Part-time work

Many new moms would like to continue working after they have their child, but are faced with an impossible choice: stay home and quit altogether, or return full-time and find a way to afford full-time childcare. Part-time work continues to carry a stigma in the corporate world – and without good reason, because it is actually a potential solution to staffing problems and gendered workplace inequality.

Our survey found that women are more than twice as likely to say they’re currently working part-time than men. If you can’t find candidates to fill your full-time position, consider switching it to a part-time position instead.

2. Flexible and/or remote work

Allowing your employees to work on a flexible schedule can make work far more accessible for working mothers. Consider, for example, the typical 9-5 work day. For parents with children in school, their workday ends after school (with school days typically ending between 2 and 4:30). This can put parents, especially single parents, in a bind. In fact, 44% of women we surveyed said that work flexibility would attract them to a new opportunity, as opposed to just 31.6% of men.

Similarly, 39.7% said they like remote work because it makes it easier to integrate personal and professional priorities. Remote work can be a better option for women who have long been excluded from the workforce due to competing priorities.

3. Salary

Women are motivated by salary and benefits just as men are. In our survey, men were slightly more likely (67.3%) to say that salary attracts them to a new opportunity than women (61.8%).

That being said, consider the cost of child care and the gender wage gap when thinking about salary in the context of employing women and working mothers.

4. Child-care benefits

How can your organization support working parents? Work-life integration is one of the top priorities for working mothers, so to hire women, you’re going to have to show concrete proof that your culture is supportive.

One way to do this could be through offering child-care benefits, such as company or subsidized child-care, or credits for employees with children in child care.

5. Parental leave programs

Do you offer parental leave? How generous is your parental leave program? Generous parental leave shows your employees that you support gender equality.

Why? Because having a child is physically taxing, and inadequate parental leave dismisses the physical and emotional recovery that parents go through following the birth of a child.

With childbirth, household duties, and childcare falling unequally on women, parental leave is one way to balance the scales.

Case study: Working mothers in education

To explore other ways your organization can hire and retain women and working mothers, let’s look at a sector that employs women at one of the highest rates: education.

Nearly nine out of 10 (87%) of primary school teachers in the U.S. are women, according to the World Bank. Teaching is the second-most common profession for American women, after nursing. Women are twice as likely as men to be teachers.

We also know that, overall, one-third of full-time workers care for a child under the age of 18. Compare this to the fact that 48% of teachers have at least one child to care for, and we see that there are more working mothers in education than other professions.

Why are so many teachers women?

There are many factors to consider here. The history of women as teachers may play a role, as might be the fact that women hold more jobs in less traditionally prestigious professions like education.

Some would point to the caregiving and nurturing aspects of teaching as reasons that the profession attracts a high number of female employees.

But perhaps the most compelling theory is that the profession simply fits better structurally with the life of the working mother. Here are a few ways that education sector policy lines up with working parents’ priorities.

1. School schedules

For working parents, corporate schedules that demand presence in an office from 9-5 make it challenging to care for children. Even if the children are school-aged, most school days end between 2 and 4:30 p.m. This leaves working parents scrambling to coordinate expensive daycare or babysitters.

For mothers who work as teachers, their schedules align far more closely with children who are school-aged. In addition to making pick-up and drop-off easier, if a parent works in the same school district where their child goes to school, they share the same school holidays and break schedules. Working mothers are able to care for their children full-time at home during the summer holiday.

2. Parental leave policies

School district policy on parental leave varies dramatically by geographical location. In North Carolina, for example, new parents are entitled to up to a year of unpaid leave following the birth or adoption of a child. This is far more generous than the 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave guaranteed by federal law.

This is just one example, though, and certainly many parents can’t afford to take an unpaid year off of work following the birth of a child.

Some teachers use school schedules to time their pregnancies with summer break to get the most possible time with new children under a system that doesn’t meet their needs.

3. Benefits

Public school teachers, as government employees, generally have access to decent benefits, a must for any working parent. While teachers are underpaid, most school districts offer robust healthcare options and even pensions.

With education offering little prestige and no promise of wealth, the number of educated women choosing to pursue this career path speaks to the other advantages it offers. Organizations looking to bring working mothers back into the workforce can learn from the opportunities and pitfalls of one of the most common professions for women.

Educate your business – in more ways than one

Your company can contribute to ending decades of gendered economic inequality by making your organization a haven for working moms. But in order to get women to return to the workforce, you have to fix what’s broken and address their needs. Shift to align your priorities with working women and you’ll gain the benefit of them as an untapped staffing resource.

The post The education solution: Address gender barriers as an employer appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Jobs in retail and healthcare are most at risk for high turnover due to the high demands and stress of working throughout the pandemic that caused irrevocable damage to employee loyalty. The tech industry also saw high turnover rates due to burnout, but they also had more competitive remote work options to turn to.

While it is typical for younger employees to have a higher rate of job turnover, that has recently shifted to employees aged 30-45 years old with an increase in resignations in this group by over 20% between 2020 and 2021. The US Great Discontent survey report also finds that employees in this group are more likely to be passively open to new opportunities than other age groups.

Younger employees are less mobile due to lack of job security while Boomers and Gen Xers are more content with their current employment.

Employers should perform their own self-audit to determine what is causing employees to resign if it does not fall under these more obvious categories.

Certain benefits such as working from home have become a premium in the job market due to the pandemic. As the appeal of juggling two workspaces fades, hybrid jobs do not inspire as much employee loyalty as fully remote jobs – 58% versus 73% employee loyalty. Considering desirable benefits that will inspire loyalty will be necessary to avoid costly high-turnover rates.

The cost of high employee turnover

The cost to replace an employee in terms of marketing the position, paying recruiters, interviewing, relocation costs, signing bonuses, and training the replacement comes to about 33% of an employee’s annual salary according to a retention report by the Work Institute.

It will also take time before the new hire is productive – in other words, the time to ramp, as Workable CFO Craig DiForte describes it – and this factors in lost revenue. These hiring costs can add up when one in three hires leave a company in their first two years and is why it is most beneficial to emphasize best practices for employee retention.

An unfortunate hidden cost of high turnover is that the workload falls on the remaining employees who must pick up the slack until the new hire is up to speed. This can be damaging to staff morale which makes it important to add incentives for those loyal workers who remain before they become resentful.

How to improve employee loyalty and retention

For the employees who remain loyal it is important to recognize when they go above and beyond their job description, especially for those who are responsible for training new hires and picking up the slack. Workers who feel appreciated by their supervisors – and are well-compensated – are more likely to stay. This, again, is confirmed in the Great Discontent survey, with two-thirds of US workers saying they need to make more money as a reason why they’re looking elsewhere.

One proactive solution is to incorporate team-building exercises because keeping employees happy translates to higher productivity which is the ultimate goal. Employers will need to make time in their schedule to be accessible and communicate with their team either at work or at more relaxed employee excursions like going to a sporting event, playing mini-golf, or participating in an escape room experience.

There are other ways to make employees happy that do not cost anything. Some workers simply desire career mobility and transparency about how they can grow in their roles at work. Providing job training and a clear path to career advancement are important to keeping loyal employees – 47% of survey respondents reported that feeling stagnant in their roles was the main reason for looking for a new job that had more opportunities for growth and fulfilment.

Hiring and recruiting strategies

Hiring a new employee is an investment and it is important to establish honest job expectations from the start to guarantee that you do not end up wasting each other’s time – not to mention the money involved in training a new hire.

Employers should carefully craft their job description to reflect their company values and should not shy away from explaining the job role in detail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Ip3mLOjOs&ab_channel=Workable

Future interviews and training should reinforce these ideas so there is no confusion regarding expectations.

It can also be helpful to advertise the fun company culture in job advertisements since workers who are leaving due to burnout may be seeking a better work environment.

It is not enough just to be fun right now because the pandemic is still a serious issue affecting job searches. Offering healthcare benefits is more important to employees than ever due to the pandemic and putting onerous restrictions on when benefits go into effect can deter applications.

Advertising initiatives for mental health resources can be a useful selling point as well and should not be overlooked. Social isolation from remote work is one of the downsides despite its popularity and proactively addressing it instead of ignoring the problem that so many are now facing can be a marketable feature for your employer brand.

Visibility is the key to future-proofing your business

The first step to creating a targeted retention program is to establish greater visibility into the root causes of turnover. This may also involve having uncomfortable conversations with employees that have chosen to resign by performing exit interviews. Ultimately, this data will empower your business to attract leading industry talent, retain loyal employees, and reduce turnover costs.

The post How do you overcome the Big Quit as an employer? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The only real ‘surprise’, if there’s one, is that other studies show a growth in value placed on job attractors besides compensation – such as the willingness to take less salary in order to remain remote according to a TeamBlind survey, and the value of perks over salary as a motivator according to Staples.

Our dataset, however, clearly indicates that compensation remains the number-one driver in career opportunities across the board. As one respondent succinctly put it:

“Employees will go where the money is. And where they’re treated respectfully and valued. But, mostly, it’s the money.”

Take a look at the dataset and see for yourself.

Money above all

As stated above, a full seven out of 10 respondents are open to new opportunities, whether they’re passively open or actively looking.

When we asked those respondents to choose from a list of top reasons why they’re open to new opportunities, nearly two-thirds (63.4%) selected “I need to make more money”.

That’s more than double the next-most popular reason, which is “I need a fresh challenge” (24.6%).

Work flexibility (20.8%), meaningfulness in work (19.3%) and career advancement (also 19.3%) are other leading factors prompting the drive to explore new job opportunities. Still, those numbers pale in comparison to compensation.

We also asked respondents what would lure them from their present job to a new one, again choosing from a list of popular attractors. Again, compensation remains the top attractor, with 62.2% of respondents in the US citing that as a top factor in deciding to move to a new company.

Again, other major attractors here are similar to the previous question, with career opportunities (38.1%), work flexibility (37.5%) and job security (32.1%) being reasons why someone would jump to a new job.

Another respondent was frank about their emphasis on salary as the dealmaker:

“If someone pays me more than I make running my own company, I’ll do it!”

We know there are nuanced differences between what an individual might want in terms of a new job at a different company and what they might want to see improved in their current capacity. It’s the difference between being ready to leave and being satisfied, but not 100%, with one’s current workplace.

So we asked that question separately: what could be improved in your current job for a better employee experience?

The answers are still very much the same. Compensation, again, is the number-one area where their current employer can improve, with 57.4% picking that as a top area for improvement.

A third respondent noted the importance of keeping salaries proportionally balanced throughout a company – especially when a company is growing and accumulating wealth:

“As a business owner, I understand that you can not cave to every whim your employees have, but instead of prioritizing balloon money bombs for executive persons, make the wealth of the company available to the people that make it happen. Smaller executive bonuses in favor of increased bonuses / benefits / perks for the workers/moving parts of a successful company.”

Is salary important? Yes, it is, but there are other forms of compensation worth noting.

The different types of compensation

Now, compensation doesn’t necessarily mean only a base salary. It can also mean paid time off, paid vacations, bonuses, incentives, extra perks and benefits, company lunches, team outings, tuition or mortgage reimbursements, pre-tax benefits, and many other things.

Intangibles can include company-wide recognition, advancement potential, the ability to work remotely and on flexible schedules, mentorship, network building, and so on.

Even then, support from their employer – whether it’s in the actual day-to-day work or moral/emotional support – are at the bottom of both lists. The traditional core elements of having a job (compensation, career opportunities, job security) continue to be top of mind.

The motivators are clear – workers in the United States want and need to make more money. Salary is important. Full stop.

There is just one area of the intangibles that deserves a deeper dive: work flexibility, which ranks highly across all these lists. We’ll go deep into that area in the next chapter.

The post Is salary important to workers? Bet your bottom dollar it is appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Our own dataset, however, finds that compensation remains a leading motivator when looking at career opportunities. A US-based respondent from our other survey report on the same topic puts it perfectly:

“Employees will go where the money is. And where they’re treated respectfully and valued. But, mostly, it’s the money.”

Money above all

As stated above, a vast majority of respondents are open to new opportunities, whether they’re passively open or actively looking. When we asked those respondents to choose from a list of top reasons why they’re open to new opportunities, more than half (53.5%) selected “I need to make more money” as a major reason.

Closely following in second place is “I need a fresh challenge”, with 43.9% citing that as a reason.

The need for more meaning in work is a distant third, at 21.9%.

We also asked respondents what would lure them from their present job to a new one, again choosing from a list of popular attractors. Again, compensation tops the list, with 70.1% of UK respondents citing that as a leading motivator when deciding to move to a new company.

Work flexibility (43.5%) and job security (39.5%) are the second and third-most popular attractors in a new opportunity.

One UK respondent noted their disappointment at their current employer cutting corners on compensation:

“The company pays less as we are touted as ‘independent contractors’, they can seemingly bend the rules.”

We know there are nuanced differences between what someone might be hoping to get in terms of a new job at a different company, and what they might want to see improved in their current capacity. It’s the difference between being ready to leave and being satisfied – albeit not 100% with one’s current working situation.

So we asked that question separately: what could be improved in your current job for a better employee experience?

Again, compensation is the number-one area where their current employer can improve, with 60.7% picking that as a top area in need of improvement.

It’s worth noting another comment from the US, on the importance of keeping salaries proportionally balanced throughout a company – especially when a company is growing and accumulating wealth:

“As a business owner, I understand that you can not cave to every whim your employees have, but instead of prioritizing balloon money bombs for executive persons, make the wealth of the company available to the people that make it happen. Smaller executive bonuses in favor of increased bonuses / benefits / perks for the workers/moving parts of a successful company.”

The different types of compensation

Now, compensation doesn’t necessarily mean only a base salary. It can also mean paid time off, paid vacations, bonuses, incentives, extra perks and benefits, company lunches, team outings, tuition or mortgage reimbursements, pre-tax benefits, and many other things.

