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.

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.

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.

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.

Some key questions to gather data around:

• Which working setup do employees typically prefer: remote, in office, or hybrid?
• How many days a week in the office vs. remote is most desirable?
• How are other company leaders thinking about returning to work?

In a PwC study, more than half (55%) of 1,200 workers surveyed said they prefer working remotely three days a week. Meanwhile, 68% of 133 U.S. executives said workers should be in the office at least three days a week, citing concerns that company culture will not survive a purely remote work model. Likewise, in an Envoy return to the workplace survey, nearly half of respondents (48%) say they’d like to work some days remotely and some days from the office.

Using data can also steer you towards something you hadn’t even thought about, such as the idea of negotiating a compromise with employees who feel strongly one way or another.

In that same Envoy study, 41% of workers said they would be willing to take a job with a lower salary if their company offered a hybrid work model. And a WeWork study revealed that 75% of employees are willing to give up at least one benefit or perk for the freedom to choose their work environment, while 64% would pay up to $300 for access to an office space.

If the operational costs of managing a hybrid work model is something that is holding you back from making a decision on a return-to-work plan, referring to data about different angles of this back-to-the-office challenge can offer alternative solutions to make everyone happy.

3. Assess the impact on your tools & processes

Whatever decision you make regarding going remote, back to the office, or hybrid, remember that your decision doesn’t just impact where your employees work but how they work – by themselves, with each other and with everyone else in their professional lives.

This means you’ll need to think about how your tools and processes would need to adapt to suit your future setup. These are some areas of your return-to-work plan where your tools and processes may change:

• Hiring. Your stance on remote, hybrid or in-office will impact your future recruiting efforts and who you’ll be able to attract. At the very least, your HR team will likely need to rework job descriptions and contracts, not only for new hires but for all your existing employees and contractors.
• Communication. Your employees have already done a lot of adapting to make employee communication work while remote, whether that means setting standard working hours, defining when to use Slack vs. email, or communicating more asynchronously. Whatever your future setup is, this is an area that you’ll need to continue to refine and create norms and standards around.
• Onboarding. Your onboarding process is designed to set your new team members up with everything they need to succeed, so you don’t want to drop the ball on that. Going forward, you’ll need to be clear on: how will employees be onboarded if they are working from home? How much in-person onboarding, if any, is required or expected? What does a remote employee onboarding process look like?
• Technology. Your company may have already provided a work-from-home stipend to employees to ensure they could continue to be productive while working from their homes. Will that be enough support in the long term? If not, what other technology needs will you need to address? Are there equity issues at play? What will these technologies cost?
• Performance evaluations. If employees and their managers rarely or never interact in person, what does that mean for your evaluation, promotion and compensation processes?

4. Consider your goals and vision as a company

How does a decision to go fully remote, hybrid, or back to the office align with your vision and goals as an organization?

This question is a crucial one to think through carefully, because you need to balance your company’s driving beliefs with the practical impact of those decisions on your business and HR processes.

A great example of a company who has managed this well is social media software company Buffer, who ditched their office way back in 2015 and have been a distributed company for years even before the pandemic. Their leadership’s perspective on remote work is well documented, and they were able to align on a remote work model as the right solution for their employees, for reasons including freedom, time zone coverage, productivity and lots more.

Does your team have to reach the same level of consensus as Buffer’s leadership team? Not necessarily. But you’ll always be better off using your company goals as a guide to your decision making than to neglect them.

Also, keep in mind that this step will be easier for some companies than others. Different people in your organization might view your company goals differently, which may prolong your ability to reach an agreement on a return-to-work plan. And if your business’ product or service requires regular, real-time face-to-face interaction with customers and clients, it might mean you can’t get rid of your office altogether even if you’re strongly considering it.

5. Be transparent

If you’re holding off any sort of employee communications about your decision until after that decision has been made, you’re communicating too late. What you’ll essentially be doing is fostering uncertainty among your employees and within your organizational culture, where rumors, gossip and assumptions will thrive.

What will typically follow closely after that is a wide sense of employee unrest and insecurity about your company’s (and their) future, and then a trend of team members starting to look for a job elsewhere where the remote vs. in-office stance is clear.

What happens if even you as a leader are uncertain about the future, and don’t have any information or decisions yet to share with employees? You can still create a communication plan in times of uncertainty, by sharing:

• What decisions you expect to make in the near future
• What your decision making process entails / who is involved
• When and how employees should expect to get updates on that decision

Covering these points of communication in periodic small meetings and one-and-ones will help you understand your individual team members’ most pressing issues. Also, ideally your organization has designated some forum or message board where employees can pose their questions, so that the communication on a return-to-work plan isn’t only flowing top-down.

6. Commit to a decision timeline

Deciding if (and then how) your employees are going back to the office isn’t something you should do lightly. And while, fortunately, nobody is forcing your company to make a decision by a certain date, it’s in your best interest to consider all of your options and pick a direction sooner than later.

Many employees already have their own expectations about what’s going to happen this year: according to a survey of 7,000 professionals on Blind, an anonymous professional network, 67% believe everyone will be back in the office by the end of next year. The other one-third of professionals believe they will be back in the office in the summer of 2021.

Rather than staying stuck in limbo, make your decision – or at least commit to when you will make your decision – to give employees peace of mind and certainty, and also give your HR and operations teams something to build upon.

A well-planned return-to-work plan can reap dividends for your organization in the form of increased employee engagement and mitigation of costly turnover. It’s worth putting some thought into it before rolling it out as a formal policy.

Linda Le Phan leads content for Compt, an employee stipends platform that’s fully customizable to your company’s needs, 100% IRS-compliant, and supports global teams.

The post Remote, hybrid or back to the office? How to decide on the right return-to-work plan for your company appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

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

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

1. EX marks the spot

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then the experience of the role itself:

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

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

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

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

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

2. ‘Moneyball’ HR

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

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

Other skills that make HR a bigger player include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. IT across all departments

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

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

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

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

4. Redefining departments

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

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

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

Which brings us to:

5. Going (fully) remote

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

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

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

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

6. Flexibility goes mainstream

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

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

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

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

Workplace changes are here to stay

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

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

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

—

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

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

Facing new workplace stressors

First of all, let’s see how the pandemic stress affects us both mentally and physically:

According to the video, with COVID-19 spreading around the world, “flight or fight” responses have gradually messed with our brains. Pandemic stress increases fatigue and affects our concentration, planning and decision-making. At the same time, each one of us must adhere to the precautionary measures our employer has introduced to face this crisis, including remote work and physical distancing, which have disrupted our routine.

Remote work

Based on Workable’s recent New World of Work survey on how businesses reacted to this crisis, nearly 60% of respondents said that their businesses went partially or fully remote when the pandemic started. Organizations had to quickly adjust their operations to serve remote work and employees on their behalf to adapt to this new work fashion efficiently.

This added complexity to their lives; not only did employees lose their daily routine and structure, some also faced new types of challenges, such as parenting and working simultaneously or working overtime because work-life boundaries were difficult to establish.

According to a recent research by Telus International, not everyone thrives in this remote work setting; more specifically, four out five of respondents in the United States said that it’s difficult to ‘switch off’ after work, and more than half requested a mental health day since they started working from home as a result of the pandemic.

Physical and social distancing

Working conditions were and still are equally challenging for employees who continued operating onsite, but in different ways. Commuting became stressful as people had to avoid crowded places. At work, in most cases, they had to alter how they operated. Mandatory mask use, regular sanitization and physical distancing measures in shared spaces became mandatory as part of COVID-19 company policies.

Let’s not forget how hectic life became for healthcare professionals who had to fight on the front lines for our society’s health and put their own lives at stake in the process. In other sectors, people had to level up their game, for example, the food or supply chain sectors, and recruit certain roles en masse (e.g. delivery, online customer service) to keep up with the pandemic’s urgency.

Unfortunately, as you know, numerous businesses around the world were forced to resort to layoffs due to unresolveable financial struggles. As a consequence, the rise of unemployment inflamed job insecurity and distress.

Loss of normalcy

Stress and anxiety are not the only emotions we’ve experienced this year. There’s also anger and sadness for everything we were forced to leave behind – our regular daily routine, our work friends, our hobbies, and for the worst, our jobs.

These uncomfortable emotions and uncertainty about the future make us imagine the worst-case scenarios. Being bombarded by negative news every day and unable to control all of our life aspects in such an inhospitable environment, it’s difficult to bounce back and see the positive side. This experience translates into collective grief.

People face the different stages of grief, such as denial and depression, at their own individual paces. And of course, when having to deal with overwhelmingly negative and unprecedented emotions and at the same time continue being productive and creative at work, that’s exhausting.

According to Telus International research mentioned earlier, 80% of remote workers said they would quit their job for a new one that focuses more on employee mental health. Plus, based on another source 50% of millennials and 75% of Gen Zers have left a job due to mental health reasons. As you understand, not having a mental health support system in place can hurt your business in terms of employee turnover, productivity and all those other important metrics.

Workplace stress management: What can your business do?

So how could your business support employee wellbeing in these uncertain times? First of all, you need to fully understand how stressful these times are and accept each employee’s feelings as they are. There’s no room for judgement and negative labeling right now. Compassion and healing should be our primary standpoints.

These simple practices will help you build a workplace stress management plan or improve your existing one.

1. Revisit company policies and benefits

Before starting off, it’s important to think about your current approach to employee mental health. Do you have an employee mental health policy in place? Do you foster a culture of psychological safety and trust when it comes to mental health issues? These questions will help you plan the right initiatives going forward, for example, updating your COVID-19, mental health and remote work policies.

Offering a flexible working hour scheme is essential these days. Many employees are facing various challenges while working from home, especially those who have to take care of family members such as parents. This has put extra weight on their shoulders. Give them the chance to organize their schedule as they wish and allow them some time off during the day to decompress.

As for benefits, if you don’t have data on how successful your existing mental health perks are, you can run a quick employee survey to see what’s already working and what you could improve based on employee needs. For instance, in these weird pandemic days, people might need different types of perks than usual, to accommodate physical distancing measures – so, instead of gym memberships or free office lunches, you could provide virtual yoga classes and restaurants tickets to staff.

Here are a few more benefits that can promote workplace stress management in these strange times:

• Extended sick leaves during the pandemic
• Mental health days
• Access to mental health counseling services
• Online yoga and exercise sessions

2. Provide stress management educational resources

To back up the above and show to employees that their wellbeing matters to you, you could share tips and resources to help them structure their day in an efficient way. For instance, you could send WFH tips or offer free subscriptions to mindfulness meditation apps, such as Headspace or Calm, for stress relief.

If you find a helpful video or article online don’t hesitate to share it with staff through an email. This video from The School of Life is a great example:

Also, you can organize a virtual stress management workshop with mental health counsellors on a company level to educate employees on basic stress management techniques.

By inviting the whole workforce to those initiatives, you’ll show them how important their mental health and wellbeing is for you and that you take action to support them. It’s not just a cool perk or performative practice, but rather a dedicated business priority.

3. Foster a psychologically safe and inclusive culture

Not all employees will communicate their stress issues with their teammates and managers. Even though the level of mental health stigma has dropped in recent years, some people are still afraid of admitting their mental struggles, with a fear of being judged.

But when stressed people suppress their feelings, they may experience a mental breakdown or physical problems. To prevent this, build an inclusive work culture that celebrates everyone’s unique personality with compassion and kindness. Encourage employees to discuss their concerns with their teammates openly and accept their discomfort without trying to fix it – remember that providing a safe space for someone to express is one of the best remedies to cope with stress.

Plus, this year, a new type of stigma surfaced because of the pandemic, towards people with COVID-19 symptoms such as coughing. Over the past few months reactions towards people who feel physically poorly are sometimes suspicious and judgemental. Some people overreact if they sense that somebody has neglected the COVID-19 policies and rules, and or course, are afraid of getting infected themselves.

As an organization, you need to prevent those behaviors and attitudes from entering your work environment: write your COVID-19 company policy and all your related communications with staff in a comprehensive and most importantly empathetic way, emphasizing on employee safety. We shouldn’t treat COVID-19 patients as enemies – we’re literally all in this together.

4. Schedule fun and social time

The abrupt shift to remote work and social-distancing measures led to isolation, both physically and emotionally. Employees cannot socialize as much as they used to with their teammates at the moment, and rely solely on virtual communication to catch up with their work friends and team. Being physically siloed has a negative impact for many and doesn’t allow them to let off some steam, as they would naturally do in a shared working environment, during a coffee break or lunch.

That’s why you should encourage your employees to hop on non-work relevant coffee meetings and chit-chat exactly as they would in the office. You can also organize virtual game activities, such as quizzes, and allow employees to stay bonded and active in these crucial times, in order to release our negative energy.

What a time to be alive…

“Anxiety takes away all the commas and full stops we need to make sense of ourselves,” writes Matt Haig, author and mental health advocate in his book Reasons to Stay Alive. Undoubtedly, this quote is relevant now more than ever. Keeping your spirits up in such an inhospitable setting is a hard job with uncertainty hovering around as a scary ghost.

But keep in mind that overcoming drawbacks is a prerequisite to building resilience. No matter how hard it is to picture this right now, life will get better sooner or later and time will do the rest of the healing. Let’s keep on visualizing this very day.