Intangibles can include company-wide recognition, advancement potential, the ability to work remotely and on flexible schedules, mentorship, network building, and so on.

Even those intangibles – while still valued – aren’t worth as much as raw compensation. Support from their employer, whether it’s in the actual day-to-day work or moral/emotional support are at the bottom of both lists. This suggests that the traditional core elements of having a job (i.e. compensation, career opportunities, job security) remain paramount for workers.

The motivators are clear – the working population in the UK want and need to make more money. Full stop.

There’s just one little intangible that deserves a much deeper dive: work flexibility, which ranks highly across all these lists. We’ll take a deep dive into that in the next chapter.

The post How valued is salary in the UK? Quite a bit, actually appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here’s what we learned:

Most of our respondents say they’re working full-time (60.1%), and another fifth (22.2%) working part time. Just one in 10 (10.4%) say they’re not working right now.

Another 7.4% of respondents say they’re working for themselves, whether that means they’re a contractor, freelancing, or running their own business.

One in 10 respondents (10.4%) say they’re not working right now.

But when we looked at the responses by gender, the numbers were more striking. Those identifying as females are far more likely to be not working (14.5% vs. 6.1%) or working part-time (31.3% vs. 13%) than males.

Females working for themselves also represented a much higher percentage than their male counterparts (10.8% vs. 4%).

On the flip side, more than three quarters of males (76.9%) are working full-time, compared with just 43.4% of females, a significant difference of 33.5 percentage points.

Of those not working, nearly two out of five (38.5%) have not worked in more than five years.

Three out of 10 (30.7%) say they last worked within the last year, with 19.2% saying they have not been working for less than six months.

And now, the important part for you, the employer: a vast majority (74.6%) say they are either actively (29.6%) or passively (45.1%) looking at new opportunities.

That’s three quarters of all respondents who might leave you at any time – meaning when you look at your current workforce, just one in four are pretty settled in their current working capacity.

And many are actually just starting to look for other opportunities right now. Of those actively looking or passively open to new work, 56.6% started looking within the last half year (26.7% just started now, 29.9% in the last half year).

Employers take note: this means a majority of your people are looking to leave or they’re open to that possibility. On the flip side, if you’re looking to hire or build teams, you have a wealth of available talent to tap into here.

This requires a deeper understanding of who these people are and why they’re looking so you can evolve your recruitment and people strategy, as Personio’s CEO recommends. Let’s dig in.

Minorities are looking

One of the demographic questions we asked in the survey was; “Do you identify as a member of a minority group (be it race, ethnicity, language, religion, country of origin, sexual orientation, gender, or another characteristic)?”. Three out of 10 (30.9%) say they do, compared with 66.1% who say they don’t, and 3% prefer not to say.

So we looked at responses based on those answers. Those identifying as minorities are also much more likely to be actively looking (41.3% vs. 24.2%) than those not identifying as minorities. And nearly twice as many non-minorities say they’re not looking for new opportunities when compared with minorities (29% vs. 15.5%).

Younger people are looking

Those in the “actively looking” category are more significantly represented by younger cohorts. More than two out of five (41.7%) of those aged 21-29 say they’re outright looking for new opportunities, with that number skewing sharply downwards when looking at higher age groups.

When combined, the numbers are striking: a staggering 79.8% of those aged 21-29 and a significantly higher 85.1% of those aged 31-39 are either actively looking for or passively open to new work right now. This means just one in five of those aged 21 to 29 and less than 15% of those aged 30 to 39 can be seen as quite settled in their current roles.

Interestingly, the top age group passively open to new opportunities is 50-59 (54.1%).

We know that tenures are usually shorter for younger people. Also younger people tend to be more in rank-and-file positions than managerial/upper-crust positions, and those roles tend to see higher turnover.

But it also indicates younger generations in the UK expect more from their employers and are less willing to put up with the current reality in the workplace.

All in all, people are looking

Again, the message is clear: three quarters of your employees at your company have one foot out of the door at any given time. Your talent is ready to jump ship as soon as they find something better. That’s particularly if they’re younger or if they identify as a minority.

But looking at it from another perspective, this also means a huge talent market that you can tap into when hiring. That raises a new question – how do you attract them to your company?

We’ll cover this in detail in the next few articles, but if you want to read more right now, jump right into our comprehensive Great Discontent worker survey report right here.

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Here’s what we learned:

Most of our US respondents say they’re working full-time (55.3%), with an additional 13.5% working part-time.

One in 10 respondents (10.4%) say they’re working for themselves, whether that means they’re a contractor, freelancing, or running their own business.

One fifth of respondents (20.8%) say they’re not working right now.

Those identifying as females are far more likely to be not working (26% vs. 15.3%) or working part-time (17.7% vs. 8.6%) than males.

We also found an equally striking gender imbalance in those who are working. Those identifying as male are resoundingly more likely to be working full-time (68.4% vs. 46.3%, a difference of 22.1 in percentage points).

And for part-time workers, the opposite is true – 17.7% of those identifying as female are working part-time compared with 8.6% of males.

Of those not working, more than a third (34.4%) have not worked in more than five years.

More than a fifth (21.9%) say their current status not working began just in the last six months, with an additional 13.8% saying it’s been half a year to one year since they had been working.

And now, the important part for you, the employer: seven out of 10 (70.7%) say they are either actively (33.4%) or passively (37.3%) looking for work.

This means that when you look at your existing workforce, just three out of every 10 aren’t potentially looking for work at this time.

And many are actually just starting to look at other opportunities. Of those either actively looking or passively open to other work, 54% started within the last half year (28.1% just started now, 25.7% in the last half year).

Employers take note: this means a majority of your people are looking to leave or they’re open to that possibility. On the flip side, if you’re looking to hire or build teams, you have a wealth of available talent to tap into here.

This merits a deeper understanding of who these people are and why they’re looking, so you can evolve your recruitment and people strategy. Let’s dig in.

Minorities are looking

One of the demographic questions we asked in the survey was; “Do you identify as a member of a minority group (be it race, ethnicity, language, religion, country of origin, sexual orientation, gender, or another characteristic)?”. A full third (33%) say they do, compared with 61.6% who say they don’t, and 5.3% prefer not to say.

So we looked at responses based on those answers. Those identifying as minorities are much more likely to be actively looking (42.9% vs. 29.3%) than those not identifying as minorities.

Younger people are looking

While the “passively looking” category is equally represented across age groups from 21 to 49 years of age, it’s the “actively looking” category that is significantly represented by younger cohorts, with 42.8% of those aged 21-29 saying they’re outright looking for new opportunities.

And when combined, the numbers are striking: a staggering 80% of those aged 21-29, 74.9% of those aged 31-39, and 75% of those aged 40-49 are either actively looking for or passively open to work right now.

We know that tenures are usually shorter for younger people. Also younger people tend to be more in rank-and-file positions than managerial/upper-crust positions, and those tend to see higher turnover.

But it also means younger generations in the United States expect more from their employers and are less willing to put up with the current reality in the workplace.

All in all, people are looking

Again, this points to a clear message: seven out of 10 employees at your company have one foot out of the door at any given time. Your talent is ready to leave as soon as they find something better. That’s particularly if they’re younger or if they identify as a minority.

But again, this is a huge talent market right here that you can tap into when hiring. Which raises a new question – how do you attract them to your company?

We’ll cover this in detail in the next few articles, but if you want to read more right now, jump right into our comprehensive Great Discontent US worker survey report right here.

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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.

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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.

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HR audits are a critical part of ensuring an organization’s employees are productive, satisfied and constantly improving. Audits are kind of like checklists for HR managers. According to SHRM, audits are most commonly used to go over current HR policies, systems, documentations and other various aspects within an organization.

After working in human resources for various corporate organizations over the last 20 years, I know firsthand how important auditing is to both HR professionals and to the overall health of an organization. Audits and productivity go hand in hand.

Here are a few auditing tips for HR professionals to facilitate an organization’s workflow.

1. Focus on the employee experience
2. Fine-tune your candidate experience
3. Conduct ROI analyses
4. Create consistent audit schedules
5. Survey your employees

1. Focus on the employee experience

When auditing an organization’s workflow, the best place to start is by focusing on the organization’s employee experiences. Look at the recruiting, onboarding, service/performance milestones, and administrative processes you have in place. Ask yourself, are they intuitive? Are they simple? Are they effective?

If not, identify areas of improvement within the organization so employees will want to brag about where they work. If employees have positive experiences, they’re more likely to be more productive.

Factors that may contribute to a positive employee experience include:

• Meaningful work
• Growth and promotion opportunities
• Healthy/positive work environment
• Trust in leaders and supervisors
• Supportive management

Additionally, employees with a more positive experience are more likely to produce higher rates of employee retention, customer satisfaction, profitability and work performance.

Read more: Josh Bersin also has a lot to say on the subject of employee experience. Check out our top 10 insights from a recent webinar.

Because of the abundance of hiring laws involved in nearly each step of the employment process, it is also critical for HR professionals to constantly conduct audits to ensure their organization’s workflow is in compliance with all applicable policies and laws in their jurisdiction.

2. Fine-tune your candidate sourcing

Whether or not your candidate sourcing process is effective can also have a massive outcome on the number of new hires your organization receives, as well as the types of hires your organization receives.

How often an organization audits its candidate sourcing practice will vary from business to business. An easy rule of thumb to remember is, if your hiring successes are low, then your audit has been delayed for too long.

Start out by determining how candidates are entering your hiring pipeline, from what sources, and whether or not you’re finding the right kind of talent. Are you using hiring boards? Social media? Have you noticed a pattern since using these sources?

Experience the process as a candidate

This step is more focused on mapping out a potential candidate’s journey. By doing this, HR professionals can clearly see an overview of what an organization’s application process looks like, and whether or not it is effective.

It is important to constantly adjust these processes to ensure your organization is focusing on hiring relevant talent that will only contribute to the growth of an organization.

Define your candidate persona

Additionally, in order to effectively recruit potential employees with relevant work experience for your organization, you must determine more than just where and how candidates are applying in the first place. Start by creating a candidate persona and aligning that persona to the employer’s or organization’s brand.

Next, check the engagement numbers on each of your recruiting platforms. Is posting on Instagram more effective than posting on LinkedIn? Is that technique bringing in large amounts of potential candidates with relevant work experience?

Auditing the hiring process goes beyond avoiding candidates with little to no relevant experience. Ultimately, it saves an organization time, money, energy and resources.

3. Conduct ROI analyses

Return On Investment (ROI) is a term used when measuring the financial return on an investment made. This concept can be applied in HR when conducting audits to analyze employee productivity, budgets, future initiatives, and of course, an ATS.

If you’re looking to build a case for a new ATS, we’ve got an ATS ROI Calculator to get you started. You can tell your decision makers that a good ATS can save your business $127,875 annually – no exaggeration!

When auditing an organization, you should also analyze your budget forecast and scrutinize your spend. This can be achieved by determining which items make sense to continue to invest in and which areas are no longer needed.

This ultimately frees up dollars to improve the HR workflow. Organizations can gauge whether or not they need to reinvest in employees, or save for a future initiative. ROI analyses help HR professionals clearly see what is worth spending on, rather than continuing to spend company dollars on expenses that have a low ROI.

4. Create consistent audit schedules

Most HR processes are heavily dependent upon employee data. Keeping the data clean and updated is imperative in order to create analytics dashboards that help your organization make important people and business decisions. Audits are a reflection of the data at your organization. If your audits are consistent and accurate, then it will reflect in the data you collect.

Regular process audits keep data clean and serve to identify breaks in the process before those breaks become a huge problem. Process audits examine a set of results and then determine whether the activities, resources and behaviors that caused those results are being managed effectively and efficiently.

HR professionals will most likely create a schedule for their process audits, either annually, monthly or quarterly. Each organization’s auditing needs will vary based on many different factors such as the employee workforce population size, the company’s size as well as the company’s overall goals.

Process audits can also help HR teams better assign roles and responsibilities within the team, identify administrative burdens and ways to resolve them, and whether or not the process is worth continuing altogether. In turn, process audits boost the overall productivity of an organization.

5. Survey your employees

Surveys are an important tool, often overlooked by many organizations and HR professionals. The best and most effective way to know what your HR team should be focused on, is by simply asking your employees.

Begin outlining your survey by deciding what type of survey you would like to conduct in order to answer your question. Different types of surveys produce different outcomes. Do you want to conduct a qualitative survey, focused on written feedback? Or would you like to gather data by using a quantitative survey instead?

Planning these surveys out can be easy and quick, depending on the content and length of each survey question.

Surveys, while sometimes cumbersome, provide the insight you want and the opinions you need to hear to overhaul processes and develop a meaningful people strategy. They blatantly show us what we should be focusing on, as well as how employees feel toward certain elements of your organization.

Employees are willing to tell you where you are falling short, what things they love about the company, and what things need more attention. Asking for employee feedback also establishes a level of trust between supervisors and employees; if employees feel safe enough to give quality, in-depth feedback, most HR professionals can assume they have a high level of trust with them.

Auditing is worth the time

While auditing may seem like an unnecessary or time consuming process to many people, HR professionals know how important auditing is. Auditing an organization’s processes, employees, investment returns and hiring practices ultimately give HR professionals a clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t.

They save organizations time, money and resources while continuously striving for improvement and improving workflow. That’s exactly why audits should be included in every organization’s HR toolbelt moving forward.

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Quit rates are through the roof, and weirdly enough, it’s not translating into a larger and more active candidate pool for employers – rather, it’s the opposite. Workers appear to be dropping out of the system, and they’re not all ready to move to a new job. Data from the Workable network confirms this as well.

Employers are taking a hit from all this. At best, they’re making do with leaner teams; at worst, they’re shutting down entirely because of this unique talent shortage.

It’s becoming more challenging to retain talent, and harder to attract candidates to new roles. As leaders in the hiring space, we’re very cognizant of this, and we want to help you overcome these challenges. So, instead of theorizing and speculating and predicting and analyzing, we decided to ask 1,250 workers in the US and UK to find out what they want and value in a job.

Out of the many insights in the Great Discontent survey, we have four main takeaways for you:

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. Again, this is especially so for women.

Our survey also finds that three quarters of workers may be ready to bolt at any given time. This signals a potential disconnect in the system. It’s a tough situation for employers, and this may require a fresh look at your talent attraction and retention strategy.

These are strange, historic, exciting times, and it’s clear the rules of the game are changing for employers. We don’t have all the answers – those will come later in hindsight. But the conversation is always worth adding to. We think you’ll find useful insights here as we venture into the new world of work and post-pandemic environment.

Without further ado, check out our reports:

• The Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey (US)
• The Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey (UK)

Have insights, concerns, criticisms, swear words, accolades, or anything else? We’d love to hear them. Please send them to our content team at content@workable.com and we’ll be sure to address each and every one of them.

Yours in sustainability,

Nikos Moraitakis
CEO, Workable

The post Announcing the Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But hiring managers across all industries are losing time and money in the struggle to fill their (often urgent) tech-related positions.

The talent battle and the mounting skills gap

When researchers at McKinsey & Co. sought to understand the apparent skills gap, they separated relevant technology skills into seven separate ‘battlegrounds.’ Offering CIOs across the globe their choice from the seven, they asked survey respondents what will matter most to their organization in the next three to five years.

The largest percentage of CIOs ranked data analytics, IT, mobile, and web design as the fields with the most talent mismatch – the highest amount of need and the lowest amount of supply.

Quantified, McKinsey’s experts are predicting a global deficit of 3.5 million cybersecurity positions by the end of this year. They expect that demand for agile skills in tech-related roles will outnumber supply by four to one, and the need for big data talent will be roughly 60% greater than the available labor. For a sector that’s shaping our post-COVID future, it’s not the demand-supply curve that one would expect.

Real continuous learning: evolution as we speak

The numbers paint an alarming image, but they don’t say much in the way of why. A crucial consideration is the rapid mental upkeep that the ongoing modernization of technology requires. A candidate today is required not only to have in-depth knowledge of existing systems, but also to understand how to transition from one system to another. Outdated programming languages, shifting organizational needs, and new-to-market vendors make intensive continuous learning a part of every tech-adjacent role.

Hiring managers and employers might ask themselves, then: are we supporting that learning? Generally, most leaders understand that training, re-skilling, and upskilling are all lifeboats in choppy COVID-19 waters. Turning to existing team members for new needs is not only cost-efficient, it’s necessary for a healthy corporate culture. 82% of global executives seem to understand that, but only 27% of McKinsey’s respondents said they’ve seen their employers pursue a talent transformation within the last two years.

Filling those seven areas of tech-related needs will require an artful combination of re-skilling, up-skilling, and open-minded recruitment methods that draw on alternate sources of talent. For post-COVID tech talent recruiters and hiring managers, below are a few promising ways to extend a talent search.

The post-COVID tech talent search: talent comes from anywhere

New candidates could determine the course of a company’s recovery; it’s crucial that employers remain open to talent in all of its many forms, shapes, sizes, and funnels. Beginning on a local level, accredited educational institutions should be a feature of every recruitment scheme. Developing relationships with nearby colleges and universities can help hiring teams engage early candidates and better understand the candidate’s skill set based on curricular offerings.

The pandemic has also shifted the educational landscape, bringing with it long-awaited changes. A number of options now exist on the market for certification and needs-aware training, helping candidates at any stage of the career train move toward the specific needs of their local job markets.

Partnering with training institutions, employers can not only engage with a self-motivated pool of applicants, they can help training professionals understand the nuances of what their local business ecosystem is seeking.

From soft skills training to advanced coding languages, local and virtual training courses are alternative talent pools, and recruitment teams should make every effort to be involved at the early stages.

The new professional ecosystem: a holistic approach

The current shortage landscape calls for non-traditional solutions. At the talent sourcing phase of the recruitment process, hiring managers can capitalize on educational settings, training platforms, and online certification offerings to find incredible talent that will be perfectly positioned to make an early contribution.

The vetting phase, too, requires new techniques. The number of self-taught IT professionals is higher than ever and continues to rise. Many candidates go through short skill acquisition programs that don’t hold the same weight as a formal degree on a resume.

Read more: Tech recruitment in London: Luring and sourcing top tech talent

But one look at their portfolio might make it clear that this is a candidate the company can’t afford to lose. Opening up the recruitment process not only to different sources of talent, but also different forms of credentials, is a crucial part of post-COVID tech talent hiring. Portfolios and skills tests should be as important, if not more important, to the hiring team.

To better understand the performance of the candidate outside of their credentials, hiring managers can involve senior IT executives within the company in the recruitment process. Roles are growing more sophisticated and malleable; it’s likely that the current employees know best the kind of competence and skills that would make the most beneficial addition to the team.

Tech-focused candidates want to speak the language of tech with other tech professionals. Rather than trying to get a full recruitment team up to speed, involving senior tech executives, and maybe those anchor hires, is the superior strategy.

Read more: Wooing top tech talent: Recruiting in the Boston tech scene

Technology is driving business success and post-COVID enterprise relevance. But it won’t be a linear path to securing a well-staffed and well-supported team. Non-traditional strategies, from talent sourcing to skills assessment, will be needed to build a robust, diverse and competent team.

By partnering with education institutions and local training programs, giving due weight to a candidate’s portfolio, and involving tech professionals throughout the recruitment process, hiring managers and employers will have what they need to appeal to top talent and compete in the post-COVID hiring arena.

Pablo Listingart is the Founder and Executive Director of ComIT, a non-profit organization designed to help people overcome employment barriers and re-introduce themselves to the local market. With an extensive network, ComIT builds ever-changing courses tailored to industry needs, connecting promising graduates with companies in need of local talent.

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• 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.

While no sector has been spared the impact of this rapidly evolving resignation trend, a new survey from HR technology disruptor Hibob makes it clear that one market segment is bearing the weight more than others: that of mid-sized companies. The survey of 1,000 full-time US workers working remotely since the onset of the pandemic has insights that mid-sized businesses must pay attention to.

With 71% of mid-size company staff now open to the prospect of freelancing and prioritizing flexibility as a critical benefit, how can mid-sized companies manage employee expectations, reduce the risk of resignation and evolve their recruiting strategies to compensate?

Let’s dive in.

By the numbers: what’s the problem?

According to the survey, 44% of mid-sized company employees either quit or were laid off by their employers over the last 12 months. What’s more, 65% of those still employed at mid-sized businesses thought about leaving their jobs — compared to only 59% of those at smaller firms.

Even more telling? While between 36%-40% of employees at smaller and larger firms said they were likely to quit their jobs in the next year, a much-higher 56% of mid-sized workers said they are “likely or very likely” to make the move. That’s a warning bell, if any, for mid-sized businesses who need to stay competitive.

When it comes to what’s making them so willing to move on, 45% said they wanted better benefits and 55% pointed to a better work/life balance. In fact, 56% of survey respondents said they would quit if their employer didn’t offer flexible hours and location options, and 66% felt that going back to the office would negatively impact their success — compared to both smaller and larger firms, mid-sized employees said they were the most productive when working from home.

Put simply? Resignations are on the rise, and mid-sized businesses are disproportionally feeling the burden.

Why the numbers: where’s the disconnect?

The Great Resignation is a catchy term, but it describes the outcome rather than the root cause. Advisory firm Gallup offers another option: “The Great Discontent”, suggesting that lack of employee engagement is driving them away from current companies and into the arms of their competitors.

We’ve got another perspective: The Great Disconnect. While discontent with current teams, management structures or existing benefit packages provides some of the impetus for this rapid resignation trend, there’s a bigger problem — disconnect between what companies are willing to offer and what staff really want.

The biggest issue is a flip-flop on flexibility: 71% of staff at mid-sized companies say their HR teams have backpedaled on flexible work policies, while the numbers drop to 60% for enterprises and just over 50% for smaller firms. What’s more, a full third of mid-sized workers are worried that leveraging flexible work options will be frowned upon and ultimately hurt their career progression.

Compensation challenges are also emerging. As noted above, 71% of mid-sized employees are open to the idea of freelancing – a side gig, if you will – and 28% have already taken a second job, while just 11% of their large enterprise counterparts have done the same.

Hibob CEO Ronni Zehavi makes it clear: “As resignation rates remain high, recruiters, company leaders, and HR decision-makers must re-evaluate and understand what employees are really looking for today.”

What to do now — and what to do next

So what does all this mean for mid-sized companies? It’s time for new recruitment and retention strategies.

Let’s start with what to do right now: If you’ve walked back any flexible work policies, turn around and walk the other way. As noted by NPR, skilled workers are in demand: If they’re being pushed back into long commutes and overtime at the office, they have no trouble getting multiple offers that offer better work-life balance.

Next, consider current benefit structures and their impact on staff satisfaction. Salary plays a role here but it’s not the only component: Employees are also looking for financial wellness programs to help them better manage money, more paid time off to spend with friends and family, and improved mental and physical health supports.

Moving forward, mid-sized companies must also recognize the reality of resignations: despite best efforts, some staff will move on to new opportunities. To reduce the impact of these resignations, companies need a new approach to recruiting that leverages technology to identify, evaluate and hire candidates ASAP.

With talented employees now in demand across industries and market verticals, there’s no time for traditional hiring processes that take weeks or months: companies need to position themselves as the right choice for prospective staff that feel disconnected at their current jobs and are looking for a better fit.

Act now to stay relevant

Bottom line? The Great Resignation has arrived, and it’s disproportionately impacting mid-sized businesses. The numbers make it clear: Discontent and disconnect are driving staff separations. Managing this new reality means fostering flexibility, bolstering benefits and integrating technology to reduce total turnover, boost satisfaction and offer a new home for workers making the switch.

Workers are clearly not afraid to make a move – you, as an employer, must take the necessary steps outlined above so you can reap the benefits of increased applications to your job openings rather than higher numbers of emails giving you a two-week notice.

The post The Great Discontent – mid-sized businesses especially take note appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Return to office and Delta: 6 tips

1. Pay attention to state laws

The CDC issued guidance that just about everyone – vaccinated or not – should wear a mask when inside where social distancing isn’t possible. But, the CDC’s guidelines are not laws. Your state and local governments decide what the binding rules are for this.

Texas, for instance, has no statewide mask mandate and prohibits local governments from implementing a mask mandate. However, several counties have created mask mandates and are battling against the governor. How do you win in a situation like this?

You can always require more safety measures than the government requires, so you will not be in the wrong to require a mask for your employees and customers in the workplace. So, even if you’re in a state that does not have a mask mandate, you can make one for your employees.

Some states do have mask mandates, such as Oregon’s, which went into effect on Aug. 13. If your business operates across multiple states, you’ll need to pay attention to all state laws to make sure you comply with the mandates in each jurisdiction. This may mean employees in different sites face different rules when returning to office.

2. Consider vaccine mandates

Federal law allows you to require your employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 (as long as you have exceptions for medical and religious reasons). As long as this doesn’t violate state law, you can create a vaccine mandate to help protect your employees.

Read more: Vaccine policies in the workplace

However, keep in mind that you may end up with a disparate impact claim, as vaccination rates are not consistent across racial groups. Black people, for instance, are far less likely to be vaccinated than their White counterparts.

If you’re having trouble recruiting or retaining employees right now (which many businesses are), limiting your applicant pool to fully vaccinated candidates may impede your ability to hire. It’s worth thinking about how your policies impact your business.

In the return to office during Delta, you can provide incentives for employees to vaccinate rather than punishing those who don’t. The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) has said that you can offer a reward as long as it is “noncoercive.” So, yes, you can offer a $500 reward to employees who receive a vaccine against COVID-19.

3. Extend working from home

Rather than implementing mask rules, mandating vaccines, or requiring people to test for COVID regularly, you should extend working from home if possible instead of asking employees to returning to office during Delta. Indeed, not all employees can (or should) work from home, but those who can should continue to do so.

This may be the easiest way to reduce the risk for your employees – even vaccinated employees. People with health concerns are the ones that remain at the highest risk from COVID-19.

If an employee requests to work from home, and there is any way to make that happen, you should strongly consider allowing the employee to do so.

4. Prepare for school shutdowns

Unlike last school year, most schools are open for in-person schooling. This is important for your employees, as they rely on schools not only for education but for babysitting. Last school year, children who were doing online school required a parent at home to monitor and help – which created a difficult situation for many working parents.

However, the Delta Variant seems to spread quickly – more than previous COVID incarnations – which means that just because schools are open today, they may not be tomorrow. That’s doubly so because vaccines for younger children are not yet available, making them more vulnerable to infection. Most likely, you will see individual schools or classes put into quarantine to stop a local outbreak rather than an entire state closing its doors.

If you plan for this, it won’t be a shock when your employees call in because their kids are quarantined and have no childcare. Don’t punish or terminate employees who are stuck in this situation – it should not count as a performance issue if the schools shut down.

Talk with your employees now about plans for dealing with school shutdowns. If you make a plan today, the impact will be less than if you wait until the school boards make a decision.

5. Prepare for angry employees

No matter what decision you make as a business owner, you will not have 100% happy employees. If you mandate vaccines, some employees will quit, or you will have to fire them for not being vaccinated. Some employees may quit if you don’t require vaccines because they don’t feel safe at work.