The post Why you should prioritize workplace stress management during the pandemic appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

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

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

Post-COVID world

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

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

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

• What are the biggest hiring challenges during COVID-19?
• What will be the biggest challenges in hiring remotely after COVID-19?
• What skills are good for remote work?

When operating remotely, unique issues surface particularly in recruitment. Finding the right people to fill those much-needed roles is crucial to business success and survival; imagine doing that entirely via your laptop. So, we asked respondents about that in our New World of Work survey.

For those continuing to hire during COVID-19, a whole new set of challenges surfaced. Remote onboarding/training challenges (37.4%) and hiring in a remote environment (33.1%) are top of mind among respondents, with uncertainty among candidates about job security (31.7%) and economic anxiety within the business (30.6%) also listed as major concerns.

In regards to challenges of remote hiring and remote onboarding as well as training, perhaps the lack of remote experience indicated in the previous graphs is a factor. The recruitment process – so familiar to entry-level and veteran recruiters alike – looks very different in a remote environment. For recruiters and hiring managers, this can be a steep learning curve.

So, we asked respondents what they thought the biggest challenges of remote hiring would be going forward. The top responses were candidate engagement (51.7%), candidate onboarding (49.7%), and candidate evaluation (42.4%), easily doubling and even tripling any tech-focused concerns such as insufficient tech stacks and lack of buy-in/adoption.

So, evidently, the problem isn’t technology itself – also shown in previous graphs where tech adoption or availability lagged behind other challenges in shifting to remote. Rather, the problem may be worker know-how in conducting standard recruitment/HR practices in a virtual world. As above, recruiters need to relearn large parts of their work. This places a greater value on soft skills around adaptability and willingness to take on new skills.

“I think it will be vastly different depending upon the sector. My company is in the technology sector so I expect there will be minimal disruption to productivity and team engagement (if the past few months are any indication) but other sectors that are not so conversant with technology may have a much more challenging experience in shifting to new models of work.” – Survey respondent

In fact, our respondents highlighted these soft skills when asked about what the most valuable traits they would be looking for in new hires. Adaptability and resilience (67.4%) and self-motivated/self-starter (54.2%) led the way as sought-after traits.

One custom response in the “Other” category put it succinctly: “Ability to work remotely with limited supervision”.

This suggests that respondents see an uncertain road ahead, that requires plenty of pivoting for businesses and their employees – in a remote environment, no less – and so, they will look for candidates who thrive in that new world.

Recruiters are themselves also operating in that ambiguous, fast-changing environment. But there are many tools available that empower hiring teams to find, evaluate, and hire candidates in the new world of work.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

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

The post Challenges of remote hiring: Tech isn’t the problem appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How much can companies go remote?
• Why can’t some employees go remote?
• Why can some employees go remote?
• Which industries are good for remote work?
• Which industries aren’t good for remote work?
• What helps employees succeed in a remote workplace?

We’ve established remote work as the number-one disruption going forward. But what will that new remote work world look like, and how feasible is it? We asked those questions in our survey as well.

Shift to remote is doable – to a degree

Two thirds of respondents (64.3%) reported that, of their workforce not already working remote, more than a quarter can move to a virtual environment without disruption. And 15.2% said they’d be able to move their entire workforce to remote.

But that’s just one side of the same coin. The other side is that more than a third (35.7%) of respondents can only move at most one quarter of their current non-remote workforce to a virtual environment without disruption. In other words, a full three quarters or more of their workforce cannot go virtual.

So, what’s stopping them? We asked that, too.

Challenges of remote work

Predictably, the need to be physically present for work is a dominant challenge in shifting to a remote-first environment, particularly for those in healthcare (81.5%) and education (73.9%). Yet, those same sectors didn’t consider adaptability, resilience, and readiness of workers to be a major issue when transitioning to remote-first.

“There is still value in being present. We are a route-based business and some staff must still report to the physical location. We want to avoid creating a disparity between job roles.” – Survey respondent

In the “Other” category, respondents cited logistics, the value of physically being in the same space, and lack of management buy-in as leading factors in the challenges of remote working.

When asked about what does enable them to go remote, a full 69.6% of education workers said they didn’t need to be physically present at work, tops across our four major sectors, while at the same time trailing all other sectors in terms of technological readiness.

One could dive deeper into the “why” of this, but one potential takeaway is that those in education feel they can work remotely if they have the technology to do so. There are myriad reasons for not having the technology, for instance, a digital divide among students, budgetary challenges, or lack of buy-in or support from key stakeholders and users.

What we do know is that many major schools from K-12 to college/university – including in California and at Harvard – are moving to a digital-first curriculum and may even remain so for the foreseeable future. Technology has enabled that to happen.

Perhaps that technology component marks a permanent shift and a major change in a sector that traditionally has required physical presence. We may see similar trends in other sectors.

So – the paradigm shift continues to be remote, and technology helps that shift to happen – but some sectors are not as ready as others.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

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

The post Challenges of remote work: the tech shall overcome appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How many workers worked remotely before COVID-19?
• How many workers are working remotely during COVID-19?
• How many businesses plan to make the remote workplace permanent?
• What are the biggest paradigm shifts due to COVID-19?
• How do the COVID-19 paradigm shifts differ by industry?

COVID-19 isn’t just a health pandemic – it’s also a social and economic pandemic in that it has significantly impacted how people and businesses operate.

Shift to a remote workplace

The majority of respondents (68%) reported that, prior to the COVID-19 crisis, a quarter or less of their employees worked remotely. Just 11.2% of businesses reported that three quarters or more of their workers operated in a virtual environment before the crisis hit.

And now? A significant portion of respondents (nearly 60%) said at least three quarters of their staff currently operate in a remote working environment.

The stark difference between these two graphs (pre-COVID and current COVID environment) indicates that COVID is a major catalyst in moving to remote, and that this change was very sudden. It also tells us that many companies hit the ground running in that shift – in many cases, literally one day to the next.

Shift to the remote workplace is permanent

When asked about a permanent shift to a remote workplace, 41.3% of respondents said they will move at least some positions to a virtual environment, and an additional 9% said they will be fully remote after COVID. Just over one-fifth (21.9%) said they will not permanently move any positions to remote.

Remote work and distributed teams led by and far in a list of predicted paradigm shifts post-COVID, with a full 71.1% of respondents citing that shift as a new standard. This is well ahead of other options including rules around physical distancing, more tech adoption, and updated workplace design.

“Remote jobs will increase. Companies will adapt to remote working patterns; this will be the new normal even with the invention of a vaccine. As people become used to working from home, meeting physically will be only a matter of necessity.” – Survey respondent

Of those businesses considering a more permanent shift, one-third (33.3%) of respondents said that they plan to move half or more of their workforce to remote going forward. Another 40.8% said they will move 26% to 50% of their workforce to a remote workplace environment.

The difference in the pre-COVID remote work numbers and post-COVID plans – and the large number of businesses who moved some or all their workforce to remote during the crisis itself – tells us that COVID-19 not only is a significant catalyst in shifting to remote, but also heavily impacts future plans around remote work.

Of course, each business has their own unique experience in this shift. Three potential stories are:

• Businesses were already planning to move some of their workforce to a remote environment for a variety of reasons (economics, logistics, engagement, etc.), and COVID-19 merely expedited those plans (for example, Twitter);
• Businesses were considering remote as a possibility, but not as a priority until COVID-19 hit; or
• Businesses did not think remote was feasible or even a good idea, but changed their perspective when forced to operate in that environment by COVID-19.

Numbers differ across industries

Although remote work was the most popularly predicted paradigm shift across all respondents in our survey, those in the healthcare sector say rules around physical distancing (63%) and tech/digital adoption (59.3%) will be as significant as remote work (also 59.3%) as major changes going forward.

And those in education tagged changes in the physical workplace as their second-most popular choice after remote work.

Still, remote work is the clear leader in terms of paradigm shift. This tells us that, regardless of industry, remote work is here to stay.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

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

Want to read it all in one place? Check out the full report here.

The post COVID-19 big shifts: The workplace will stay remote controlled appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But remote onboarding is no longer an unusual part of the job. It may become more the norm than the exception – according to Workable’s survey, 71.1% say remote work and distributed teams will be a major paradigm shift going forward.

It’s also a welcome shift; in the TalentLMS study, 77% of employees say they would accept a job even without a physical visit to their employer’s office, while 73% say they’d accept a job even without meeting any of their new colleagues in person.

If remote is accepted both by employer and employee – the focus then moves to onboarding remote employees. And an effective remote onboarding process is essential if you want your new hires – and your business altogether – to be set for success.

Related: 9 remote onboarding FAQs to level up your process

New jobs are stressful – and can be costly

Onboarding is not only important for business performance – it’s a concern for new hires as well. Starting a new job is a stressful experience. The tips for new employees range from finding support to not being afraid to ask for help – but how do you do that if you can’t even see your work environment or even know who you’re working with? Fast Company recommends designing familiar schedules outside of work and sticking to a regular work routine. Great, but even our non-work activities are severely disrupted by COVID-19. This just adds to the existing challenges of a regular work routine in a remote environment.

If you don’t solve or at least alleviate those stresses in a new hire, the costs to business are clear, both factoring into the cost per hire:

Increased employee turnover

A clumsy onboarding experience can make new hires feel frustrated and lose faith in you as an employer. Culture Amp’s Joshua Bach told us at an event last year: “10% of people [leave] within the first six months of starting a new job. And many people decide if they’re going to leave a job within the first six weeks.“ So, it’s crucial to make that strong first impression as an employer.

Those are important numbers considering that the costs of employee turnover can be a real eye-opener.

Increased time to ramp

When it takes longer for a new hire to know how to do their job properly, be it in utilizing new technologies or fitting into the existing workflow, it causes delays and even breakdowns in operations and processes. You want your new hires operating at full productivity as quickly as possible – and onboarding is a huge factor in that.

A good onboarding process can increase new hire productivity by 70% and employee retention by 82% according to Sapling, an onboarding/offboarding platform. The numbers speak for themselves, including at the bottom line.

People like predictability

Structure. Systems. Clarity. Uniformity. Organization. People trust people – and employers – who are organized ahead of time. If a new hire comes into your company and experiences a clear, well-thought-out process for onboarding remote employees, that’s a powerful first impression, showing them that your company cares about them and that you’ve got their back.

There’s a reason why process standardization is a heavily emphasized necessity in the survival and sustainability of a company: it’s because it works. When you have a clear blueprint that everyone can follow to a T, the benefits are numerous:

• It reduces costly errors and breakdowns in process.
• It ensures higher-quality and quicker execution.
• It enables scalable training when you need to fill numerous positions at once.
• It helps you identify specific areas for change and improvement – and act on them.

Inna Shevchenko, the CMO at iGMS, a short-term rental management SaaS company headquartered in North Vancouver, Canada, says that the most important lesson she’s learned after five years of hiring, training and managing employees remotely is to have a well-established process to follow.

After 12 years in the marketing biz during which she managed and trained remote teams, Inna finds that remote onboarding really isn’t all that different from ‘normal’ onboarding – the core components are the same.

“Creating a well-crafted process and structure, preparing detailed training documentation, and hiring the right person are the secrets to success.”

Business executive Erik Rivera of Thrive Talk, a telehealth platform focusing on mental health, emphasizes the importance of setting up a system beforehand, to increase clarity and reduce cost.

“A premade onboarding process followed by assessment tests helps ensure that employees know the essentials before working. Since the process is entirely automated, it lessens the expenses of the company because it eliminates the need to hire onboarding specialists.”

SuperAwesome’s Nick Yockney highlighted structure as one of his four go-to strategies in successful remote onboarding.

“We have a very, very structured way that anyone joining SuperAwesome comes into the business.” Nick said. “We call it a 30/60/90. And when someone comes in, they will have a list of tasks that they need to do for their first 30 days, and they will be specific to the role that they’re doing, but there’s also a core foundation of exactly what they do.”

Meanwhile, this comprehensive, step-by-step guide on how to build a new employee onboarding process will give you the framework to build on.

On board with us now?

Let’s start with four top tips for standardizing your onboarding process for remote employees:

1. Start with existing templates and tools

Not having an onboarding foundation already in place is a big mistake, says Max Harland, CEO of Dentaly, one of the world’s largest online dental health resources.

“The biggest challenge in remote onboarding is starting from scratch without any robust plans to start,” Max says, pointing to unreliability in the process and cost creep as potential issues. “You might end up creating a structure that is not suitable for remote onboarding and spend resources aimlessly without getting any results.”

Max recommends procuring an existing remote onboarding template from a colleague or investing in a reliable onboarding tool to more quickly set you up for success.

Following up on Max’s point – it’s better to have something in place and build on that. You can customize to your unique needs as they reveal themselves, and identify areas for improvement. Premade onboarding tools such as Rippling or Click Boarding can help you get a head start with your online onboarding until you’re ready to refine the process.

Also, here’s a remote onboarding checklist template you can use.

2. Line up your training materials – and diversify the format

The second point of advice from Inna at iGMS, that of having detailed training documentation to share with the new hire, is also crucial to a standardized process for onboarding remote employees.

“Documenting the processes, steps, training, and related materials make it easier both for the trainer and the new hire.”