If you mandate masks for everyone, you may get a revolt from some employees who feel that this is an overreaction. If you don’t mandate masks, you may find other employees complaining that you aren’t doing your best to create a healthy workplace. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

You need to take health and local sentiments into consideration. It’s a balancing act, and what is best for your business may not be best for the business across the street. Who is your clientele? A nursing home should have different requirements than a fast-food restaurant down the road.

You will need to explain your decision to your employees. Consult with a local employment attorney before announcing your policy.

6. Require COVID testing

You can require mandatory COVID-19 tests regularly. Some businesses want unvaccinated employees to pay for these tests as a punishment for not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, but this is not a good idea. First of all, free COVID tests are available in all states. Second, if free tests aren’t available in your area, you should pay for them. Employment attorney Jon Hyman explains:

“EEOC guidance strongly suggests that the ADA requires employers to cover the costs of COVID-19 testing. The EEOC’s Enforcement Guidance on Disability-Related Inquiries and Medical Examinations of Employees Under the ADA provides that an employer must pay for all medical exam related costs when an employer requires the examination because the employer reasonably believes the employee poses a ‘direct threat.’”

The only way out of this

Everyone is tired of COVID, and the Delta Variant doesn’t help. But, we’ve either got to get sick or get vaccinated to get done with this. The Delta Variant spreads faster than the original virus, and even vaccinated people can still (occasionally) get sick. However, if you are vaccinated, you’re much more likely to have a mild case.

Whether you decide to mandate vaccines or require masks, encourage your employees to receive the vaccine. The CDC just approved a third dose for people who are immunocompromised. Let your employees know about this as well.

Let’s all work together so that we can end the pandemic and return to the office – and get back to normal life.

The post Return to office and the Delta Variant: How do you manage it? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Instead of firing them, help your employee remain a productive team member by following these seven tips.

1. Discuss outpatient treatment

Many people with addictions require inpatient treatment. That means they live at the treatment center, which makes it difficult to continue working.

However, people with milder addictions and strong support systems at home may qualify for outpatient treatment. In outpatient treatment, a person regularly attends a treatment center while living at home. They can then schedule their treatment sessions around their work schedule.

Encourage your employees to ask their doctors whether they qualify for outpatient treatment.

2. Set up an Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a work-based program that helps employees cope with addictions and other personal issues that affect their job performance. It provides free, confidential resources such as education, assessments, counseling, and referrals to support groups.

These services can help your employees navigate the challenges of working during treatment. They’re usually available via phone, e-mail, video chat, or online chat.

Most employers operate EAPs through third-party providers. To find a provider, search online EAP directories, such as this one. You can also ask fellow employers for referrals.

3. Provide accommodations

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers must provide reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities, including addiction.

An accommodation is a change to a job or work environment that helps a person with a disability complete the job’s essential functions. Common accommodations for people with addictions include:

• more frequent breaks
• special break locations
• support animals
• weekly meetings to determine whether the accommodations are working

Accommodations can help your employees feel more calm and productive as they balance work with addiction treatment.

4. Offer a more flexible work schedule

When you provide a more flexible work schedule, employees won’t miss out on therapy appointments, support groups, or other important services that boost their overall well-being and productivity.

As a bonus, flexible work schedules decrease stress. Stress often causes a person with addiction to relapse (start using drugs again).

Before your employees start addiction treatment, ask if they’ll need any adjustments to their work schedules. Hold regular meetings to ensure their current schedule is effective for both your employee and the company.

5. Encourage self-care

As mentioned above, stress is a common cause of relapse. That’s why you should create a workplace that promotes self-care and relaxation.

For example, you could designate a quiet area of the office for meditation and mindfulness. The area may include features such as:

• dim lighting
• soothing artwork
• a comfortable couch
• yoga mats or prayer mats
• peaceful music

Employees with addictions can come to this area when faced with cravings or other stressful emotions.

To further reduce stress, remind employees to take full lunch breaks and avoid taking work home on weekends (unless they find the extra work helps keep their minds off drugs).

You can also encourage self-care by reminding employees to:

• get at least eight hours of sleep per night
• eat a well-balanced diet with plenty of vegetables, fruits, and other nutritious foods
• exercise regularly

6. Reduce stigma

Like other mental health conditions, drug addiction attracts a large amount of stigma. Other people in your office may judge an employee with addiction as lazy or weak. This type of judgment can cause stress, which increases the risk of relapse.

To help your employee stay calm and productive during treatment, create a stigma-free workplace. For instance, you could hold mandatory meetings that explain how addiction is a disease rather than a moral failing.

Also, tell your staff to avoid stigmatizing language like “addict” or “junkie.” They should instead use person-first, non-judgmental language such as “a person with addiction.”

7. Discuss medical leave

If your employee needs inpatient treatment, remind them that they can take medical leave.

If your company has at least 50 employees, you’re probably covered by the Family and Medical Leave ACT (FMLA). This Act provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for medical reasons, including addiction treatment.

To qualify for FMLA leave, your employee must have worked for your company for at least 12 months and at least 1,250 hours during the 12 months before taking leave.

If your company isn’t covered by FMLA, it might be covered by your state’s family and medical leave laws.

Aside from medical leave, your employees can also take time off for treatment using their Paid Time Off (PTO).

Once your employee completes treatment, facilitate a smooth transition back to work by encouraging frequent, open communication. Also, point your employee to resources such as the EAP when necessary.

Amy Matton is a content writer for Ark Behavioral Health. She strives to reduce the stigma surrounding addiction and other mental health conditions.

The post Employees with addiction: 7 tips to retain them during treatment appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And the Great Discontent survey carried out by Workable in June 2021 points to the disparity in current working situation between the genders, with those identifying as female far more likely to be not working (26% vs. 15.3%) or working part-time (17.7% vs. 8.6%) than males in the United States.

The World Economic Forum also reported similar data:

What does that say about how our workplaces are doing in supporting working mothers?

We’ll let TopResume’s report answer that:

“Women have had to navigate the stress and time-management challenges of taking on the role of teacher and child-care provider while attempting to work or find work during quarantine. All of these factors together have led to what economists are calling the world’s first ‘she-cession’ – a women-led economic downturn.”

To gain further insight, we sat down with TopResume’s career expert Amanda Augustine – herself a working mom – for a conversation about this. Clearly, employers need to up their game if they want to be part of changing things for the better.

The plight of the working mother

The mother of a five-year-old boy with special needs, Amanda’s own personal and professional load is further stressed by the fact that she has a husband who works long hours as an essential worker. And, she says, women feel they have to take all that on – more so than men.

“I think for the working mother in general, we’ve grown up hearing, ‘You can do anything’, and we’ve somehow translated that over time into ‘You should do everything,’” says Amanda. “And there’s a lot of extra responsibility and weight and stress we put on ourselves.”

And that commitment to a full-time workload also ate into Amanda’s daily schedule. Before the pandemic, she commuted into New York City for work three times a week, translating into three hours of commuting each day. This meant less time with her son all around.

“I only saw my son for two hours a day on the weekdays. I was gone well before he was awake. And I came home, picked him up from daycare and I got two hours before he had to be in bed.”

The sacrifice and the stigma

Work has long been an unmovable pillar around which we mold other parts of our lives. It’s created a situation where working mothers worry that if they make concessions in the workplace – such as arriving late or leaving early because they need to drop off or pick up their kids at school or the daycare, it impacts their career arc.

“[Those] suddenly become issues where they have to be navigated around fears that you’re not going to be put up for the promotion, or you’re not going to get the raise,” Amanda explains.

“And because whether, you know, whether [working mothers think] correctly or not, they’re going to assume that it’s either not feasible or that they’re concerned that other priorities will take over, which is just… it’s unfair.”

There’s also a proximity bias in the workplace that makes things even more difficult for working mothers forced to make amends in their schedule to accommodate demands on the home front.

“There’s this false assumption by managers that the people they see working in the office are more productive than the ones that they don’t see.”

It’s not COVID’s fault

These problems facing working mothers aren’t rooted in the pandemic. Rather, the pandemic simply exposed – and exacerbated – the problems that have long existed in the system.

“Many of us were already underwater before the pandemic and the pandemic was that last straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Amanda. “It pushed on all those little cracks and just made them that, that more obvious.”

That’s why working mothers are leaving the workforce in droves – if they can – because they’ve given up on the possibility of a much-needed balance between work and home life.

“Women aren’t going to just show up and sacrifice everything,” says Amanda, emphasizing that this is a situation faced by fathers as well.

“For some people, it’s a re-evaluation of their priorities. Many are assuming that they’re not going to find a job that’s going to allow them to still keep some of these things [remote work, etc.] that were actually the silver linings of the pandemic.”

That 69% statistic points to this new reality.

“What’s happening now is that people are [saying], ‘Do we really need that income? Can we get by without it? I’m going to hold out until there’s something that really makes sense and is a good fit. I’m not rushing back to the workplace, because I want to see what happens.’”

It’s a crisis, but it’s an opportunity

We’re already seeing a recruitment crisis – as indicated by the staggering numbers of job openings, higher than the number of unemployed, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This exodus of working mothers presents an added challenge for recruiters already facing depleted talent pools.

“[Many] recruiters I hear from and talk to are just saying, ‘We can’t fill these positions. We can’t get people in the door what’s going on here.’”

And it’s not that these are not good opportunities. These are “white collar, corporate, good paying jobs”, Amanda adds.

“A good portion of your normal labor force or, you know, is not looking right now. And so you’re missing out on a lot of that.”

But there’s good news. They’ll come back – if the conditions are right.

“Many of them would probably come back [if] they’d be able to still bring in that money or do what they love, but in a more balanced fashion where they don’t feel as though they’re slightly underperforming in every aspect of their lives.”

That’s where greater support of working mothers is needed in the workplace. Forcing your employees to find a balance between work and home actually hurts at both ends. Something always has to give.

“If you’re feeling really great as a mom, you feel like you’re probably not the star employee that day. And if you’re really rocking it at work, chances are, you’re not feeling like you’re getting a gold star from your kids that day.

“And you know, it’d be nice if that wasn’t necessarily the feeling all the time.”

The need for flexible schedules

So how do you build an environment that supports working mothers? Obviously not every company can do everything – but you can start by looking at the things you can do that don’t drastically impact your bottom line. The first objective is to build up your support system that you can offer to a potential employee. Have a strategy that enables mothers to thrive in every area – both at home and at work.

One way to do that is introduce greater flexibility in work – a lesson we all learned from the pandemic, as shown in our New World of Work survey report in August 2020 which found that 71.1% of respondents see remote work and distributed teams as one of the biggest paradigm shifts coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amanda agrees.

“More jobs are becoming location agnostic. This giant work-from-home experiment has been successful for a lot of organizations,” she explains.

“There are a lot of employees that I know of while they were still working, moved across the country, just decided they’re like, ‘You know what? I don’t want this cost of living. And if I can work anywhere, I’m going to do it.’ A lot of people are relocating.”

She points to her own company as an example.

“That’s why we’re not really going back to one central office. [It’s] because they saw it worked and they started hiring people all across the country.”

Another thing Amanda’s employer is doing right in supporting working mothers is leaving the responsibility of scheduling to employees.

“Are you getting your work done? Then we don’t care when you’re logging in and logging out. Are you there when you need to be for a meeting? Great. As long as you’re producing, no one cares.

“If you have to run out in the middle of the day to grab your kid or, you know, take them to the appointment or pick them up from daycare, as long as you’re getting your work done and you’re on when you need to be on for the very important meetings, nobody’s going to look twice and think there’s anything wrong.”

Employers can step up their game

And that’s a mindset which needs to be adopted by employers if they want to attract – and retain – workers. That’s especially when it comes to working mothers, who benefit more from this than other professionals.

“Working mothers [see this] more as a necessity or a requirement as opposed to an extra benefit.”

You can step up your policies supporting working mothers if you’re looking to attract them to your company, especially if you don’t have the luxury of moving to a permanently remote or flexible working system.

Amanda suggests looking at your maternity leave policy, and looking at other ways you can help ease the demand that a working parent faces.

“Are you providing either stipends for daycare or are you providing onsite daycare or services? Do you have a service that you keep on retainer that your employees can call if they need help securing a last-minute babysitter because someone’s ill or something like that? Those services do exist.”

Be leaders by example

While these and other programs and policies are a great first step for employers, it’s not enough, says Amanda. It also comes down to the mentality of your organization – and from the very top.

“It also has to come through in your communication. [Are you] a company that truly values and embraces and supports the working parent or various different lifestyles and is able to adapt?”

Personal experience plays a factor as well, she adds, recalling an anecdote from a friend who expressed that she couldn’t wait for her CEO and his wife to have a kid because “he doesn’t get it today”.

Instead, get ahead of that situation, with executive leadership setting the tone for a truly inclusive working environment.

Amanda described an experience before our interview where she was in a meeting with one of her own executives.

“She was sitting on her patio and she goes, ‘This may be my only moment of vitamin D all day, because I don’t know when my son gets home from daycare, if it’s going to be an outside or inside day’.”

That was a strong message from leadership. The result was that Amanda – and likely her other colleagues – now felt empowered to be able to do the same.

“I would have never considered that before, until I saw somebody a couple of rungs up for me doing it and it being perfectly OK, and not making a big deal about it.”

So pay attention, managers, directors, and executives.

“If you’re going to offer those benefits to your team, take them. If you’re encouraging them to take time off, you have to take a few days off too.”

This is a wakeup call – will you answer?

“There were a lot of awful things that came [in the pandemic], but I have to say for me, there were some definite silver linings. It has a lot to do with getting a better sense of what is a healthy work-life balance and what I want. But […] for many people out there, I think it’s a wakeup call.”