She recommends having training materials with easy-to-follow instructions enriched with visuals, creating how-to videos, and recording online training sessions for future reference. And, she adds, it’s better to be short, legible, and to the point.

“In the end, all these materials help build an internal knowledge base and make the process of onboarding smoother.”

Greg Hayes, the CEO/Founder of Branch Furniture, a venture-backed office furniture startup in New York City, also likes to have starting guides for new employees including all the information they need to know about their department, past and ongoing initiatives, and goals to aim for in their first week and first month.

“These guides help give them practical, tangible to-dos so that they can get active on day one,” Greg says.

As above, use templates to get started, and build from there. Be informative and make sure everything’s covered – more so than in a normal onboarding, even. These training materials give new employees a treasure trove of resources they can tap into if they’re feeling uneasy about asking colleagues for tips or guidance.

Keep the resources diversified. A folder with 25 wordy documents is boring – include videos, audio, infographics, and other forms of media. Make it interesting and digestible.

3. Have a handbook ready – packed with information

Similarly to #2 is an employee handbook. It’s the ultimate go-to guide for everything you want the new hire to know about your company. It can include:

• Mission, visions, values, positioning statement, corporate social responsibility statement
• Organizational chart
• Guidelines for work and code of conduct
• Benefits, perks, trainings, programs, incentives, bonuses, etc.
• Performance reviews
• Important dates for reviews, holidays, annual functions, etc.
• All policies as they relate to employment (i.e. parental leave, time off, sabbaticals, etc.)

There’s a lot more that goes into an employee handbook, of course.

Husam Machlovi has seen a lot of success in having a detailed handbook. He’s the founder of digital studio With Pulp, which operates fully remotely out of New York state. His company has served notable clients such as AMC Networks and World Wrestling Entertainment, and he’s found a lot of success hiring remotely.

“Something that’s really helped is sharing the company culture very early on. From the hiring process into day one.” says Husam. “We took a page out of Valve (the game development company) book and designed a fun and casual employee handbook. The goal was to share more about the history of our company, how we work and to inspire new employees.”

Like Husam, Greg has found a larger business benefit to having a ‘user’s manual’ for onboarding remote employees.

“It’s forced us to consider more than we normally would, as everything now must be written down and contextualized in critical detail.”

Think of it as an all-inclusive guide to working at your company and an opportunity to show off your company culture. Create an employee handbook using this tutorial. And you’ll want to check out GitLab’s comprehensive employee handbook which is available for the public to look at. If printed, it would be 7,100+ pages!

4. Have a pre-set schedule – and stick to it

You also want to have a schedule in place for the new hire. Preload a calendar with meetings, training sessions, inaugurations, introductions, 1-1s, and anything else for the new hire so they’re already busy from day one.

CEO Neal Taparia of Solitaired, a new NYC-based company that ties classic games to brain training, speaks to the value of a detailed, well-planned onboarding schedule.

“You don’t want new employees twiddling their thumbs [during] their first week of work. That’s an awful first impression,” says Neal. “Our HR leader with their manager schedules out almost every hour of their day in their first week to make sure they have a productive first week. It sets the precedent that we are serious and thoughtful.”

Tara Lilien, the Chief Talent Officer at Peppercomm, a communications agency located in NYC, San Francisco, and London, transferred her team to a fully remote environment in early March. It was a steep learning curve, but she and her team worked hard to determine the right touchpoints for new remote employees.

“Video introductions, a very solid orientation week 1 schedule, and a ‘buddy’ program allowed us to ensure that we were setting up our new hires for success even if they were remote,” she says, admitting that it was easier to have met new hires in person prior to March before getting to know them via video communication.

That being said, she’s pragmatic about the remote onboarding process:

“We acknowledged early that there would be a longer ramp up period to get to know the agency, our clients and our culture and spent time checking in with our new hires to see how they were doing at the 30-60-90 day period.”

In addition to the aforementioned onboarding softwares, use these calendar tools to organize a schedule in advance of the new hire’s first day.

Success can be standardized

Templates, software, training materials, an employee handbook, a set schedule. It’s really not that different from a normal onboarding process, as Inna says.

But there are some important differences – you’re utilizing tech more often, you’re arming your new hires with the needed tools and information to be able to work autonomously in their new remote job. And, in a remote environment where spontaneous meetings are nearly impossible to come by, you’re laying out a schedule so that those meetings still happen.

Now that you have a system that can familiarize the new hire with the essential components of the job, you need to think about the more nuanced parts of onboarding remote employees: building connections with colleagues, familiarizing the new hire with the company culture, and helping them feel like part of the organization. Yes, they’re the new kid on the block, but if you follow a standardized plan, they won’t feel like it for long.

The post Onboarding remote employees: A standardized process for the win appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• How did businesses respond to the COVID-19 pandemic?
• What were the effects of COVID-19 on business operations?
• How did COVID-19 change hiring?
• And finally: how are businesses planning for a post-COVID future?

Not only was COVID-19’s impact palpable, it was also very tangible and it forced action in many aspects of business. Let’s look at what our respondents did when COVID-19 became a reality for them.

Business response to COVID-19

As is now known, a significant impact of COVID-19 on business was that it triggered a sudden transition to a fully remote working environment where all employees worked from home. Our survey confirmed this – nearly two-thirds (62.6%) of respondents cited going fully remote as one of the actions their business took.

A third (32.3%) of respondents said they moved part of their operations to a remote environment. It bears noting that nearly a third of all respondents work in IT/technology – considered to be one of the most remote-friendly sectors.

A sizable percentage of businesses introduced precautionary measures at their working location (37.9%) and/or reduced capacity at work, if remote was not an option for all workers (18%).

“It’s going to look very different without a doubt. … Personally, I think it will be good for us, we were starting to lose focus of who we were, it was becoming less important to talk to people face to face and more important to stare at phones. … Yes, we will be using technology more in our day-to-day lives due to COVID-19, but now we are focusing more on what’s actually important.”
– Survey respondent

Economic impact

The economic impact of COVID-19 is also significant in our dataset. A full 12% shut down business altogether – albeit temporarily in most cases. All but one in hospitality and 26.1% of those in education shut down. In terms of company size, 21.7% of those in the 1-9 employee-size bracket opted to shut down temporarily, a far higher rate than any of the other size categories.

More than a fifth of our respondents reported that their businesses laid off or furloughed employees. When breaking down by company size, we found those in the 50-99 and 100-499 employee-size brackets were statistically more likely to lay off workers, with percentages choosing this option being 12.3 and 10.6 percentage points more than the percentages of total respondents in those brackets. The opposite was true for those with 10-49 employees, with just 17.1% in that category choosing to lay off or furlough workers, compared with 26.1% of total respondents falling into that size bracket.

And by industry, those in hospitality (62.5%) and manufacturing (50%) were more likely to turn to layoffs and furloughs as an option, whereas those in healthcare (7.4%) and education (4.3%) were far less likely to choose that route.

Changes going forward

When asked about the changes businesses are planning going forward, the response was comprehensive, with all listed options being selected widely. The most popularly selected moves are travel reduction (59.3%) and a shift to remote (56.5%). Closely following are plans to switch to staggered/flexible work schedules (44.9%) and a redesign of the physical working environment (44.1%).

Many of those in the “Other” category stated they aren’t entirely sure yet, with one indicating they want to see how other businesses fared before taking action of their own. Others plan to increase personal protective equipment (PPE), sanitation protocols, and overall employee safety either in the field or in the workplace. One respondent in the business/consulting sector plans to require clients to be tested beforehand.

Most striking is that just 6.2% of respondents stated that nothing is being planned going forward.

Whether it’s layoffs, a shift to remote, or redesigning workplaces, this response tells us that COVID-19 impacted the majority of businesses in our survey, and drastically altered their planning.

“I think that it will change a lot in the world. Adapting as we have gave us knowledge to be more flexible and change to remote working. I think many people will adapt more wellness programs and education.” – Survey respondent

Impact on hiring

COVID-19 was also readily felt in the hiring space. Two-thirds of respondents (65.2%) said they were hiring less during the crisis or had frozen hiring altogether. Just 8.1% said they increased their hiring in response. Although our own survey results don’t reflect it in terms of healthcare hiring, it’s well documented that healthcare, supply chains, telecommunications, and the mortgage industry are sectors that aggressively ramped hiring in the early days of the crisis.

Company size also dictated responses: smaller companies (1-49 employees) and larger, enterprise-sized companies (>1,000 employees) were the most likely to report that they’ve frozen hiring completely, while a full half of companies with 500-999 employees said they were hiring less than planned.

None of the six size categories saw more than 10% of respondents hiring more than planned.

Want to learn more? Navigate to:

• Chapter 2 on the magnitude of the shift to remote work
• Chapter 3 on the challenges of remote working and why
• Chapter 4 on the challenges of remote hiring and why
• Chapter 5 on the role of technology in remote work going forward
• Methodology and firmographics
• A collection of open-ended responses from those we surveyed.

The post How businesses responded to COVID-19 – and what they’re planning now appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

SuperAwesome creates products and services that make the internet safer for kids and has distributed teams in the UK and the US. SuperAwesome’s Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Nick Yockney, kindly explained to us how they managed to onboard around 18 people remotely in March 2020, amidst the pandemic. Below, you’ll find his remote onboarding best practices.

Related: Learn how Nick Yockney built an effective hiring plan and increased SuperAwesome’s workforce from around 55 to 160 employees in two years.

Onboarding remote workers – the essentials

First of all, Nick highlights the importance of having a stellar People Operations team to reach remote onboarding success:

“Our People Ops team who manage the onboarding are the real stars of this show,” Nick says. “They’re the ones that make everything happen, really. I take things up to the point of getting an offer accepted, and then they take over, and they run a brilliant process.”

Yes, a top-notch operations team can definitely save the day, but Nick admits that they had an additional asset that enabled them to quickly transition to a fully virtual set-up: Remote technology. With distributed teams in different countries, they already had functional tools in place which proved to be valuable when onboarding employees fully online.

Which brings us to the first remote onboarding essential – that of technology.

1. Make the most of technology

How can you replicate in-person meetings and training sessions in the digital world? First off, with e-conferencing platforms such as Meet and Zoom, you can easily set up a virtual appointment with your teammates. All training can be transferred online, as well. Pro-tip: if the learning material is complex, you can enable an e-learning platform for better structuring and outcomes (e.g. TalentLMS).

According to Nick, tech can help new hires get to know people in the company quickly, which is very important to feel comfortable when joining a new business, especially in the remote world, where, Nick says, “everyone is working slightly more siloed than previously”.

With the right communication tools and live-chatting options, such as Slack, and the video options we mentioned above, you could organize online quizzes or daily challenges to bring people together to interact for non-work related matters. It would be beneficial to maintain that spontaneous socialization that can go missing in the digital work world.

Nick points out how socializing at work will change in virtual environments:

“There would regularly be team lunches, evenings out, all of this kind of stuff, and always as well just that social thing of after work, maybe going for drinks or going for some food with colleagues or going to the gym at lunchtime with them,” Nick explains. “That kind of stuff has kind of fallen a little bit by the wayside, which there’s nothing you can do about. It’s the new world that we live in, unfortunately.”

2. Prepare a structured remote onboarding plan

Nick’s last point on how social relationships among colleagues change in remote work setups shows that not everything can be replicated equally online. But certain parts of onboarding can be transferred without much disruption. Having a standardized process makes the difference:

“We have a very, very structured way that anyone joining SuperAwesome comes into the business.” Nick says. “We call it a 30/60/90. And when someone comes in, they will have a list of tasks that they need to do for their first 30 days, and they will be specific to the role that they’re doing, but there’s also a core foundation of exactly what they do.”

Apart from consistent and structured, the remote onboarding process should also be flexible enough to accommodate potential changes, such as additional meetings:

“Every hiring manager knows that they’ve got to have this 30/60/90 written for the day that their person starts. And part of that will be to get that person to go out and to set up these meetings with various different people. So, they need to go out and organize those meetings themselves.”

3. Communicate your vision and mission

Communicating remote culture is not a piece of cake – especially if you’ve never done it before. Apart from revealing bits of your culture during meetings, get-togethers with teammates, or through your careers page, it’s critical to get your business leaders onboard in this journey.

Nick explains the role SuperAwesome’s CEO Dylan Collins and other C-suite employees play when onboarding remote workers:

“Everyone in the business, regardless of if you come in at a senior level or a junior level, will have a talk with Dylan, our CEO, around the history of the company, what we’re doing, what the strategy is. Everyone in the business will have a meeting with our chief product officer who will talk us through all of our products and what they are.”

So, when onboarding remote workers your leaders can work on getting everyone on the same page and walk them through the product’s or services’ details:

“Our product marketing managers will take everyone through how we talk about SuperAwesome, how we talk about the products, the lexicon of all these different definitions that you need to learn.”

4. Craft a careful logistics process

Your new remote hires will need access to tech gear to get the work done. According to Nick, it was hard to get laptops quickly during the lockdown and this was a challenging task for them:

“Bizarrely during lockdown a lot of people started to find that they didn’t have as long notice periods, or they wanted to start very, very quickly. So, that kind of put a bit of strain I think on our office ops who’re amazing”.

So if you plan to hire and onboard remote employees, especially in different regions or even countries, keep logistics in mind. Ask your people ops or office management team to set up a solid and agile plan and partner with vendors and suppliers you trust.

You don’t need to start from scratch

SuperAwesome’s onboarding story is definitely a positive one. Based on Nick’s description as long as you have some basic digital tools that are easy to use and a well-structured onboarding process, you can easily transfer them to the virtual world.

But what is going to matter the most to rate new hire experience as successful? Is it the culture or a different factor? Nick shares a wise thought:

“Well, I think a lot of the things will come down to adjusting how people measure companies and how they measure whether a company’s doing the right thing or the wrong thing”, Nick says.

“I can’t remember where I read this, but it’s around that people kind of shift from talking about company culture or measuring culture as a benchmark of how they appreciate a business to actually whether the company does what they say they’re going to do. I think that’s going to be a really kind of interesting change for them.”

So, if you’re moving operations remotely make sure to revisit your employer branding and culture and stick to your promises as much as you can. Transparency and consistency will be crucial going forward to the new work world to ensure talented employees stay with you.

The post Onboarding remote workers: SuperAwesome’s success story appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The result is Workable’s New World of Work survey report. We think you’d be very interested in this. Out of many insights, we’re highlighting three for you:

• Remote work is the big paradigm shift.
• Digital transformation is the way to get there.
• Employee engagement (particularly in remote) and remote hiring/onboarding are huge concerns now and in the future.

Other insights from the data include:

• COVID-19 forced nearly two out of every three businesses to move fully to a remote-first environment.
• 56.5% of businesses plan to make remote permanent for at least some of their workforce going forward. Just 6.2% of businesses plan to do nothing in general.
• 68% of those going remote did it without disruption because they had the technology in place. Plus, 46.1% will prioritize tech in their plans to go remote.
• 7 in 10 education workers said they could actually go remote if they needed to – but the technology is just not there to allow that to happen.
• Candidate engagement, onboarding and evaluation are predicted to be major headaches in the new world of work. Add remote to the mix, and it becomes even more challenging.
• Senior-level executives are more worried about productivity while their employees are far more concerned about engagement.

But while there’s plenty of discussion and consensus in the three highlighted areas of the report, there is no clear solution or even a rulebook to follow in this new world of work that we’re entering.

What we know is that the traditional form of work – effectively, being roommates with your colleagues, sticking to a set schedule, being “present” at your desk – is no longer tenable. It’s like trying to drive an autonomous vehicle with a stick shift.

Remote is easy at first, and so is the tech adoption to get us there. But in the long term, the pandemic is forcing us to evolve. The numbers from our survey prove that. We may not know exactly how to go about it, but it’s now on us to figure out how to do it in the best way possible.

One respondent summed it up aptly:

“It is a road that has not been walked. I honestly don’t know what is ahead; one is only just willing to explore many different strategies until they find one that works.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing crisis is unprecedented, and is already being called a seminal event in modern-day world history. There will be entire books and documentaries produced on the topic.

One day, we’ll settle into a new form of living, whatever that may be. Until then, let’s keep thinking, talking, collaborating, as we work towards a new – and very different – future.

Stay healthy,

Nikos Moraitakis
CEO, Workable

The post Announcing our New World of Work survey report appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Obstacles to remote work

In response to the question, “Of your workforce that can’t go remote without disruption to workflow, what’s stopping them?”, logistical challenges and willingness to work from home were common refrains:

• “Not having the space for working at home uninterrupted.” (Marketing, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Some don’t have a great setup at home – some people are struggling emotionally from isolation, WiFi, comfortable workspace, noise, family, living in small spaces.” (Healthcare, Middle East & Africa, Service/Support Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote working is very much a personal thing. The office is a controlled environment. Home is very different for different people.“ (Staffing/Recruiting, UK & Ireland, Recruitment Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “No space at home to work remotely.” (IT/Tech, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “They prefer to work from the offices.” (Education, Multinational, Product VP/SVP, <50 FTEs)
• “They do not want to work remotely.“ (IT/Tech, Multinational, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

The value of being physically together in a workspace also came up:

• “There is still value in being present. We are a route-based business and some staff must still report to the physical location. We want to avoid creating a disparity between job roles.” (Landscaping, US & Canada, Owner/Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “Lack of team work experience/stand-ups, spontaneous interactions, etc.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “The fact that we’re solving very tough problems and we believe in people having a chance to discuss how to solve them.” (IT/Tech, Continental Europe, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “Easier to collaborate in the office.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “We like being together.” (Accounting/Finance, US & Canada, Office Administration Entry Level, <50 FTEs)

And overall lack of buy-in, especially among management, was a major sticking point:

• “We could offer all our team remote working, but it won’t work for us.” (IT/Tech, UK & Ireland, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “Employer not in full support of remote work/flexi-work.” (Accounting/Finance, Middle East & Africa, HR Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Mindset of leaders who cannot trust people working from home.” (Accounting/Finance, Continental Europe, Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Managers not really happy with having people in full remote.” (IT/Tech, Continental Europe, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “CEO does not like it.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, self-described sole Talent Manager reporting to CEO, <50 FTEs)
• “Managerial trust.” (Salon, US & Canada, Operations Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Team leads want their teams to be physically in the office saying that it’s more effective.” (Accounting/Finance, Continental Europe, HR Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “CEO opinion on WFH.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)

Hiring challenges during COVID-19

In response to the question, “If your business is continuing to hire during the COVID-19 crisis, what are the top three biggest challenges in filling job positions?”, the following challenges were cited:

• “Candidates unable to apply for visas/permits due to a temporary freeze from certain countries (in this case Switzerland).” (Publishing, Multinational, Recruitment Entry Level, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Difficult to find qualified engineers.” (IT/Tech, Americas, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Small talent pool of profiles we are looking for.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, HR Executive, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Coordinating remotely with hiring teams.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Uncertainty of permanent job location.” (Nonprofit Publishing, US & Canada, IT Support, 100-499 FTEs)
• “People extending their notice periods of termination as mutually beneficial due to economic uncertainty – thus feeding into hiring freeze.” (Education, UK & Ireland, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Restrictions to travel/relocate.” (Gaming, Europe/UK & Ireland, Recruitment individual contributor, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Candidates unwilling/unable to relocate despite generous relocation offers.” (IT/Tech, Continental Europe, HR Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Candidates accepting the first offer they get, so we need to be quick. And passive candidates not wanting to change roles for uncertainty and new probationary periods.” (Education, Continental Europe, HR individual contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Candidates not wanting to work at specific sites” (Security, US & Canada, HR Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “Unsure if candidates truly want to work for us, or if they are applying due to a layoff and they just want any job.” (Consumer Packaged Goods, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor. 50-99 FTEs)
• “Initially, we had many people looking for positions as they were out of work. As more areas open up in our state, we have seen less availability. Healthcare is very busy.” (Healthcare, US & Canada, Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Not being able to hire internationally (can have temp visa holders enter Australia).” (Education, Asia, Recruitment, 1000-4,999 FTEs)
• “Reduced recruitment pool due to border restrictions.” (Science/Research, Oceania, Operations Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)

Hiring challenges after COVID-19

In response to the question, “If your business plans to hire in the future after the crisis passes, what do you anticipate to be the three biggest challenges in filling positions?”, diluted talent pools and hiring in a distributed fashion were listed as top challenges:

• “Candidates requesting total remote working options from countries where we don’t operate offices in.” (Publishing, Multinational, Recruitment Entry Level, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Coordinating with hiring teams remotely.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “With an increase of job-seekers, quality of candidates may lower and sifting through ‘qualified’ applicants will be time consuming.” (Facility Management, Multinational, Marketing Manager/Director, 5,000+ FTEs)
• “Increased supply of candidates but finding right/good people and not excited by all who present well but are not who they seem.” (Consulting/Business Services, Multinational, Recruitment Individual contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Too many candidates for some roles, not enough in others, highly specialized high tech positions may be hard to fill.” (IT/Tech, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)
• “Onsite interviews during a slow re-open process.“ (Accounting/Finance, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, US & Canada, <50 FTEs)

Ending quotes from respondents

The most comprehensive responses were reserved for the end, with more than 90 of the 350+ adding their own insights, commentary and opinions on completion of the survey.

The question was as follows:

Any additional thoughts or comments on what you think the world of work will look like after the COVID-19 crisis? No right or wrong answers here – we just want to hear your perspective.

The overall themes were clear as seen in this word cloud generated from the responses.

Even then, the answers were broad, insightful, and varied.

The ‘New Normal’

Many respondents highlighted huge changes going forward, with “new normal” being a popular catchphrase throughout.

• “New normal, more remote work and virtual meetings, less unnecessary face to face activities.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Service/Support Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “More tech/digital adoption; More WFH opportunities: More need for employee engagement and employee monitoring.” (IT/Tech, Asia, Recruitment Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “I think that it will change a lot in the world. Adapting as we have gave us knowledge to be more flexible and change to remote working. I think many people will adapt more wellness programs and education.” (Human Services, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “The new normal will change definitely our lives especially in work perspectively. We need to follow set of rules, guidelines for you to be able to move on forward.” (Healthcare, UK & Ireland, Service/Support Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “Businesses will hire less workforce as they adjust to the new ‘normal’. Some businesses will definitely adopt a virtual platform that will see shift in work schedules. New policies adopted should ensure that the workforce is confident in how the businesses will treat them in psychologically, professionally and financially.” (Consulting/Business Services, Multinational, Operations Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “People are adapting to the new normal. That means, industries and businesses are going to adapt to using digital platforms to deliver their work and product. People are adjusting to social distancing and embracing the technology to meet people and make their daily earnings.” (Education, Entry Level, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote and flexible working will be the new reality.” (IT/Tech, Asia, HR Individual Contributor, 5,000+ FTEs)
• “After COVID-19 crisis, everything will change, industry, leaving environment, job opportunity in market and unemployment will increase.” (Education, Asia, Sales Owner/Executive, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Less social interaction, business travel, longer work hours.” (Energy Commodity, Multinational, HR Owner/Executive, 100-499 FTEs)
• “All of us will need to adapt to the new normal. Travel and work will be planned differently. BCP-DRP will be looked at differently.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Engineering Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote working will be the new normal with great flexibility, greater international opportunities and life balance.” (Fashion, Continental Europe, Service/Support, Owner/Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “Remote jobs will increase. Companies will adapt to remote working patterns, this will be the new normal even with the invention of vaccine. As people become used to work from home, meeting physically will be only a matter of necessity.” (Consulting/Business Services, Service/Support Owner/Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “In our industry, it will never return to before COVID-19. We will need to change our focus to marketing to consumers within our own country, province or within driving distance. The visitors from around the world will be minimal. This means hospitality won’t be big employers any longer.” (Hospitality, US & Canada, HR Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Company headquarters will transform to be brand builders, places to develop company culture, drink the Kool-Aid, for candidates, employee training/gathering and customers. Think McDonald’s Hamburger University meets Google headquarters.” (Healthcare, Multinational, Marketing Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)

Some respondents highlighted the lack of clarity about the road ahead:

• “There is no standard to go off of. My company is in tech/software and it is far more about what the competition is doing than what is a good idea for our business and population. A small start-up of 60 is trying to set precedent based off of Twitter going 100% remote. That does not seem reasonable to me.” (Consulting/Business Services, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Everything is still unclear… No visibility of what tomorrow will look like…” (Logistics/Supply Chain, Middle East & Africa, Marketing Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “It is a road that has not been walked, i honestly dont know what is ahead, one is only just willing to explore many different strategies, until they find one that works.” (Hospitality, Sales Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “I’m not even sure. It’s scary to think that the covid will never go away and that at any given time you could run into someone who is infected but not showing any symptoms and can infect others.” (Substance Abuse Counseling, US & Canada, Senior Counselor, <50 FTEs)

A few suggested it’ll eventually return to the norm that we always knew:

• “Things will go back to normal, businesses will operate like how they used to.” (Education, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “This time shall pass. Social distancing will end. We will all be back to being regular humans again.” (Telecommunications, US & Canada, Finance VP/SVP, <50 FTEs)

Technology becoming a necessity

The emphasis on tech as part of a company’s business continuity plan (BCP) and disaster recovery plan (DRP) was clear:

• “The world of work will be focusing on new technology to make work efficient and boost collaboration in virtual ways, more adaptive to remote working style, the expenses for office rental, travelling will be cut as well, more creative ways in employee engagement events.” (Healthcare, US & Canada, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “Asian work environment was still very much conventional where employees are expected to be in office. Covid-19 has shown the Asian business owners that weak link where they refused to even contemplate a more modern outtake in workplace practice (i.e. have flexi-working arrangement, therefore reduce office space or have office suites), being penny wise but pound foolish when it comes to technology adoption. During the shutdown, those who spent on technology was able to be ‘business as usual’ where workforce worked 100% remotely.” (IT/Tech, Asia, Operations Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “It will have to be very flexible and open to new and unprecedented measures in allowing productivity to flow despite the new office norms. There will be a greater need for technology and its various intents and purposes so that operations can still continue despite physical limitations. What humans or live personnel cannot do, technology should cover.” (Staffing/Recruiting, US & Canada, Recruitment Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Technology constantly changing and updating. Need training for new tech that changes constantly. We all work with different ideas and really don’t train to work as a team. It would be helpful if we all worked in a similar manner – using similar styles for best in class work.” (Staffing/Recruiting, US & Canada, Recruitment VP/SVP, <50 FTEs)
• “I think it will be vastly different dependent upon the sector. My company is in the technology sector so I expect there will be minimal disruption to productivity and team engagement (if the past few months are any indication) but other sectors that are not so conversant with technology may have a much more challenging experience in shifting to new models of work.” (IT/Tech, UK & Ireland, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Innovation cycles in our (conservative – mechanical engineering) will be faster, customers are more used to digital technologies and will ask for that, e.g. IoT.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