You can answer that call by updating your policies and employee management strategy to accommodate and support working mothers, and you’ll find that you attract the very best candidates to your company.

“It would be really nice if, if we could change that narrative and put systems in place that helped to support a new narrative out there,” Amanda says.

Don’t wait for others to set the standard – you can lead the charge. Be part of the solution.

Amanda Augustine is a well-recognized expert in career advancement, ranging from developing one’s professional brand to acing that next interview. She’s the resident career expert for TopResume, the world’s largest resume-writing service, as well as a certified professional resume writer (CPRW) and certified professional career coach (CPCC).

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The needle of diversity is moving too slowly. Perhaps change can be accelerated by showing how diversity can drive extraordinary value. It’s now about determining how to unlock it.

Diversity is more than gender

The dominant focal points for diversity are gender and ethnicity. The deficit in these dimensions is obvious in most organizations, as they’re relatively easy to measure. They’re also well informed by moral, ethical, and social drivers, as much as anything else.

When you consider organizational performance, there is a range of categories you can add to gender and ethnicity that provide an even greater opportunity for unlocking value. Differing perspectives are shaped by people’s sexual orientation, their age, their immigrant status, the industries they’ve worked in, the physical locations they’re in, and even the size of the organizations they’ve been part of. The list goes on.

The more you can adopt the mindset that difference equals value, the more attuned you’ll be to that value when you encounter it in a job interview, a meeting, or a business case.

What’s the point of having a highly diverse team if you can’t draw out the unique experiences, capabilities, and perspectives of each of your people? The challenge for every leader is to create an environment where people feel safe to contribute, to challenge each other, and to debate issues with a view to getting the best outcome – and not simply pushing your own opinions.

Competing against this ideal are two things: our natural tendency to avoid conflict, and our fear of being wrong. But high-performing teams aren’t built on unanimity and consensus. They are built on robust debate, respectful challenge, and fearless honesty.

Six tips for leveraging diversity

Leveraging diversity is most important in two scenarios:

1. When you’re solving a complex problem.
2. When you’re making a difficult decision.

These are the points at which you want as much diversity of input as possible. It will help you to avoid groupthink, and consider factors that may not have been identified by a less diverse group.

As most of this type of work occurs in group settings, these six practical tips on leveraging diversity will help you to maximize the opportunities when they present themselves.

1. Qualify the room

Only people who can add value to a decision or problem should be in the room, and this is usually fewer people than you think (or they think). People love having input in an all care, no responsibility way, but that’s not constructive. It slows the process down and adds little value to the outcome.

Get the right people in the room, give them all the information they need to fully contribute to the topic, and create an environment where it’s easy for them to express their views.

2. Don’t speak first

As a leader, it’s important to empower and encourage people to contribute before they have the benefit of knowing your position. Only the most resilient and robust individuals will contradict or offer alternatives to a strong leader, once that leader has shown her hand.

Facilitating the conversation to draw out people’s views and incorporate them into the framework of the discussion will do a lot to unlock diversity, so you don’t want to stymie that in any way.

3. Listen objectively

Listening is a much underrated skill, but one that’s critical to fostering diversity. We naturally tend to discard any information that doesn’t conform to our own world view.

Putting aside your own preferences and viewpoints, and asking yourself a few simple questions will improve your listening skills:

• What can I learn from this?
• What am I hearing that I hadn’t considered previously?
• How can this perspective improve our current position?

When you open yourself to the input of others, you’ll pick up some valuable insights that can only add to the existing conversation.

4. Draw in the quiet ones

Many people don’t like to talk in group forums. They need to learn to, and as a leader you need to teach them how. Although it might be safer and less confrontational to send an email to express their views, people only bring true value when they allow their ideas to be challenged.

When moderating group discussions, call on these people by name. Support them, and show them that their perspectives are valued, and that it’s safe for them to contribute.

5. Show a willingness to shift

When something changes your mind, or improves your understanding of an issue, be explicit about the fact that you’re changing your mind based on their input. This will encourage people to contribute in the future. If you don’t constantly demonstrate a willingness to be convinced of an opinion other than your own, people will stop offering theirs.

Once people can see that their ideas can make a real difference, they’ll be more likely to offer them up. Over time, this will become a key motivator for your people.

6. Encourage robust debate

Respectful, robust debate is the means by which alternative viewpoints are uncovered and challenged. Help your people to become more confident by rewarding them for engaging in this way.

Public praise and one-on-one reinforcement can motivate someone to up the ante in their contribution, because they understand why it’s important and they’re prepared to take a little personal risk to see that unfold.

Without robust debate of alternative viewpoints, people’s input is only of marginal value.

Make performance through diversity your brand

Your ability to liberate people’s talent and experience is the real key to unlocking and leveraging diversity. Ultimately, this becomes a true driver of performance, and a defining characteristic of your team. Results speak louder than anything else, so if you learn to harness the power of diversity to drive better results, people will sit up and pay attention.

Once this becomes part of your culture, it forms an important plank in your employee value proposition. Why would people want to work for you? Because you value diversity in a way that takes the organization to new levels of performance – it’s your brand, after all.

Who wouldn’t want to work in a company like that?

Martin G. Moore is the former CEO of CS Energy. Within five years, he grew earnings from $17 million to $441 million, a compound annual growth rate of 125%. Moore hosts the chart-topping No Bullsh!t Leadership podcast, and his book, No Bullsh!t Leadership, is scheduled to be published in August 2021.

The post Diversity on its own isn’t enough: 6 tips to leverage value appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That means you need to focus on recruitment and retention strategies that actually work. Flip that and focus first on retention and then on recruitment. If you can retain your employees, that reduces the work you have to do to recruit new ones.

And remember that good recruitment also means fewer problems with retention. Getting the right people into the right jobs impacts your retention in a way that a specialized program never can.

Here are five ideas that will work.

1. Hire for potential, not experience

“You must have a college degree and five years of experience in X.” These types of requirements are standard in job postings, but researchers found that for many jobs, employees will still need to learn 10 additional skills within the next 18 months.

In other words, even if your new hire meets all the job requirements today, that means 10 new skills needed as they settle into their new role.

If you are insistent that every candidate has every skill, you may end up with a very short list of candidates – and hiring someone whose skills may be obsolete in a month anyway. You should look for people who have a solid – and versatile – foundation and the ability and desire to learn new things.

Keep this in mind for a recruitment and retention strategy as well. Often, companies don’t want to promote from within because they want someone in the position that can ‘hit the ground running’.

This strategy denies reality because the position will change anyway. Retain your best employees by promoting them into stretch roles.

2. Stop outsourcing your recruiting

Peter Capelli, a professor of Management at the Wharton School of Business, reports that up to 40% of companies use outsourced recruiters. While that sometimes makes sense, he points out that these companies often outsource themselves – to the Philippines or India, for instance. These contract recruiters scour LinkedIn and focus on using keywords.

Companies often reward these recruiters with higher bonuses if they can get a candidate to take a lower salary. That sounds cost-effective, but in today’s high-turnover environment, saving your business $5,000 today may result in an additional $50,000 in turnover costs next year, if not more. As far as recruitment and retention strategies go, this one isn’t very effective in the long term.

Keep your recruiting close to your company, and you’ll be more likely to find candidates that are fit for the long term in your company and not just those with the matching keywords.

3. Study your results – and act on them

While this may not seem like a recruiting or retention technique, it will lead you to correct your processes. Capelli, again, points out that very few companies do detailed tracking on recruiting and retention.

“Imagine,” Capelli says, “if the CEO asked how an advertising campaign had gone, and the response was ‘We have a good idea how long it took to roll out and what it cost, but we haven’t looked to see whether we’re selling more.’”

You won’t improve your retention or recruiting if you don’t know what works and what fails. You need to keep data on these things.

4. Keep an eye on your competitors

The Fight for $15 campaign has been very successful, and many people refuse to work for less, even though the federal minimum wage remains at less than half of that. You may think that your salaries are at the proper market rate because they were last year and you could hire just fine. But, it’s 2021, there’s a labor shortage all around, and your candidates can walk across the street and get a job at a fast-food restaurant for $12 or more per hour.

Remember, your hiring and retention competitors are not only the people who make and sell similar products and services. They are also anyone who hires people similar to your employees. Every business needs an accountant and a customer service person. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you don’t need to pay attention.

In addition to salary, people are looking for flexibility. Whether it’s working from home, a hybrid situation, or shifts that fit their lives, other businesses offer those. If you want to keep your employees and hire new ones, you need to keep up.

5. Start asking your employees questions

Do you know what makes your current employees happy? Do you know what makes them miserable? If you can’t, you may find your retention numbers struggling.

Margaret Rogers, vice president at Pariveda Solutions, says that while companies invest in training and development, they often do so without consulting the employees.

You need to know what your employees want and need before you develop your programs. A few questions she recommends when conducting employee surveys are:

• What parts of your job are most interesting and rewarding?
• What areas are you finding most challenging right now?
• What are you doing to reach short- and long-term career goals?
• Are there any other projects, committees, or additional responsibilities you would like to be a part of?
• Is there anything else you’re curious about that you haven’t been able to explore yet?

Knowing the answers to these questions helps you to tailor your training and development opportunities to not only what will benefit the company but what will benefit your employees. You won’t retain people who don’t see growth potential, so make sure you know what they want and figure out how to help them get it.

If you aren’t thinking about recruiting and retention strategies now, you need to be. Otherwise, the great resignation will hit your business, and other companies will snatch up your best people. Don’t let that happen to you.

The post 5 recruitment and retention strategies that actually work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

After an incomprehensibly difficult year of COVID-19 and social upheaval, there’s a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel in the form of the COVID-19 vaccine. In the workplace, this brings up questions: Can employers require employees to be vaccinated? And how can you implement a COVID-19 vaccine policy?

First, let’s look at social opinion. A CNBC survey released on Dec. 18, 2020, found that 57% of Americans feel that vaccinations should be made mandatory in the workplace. Look at the opposite, and you can read that 43% of Americans don’t think it should be required.

Another survey, released by Sykes, found a similar result:

In that same survey from Sykes, half (50.7%) of respondents who plan to get vaccinated said they know someone who doesn’t plan to get the vaccine.

Since the workplace can be a natural extension of society, this can pose a challenge for employers who need to make a decision on a COVID-19 vaccine policy. So how can employers go about it in the right way – whether it’s best practices, legal compliance, or both?

COVID-19 vaccine policy in the workplace

We reached out for insights in the business and legal communities to find out, and we’re sharing seven high-level takeaways.

1. There are important legal considerations
2. A safe workplace is a major motivator
3. Worker health equals business health
4. Employers are willing to pay out of pocket
5. Employees should decide how to get the vaccine
6. Not everyone feels the same way
7. Clear communication is key

1. There are important legal considerations

First and foremost: you, of course, want to be compliant when considering a vaccine policy. When it comes to workplace requirements, there will be legal implications – and those get more and more convoluted when you’re dealing with the COVID-19 vaccine and other treatments that can be viewed by some as intrusive.

These legal implications fall largely under two areas, according to Philadelphia employment lawyer Edith Pearce of Pearce Law Firm:

“There are exceptions for certain employees who should receive additional accommodations because of their sincere religious beliefs, or due to health conditions or disabilities that could prevent them from safely receiving a vaccination.”

Medical conditions

David Reischer, Attorney & CEO of New York-based LegalAdvice.com, says that, while there is no law that specifically considers a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination, an employee can exercise rights on the grounds of disability:

“The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has historically advised for the flu vaccination that an employee may be exempt from a mandatory vaccine if the employee has a disability covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that prevents them from taking the vaccine.”

Edith also points to medical conditions, saying if an employee has a medical reason to object, as recognized by the ADA, they have the right to do so.

“For example, recently Britain’s medicines regulator advised patients who have a history of a significant allergic reaction to vaccines, medicines, or food, and those who have been advised to carry an adrenaline autoinjector (a.k.a. an EpiPen) should not receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.”

If this is the case, the employer has legal rights and obligations of its own, says Edith:

“The employer may request disability-related documentation that substantiates that the individual should not receive the vaccination because of a health condition. The employer would likely again need to provide reasonable accommodation such as wearing a mask as effective alternative means of infection control.”

David adds, however, that employers can take business impact into consideration when looking at such exceptions: “An exemption is permitted as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA unless there is undue hardship, which the ADA defines as significant difficulty or expense for the employer.”

Religious belief

According to Edith, if an employee objects to a vaccination based on religious grounds, they have that right as well.

“If an employee has a sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance against being vaccinated they are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as an employer has a duty to reasonably accommodate the employee unless this creates an undue hardship on the employer’s business,” she says.

“That language is important and one should take note of ‘sincerely held religious belief.’ What this means is that employers cannot force those specific religious employees to get the vaccine, but the employee would still have to adhere to other accommodations that would likely include requiring the employee to wear a mask if they have a religious objection to being vaccinated.”

Edith points out the important distinction between personal beliefs and religious beliefs:

“In past cases involving an employee’s objection to the seasonal flu vaccine, courts have held that views based on mere personal beliefs regarding the health effects of the flu vaccine and the desire to avoid the vaccine does not qualify as a ‘sincere held religious belief.’”

David also pointed out the religious accommodation provision in the Civil Rights Act, noting that the impact on business health can be a consideration:

“In such instances, an employee may be exempted if taking the vaccination would violate a sincerely held religious beliefs, practices, or observances. In such instances, an employer must provide reasonable accommodation unless it would pose an undue hardship, which under Title VII is ‘more than de minimis cost’ to the employer’s business.”

2. A safe workplace is a major motivator

While employers have strong legal footing in requiring vaccinations for employees, what’s also top of mind for many employers is the health of their employees and ensuring a safe and healthy working environment.