Challenges are unique and varied

Managing a business through this time and in the future had challenges specific to industry:

• “Universities’ revenue model has to change. Will people be more inclined to become self-employed?” (Entertainment and Telecommunications, Multinational, HR Individual Contributor, 5,000+ FTEs)
• “Hopefully more UK manufacturing as reliance on manufacturing from abroad has been a huge issue.” (Staffing/Recruiting, UK & Ireland, Recruitment Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Working in a preschool environment, we found it challenging to meet the needs of our families remotely. We were able to deliver a quality educational experience, but families really missed the childcare component of our program. They are not interested in a remote alternative to preschool and would accept it only as an emergency measure.” (Education, US & Canada, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

Logistics and operations were affected as well:

• “It’s difficult to enforce policies that aren’t government mandated, like mask wearing, to non-employees, such as drivers coming to the warehouse. Then a decision has to be made to refuse that person into the building and potentially delay customer orders? The variety of how much people care on an individual level makes it impossible to modify everyone’s behavior the same way.” (E-commerce/Online Store, US & Canada, Operations Manager/Director, 50-999 FTEs)
• “In our region, we struggle with our labor legislation – more employers are looking at new ways of working and that impacts every aspect of our work , from remote teamwork to sales and customer service, critical cloud infrastructure and security. We need to be 100% focused on keeping our employees safe and serving our customers the best way we can ever be.” (Food Industry, LATAM, HR Manager/Director, 500-999 FTEs)
• “I guess my only anxieties are: When we partially reopen the office how much everyone will stick to the new rules we’ll need to have about hygiene. When we partially reopen the office if will this impact presenteeism (i.e. my boss has gone in today so I feel I should go in even if I don’t feel safe, or have to take a busy underground train, etc.)” (IT/Tech, Multinational, HR Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “Overall, adjust of employees to the new normal will be a challenge. As once in the office, most of them will easily forget the distance measures or to continuously wash hands. But looking forward to have operations and sales increase, having Clients confidence.” (Consulting/Business Services, Multinational, Sales Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)

And sadly for some, the challenges were insurmountable:

• “This is all so sad. Very very unnecessary. I lost my business because of a dishonest political agenda.” (Education, US & Canada, Office Administration Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)
• “It has completely destroyed a business that I have worked 38 yrs to build. I do not see how I am going to be able to stay in business with the new guidelines.” (Education, US & Canada, Office Administration Executive, <50 FTEs)

It’s not just about business

For many, the crisis has a political or social component to it:

• “It feels like the politicization of the pandemic can’t be avoided. if you wear a mask or insist on 6ft distancing, some people treat you differently. this is a much larger issue obviously, but the lack of empathy for immunocompromised/at risk individuals is sad, and it’s hard to empathize for those who think I’m brainwashed by the CDC, WHO, etc.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Service/Support Individual Contributor, 500-999 FTEs)
• “Instead of thinking it is a post-COVID, we need to think that this is the balanced and readily available economy. Gap between rich and poor has to come to a point where both can meet. Only poor feeds the rich.” (Hospitality, Middle East & Africa, Finance Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)
• “More remote working. Increased tech. Increased tracking. Less personal contact. More depression and mental health issues. The phrase ‘New Normal’ was thought up by Communist China. I wish these phrases were not adopted along with assuming everything is all new. Critical thinking is key as is compassion and kindness. Adopting new slogans and so forth sweeps people along but at a cost.” (Consulting/Business Services, multinational, Recruitment Individual Contributor, 100-499 FTEs)

The human factor

People are at the core of the crisis and its impact on business, and many respondents were quick to highlight the changes in how colleagues approached their work – and how that fit into their personal lives:

• “Workers will care a lot more about their loved ones than ever before; work will be secondary…” (Staffing/Recruitment, multinational, Recruitment Executive, <50 FTEs)
• “There will be more focus on the person rather on what the person produces. Companies will start asking why people do what they do before asking them to just do their job.” (Education, LATAM, HR Entry level, 50-99 FTEs)
• “Basically this Covid has made us realize that people can work remotely with the same efficiency and giving extra time to their family as well. So we can keep or introduce a few new policies in our company where each of the employees can get an opportunity to work from home for particular week or days, which will make them more happy as their willing to spend time with their family will be fulfilled during their work.” (IT/Tech, Asia, HR Executive, 50-99 FTEs)
• “On the positive side: People will be more aware of self and growth which will lead career stability and as an organization attrition can be controlled. On the other side: there may not be enough opportunities for those who are laid off – as most of the work would be automated or virtual. We need to create more jobs … that is something which will take time.” (Consulting/Business Services, Asia, Recruitment Manager/Director, 50-99 FTEs)
• “I have been amazed at how well our team have adapted to working from home. We have all acknowledged that we miss the team interaction, but I really feel we’ve got to know each other more, we’ve had daily calls since the lockdown, which has helped our split site company (some on Isle of Man, rest in London) I think it will take time to accept the new normal, but we will get there. My feelings about travel certainly feel different, I live on the Isle of Man, but travel to London to see our team there, and I don’t feel comfortable being on a busy tube right now, so I think it will all just take time. I hope that we take all the learnings we’ve acquired during this lockdown and bring these forward. Our air is clearer, our seas are cleaner, we recognise the importance of being connected after being so isolated for so long, we appreciate the small exercise time we’ve had outdoors. The world will be different, but so much potential to be better too.” (IT/Tech, UK & Ireland, HR Individual Contributor, <50 FTEs)
• “New life and new way of living is happening now, the most important is to adapt and find the right way to work and to improve.” (Retail, Middle East & Africa, HR, Individual Contributor, 100-499 FTEs)
• “It’s very ambiguous how the world of work will look like after the COVID-19 crisis. What I’d like to see though, is to make adjustments which benefit employees and define new standards which will make employees feel safe. There are so many things going on around us as a covid-19 effect, that make mental health quite fragile. And this is something very crucial we should focus on.” (IT/Tech, Multinational, Marketing Manager/Director, 100-499 FTEs)
• “It’s going to look very different without a doubt. However, we are a resilient species and will adapt to this like we did other situations. Personally, I think it will be good for us, we were starting to lose focus of who we were, it was becoming less important to talk to people face to face and more important to stare at phones. People are now more aware than ever about the importance of family and friends, and less people will take that for granted. Yes, we will be using technology more in our day to day lives due to Covid-19, but now we are focusing more on what’s actually important.” (Mining/Exploration, Oceania, Operations Manager/Director, <50 FTEs)

The post New World of Work survey report: In their own words appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The majority of respondents were from companies in the 100-499 employee range, in IT/Technology, operating in the United States or Canada, in HR, and at the manager/director level.

Number of full-time employees:

Main industry:

Region of business operation:

Primary function of department:

Job level:

The post New World of Work survey report: Methodology and firmographics appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

During a hiring freeze, technical recruiters can proactively position themselves and their teams by adopting more efficient remote sourcing techniques, interview processes, and by embracing ways to build work-from-home cultures while social distancing. For recruiters that have been furloughed or laid off, now is the time to reinvent their own habits and skills for a new economy.

We talked to six uplifting recruiting leaders from CNN, Airtable and others to understand their perspectives and recommendations on how to keep moving forward during an economic downturn and surviving crisis.

Recruiting leaders

Aleks Derikonja Technical Recruiter, CNN	Jacob Chavarria Lead Technical Recruiter, Formation
Victoria Day Technical Recruiter, Airtable	Geno Miller CEO & Cofounder, Shtudy
Bryan Menduke Senior Technical Recruiter, Kensho Technologies	Analisse Dunne People Operations Manager, Nulab

Increasing productivity and staying positive while WFH

“It’s always those simple things that make a whole lot of difference in your day to day. I’ve had to accept that it is OK to take a break at any point in the day or week, to go walk your dog, do a yoga class in your living room, listen to your favorite podcast or meditate. Even on some of those meeting packed days, I’ve scheduled in time for myself to make sure there is a good balance.”

– Aleks Derikonja, CNN

“I have been using the app, Focus Keeper, to make sure I give a good amount of time to work as well as when to shut off. Right now the lines are being blurred between personal and work time. That can lead to a high amount of stress. By using the app, I know when to shut off for the day and when to give myself time to take breaks.”

– Jacob Chavarria, Formation

“The best investment I’ve made is a standing desk converter and an anti-fatigue pad. They are life-changing! My time investment was moving apartments and then decluttering the space so that my ‘office’ can coexist with my workspace without being intrusive. I have a setup that’s easy to break down at the end of the day, so I just have an empty desk with a small box underneath (with my laptop, stand, keyboard/mouse, headphones, notebooks, etc). I know many of us don’t have the luxury of extra space, so being able to clean up my space helps me disconnect from work life and pivot my mind into my personal life.”

– Victoria Day, Airtable

“I’m sort of a news junkie, so I always check tech and recruitment news first thing in the morning. I also love having 1-on-1 personal interviews with real job seeking engineers. News is good to see what’s going on from a bigger picture, while 1:1 personal interviews allows us to empathize with what developers are going through emotionally. This is super important because every engineer’s journey is different, and after about 20-30 interviews, it’s usual to start noticing common themes between the interviewees. This helps us provide new scalable solutions to help them quickly.”

– Geno Miller, Shtudy

“For staying on top of engineering trends – one great way to do this is to sit in on engineering all hands meetings and different team meetings to understand what the team is doing. You will be able to learn about the different tools the team currently uses, what they may be evaluating, and the why behind it all.”

– Bryan Menduke, Kensho Technologies

Advice for recruiters who have been laid off

“Please don’t rush into anything if you have a choice. I know several of my colleagues took at least two weeks after it happened to them to clear their heads. Try to find gaps in your resumes and take one of the many free learning courses. I know Linkedin has some great courses to help. Even spend some free time researching recruiting tools that are out there. I feel we get stuck using the same tools and do not see what has changed out there. Really start working with your network and if you don’t have a network this is a good time to start to build one. Connect with other recruiters that are in the same position to help each other.”

– Jacob Chavarria, Formation

“Go above and beyond where you can – if you’re looking for a new job, put more effort than you think you need to into preparing for interviews (for the jobs you really want)! One of the best pieces of feedback I received during my interview process was to make myself stand out for the jobs I want. For example, before an interview, research a role at the company, and come with an idea of how you engage candidates (bring a search string), how you’d sell the company and engage with the candidate from the first message until their offer is signed. Also, share the resources you have – I talk about resources I’ve created in past jobs, and even re-created them on the fly with a screen share. Answers sound similar when you’re asking the same questions again and again, and people who go outside of the box are the ones who stand out.”

– Victoria Day, Airtable

“The market is tough, but there are still firms and companies looking to hire recruitment consultants to help with hiring. Connect with anyone you can in the industry via LinkedIn or be on the lookout for virtual groups via Meetup networking!”

– Analisse Dunne, Nulab

Advice for job seekers

“Use your network, and engage with recruiters. There are so many talented applicants on the market right now, and many recruiters have told me they can’t even get through their inbound applicant pool each day before it completely fills up again overnight. Personally, I don’t know if I would have gotten an interview with Airtable if a recruiter hadn’t passed my resume along to the top of the pile. If you’re interested in a company, check out their LinkedIn and see who you know through 1st and 2nd degree connections (don’t be afraid to ask for an intro to a second degree connection!). Also, once you identify these connections, you don’t have to ask them to talk or have coffee – most times, when I’ve asked for a casual conversation about the company, I don’t get a response. If I send a quick note saying I’d really appreciate it if they could refer me, I’m significantly more likely to get a response. I’ve found that Zoom fatigue is real, and while people are mostly happy to refer you, sometimes they don’t always want to take time to talk about their work (especially outside of work hours). Basically, don’t be afraid to start the conversation by asking for a referral.”

– Victoria Day, Airtable

“There are many hiring lists for people who have been laid off or furloughed. Parachute List is a good one for all kinds of people and skill sets. I highly recommend EVERY engineer adds their resume to at least one of these, even if you haven’t been laid off yet. Here at Shtudy, we’ve created a hiring table for tech talent of color to anonymously sign up so you can receive new career opportunities – it’s a step-by-step guide on exactly what technical talent should do to survive after being laid off according to recruiters at Google, Facebook, and more. It’s super valuable for every job seeker and recruiter who cares about their career. They’ll have a significant advantage in your job search if you do.”

– Geno Miller, Shtudy

“Don’t just take any job, and brush up on skills you may have not focused on recently. When you are not working, it is easy to just jump to the first opportunity that presents itself. However, it is critical to evaluate the longer term fit of an opportunity because you don’t want to get yourself into a situation where you take a job that is not a fit and then feel stuck there because of the outside circumstances. Additionally, I would suggest technical job seekers to focus on brushing up and also learning new skills that will make them attractive to an employer. This will pay dividends not only in the short term but over the course of their career.”