Test Prep Insight CEO John Ross is viscerally mindful of this in his online education company.

“Once the vaccine becomes widely distributed, I will require that all 10 of our employees get the vaccine, unless they have a substantiated medical reason not to get it,” he says. “As a business owner, I have the obligation to provide a working environment that is safe and where employees feel comfortable, and having a team that has all been immunized against the virus will help me satisfy that obligation.”

The decision to require vaccines can depend on industry, sector, and job position, according to health expert and CEO Vinay Amin of Eu Natural, a health supplement manufacturer and seller in Nevada.

“I believe the COVID-19 vaccine policy of an SMB will depend on the industry, and the type of employment they choose: i.e. in an office, WFH, or a combination.”

However, founder Daniel Carter of ZippyElectrics, an online resource for electric transportation, is equally adamant about the responsibility of the employer in a COVID-19 vaccine policy:

“It is every employer’s task to ensure that their employees and the working environment of their employees are as safe as possible. Therefore, I believe that requiring the vaccine and providing it for your employees is your task as an employer.”

Employees’ rights to a safe, healthy workspace

Daniel points to the obligation of employers as well according to law:

“The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) ensures that the federal law of providing a safe workspace for employees is followed. If you require your employees to be present at the office/establishment, then, as an employer, you are responsible for their health.”

Daniel is right about OSHA, says Edith, who has been practicing law for more than 25 years:

“When it comes to the COVID-19 vaccination – and vaccines in general – employers can generally require their employees to become vaccinated to promote a safe work environment.“

Edith continues: “Under [OSHA] and various state laws, employers have a duty to provide each of their employees with ‘a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm’ to its employees. These laws allow employers to put health and safety policies into action, such as vaccinations from a virus such as COVID-19, but they need to be applied equally to all employees and uniformly enforced for business necessity.”

Holly Helstrom, an Adjunct Instructor at Columbia University in NYC, also states that an employer has the legal right to introduce a COVID-19 vaccine policy if they’re a private sector at-will employer, again due to workplace health considerations:

“This is a product of how US labor law and the Constitution are written. Employers can and have fired employees based on lifestyle choices related to their health, including if they smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol,” says Holly, who specializes in First Amendment rights for employees. “Refusal to get a COVID vaccine if your employer is requiring one could get you fired and your employer would be within their legal rights to do so. “

Andrew Taylor, Director of Net Lawman, an online resource for legal advice in the United Kingdom, says the same.

“Employees can be fired over their lifestyle choices and the COVID-19 vaccine is no different. There are some laws put in place about 10 years ago, protecting employers in this instance and regulations specifically regarding COVID-19, in favor of the vaccine, are quickly clarifying any thoughts.”

3. Worker health equals business health

Business continuity is a factor for many employers in deciding whether or not to have employees be vaccinated, including for Matt Rostosky of Cash Offer Kentucky, a real estate investment firm in Louisville, Kentucky.

“In our case where we go out into the field to conduct real estate sales, it’s important to let our clients feel confident that we have been vaccinated so that our transactions can be much safer at least when the COVID-19 virus hasn’t been eradicated yet.”

Rex Frieberger, CEO of tech and lifestyle publication Gadget Review, admits that he won’t be outright requiring all employees to vaccinate because of what he sees as potential legal implications, but still wants to incentivize it. However, he will require vaccinations for some functions in his business:

“Because we’re focused on travel, I will definitely require employees doing lots of travel to get it. The risk is too great otherwise.”

Jake Hill, the CEO of Austin-based personal finance publication DebtHammer, works with vulnerable populations, and consequently, he’s adamant that all employees be vaccinated if they can safely do so.

“This is something I feel very strongly about and I will not argue with employees about it,” says Jake. “While we do a lot of our work remotely (especially now), in-office we counsel some of the most vulnerable members of society. The elderly and the working poor are extremely susceptible to communicable disease and there is literally no reason not to get the vaccine when working with high-risk individuals.”

John at Test Prep Insight also sees his overall business benefiting from a company-wide vaccination policy.

“Our team is more productive in an in-person working environment, so the moment we are allowed to return to in-person activity, I plan to act on it. However, I have to make sure I have taken all precautions to protect my employees when doing so, and I think requiring the vaccine is the best course of action.”

4. Employers are willing to pay out of pocket

In the United States, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states on its website that all COVID-19 vaccines purchased with taxpayer money will be provided free of charge – but notes that there may be additional administrative costs levied by vaccine providers. If that’s a factor in an employee’s decision to get a vaccine, some employers told us that they plan to pay out of pocket for this.

Rex at Gadget Review is actually sweetening the deal for those who get the shot.

“We’ll be covering the cost and giving employees who get it a one-time bonus as well, so I think that will encourage most of our crew to get it.”

Jake at DebtHammer also wants to remove any potential obstacles to getting it, whether financial or otherwise.

“I’m hoping the vaccine will be covered by our health plan, but if not I’ll cover it out of pocket. I don’t want anyone to have a reason not to get it, and I’ll expect our employees to step up and do what needs to be done.”

WikiLawn President Dan Bailey plans to extend the same offer beyond employees in his online lawn care resource center’s COVID-19 vaccine policy.

“I don’t know when we’ll get access to it, but we intend to cover the cost for every employee as well as their immediate family. The faster we can get everyone vaccinated, the sooner they’ll be able to live their lives without fear of the virus.”

5. Employees should decide how to get the vaccine

While the motivation and sense of responsibility is strong for many employers, some like Daniel at ZippyElectrics are deferring to the experts when actually administering the vaccine – because of logistical considerations.

“Due to varying schedules, the most ideal way to execute this program is to contact hospitals and clinics that administer the vaccine and point your employees in their direction. This way your employees still have the freedom to choose when and where to get the vaccine. Then you can cover the vaccine’s costs before requiring your employees to return to work.”

There’s another added benefit to empowering employees to dictate the logistics of actually getting vaccinated, according to Spokane, Washington-based Miles Beckler, who works with entrepreneurs in digital marketing.

“The onus is on the employee to get the vaccine themselves – after all, they will be able to access it in a much more sterile, safe environment than an office space.”

6. Not everyone feels the same way

While many employers feel it’s necessary or at least crucial for every employee to be vaccinated, there are some detractors who are uneasy or outright opposed to implementing a formal COVID-19 vaccine policy in the workplace:

Founder and CEO Deven Patel of domain marketplace Alter.com is one who wants to leave that decision to employees, taking into consideration the rapid rollout of the vaccine:

“I would not require my employees to take the COVID-19 vaccine. They should be free to choose on their own,” says Deven, who operates out of New York City.

“Historically, vaccines typically took about 10-12 years to be developed properly. Requiring employees to take the COVID vaccine that was rapidly developed in under a year would be like forcing people to use beta software. It should be the employee’s choice.”

L.A.-based MintResume’s senior career advisor Joe Wilson’s own apprehensions come from a legal and moral standpoint. He would rather defer to existing precautions as recommended by authorities:

“I would question how viable it is to ask employees to have a vaccine. Would it be a case of vaccination or lose your job? I think that could bring a whole host of issues. I certainly don’t want that fight. Precautions such as wearing a mask and keeping a distance are possible and realistic but I’m not sure of the moral implications of insisting that employees have a vaccination.”

7. Clear communication is key

The consensus among employers who do plan to request vaccinations among employees is that the communication must be absolutely clear, to preempt any potential misinterpretation or confusion.

Miles in Spokane points out the importance of full transparency in communicating such a policy to employees. “Given the emotionally charged nature of COVID-19, there can be no gray areas in how the workplace operates post-vaccine. If the office environment is only accessible to those who have had the vaccine, make that distinction clear well in advance.”

Miles adds that a single stream of communication is key.

“To do this in the most effective way, send out a single, definitive communication that answers the questions your employees may have.”

Daniel at ZippyElectrics points to the many different ways that Human Resources can communicate this policy to employees:

“As with many offices, group chats, newsletters, and the like are available to spread new regulations. You can make use of these to tell your employees about how the vaccine situation will be executed.”

Daniel recommends including all details, especially answering “why” such a policy is being implemented, to reassure employees about the motivation of the business:

“It is also important to inform your employees that just because vaccines are being rolled out and are available, does not mean we have to neglect health and safety protocols that have been put in place. Until such time that the vaccine is provided for everyone, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Miles recommends including as many details as possible in that single stream of communication so as to remove any confusion:

“The document should clarify whether vaccinations will be administered on-site, whether they’re simply strongly advised, and whether the vaccine is required to return to the workplace.”

Be kind and empathetic – it’s a sensitive topic

Matt of Cash Offer Kentucky recommends that rather than bluntly requiring employees to be vaccinated – which, based on the above-cited survey data, can potentially create a toxic working environment – the language can be revised, and made more approachable. It is, after all, a sensitive area and should be treated as such.

“Encouraged to take the vaccine is a more appropriate term.”

David at LegalAdvice.com says this language exists even in a legal sense: “[With some exceptions], the EEOC does not prohibit employers from mandating vaccines. It strongly emphasizes employers to consider encouraging employees to take the vaccine rather than requiring employees to take the vaccine.”

Holly – who also advises clients at Logos Consulting Group in NYC – points to the importance of clear communication on “why” an employer is taking a specific stance on a COVID-19 vaccination requirement:

“When navigating complex questions such as ‘Is it morally right to do, or not do, X?’, having clarity on one’s values, whether from the employer or employee perspective, can make the decision easier,” says Holly. “For example, if individual liberty is more important to you than job security, your decision when navigating this question as an employee will be much easier.”

COVID-19 vaccine policies at work

For the most part, yes, employers do have the legal right to implement a COVID-19 vaccine policy for their employees – with several notable exceptions. You should do your homework on that from a legal standpoint before administering such a policy – including consulting a lawyer as needed. Workable is first and foremost a recruitment solutions service, not a formal legal authority.

That aside, ensure your employees are on board with such a policy by being clear about your reasons for doing so – be it for business health, workplace health, a combination of both, or otherwise. There’s a clear hesitation by a large swath of the population on the health effects of such a vaccine and its overall impact on the pandemic, and that can’t be ignored. The social and political tensions are also quite tangible, and will be for some time.

The least you can do for your employees is to introduce a COVID-19 vaccine policy in the workplace in a thoughtful, empathetic and clear way. That applies not only for your business health, but also for your employee engagement during a time where reassurance and support can go a long way during tough times.

The post COVID-19 vaccine policy in the workplace: Best practices appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Let’s start with why: The workforce was not immune to the migration patterns of the pandemic. Affording everyone the time to re-examine anything, from a life’s purpose to a day-to-day routine, the lockdown was a time of mass decision-making.

The ‘Great Resignation’ then earned its name as professionals across all industries shed their pre-pandemic roles. Increased turnover became one of an employer’s many costs. But in a normal economy, one worker’s loss would be another worker’s gain – roles would fill about as quickly as they’re given up. Now, employers have made it clear: there’s a disconnect between the post-COVID candidate and the roles at hand.

A look at the numbers

Talent and employers are passing each other like two ships in the night. This past March, US employers added a seasonally adjusted 916,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate reached a new pandemic low of 6%. Still, recruitment campaigns are flopping, candidates are in short supply, and professionals continue to change paths across virtually all sectors.

Conversely, LinkedIn data shows that professionals in the United States added over 110,000 volunteer activities to their profiles monthly since the inception of the pandemic. That’s a near 250% increase since 2017.

And the boom of ESG-focused investing has come from retail investors as much as it’s come from institutional activity; new investors are showing a large interest in green bonds, and 56% of households with more than $100,000 to invest are showing an overwhelming preference for impact investments.

These numbers quantify an important COVID change: purpose-driven living has become a full-time occupation. Professionals want ESG values represented and upheld across all segments of their life, including and especially the team with whom they focus their working talent.

A tight ESG labor market

Before the pandemic, BlackRock reported that many of their high-profile investors planned to double their allocations into sustainable products over the next five years. A subsequent report announced that one-fifth of those investors felt the pandemic had accelerated their plans to do so.

That early influx of capital led to a job boom in the ESG space, attracting the market’s best talent.

Already, the wave of behavioral change is evident across industries. Companies are under pressure to adopt new standards and regulations for ESG operations and sustainable investing in order to source investment capital and satisfy stakeholders. ESG is the new workplace normal, and will soon be a standard workforce strategy rather than basic value proposition.

Re-imagining the post-COVID EVP

Employers need new tactics to differentiate their employee value proposition (or EVP for short). Introducing tangible ESG as a workforce strategy is an important place to begin. The large-scale purpose and impact of the company is important. But the day-to-day initiatives, policies, and campaigns are important places in which employees feel those social values reflected.

Consider the actions of industry giants throughout the pandemic:

• Apple increased their matching gift donations to a 2:1 ratio, surpassing $15 million in the early months to support COVID-response efforts on a local and global scale
• Facebook committed to matching $10 million in charitable gifts by the public, in addition to their existing policy for employees and retirees
• Google upped their match cap to a significant $20,000 per employee.

The scale of these actions reflects the size of these corporations, but small and mid-sized businesses can instill the same corporate practices with the same effect. Regardless of magnitude, these decisions made by industry giants reflect what they’ve noticed among their employee culture: social involvement and purpose-driven impact is an important part of employee satisfaction, competitive recruitment, and top talent retention.

Hilton: A case study in workplace happiness

At the end of 2020, Fortune released its list of the 100 best companies to work for based on self-reported workplace happiness of employees. The top 25 companies are similar to 2019, with a few exceptions, including Hilton. A newcomer to the top 25, Hilton climbed all the way to #1. Let’s consider their pandemic response.

Notably, Hilton partnered with American Express to donate one million hotel room nights across the U.S. for frontline workers. In addition, the company made a $1 million contribution to the World Central Kitchen, providing healthy, fresh meals for healthcare providers.