– Bryan Menduke, Kensho Technologies 

“Partner with a recruitment firm who focuses on your area of expertise, there are companies still hiring! Also, reach out to internal recruiters via LinkedIn at companies whose jobs you have applied to-a message will help you stand out amongst candidates. Also, don’t be opposed to freelance; lots of companies are opening up contract and freelance roles because they can’t commit to long-term at the moment but once the pandemic is over, that could change! Last but not least, don’t fret – furlough is not forever and something will come along!”

– Analisse Dunne, Nulab

Predictions about the future of hiring

“I think the pandemic will change not only how we hire, but also how we work. Many companies have already announced that they will allow their staff to work remotely indefinitely, which I think is just the beginning of this workforce transformation in tech we’re going to see. This will have a massive impact on culture, benefits, as well as recruiting strategies. However, I think it will be less challenging to find and hire top talent since we will not be tied to a specific location with lots of competition and high price points.”

– Aleks Derikonja, CNN

“I think location won’t be as much of an issue (although I don’t think all of tech will become remote in the near-term), and I hope long-term this will bring greater diversity of thought and experience to workforces in general. I’ve always been a huge advocate of self-taught and non-traditional backgrounds when I recruit because I believe great talent can come from anywhere, so I think we’ll see co-workers from all parts of the country, all sorts of backgrounds, etc. especially with the combined forces of online boot camps and remote-friendly companies! Idealistically, hopefully this will make us more empathetic people in general, and the tech industry will truly build products with everyone in mind.”

– Victoria Day, Airtable

“I personally think that you don’t necessarily need to put someone through rounds and rounds of interviews, in person, or not, to determine if they will be a good fit. Talented candidates will shine just as much virtually as they will in the office; a lot of hiring managers are realizing that and changing the way they interview/hire because of this. It will definitely be a long-term effect.”

– Analisse Dunne, Nulab

This is a guest post from Coderbyte, who is committed to helping forward-thinking technical talent acquisition leaders make an impact. They’ve put together a COVID-19 Report & Best Practices Guide based on surveying hundreds of software developers to better understand perceptions about remote work and company culture.

The post Chin up, recruiters and jobseekers: Expert tips for surviving crisis appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• Natalia Panowicz – CEO at Codility
• Lee Biggins – CEO and Founder at CV-Library & Resume-Library
• Nikos Moraitakis – CEO and Co-Founder at Workable

Learn what the top four issues are top of mind for our three CEOs below:

Future workplace – CEOs share their thoughts

1. Flexibility will be the new reality

One of the things that stood out over the past few months was workplace flexibility – whether that’s in work schedules or location. Being flexible and agile was the only way to adhere to physical distancing restrictions. Some companies moved their operations fully remotely while others did it partially, with rotational shifts and strict hygiene measures to keep employees safe and sound.

With most businesses shifting to a virtual workplace – and in some cases a more asynchronous collaboration style – structured work arrangements, such as 9-to-5 schedules and long meetings started to fade out. Employers quickly realized that they’re not the key to productivity but rather a habitual schema they probably had to revisit.

Related: We also talked with Ørsted, a multinational company in Europe, on how they planned their return-to-work strategy. The takeaways here will be invaluable to you if you’re doing the same. Learn how they did it

This flexibility trend became also evident at a poll we carried out during the webinar; nearly half of the 562 attendees stated that they’re planning to offer more flexible work options in the future.

Take Workable as an example; Nikos explained that the company switched to remote-first amidst the pandemic. Employees will be able to explore which working style suits them best, in-office or work-from-home and freely go for it:

“The office is going to be there and everybody can choose whether they want to work from the office or they prefer to work from home, or even to change their mind”.

Nikos noted that for most businesses there is going to be an exploration stage to see what works and what not to keep employees happy and productive in the long run:

Natalia continued in the same mindset saying that the best workplace is the one that serves the best work, whether that’s virtual or in-office. The good news is that now most of us, businesses and employees, have experienced both working styles because of the pandemic and we’re more likely to create the best workstyle for us.

Natalia highlighted:

“I think we are in a unique place to blend and to figure out what we want to keep from the typical office situation with our teams, and what we want to keep from the current remote setting, so that what we design for the future is the best mixture of both – to support [the] best possible work.”

2. Remote office: pros and cons

Many companies nowadays are increasingly moving their operations to remote-first; before making that decision, CEOs weigh advantages and disadvantages to ensure maximal productivity and revenue growth with minimal impact on business operations.

Natalia gives a high score to the remote-first office. She believes that it allows employees and employers to concentrate their full energy on what matters the most – operational efficiency and discipline:

Nikos supports the remote office as well, especially in terms of productivity compared to the typical office which can come with distractions:

“There is some fluff and there is some distraction, some waste of time. We all know that companies like ours, due to many physical constraints, have open offices. These are not ideal for concentrating [on] your work.”

On the flip side, with remote work, it’s not always easy to set boundaries between work and personal life:

“To be able to regiment routine and create those boundaries, you know, the meaning between family and work is not easy,” Nikos said. “And not everybody experienced it the same way. Some people were stuck in a small apartment alone. Somebody had to take care of another person in their family.”

For those who experienced remote work for the first time during the pandemic, Nikos stated that this is not the most representative remote work sample to draw from as an ideal example. The lockdown created some constraints that will not always exist – and in many cases, happened in an unprecedented situation. Once the physical restraints are limited, maybe employees will need this shared space again to thrive as teams.

Lee also shared his remote office pros and cons and got straight to the point – remote work allows business owners to save a good deal of money they would otherwise spend on facilities or transportation.

Lee unveiled his thoughts further and also talked about the bystander foe which we’ll call employee burnout:

3. Access to global talent

As Lee stated in the video above, one of the biggest assets of being remote-first is access to a “massive talent pool”. You can attract top, diverse talent from all over the world, not just your restricted area.

Natalia agreed and added:

“The talent pool became global. We all figured out that we can do our work from wherever and we can do our work well. If work can be done remotely, you can also hire remotely, so you don’t even need to meet the person to make a hiring decision.”

But this remote work arrangement can also cause a shift in compensation arrangements: “What does that mean to compensation, if we had localized compensation in the world based on talent pools and local job market conditions?” Natalia suggested as a question.

Nikos had a word on that:

“If we get to the point where we really are paid for the output of our work, you may have a completely different employment relationship sometime in the future, maybe in five or 10 years. They have to face things like comp was tied to location. And it should be tied to location, it makes sense. If you didn’t, you would destabilize the world economy.

“Suddenly,” Nikos adds, “you have a lot of people replaced, earning disproportionately from the people around them as well.”

There are numerous logistics business leaders should take into account when adopting more flexible work arrangements, such as localized compensation and employment laws. HR and people operations teams will have plenty of work to do to fine-tune all these elements and bring on best results – hopefully the output will reward the struggle.

4. Re-inventing benefits and culture

What will benefits look like in the future workplace? Following the flexibility and remote work trends, they will have to cater for new employee and workplace needs. With many companies switching to remote work, employers have already adapted some of their benefits to help employees prepare a home office. Lee and Natalia, for instance, offered allowance for equipment, Internet and phone calls.

“We offer our team equipment allowance to make their work settings most comfortable to them,” said Natalia. “We gave the teams a chance to take stuff from the office that might actually help them”.

But how can you be sure of what each employee needs when they work from home? Some of them may already have a catered home office and may prefer other perks, such as babysitting or internet supply. That’s exactly why it’s best to offer a more “vague” allowance as Nikos suggested to cover all types of needs. With a workforce all around the world this will be handy, as well.

Apparently all these changes will impact employee expectations and employment relationships in the long run. Nikos elaborates:

So the culture that companies have tried to nurture all these years, with cool offices and perks – especially in start-ups – may stop existing at some point. But, says Natalia, this is not going to happen at a glance but will be an ongoing process that the employer will have to re-evaluate and update regularly:

Future workplace – a two-way street

“Employees and companies will have to work together to figure it out,” Nikos said. “We all need to be prepared to make some mistakes or to change our mind, which you know is very hard to do recently, so check that out. We need to be a little bit patient.

“I don’t think there’s many people who have a single answer – maybe it’s not the same for all companies. So everybody will have to figure out their way.”

According to our speakers, these “future workplace trends” that have already started to gain ground are here to stay. The future workplace will be more flexible, remote-first, globalized and, in short, different from before. As long as we’re agile, open-minded and patient, employers and employees will make things work – together.

The post CEO insights on the future workplace appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s why on June 25, 2020, we hosted a webinar titled: “Working, hiring and onboarding in the new normal”. Jess Meschino, Workable’s VP of Account Management moderated and the guest speakers were:

• David Vencis – Head of Talent at Drizly
• Natalia Panowicz – CEO at Codility

Here, we present their most insightful takeaways that shed light on the future of hiring – and the future of work in general. Get on board and enjoy!

1. “New normal” – emerging trends and challenges

So what will this new normal look like? First clue: remote work is not going to be just a cool perk anymore – it’s here to stay.

For some remote-first companies this was already the reality, but for those who were hesitant about it, the emergency shift to telecommuting because of COVID-19 proved that remote work is not only feasible – except for jobs where physical presence is required – but also beneficial in many ways.

As Natalia said:

“We quickly discovered that it’s possible to do our best work not from an office, that was a traditional way to go, but we’re actually able to do it from anywhere.”

Greater authenticity

This has given a fresher outlook to the way we collaborate and connect with our teammates. We don’t bring only ourselves virtually to work, but also our dogs, our children, and even our personal home decoration taste:

“Work becomes way more authentic and purposeful to a sense [that] we are able right now to bring our full selves to work”, Natalia said.

But according to David, there are two sides of this coin. Sometimes it may be hard to set boundaries between work and personal life, and together with the consequences of the pandemic, this disruption has put employee wellbeing at risk – and at the center of HR attention, too:

Technology giveth

What was the main contributor to transitioning to a digital workplace so quickly? Second clue: tech and digital solutions played a pivotal part in this shift, and will continue to do so. Virtual screening tools, such as Workable Video Interviews, and other collaboration platforms surely saved our lockdown days:

“If before the pandemic every company was becoming a tech company, right now they were forced to do so overnight, pretty much”, Natalia highlighted.

2. The future of hiring – remote screening and D&I

While one of the direct consequences of COVID-19 in hiring is the so-called ‘abundance of talent’ due to widespread layoffs and increased unemployment, there are longer-term impacts on the application and screening processes –such as the increase in need for empathy when dealing with candidates.

David explained:

“We’ve really been challenging ourselves to really meet the moment of what’s happening and remind ourselves about just how important empathy is with candidates,” he said. “Because if they’re finding themselves unfortunately in the layoff situation, [or] maybe they’ve dealt with the COVID situation personally, if they’re still working at a company there might be uncertainty… I mean we are […] really connected by this all in a human way”.

Natalia – and Codility – is on the same page: “We’re in it [the COVID-19 crisis] as humankind. We’re not in it as employers and employees that much anymore”. That’s exactly why being transparent and respectful with candidates is extremely important these days to gain their trust. Natalia elaborated:

E-hiring on the rise

As mentioned earlier, technology has been life-changing for HR and hiring teams; interviews started taking place fully online, either synchronously – with video-conferencing tools, such as Zoom – and/or asynchronously – with solutions such as Workable Video Interviews. According to David, virtual hiring makes things move faster, as you no longer need to invite someone to your headquarters to meet them:

“Knowing there’s so many great job seekers out there who are so qualified, we’re engaging with people a lot faster,” said David. “As soon as we post a position we’re starting to see people who are a great fit – we’re not waiting a few weeks to need to kind of do sourcing efforts.”

Skill-based assessments ascending

Both speakers agreed that hiring teams should rely more on skill-based assessments to find those candidates who are the best fit for both the role and the company. David elaborated more on how, at Drizly, they do their homework and prepare for each job posting beforehand and what they focus on during screening:

Skill-based assessments can also boost diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace. Natalia talked about introducing blind evaluation techniques in early screening phases to eliminate unconscious biases around gender, ethnicity or appearance:

“We have an anonymous workflow mode where we can actually uncover who the candidate is well past the assessment is done on the core [engineering] skills of that candidate”.

This is a positive change; with remote work on the rise, you’ll be able to hire people from all over the world and diversify your teams more than ever.

3. Remote onboarding – pre-onboarding and new hire engagement

Remote onboarding became a huge challenge for companies during the COVID-19 outbreak, but with the right tech tools and tactical moves they managed to cope.

According to David, to nail your remote onboarding plan you first need to succeed in pre-onboarding – syncing with hiring managers and teams and designing the process step-by-step – and based on data, too.

David walked us through Drizly’s onboarding process and gave tips to make new hires feel instantly part of your team and to show them what your goals and biggest values are.

His bonus tip: conduct a survey – or even a fun quiz – to explore what impact the onboarding had on new employees’ learning:

Natalia added how useful buddy systems are when onboarding new employees to maintain human connection and a sense of camaraderie, especially in a remote environment. This way new hires have someone to reach out to when their manager is not available for questions and support:

“It helps everybody to connect way faster and to [kind of] tactically help them find things out if they need to quicker” Natalia added.