Their Hilton Effect Foundation Grants provided an additional $1 million in community response efforts. Meanwhile, their success in cutting their environmental footprint in half and doubling their social impact investments worldwide led them to be named the global industry leader in sustainability for the second year in a row.

It is the case that the Hilton team was able to impart a significantly positive impact on many communities throughout COVID-19. But it’s also the case that those social initiatives occupied a large part of the company mission, meaning that those goals were a constant part of an employee’s day-to-day responsibilities.

The sequential earning of both titles, ’global leader in sustainability’ and ‘best place to work,’ is no coincidence. But it is perhaps the day-to-day experience of striving for environmental and social impact, rather than the final culmination of the effort, that makes the Hilton work experience so fulfilling. In terms of ESG as a workforce strategy, it’s a model to look up to.

It’s about good intentions

Again, it’s not the scale of the initiative, but the intention behind it: purposeful ESG as a workforce strategy needs to be top of mind to attract and keep the best performing talent in the industry. Offering the time or financial resources that allow employees to volunteer in their own communities is another way for small or medium size businesses to achieve the same effect.

Similarly, smaller sized corporations can create social-oriented projects that allow each team member to contribute their expertise toward community impact. For example:

• Pay a web designer to create an order platform for a local food bank
• Offer senior executives days off to mentor younger professionals in the field
• Work in a standard donation amount into an employee’s salary to go toward the organization of their choosing

These are other ways to bring ESG aims closer to the day-to-day operations.

Post-COVID recruitment needs to center on similar questions. What opportunities are we providing for employees to bring their social awareness, environmental commitment, and global concerns into the workplace? The lines between home and work have blurred. With them, the demarcation between work purpose and life purpose has faded.

Employers that can offer a work culture that’s fulfilling, purpose-driven, and ESG-oriented will see their efforts rewarded in the prospective candidates and existing employees alike, and the post-COVID workplace will change for the better the way all real change takes place – from the ground up.

Tara Milburn is the Founder and CEO of Ethical Swag, a sustainable branding company that makes it easy for HR professionals to offer personalized promotional products that they can stand behind. Certified as a B-Corporation, Ethical Swag has been audited to the highest global standard for sustainability.

The post ESG as a workforce strategy: post-COVID attraction and retention 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.

Jump straight into the podcast or check out the transcription here.

As a practiced expert in global talent management, Tony had a lot to say. Here are the top takeaways from our conversation:

Make the commitment, then make it work

Virgin mogul Richard Branson once said: ”If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!”

Tony would agree when it applies to the global talent market.

“My first tip here is to really focus on what’s really important, which is finding the best talent no matter where they are,” he says. “And worry later about these obstacles or these barriers that prevent you from hiring that talent.

Why? Because it makes sense

And forget whether your services are global or local. It makes a lot of sense to hire globally, because your talent market is much broader.

“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 [that] the best talent will be in a 20-mile radius from your office? It’s like 0.1%,” Tony says.

“So how can you explain statistically that this is a good strategy for talent acquisition, where over 99% of the great talent is elsewhere?”

He points to hubs of engineering in areas such as Eastern Europe and Latin America that have a much higher representation of highly talented developers who specialize in specific coding languages – all of which presents an opportunity for smart companies who tap into the global hiring market.

Talent distribution aside, Tony points to other benefits:

1) Local connectivity makes better EX

There are huge benefits in the new reality of living where we work and working where we live – especially for the employee.

Tony shares his own example.

“Now my identity is work but it’s also family. I spend more time with my children, with my partner,” he says of his work-life integration. “It’s my community as well.”

He talks about an elderly neighbor in the small French village where he lives and works. “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 in the afternoon, and I had a 45-minute 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 what does that mean for the new working environment?

“If I was in the office,” Tony explains, ”I would have missed that opportunity to help him out. And so I feel much more connected to my local community. So that’s good news for the world. And that’s good news for people.”

And when employees feel more connected to their families and communities even when on the job, they’ll be happier. That speaks volumes for overall employee engagement (EX) and experience.

2) Remote can outperform office

Tony says that, if executed properly, a remote-work environment can actually be more productive and engaged than the alternative.

“For instance, a virtual environment requires you to share leadership more, so essentially because everybody is in different locations 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 leaders faster in the business.”

It’s not just about collective leadership. Remote also fosters a more equitable and democratic working environment that brings the best out of people.

“The best ideas win,” Tony says. ”[W]hen you used to work in an office and you go to a meeting room and usually the loudest person in the room monopolizes the discussion, but you have maybe this introverted, brilliant person on the side [and] they’re not sharing their ideas.”

And now, working online across locations, there’s a more collaborative spirit via a shared document where everyone is able to bring something to the proverbial table, and have a conversation, Tony says.

“The role of the leader is really to be aware of these superpowers and create an environment that actually facilitates and fosters these benefits.”

3) There are social and environmental benefits

There’s an added intangible that can speak volumes for your employer brand: the social impact that your organization has as a remote-first organization.

“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 impacts of wealth distribution issues in the world.”

There’s also an environmental impact as well.

“Think about it; every year, we’re pouring the equivalent of four New York Cities in terms of concrete on planet Earth. And in many cities, it’s not a more livable condition.”

He notes the example of Delhi, where workers lose an average of seven hours of life expectancy due to the air pollution.

“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.”

Global talent market best practices

Convinced? Tony now has some best practices for you when executing on a global talent market strategy.

1) Ensure equal opportunity and experience

When you have a distributed team, you need to align your company success with your employee success, Tony says. This ties into employee experience, which can differ across locations.

Tony shares the example of a contact center in India that worked night shifts to accommodate the US market.

“There’s something we don’t really talk about … this lifestyle disparity when it comes to working from anywhere. [A]s a leader of an organization, my recommendation is to create an environment and a culture that gives everybody an equal opportunity, no matter where they are.”

Balance out the opportunities

Also, when hiring for more senior positions in tech, you’ll also find that talent is more concentrated to specific locations. For example, Tony says, senior talent has been focused in the Western world in the last 30 years.

And that can lead to further imbalances when it comes to opportunity within a company.

“[It’s 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,” Tony says, “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 hubs in the world, such as the Silicon Valley, or London, or China.”

This also applies to the overall nature of remote work, where it comes naturally to some and more of a challenge to others – again a recipe for imbalance and unequal experiences across teams.

“There are certain trainings [where] you can upskill your talent force on remote work. You can teach your team how to behave, how to be productive, how to take care of themselves so that they don’t burn out.”

Focus on the results

To ensure equal opportunity and growth across locations, Tony also recommends shifting to a results-driven model.

“We’ve seen companies that have this obsession with output rather than input. Essentially we don’t care how [many] hours you put in to get the job done, as long as you have clear goals and you’re delivering on your goals,” he says.

“That goes a long way to create a culture where there’s a high degree of trust in order for anybody, anywhere they are, to grow in and develop in your company.”

2) Establish a strong company culture

The reality of working across locations – and especially, across cultures – is that there will be some inconsistencies as colleagues of different backgrounds collaborate on projects. There are ways around that, however – and the first big takeaway from Tony is that a strong company culture is essential if you want to overcome these challenges.

In short – the collective vision can be very powerful. But, Tony says, it doesn’t happen on its own.

“My experience having led two companies in the last 10, 12 years is that [there] are people from all over the world. Company culture definitely trumps country culture. … 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 you create a strong company culture that actually is stronger than in local cultural specificities.”

Learn how Belgium-based startup ProxyClick built a great company culture that unifies and inspires its employees.

3) Standardize and prescribe a virtual working system

Working in a remote working environment means you need to actively build trust among colleagues. In a physical workplace, Tony says, trust grows naturally, but in a virtual environment, you have to work at it.

He shares the example of working with his product team. Syncing in real time is needed to align on ideas around product development, but an equally strong element of building a strong virtual work culture is in carrying out the actual work as a team.

“[At Oyster], we call them ‘tools and the rules’,” says Tony, adding that while you can get away with lack of clarity if you’re working together in the same office, that’s not the case when working across time zones, cultures and backgrounds.

“You have to be very prescriptive of how you work together. What tools do you use? When do you use them? What different meetings do you have?” Tony says.

And this system can’t be dictated top-down. It needs to be mutually built across the team.

“And you, as a team manager, 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.”

4) Know how job attractors differ across cultures

Building a strong employer brand is essential to candidate attraction, of course. But that becomes a unique challenge when sourcing and attracting talent in different locations.

Tony agrees, sharing a hypothetical example of a person named Mary in Nigeria, who has the option to work at a local bank for a contract and the best benefits in the area.

“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,” Tony says.

He adds the value of job security for someone like Mary.

“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.”

Benefits will be different as well

Tony then talks about other countries that put more weight on certain benefits, such as the United States where health insurance is an absolute must-have. In France, on the other hand, the expectation is more about restaurant vouchers, with health insurance more complementary rather than a core benefit.

In other countries still, health benefits are a non-issue because of a universal health care system.

There are also other elements at play in a global talent market, Tony says.

“[Maybe] there is a fear of cultural differences. Maybe people in that country think differently than people in that country. There are administrative and legal and tax challenges that companies have to go through. […] So every country is different and you have to navigate that.”

Adapt and thrive in the global talent market

“The war on talent is going distributed,” Tony says. “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.”

Employees have that expectation as well, and Tony says employers need to pay close attention to that.

“Employees are asking for an extra degree of freedom, which is location. [They] want to be able to live wherever they want to live,” he says.

“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.”

Tony adds that 1.5 billion knowledge workers will be entering the workforce in the next 10 years. He says this is the biggest labor democratic shift since the Industrial Revolution.

“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.”

Ultimately, the global talent market is about people and quality of life.

“We want to have a future where people have a choice in where they want to live. And they don’t necessarily have to live in the city. It becomes a choice if they decide to want to live in a city, but 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 [at Oyster].”

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Now, with restrictions lifting or already lifted in many countries – including Denmark – there are questions on best practices for a return to office and a relatively normal standard of work. Since Denmark is ahead of the so-called flattened curve, we sat down with Dave to talk about his company’s approach to a reboarding strategy in the workplace.

These were the main learnings from our conversation:

1. Don’t disrupt the operations

To say the COVID-19 crisis has been disruptive to business is putting it mildly. Small businesses are hurting significantly according to a Business.com survey, and even larger companies are pushing back on or cancelling investments according to a PwC survey of CFOs in early May.

Ørsted focuses on energy, which can’t be scaled back or adapted to a remote workplace so easily as businesses in other industries. So the survival options available to others aren’t as available to Orsted. Dave thinks about this when considering myriad changes to work operations:

“We generate substantial amounts of electricity in the markets we serve and it’s actually making sure that we continue to generate electricity. So [this] is considered [essential] work. Those who are responsible for operating and maintaining offshore wind farms are still working,” David says. “We’re getting quite a bit of work to do, a lot to work to ensure social distancing, good hygiene and these kinds of things as well so those people can carry on working. We make safety our top priority, and that’s remained at the forefront of our minds.”

Also, he adds, not everyone is able to work from home for logistical reasons. Dave is aware of that and takes this into consideration when determining who works from home and who doesn’t in the return to office.

“[T]here are office workers like me who are working from home. [But] offshore wind technicians are still working offshore because their job needs to be done at the site.”

Ultimately, Dave’s keeping his eye on the prize – business continuity. In the energy industry, you have to keep those wheels turning no matter what changes are made in operations.

“Our business has been really clear in saying that the business continues. We don’t stop. We continue what we’re doing. So in many ways, our way of working has changed, but our work hasn’t changed.”

2. We’re learning as we go

The COVID-19 phenomenon and its economic impact has been called largely unprecedented – particularly the impact it’s had on how modern-day society operates. It’s still up in the air how we’ll return to office and some semblance of normalcy – if it even happens – and that’s because we have no experience to draw from.

As stated at ChiefLearningOfficer.com: “Reboarding is not ‘unpausing’ the TV because you shut it off during coronavirus. It’s not the same anymore; the TV show is new.”

Dave acknowledges this reality. We’re not returning to the way things were.

“Even when a country starts to ease out of lockdown, I think the workplace will continue to look different for a prolonged period. Like everyone else, we’re learning as we go.”

It’s about finding a new way to do things. And to make it more complicated, as the saying goes, we’re trying to change the tires while the car’s still moving. Digital transformation is only one part of the equation. There are other challenges and changes coming, according to Dave, who says his company’s looking at new ways of collaboration while managing to continue doing things in a productive way.

3. Health above all

A recent Qualtrics survey finds that two out of three people surveyed in the American workforce aren’t feeling comfortable about the idea of returning to office life, with their health and safety at the core of that concern. What’s more, if they absolutely must return to the office, the majority of those surveyed expect their company to take strict precautions to ensure the workplace is safe for employees – including strict guidelines around sanitation (deep cleanings, facemasks) and an updated sick leave policy.

That isn’t just on Dave’s radar – it’s a major focal point for him.

“I want to make sure that the most important thing is keeping our colleagues safe,” says Dave. “That’s our top priority rather than anything else.”

It’s not just about reducing the risk of infection through sanitizing the workplace and redesigning it to minimize the so-called risks of social contact. Mental wellbeing has risen in importance for many – with significant spikes in stress levels and calls to mental health hotlines being reported.

Above all, caring for your workforce’s wellbeing is not only a good gesture – it also positively impacts business productivity.

4. Introduce strict sanitation protocols at work

Like many other companies also consciously aware of the emphasis on employee health, Ørsted’s implementing new processes and protocols to minimize the risk of COVID-19 in the company’s workforce. Some of it is pretty straightforward stuff, as Dave explains:

“We have certain things where we expected to touch surfaces, things like coffee machines and door handles and photocopiers and that sort of thing. So we will say that if you touch one of those things, we’ll probably turn the coffee machines off, but if you touch a door handle wash your hands, use hand gel, something like that to sanitize your hands.”