4. Remote management – flexible and empathetic

First signs have shown that a thriving remote work culture is one that promotes flexibility and inclusion. As Natalia explained, we now know that “we can work from anywhere, we can hire people from anywhere and have access to a wider community”.

But how can managers adapt to leading their remote teams in this new flexible, wellbeing-oriented style? First off, leaders should accept this new arrangement and make the most of it. David explained:

“It can be tough for managers. It’s tough for everybody to kind of distance themselves from their work, but I think those things are really important to give people the space they need. We have a flexible unlimited time-off policy so reminding people about taking that time, I think, is also a big part of engagement as well”.

Being more human

They could also benefit from a deeper shift that would allow them to be more vulnerable in front of employees and true ambassadors of psychological safety and empathy in the workplace, said David:

“Emphasizing things like self care and psychological safety, and having managers be more vulnerable as well, I think, can really fuel culture”.

As for everyday practices managers can follow to engage employees, Natalia shared her own insights:

5. Remote benefits – flexible and personalized

Switching to a new world of work, which is also remote, means that some benefits will be temporarily – and in some cases permanently – rendered obsolete. Plus, with many companies shifting to a remote-first culture, HR professionals should build a new benefit scheme from scratch that would be more relevant to employees’ ongoing needs – such as equipment for a home office or health insurance.

David noted that it’s important to individualize benefits as much as we can, keep them flexible and explore what each employee would value the most:

“Some people might need to use that money to pay for a babysitter to free up some of their time during the week because that’s what’s going to set them up to do their best work”.

It matters to candidates

Candidates are increasingly asking whether remote work is still going to be an option – either fully or partially – when the pandemic is over. David explained:

“A lot of people are asking what’s the plan, when do we go back to the office, when does your company go back to the office, is being fully remote something that you’re you’re willing to do as a company? Will I have the option? People are asking about that because that’s just the way we’re working right now, right? Some people want to be in the office and I get that, and some people don’t, and we get that [as well].”

Natalia highlighted how crucial employee wellbeing initiatives and benefits are now and will continue to be to prevent burnout as a consequence of the pandemic:

“There’s so much pressure, there’s so much stress everywhere. boundaries between work and private life are shifting. We have to learn how to adapt to that world“.

Emphasis on employee mental health, flexibility and individualized benefits is important; these trends shouldn’t be forgotten and companies should continue to offer them when the hard days of the pandemic are over.
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The future of hiring is here and now

The COVID-19 crisis is a debilitating time for many – including businesses and workers – but has some silver lining in it, in that it’s prompted paradigm shifts that had been in discussion for a long time – namely, the acceptance of remote work as a norm and a greater emphasis on empathy and inclusion. Change is uncomfortable and as a result, preferably avoided, which means some of these shifts may not have happened – or not as quickly, at least – without COVID-19.

It’s a tough time right now, but if you focus on the good that’s coming out of it in the new world of work – such as greater flexibility, work-life balance, an increased focus on wellbeing, and the introduction of new tech – then perhaps it can be said we’re all headed to a much better place, provided we follow through on the promise.

The post The ‘new normal’: the future of hiring, onboarding and working appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Technical recruiting teams that can reinvent their employer brands, interview processes, and work from home cultures for developers while social distancing will find better and more available talent than they have in many years.

Hiring data from the code screening platform, Coderbyte, illustrates the dramatic drop in the number of technical interviews since February. But whatever the slope, a bounce in hiring is sure to return as jobs shift to different industries. It’s too early to say, but we may already be beginning to see it.

In the meantime, tech recruiters should familiarize themselves with all the available sourcing resources and strategies for finding top talent during this downturn. Doing so will enable their companies to emerge from this pandemic stronger than ever before.

Need some tips on tech recruitment? Check out Workable’s related content:

• Hiring tech workers when you’re not on their A-list
• Wooing top tech talent: Recruiting in the Boston tech scene
• Tech recruitment in London: Luring and sourcing top tech talent

Showcase your WFH engineering culture

Before even beginning to interview candidates, get started on the right foot by highlighting what makes your company a great place to work during these challenging times. Candidates who have been recently laid off may be particularly sensitive to the culture at a company working remotely for the first time. Here’s how to go above and beyond, and stand out in the process.

• Workable has a library of resources dedicated to helping your organization excel at remote work. Consider creating a ‘remote ops’ committee that is accountable for continuously improving your organization’s WFH culture and processes.
• If you don’t already have one, consider building a dedicated career section or page for your engineering department, especially if that’s the only area you’re currently hiring for. BuiltIn offers a guide with great examples of career pages.
• Now is also a good time to update or create a company profile on BuiltIn and TheMuse. You can even level up your employer brand by partnering with content creators there to feature your company in content. Also make sure to reach out to your city’s local newspapers, many of which have been featuring employers that are still hiring for essential and remote roles.
• Reframe WFH at your company to mean “Wellness From Home” by embracing and emphasizing to candidates how your company is adopting best practices from GitLab to Knowable. Consider introducing your people experience teams to individualized wellness solutions which will look great on your career page. Candidates will appreciate that your company is going beyond talk with real action.
• If your company’s current engineers are up for it, ask them about participating in mission-critical hackathons and technology projects. ProductHunt recently hosted a Makers Festival while MIT hosted COVID-19 challenges. Along with community volunteering activities like Code Against COVID-19, participating in these types of events help elevate your employer brand and boost team morale.

Of course, part of having a great WFH culture also means optimizing for candidates who already have experience or will excel at working remotely. NerdWallet offers a number of insights into the types of people and teams that will thrive, and how to structure your interview to assess such capabilities. SmartBug Media looks for resilience and the source of “social energy” in candidates to assess their remote-working capabilities. Coderbyte’s survey of 150+ software developers show that most are generally comfortable with entirely remote interviewing, onboarding, and working for a new company.

Nevertheless, some developers will struggle with the distractions of coding from home, but will benefit from learning pro tips and best practices.

Monitor tech layoffs and be present on critical job boards

Rapid shifts in the labor market are creating tailwinds for savvy technical recruiters that have their fingers on the pulse of the tech community. There are a number of bespoke job boards and opportunities to connect with top talent.

• Glassdoor has an entire page dedicated to COVID-19 resources, with best practices such as switching your job listings to ‘remote’, and even new features like posting a designated COVID-19 company update and listing your company as experiencing a hiring surge.

• Technology companies are combining their laid off employees into lists to make it easier for new employers to rapidly review résumés and hire. AngelList has also made it incredibly easy for employers to browse newly available tech talent. Parachute aggregates many smaller lists and makes it possible to import candidates directly into your Applicant Tracking System. In fact, your Applicant Tracking System may even be able to redirect qualified candidates your way, as Workable is doing with a new feature called Bridge.
• First Round Capital is compiling an updated list of COVID-19 resources for companies that are hiring, including user-generated spreadsheets of talent. Make sure to add your company to the Startups Actively Hiring During COVID-19 spreadsheet and the Companies Still Hiring coda.

Take advantage of tools built for COVID-19

Once you’ve repositioned your employer brand and added your job posting to high-traffic job boards, you’ll inevitably begin to see an influx of candidates. Combine those efforts with sourcing and interview tools that are offering limited-time discounts.

• Workable just released a new capability for remote video interviews that transforms the candidate experience during social distancing. It allows recruiters and candidates to bypass the hassle of scheduling and carrying out initial phone screenings by simply having candidates record their responses to set questions via video, at their own convenience.
• After the phone screen, you can make scheduling candidate interviews easier via Workable’s recruitment solution, where you can conduct live interviews with your provider of choice, including Google Hangouts, Zoom, and Skype.
• For the interview process, there are a number of companies offering discounted or free technical assessment services, including Harver, Coderbyte, and Devskiller.

These are trying times but you are fortunate to still be hiring! Some of the best technical talent in the world is suddenly available if you know where to look and how to attract them. I’ll continue sharing the latest proprietary employment and hiring data for software development on Medium.

Daniel Borowski is CEO and Founder at Coderbyte, a platform for developers and coders to build and refine their coding and interviewing skills.

The post How to source top software development candidates during and after COVID-19 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But there is content being written about this return to some sense of “business as usual”. We’re pulling all of this together into five major insights, plus a bonus list at the end of companies who have shared playbooks and blueprints for their own action plan.

Table of Contents

1. Physical office revolution
2. Introduction of new equipment and supplies
3. Change in office etiquette
4. Change in work hours and commutes
5. An increase in remote work
6. Additional resources – what other companies are doing

1. Physical office revolution

If the discussions are any indication, office space in the new world of work will be remarkably different. There will likely be a departure from the open-office environments that surged in popularity in recent decades.

But the return to the cubicle environment isn’t necessarily accurate, despite what Wired may make it sound like. The reality is, this is more of an evolution of office structure than a regression to the horrific fabric-laden wall separations so commonly derided in pop culture – particularly in the movie Office Space.

No, your employees needn’t be left behind in the dark. There are many brains behind the design of the “new” workplace, with COVID-19 being a catalyst for the evolution of a more functional office space, as is intricately detailed in this piece from Business Insider, complete with sketches and diagrams of how your new office might look.

“The fundamentals of real-estate economics — we don’t suddenly have the cash to buy three times more space,” Melissa Hanley, the CEO of the design firm Blitz, told BI. “So if we’re going to engage in social distancing, we have to think about it in a different way.”

Many design solutions are being proposed, including the “Six Feet Office” concept from commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, showing how routing and physical distancing rules can be implemented to ensure compliance with the six-feet separation recommendation:

The good news is that you probably don’t have to plan for the new world of work on your own. There are numerous workplace management platforms out there that can do the grunt work for you based on algorithms and data, including:

Maptician Flex – This tool analyzes an office’s physical layout including hallways, meeting rooms, etc. to devise the best desk arrangement. It also includes options for staggering employee schedules and has a built-in contact-tracing system to help identify those most at risk when a colleague falls ill.

Wisp by Gensler – This tool analyzes the existing layout of a workplace to identify an optimal plan for assigning seating, and includes personalized human expertise as needed.

Salesforce’s Work.com – This tool includes a contact-tracing system, shift-management algorithm, and a dashboard of localized COVID-19 data and government guidance. This product is created with open-architecture coding, allowing developers to design/build as needed and share via a marketplace for other users to utilize.

2. Introduction of new equipment and supplies

Office layout is just the first step in what’s being discussed in return-to-work best practices. Employers and thought leaders are also talking about the introduction of new technologies, supplies, and capabilities throughout offices to ensure minimal transmission of viruses and bacteria.

For example, low- or no-touch fixtures may be introduced throughout (buttons, door handles, faucets, etc.). Temperature checks and hand-washing stations will be available on arrival for employees and office visitors. Some offices will implement required wearing of masks and other face coverings. Those with the munchies may suffer – snacks and other all-in food options will potentially be limited or phased out altogether, and canteens may be closed or tightly managed.

Plexiglass sneeze guards and movable or permanent barriers are being considered by employers, as well as movable partitions in what is being described as the potential end of the open office as we know it. Employers are talking about hand sanitizers at every desk. There may be an increase in the use of copper as a design element in office spaces, as it’s less hospitable to germs. And there’ll be increased, intensive sanitizing and cleaning during off-work hours.

A breath of fresh air

Good news for those who are weary of the dead-air offices, numbing drone of air returns, and flickering fluorescent lights – we may be looking at brighter, breezier offices ahead. HEPA filters will be more often used and there’ll be more ventilation in offices with open windows and more free air-flow. Ideally, we’ll bid a final farewell to the sick-building syndrome for good. Offices will be designed to take in more sunlight and there’ll be more outdoor office space where it can be accommodated.

3. Change in office etiquette

Physical layouts and added equipment can only do so much. There are human habits that also need to be managed and controlled. Common cultural greetings such as the touching of noses in the UAE and Qatar, the cheek-to-cheek kiss commonly seen in many countries worldwide, the friendly hug between familiar companions, and, of course, the ubiquitous handshake are all being strongly discouraged.

But we’re social animals – we need to greet each other somehow. Don’t despair – the “Wuhan shake” (touching feet instead of shaking hands) has been played up in social media as a safe alternative. There’s also the clasping of one’s own hands as a greeting – as seen in Beijing – rather than shaking hands. There are many other touch-free options to greet one another, including the head nod, the wave, the obvious “hello”, and if you’re an Office fan, the Jim and Pam air-five:

Face-to-face meetings can also be reduced where possible. There are many instances in which these meetings can’t be avoided, and are even preferred to video or other telecommunications, particularly to get through some of the difficult stuff like conflict resolution, complex project strategizing, and so on.

In cases where face-to-face meetings are inevitable, there are etiquettes that can be expected to be followed. The obvious precautions – no touching, no handshakes, etc. – apply, but there are other rules that will be implemented to mitigate transmission in the new world of work. For instance:

• Reducing or eliminating the sharing of paperwork
• Using hand sanitizer both on entry and exit from the meeting room
• Banning of food sharing – and especially no need for catered lunches
• Ensuring physical separation in the meeting room – sit at least one full chair away from each other

4. Change in work hours and commutes

If the 9-to-5 was already on its way out, the pandemic may actually be the final nail in the coffin for those industries that don’t absolutely need to adhere to such a schedule and only stick to it out of habit. The greater emphasis on flexible work hours and work-life integration may be already in vogue for many, but there’s another thing that will likely become norm as business returns to some kind of “normal”: hot desking and staggered work days to reduce the density of workers in the office at any given time.