Dave’s also thinking about getting rid of the open-office setup and introducing a different kind of desk-sharing system – especially since hot desking is being ushered out as a standard in workplaces, even by law in some jurisdictions.

In the office, social distancing will be the norm. Canteens (eating areas) and shared tables at lunch will no longer be in the workplace. Instead, David says, “you’re all given food in a box, which you can take back to your desk and eat it there rather than all being out in open spaces. When we return to canteens, this will be socially distanced so we can keep our employees safe”.

Physical movement will also be limited within the building – employees will be required to stay at their own floor, using only the bathrooms and other facilities on that floor. Meetings will more often be virtual using video tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Meet rather than in person, even if colleagues are physically in the same area together.

There’s also going to be a reduction in workplace density, by switching from office-first to remote-first – for the time being, at least.

“The majority of our colleagues will continue to work from home for the foreseeable future. And so we have done it in Denmark on an opt-in basis.”

But, Dave notes, not all workers are able to simply move to a work-from-home model:

“Some of our colleagues have needed to return to the office earlier. Some of the reasons have been that we have people working on critical projects that require certain IT resources and traders who manage our market exposure, so they need particular equipment.”

5. Stagger your WFHs and commutes

When you’re limited to 25% capacity in the workplace according to Dave, that means just one in four of your talent can be physically present at work at any given time. Which brings forward another question: who do you bring back to the workplace first?

For Dave, the priority are those who need to be onsite to work in any capacity. Next are the ones whose options are limited on the home front.

“For some people, their home Internet is not very good, or the work setting isn’t great. So they have to come back early.”

Those with small children are also being considered. Nurseries and daycares are now reopened in Denmark, making return to office easier for those working parents.

But the challenges aren’t restricted to office density or even compliance for that matter. There are other logistics to think about as well for Ørsted in keeping employee health at top of mind.

Avoid the crush

When employees return to office, another reality sinks in: the ‘rush-hour bottleneck’. Dave considers this a major factor in logistics. In Denmark, he says cycling is a popular commuting option – but if everyone, including him, was to start cycling to work, that increased density along bike routes would have to be considered.

So, he’s looking at a couple of solutions to get around that potential glut of commuting cyclists:

“Rather than everyone trying to come to work at nine, some people will come early, some people will come at normal times, some will come later.”

In London, which doesn’t even register in the top 20 most bike-friendly cities in the world according to the aptly titled Copenhagenize Index for 2019 (spoiler: Copenhagen ranks #1), the London Underground is usually the travel option. Dave notes that packing into those trains doesn’t make a lot of sense now especially given London’s huge population, so you have to give your workers some control over making the right decisions in reducing their potential exposure to COVID-19 on returning to the office:

“We would have to find a way in which physical distancing can continue for those who travel by public transportation… We talk about whether they want to go back to the office. Back to work is opt-in.”

And this means HR should inform colleagues to set expectations for being present at work with their managers, and that messaging must come from the top.

“We have regular communications from our executive committee and from our managers and our teams. And there’s already clear communication in the business about [that].”

Dave notes that a number of his senior leadership have already returned to the office, reminding us of the importance of leadership setting an example. “The reason why we want to get some senior leaders back in the office is to send the signal that we are slowly returning to normal.”

Keep things flexible

Flexibility around hours and working patterns is especially important in these times, says Dave. It’s normal for people to work from home one or two days a week in the UK, he adds, whereas in Denmark, it required more cultural adaptation:

“In Denmark it was considered quite unusual [previously], whereas now we see that people can be productive when working from home as well.”

Dave is quick to remind us that flexibility isn’t just about opting to work from home or come to the office – it’s also about working hours, empowering employees to set their own hours and decide what works best for themselves.

6. Tech can solve many issues

Business travel was an Ørsted staple for the longest time – both for Dave himself and for his colleagues. Now, of course, travel has been scaled back significantly – and this has led to a company-wide rethink of priorities:

“I think we are re-evaluating how much business travel is really necessary, and actually how much communication we can do virtually via video,” David explains. “That’s one of the things that we’re already doing; how can we find a way that we don’t always travel face to face and we do more by video, more digitally? We also want to be a leader here based on our green ambitions.”

Hiring and onboarding

Ørsted is a multinational company, with some 6,500 employees spread across eight offices in six countries, so it makes sense that their hiring and onboarding needs to be a multinational effort as well. That pushes the need for digitization of internal operations to a higher platform – including onboarding and introductory trainings, says Dave.

Hiring hasn’t stopped, or even slowed down for that matter, which heightens the urgency to digitize the whole recruitment process to maintain its efficiency:

“That is due to the nature of the industry we’re working,” says Dave, ”and because our company shouldn’t have any changes to its financial performance and shift as a result of COVID-19.”

7. Tech also empowers action

COVID-19 is a serious matter, and it has unearthed many of the issues in the way we operate as a broader society, be it in the workplace or elsewhere. It’s called for changes in our work processes by elevating remote work to be as equally effective as in-office work.

Going deeper, it’s also shed light on the limitations and faults in the way we did things before. The Black Lives Matter phenomenon is not a new one – but it’s been drastically amplified alongside the need for a healthier society. It’s resulted in greater emphasis on diversity in hiring and inclusion in the workplace, and companies worldwide are actively taking steps to make that happen.

The digitization of the recruitment process, interestingly, creates an opportunity to pursue diversity in greater depth, Dave suggests. Hiring and onboarding virtually means you can go broader in your candidate outreach. For instance, Dave’s hiring pool is no longer restricted to Denmark and he’s now able to work with international colleagues as well:

“We have colleagues joining us [from] Taiwan and Japan rather than going to Denmark and then fly back. We want to actually help them find a way to make it really inclusive for everybody.”

Side note: that opportunity to build remote connections was also identified by SmartBug Media in their own efforts to unify teams remotely. Read more about it.

8. Be mindful of the big picture

A more inclusive work culture is just one of the paradigm shifts that could be happening as part of the COVID-19 crisis. Dave is attuned to the fact that COVID-19 is a catalyst for even deeper shifts to happen:

“Our workplace like many other workplaces, is set up pre-COVID-19. So if we needed to talk about long-term changing of working patterns, then the way the workplace looks would be quite different, I think. But, at the moment, we haven’t got to that level of thinking yet.” Dave adds that this is because we’re still in survival mode and implementing stopgap solutions.

So when do we start that ‘rethinking’? Dave suggests giving it a couple of months before making those long-term modifications “For example, we’ve said I counted six desks. One is available for work. Whereas if we said long term, these desks need to be at least two meters apart. We’d have to reconfigure the workplace,” he says.

Great, but those are the easy details. The bigger questions remain: how do we adapt to this new way of working to reflect this new reality, while making sure we’re still building connections with each other?

“That’s one of the biggest learnings; how can we make things less impersonal? And that’s been our biggest challenge, I think, starting from my side. It says how we think about what’s right.”

So what it comes down to in the end is how to adapt to that new world of work. Dave says he’s concentrating on this question: “How do we then support each other in this different way of working?“

That’s the big picture there. We humans are social animals, and physical distancing makes it more difficult for us to work together. Or does it? We have the technology and versatility to continue working together – Dave Vinton and Ørsted have made that clear. With the right kind of thinking and planning in place, we may just get through this yet.

End note: This article is the result of an in-depth interview carried out by Christina Pavlou.

The post The winds of change: return to office in the face of COVID-19 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Leaders must think about the employee experience in the same way they do the customer experience. In order to create win-win scenarios, they must become truly inclusive leaders, and listen to the diverse voices inside their organizations and take time to understand what’s important to them in order to unlock valuable insights that will inform future successes.

Bridge the gap between office and home

As the world reopens, competitive advantages will need to be leveraged in order for organizations to bounce back quickly. Creative problem-solving, innovative thinking, and seamless collaboration across teams will help them authentically communicate in a voice as diverse as their audience. All of this requires a different approach to leadership in the new world of work.

Before the pandemic, leaders focused on how their employees performed in the office. It took a global pandemic to break the disconnect between work and home life and give people permission to bring their authentic selves to work. Video conferencing calls have allowed us to witness how our colleagues interact with family, pets, or an inconvenient parcel delivery during an important meeting. In this way, we are now better able to empathize with each other and build trust within our teams.

Leaders now need to embrace this opportunity to lead the whole person in order to help both their teams and organizations achieve more.

Why managers need to lead the whole person

Employees look to leaders for guidance to help them overcome challenges. A caring leader understands that they will get more from their team by building relationships with those they lead. But to do this, they also know that they need to look beyond performance reviews and life inside the workplace. To lead the whole person, leaders must consider the mind, body, spirit, and emotions of those they lead.

By investing the time to see the world through your employees’ eyes, rewards can be unlocked via increased performance across your organization. But before you can lead the whole person, you need to build a safe space where every employee can feel comfortable sharing their fears, questions, and concerns without judgment.

There are many ways in which you can build a culture of listening. You can empower teams to create open forums like roundtables or coffee hours to connect at a deeper level with their people.

Whole-person leadership in the hiring process

It doesn’t matter if you are working in a B2C or B2B environment. We are all in the people-to-people business. Every organization must be as diverse as its audience to thrive and survive in an increasingly competitive environment. These changes also demand a different approach to recruitment.

The ROI of a diverse workforce that ensures everyone feels included and a sense of belonging will transform your culture and pave the way for your future success. By contrast, departmental silos and HR technology that feels dehumanizing to prospective candidates looking to join your team will stop any progress in its tracks.

Whole-person leadership is also critical in the hiring process, especially when recruiting new managers. If we fail to communicate trust and authenticity and set those expectations as we advance, leaders won’t like the reflection of themselves that they see. The bottom line is that employees that aren’t growing feel unappreciated and don’t feel safe or mimic the poor behavior of a bad leader will quickly result in low morale and a toxic culture.

Phil Cohen, founder and president of Cohen Architectural Woodworking, addressed the leader’s responsibility to lead the whole person with me: “We have to be cognizant that people present with their own unique lenses based upon their background. We take that in when we bring them in as an employee. They don’t just leave that at the door.”

The understanding that there’s a gap in perception between how the employer perceives the employee experience it offers compared to the employee feedback they receive is just the first of many stages of your journey of continuous improvement. Leading the whole person is not a scalable concept. It is building individual relationships with our people and paying close attention to the details of their lives.

We can now work from anywhere and everywhere. How we define the workplace has completely changed in just one year. From the recruitment and onboarding process to managing the entire employee experience, it’s time for a caring leadership style to bridge the gap and empower managers to lead the whole person.

Heather R. Younger — author of The Art of Caring Leadership — is an international speaker, consultant, adjunct organizational leadership professor, and facilitator who has earned her reputation as “The Employee Whisperer.” As a champion for positive change in workplaces, communities, and our world at large, Heather founded Employee Fanatix, a leading employee engagement and leadership development consulting and training firm, to inspire others by teaching the kind of caring leadership that drives real business results.

The post Whole-person leadership: Lead your employees as people 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.

Some companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Slack, Ford, Target, and Citigroup have already planned out and gone full steam ahead on their own version of a hybrid work model that includes both remote and in-office work, but that return-to-work plan is not going to work for every company.

Your return-to-work plan: What’s best?

To even begin to decide on what will work best for your team, you’ll need to ask yourself:

• Has the remote setup been working well for my company?
• Do my employees even want to go back to the office?
• If some do, how do we decide when, how and who goes back?
• And if opinions are split, how do we balance each side and make sure all employees’ preferences are heard and accounted for?

Those are the types of questions we’ll help you sort through.

Here are 6 tips to help you decide whether you should return to the office (if at all), so you can put together the best return-to-work plan for your company:

1. Listen to employee feedback

As challenging as this past year has been for businesses, it has arguably been far more challenging for individual employees since they’ve had to continue being productive despite what’s going on in their new working environment (their home), or how much child and family care coverage they have, and to what level their home office is equipped for remote work. Employees also have no choice but to look to their company leaders for guidance on what to do and how to move forward.

For that reason, you should take your employee feedback into consideration when deciding whether to go fully remote, go back to the office, or start a hybrid work model in your return-to-work strategy.

You can unlock your employee feedback in a few different ways:

• Sending an employee survey
• Having an open forum at an all-hands meeting
• Incorporating feedback exchange during individual 1v1 discussions

A perfect example of a company who has relied on employee feedback for their approach to returning to the office is IBM.

Earlier in 2021, IBM held a “global brainstorm” with the entire company to get real-time feedback about whether employees want to return to work, and how often. In that session that they call a “Jam” – 60% of employees said they wanted to go into the office one to three days a week and 72% said they saw the office as having a vital role for employees to come together and collaborate on projects in the future.

That exact employee feedback helped shape how IBM is approaching its future hybrid work model, which they admit isn’t set in stone and will need to adapt as the global pandemic situation develops differently around the world where their employees are.

An example of what not to do in a return-to-work plan comes from none other than Google.

Before vaccines were even available to most of their employees (CEO Sundar Pichai voiced intentions in early April 2021 about bringing employees back to the office; in L.A., vaccines were only made available to individuals 16 and older in mid-April), Google leadership decisively shared their commitment to return to the office, even while many of their employees don’t want to go back.

Google subsequently publicly backtracked their initial return to work plans in favor of a much more remote-friendly stance after finally listening to their employees’ feedback.

2. Refer to the data

Like with any major business decision, data is your friend. It helps give you an objective perspective of how others are approaching the same decision you’re about to make. Pair that current, relevant data with the employee feedback you’ve been gathering from inside your organization, and you’ll be in a much better position to design a path forward that works for you.