Spreading out the work hours also means lesser concentration on the commute during rush hour, which will benefit many who do need to go to the office. We won’t see nearly as much packing onto trains and buses – or even highways – as workers travel to and from work every day, with the benefit being twofold: a reduction in the average commute time which reached a new record high of 27 minutes each way in the United States in 2018.

An IBM study finds that 20% of respondents who regularly used buses, subways or trains now said they no longer would after the crisis passes, and 28% would use it less. More than half surveyed would reduce or even eliminate ridesharing (Uber, Lyft, etc.) as an option. A staggering 75% said they were less likely to attend an in-person conference or trade show in 2020.

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With the health consequences of a heavy commute being tangible, including obesity, breakdowns in family dynamics and relationships, burnout, disengagement and increased sick days – and augmented by congestion being a perfect recipe for COVID-19 to spread, the benefits of a reduced commute would be hugely welcome for both employee and employer.

5. An increase in remote work

Remote work is the obvious go-to solution – and the most widely discussed one – to reducing the risk of COVID-19 contamination in the new world of work. GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics found numerous socio-economic benefits to offering remote work as an option or even shifting an entire company to a remote-first operation.

Even though the remote work trend has been gradually introduced across industries and economies for years – even decades or centuries – it’s still a new thing for many companies. But the COVID-19 crisis has been a catalyst to push that even further – with the pandemic being described as the “remote work tipping point” by TopTal in a detailed infographic of the history of remote work dating back to 1560.

The IBM study mentioned above notes that it’s not just a “nice to have” among employees – it’s a growing “must have” or an “expected to have”. A full 40% now expect their employer to offer remote work options when returning to normal operations,and 75% would like to do it occasionally.

Plus, 54% would like their job to be remote-first. The perks are clear – no commute, more time with family, greater control over schedule, decreased stress, and so on. Paramount is the emphasis on work-life integration – the ability to determine one’s own schedule to excel in both work and personal life.

It’s not just about reducing the transmission of COVID-19 – it’s about increased tangible benefit to the employer as well. Remote workers put in an additional two full weeks of work than their in-office counterparts, the costs saved in providing traditional office space is lower, and employee retention is higher. Suffice it to say, remote work is here to stay.

The work, it is a-changin’

Whether you’re an employee or employer, a hiring manager or recruiter or HR manager, your work world will be impacted massively. There’s no point in crawling under a rock and hoping everything goes back to normal once the COVID-19 crisis passes – because it most likely won’t return to the way things were. We’re entering a whole new world of work.

This isn’t necessarily a terrifying revelation – rather, consider it a concentration of the next five years of progress happening within the span of a few months. There’s a famous quote by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

Right now are the weeks where decades are happening, so to speak. What you can do as an employer or HR manager is to try and prepare as much as you can – because one thing that isn’t changing is that we’re going to continue business in some form or another. In the end, what matters is the health and safety of your employees – be it mental, physical, financial or otherwise – and taking many or all of the above learnings into account will go a long way for them and for you, as well.

Additional resources

Theories and predictions are fantastic, but you want to see what companies are actually doing and planning in terms of return-to-work strategies. That’s great, because there’s plenty out there, and they’re sharing their plans with the public. Learn from them as we enter a new world of work:

Bergmayer

This self-declared design collaborative focused on improving everyday lives through design – shared a comprehensive return-to-work plan that included:

• details on compliance with local and federal government
• sanitization protocolsa staggered schedule – i.e. Mon/Wed/Fri for some employees, Tues/Thurs for others
• detailed visuals on how the office layout will look

They’re clear that some of these are temporary guidelines around re-entry to the office, but some of it will become a new standard.

KPMG

Irish financial services company KPMG shared a PDF of their return-to-office plan, with step-by-step details on:

• gradual and phased return for employees
• key mitigation measures (access controls, physical distancing, PPEs, office cleaning/hygiene)
• travel considerations and preemptive measures for conferences, events and meetings
• preparations for technology incorporation

KPMG also included guidelines on communications and compliance in what they ultimately called the “New Reality”.

Kroger

Supermarket chain Kroger, being an essential service, has this blueprint for their new world of work efforts, including details on:

• the process to follow if an employee tests positive for COVID-19 and measures to contain the spread of the virus throughout its own workforce
• utilization of data to make informed decisions
• best practices regarding employee and customer physical and mental well-being in their supermarkets and manufacturing plants (communications, sanitation, safety, traffic control, contactless solutions, PPEs, etc.)
• providing physical, mental, financial, and holistic support to managers, team members, and other colleagues throughout.

“We want to share what we’ve learned and best practices with other businesses, so they can take steps now to develop protocols and procedures to reopen safely and continue to flatten the curve,” Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen said in a video message.

Salesforce

Cloud-based CRM software mogul Salesforce shared six steps to be considered on returning to the office space, starting with:

• a guideline matrix on reopening (government guidance, medical advice, local leadership) specific to each office location
• preparation of new health and safety measures (testing, temperature screening, face covering requirements, physical distancing, deep cleaning, etc.)
• setting expectations and clear communications, office redesign, and supply chain strengthening

Forrester

Tech market research company Forrester shared two sets of pandemic management protocols for businesses to follow in returning to the office. The first set includes:

• guidelines on staggering your employee schedules
• tightly managing business travel
• maintaining social distancing
• boosting remote-work capabilities

The second set focuses more on the physical office itself:

• rigorous cleaning schedules
• rethinking office space to allow for greater distancing and less physical contact
• limitations on gatherings (meetings), temperature checks
• travel history monitoring for both colleagues and visitors.

Snap (Snapchat)

CEO Even Spiegel of Snap – the brains behind Snapchat – described his company’s return-to-work plan to CNBC’s Squawk Alley in a recent interview. He detailed changes to the floor plan, temperature checks, surveying for health conditions, micro-kitchens, and even the possibility of removing ice dispensers.

American Enterprise Institute

DC-based think tank American Enterprise Institute shared a detailed roadmap on returning to work, based on four phases of progress with many of the elements already discussed above – and with clear trigger points that need to happen to move to the next phase.

Alphabet (Google)

Internet behemoth Alphabet – best known as the parent company of Google – will reopen its offices starting June 1, and is looking to get 10%-15% capacity across its global offices. Those employees who require access to special equipment and those higher up the ladder will be prioritized for return, and those who can work from home will continue to do so until further notice.

“There will be no one-size-fits-all approach, and the specific guidance will vary from location to location,” according to a Google-issued memo.

Others

Similar practices were being looked at by numerous other companies including the tire company Pirelli, UK recruitment company PageGroup, and business services group Rentokil.

Social distancing, return-to-work schedules, PPEs, on-site testing, limitations on business travel, lesser density in office workforces, ramping up IT spending to accommodate remote work, and increased office ventilation and air quality were some of the hot topics being shared by some of the world’s top companies, including Boeing, IBM, and Discover Financial Services.

“Things will return to normal in our personal lives, like going to restaurants, but things in business will change forever,” cloud content and file-sharing service Box Inc. CEO Aaron Levie told MarketWatch.

Many other large US companies, including IBM, Hewlett Packard, JPMorgan, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs are enacting similar staggered return-to-work plans over the next few months. Like others, they’re also reevaluating crucial needs in the new world of work, which includes the hiring for new jobs such as “thermal scanner” and elevator attendants.

Note: Workable’s Marketing Content Intern Zinovia Panagopoulou’s research contributed significantly to this article.

The post Return to a new world of work: Get ready with these 5 insights appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

These downturns happened at very different stages of my life, both professionally and personally. While my risk tolerance was certainly higher when I was younger, I still choose to work at start-ups where I need to constantly navigate uncertainty. In the startup world, the path forward is never clear. Far from that, in fact – it’s often winding, unstable, and dimly lit – and never more so than now.

People talk about the ‘new normal’, but what does that even mean? Reality set in very quickly that it is certainly no longer business as usual – for anyone. Customers are panicked, employees are anxious, the markets are ridiculously volatile, we’re working in new and unfamiliar ways, and tomorrow is a big unknown.

Running marketing for a recruitment software company, my job is to try and make sense of all the noise and confusion and blaze some sort of path forward for my business and my team.

Here are six things I’ve done – and continue to do – as a marketing leader to keep the engines running and ensure some sort of continuity and, ideally, progress:

1. Tune in like never before

Throughout a period of uncertainty, get as close as possible to the market(s) you serve. Observe, listen, and consume information from those around you – analysts, consultants, competitors, thought leaders, and other executives. Become knowledgeable about how your industry is being affected, and most importantly, make sure you talk to your customers. Find out how this uncertainty is impacting their business. What are they worried about? What are their contingency plans?

And, likewise, get close to your sales, support, and account management teams. What are they hearing on the front lines? Do they see opportunities that you don’t? Any feedback or signals are helpful to understand how your business may be impacted and to help inform how your team and your business might need to adapt.

2. Be helpful, but stay opportunistic

Put yourself in a position to be helpful to the market and view this as a unique opportunity to actually strengthen your company’s brand. Listen to your customers and see how flexible you can be to support their needs. Provide guidance to your prospects and be there as an advisor, not just someone trying to sell them a product or service. Stay opportunistic – that’s your job, but at the same time, don’t be obnoxious or tone deaf. Timing is everything.

The help and guidance you provide now will strengthen your brand in the mind of your customers and prospects, so adapt your messaging accordingly and make sure it flows through all of your touchpoints with the market – through marketing, sales, customer success, and support.

If you approach the market with the purpose of being helpful, you will likely unearth some short-term opportunities and definitely build goodwill that can pay dividends down the road.

Workable’s own approach

In Workable’s case, we worked quickly to provide useful content to help companies adapt to the urgent shift to remote work. Our content team created WFH policies and templates that could be used by HR departments and other business leaders. We quickly pulled together a webinar with panelists from companies that had the WFH thing down to an art form. They shared powerful advice on how to run remote meetings, how to hire and onboard remotely, and how to maintain team morale.

On the product side, we gave away access to our new Video Interviews feature for free so that companies that needed to interview and hire at scale could do so. We invested in getting companies set up at no cost and even gave away our core technology for free to companies that needed to hire essential workers.

We’ve also launched another free service called Bridge, designed to help companies provide outplacement job support to their laid-off employees.

We’re seeing our customers scrambling for content, guidance, and flexibility in how to conduct business through this trying time. And we’re seeing a healthy response to our own efforts. We can’t solve all of their problems, but we’re genuinely trying to help where we can.

3. Ramp up your internal communications

The amount of information you’re exposed to and the gravity of some of the decisions you and your executive team need to make can be overwhelming. While nobody expects you to have all of the answers, your employees do look to you to provide guidance and make sense of what all of this means for your business and their careers.

Be sure to meet regularly as an executive team and build consensus for how you plan to communicate with employees. Encourage your CEO to share the broader vision with all employees on how your business is doing – and responding – and offer to help shape that messaging where needed. Then be sure to bring that same vision into your team and gather feedback.

You know your employees, so be sure to ask questions about what they’re anxious or uncertain about, and try to provide additional context. It’s better to over-communicate rather than under-communicate. Set up extra touchbases, standups, or 1:1s. Not everyone will need them, but most will appreciate them. Lastly, be hyper-vigilant about projecting a sense of calm and confidence to your teams. Don’t sugarcoat things, but avoid hitting the panic button at all costs.

4. Plan your contingencies

For most startups, financial stability comes down to the company’s cash position and how long it will take to either burn through that cash or achieve cash-flow breakeven. More mature, profitable companies might be more focused on maintaining efficiencies and managing the bottom line. Your marketing budget factors into your company’s financial picture and it’s your job to help your CFO with contingency planning and have a good read on what levers you can pull, if needed. If you’re not currently close to your CEO, now is a good time to get acquainted.

Marketing is typically the first – and often hardest hit – area of a business when it comes to contingencies built to manage the business through uncertainty or a possible recession. It’s one of the only areas of a business where spend can be flexed quickly, especially in areas like paid media and field marketing.

Even if you’ve established your marketing operation as a revenue-producing function, your CFO likely views you as a cost center, and both your CEO and CFO are exploring every possible opportunity to maintain the health and viability of the business.

Prepare to make tough calls

If it’s going to be difficult to generate demand in your market because the pace of business is slowing or coming to a halt, understand that a pullback or a complete pause in your variable marketing spend might be necessary. Beyond program spend, look at your tech stack. What’s mission-critical versus a ‘nice-to-have’ software (more on this below)? Talk to your vendors and renegotiate rates and payment terms – anything that helps reduce costs and preserve cash in the short term.

It’s possible that cutting programs and tech spend might not be enough and that you might be required to look at a reduction in overhead. It’s an uncomfortable proposition, but one that you must get comfortable with as a department head.

The key is to move fast here. Align with your CFO, work through your contingencies, and get scrappy.

If you’re in a less impacted market, it might be possible that increasing investment or activities might be the best possible action, especially if some of your competition is pulling back. This takes us back to point #1: stay alert and read the market. Use the signals to identify where the opportunities are and figure out if there is a way to go after them.

But, be pragmatic. If you have to cut, you have to cut. Spend is a luxury. Use this as an opportunity to refocus the team on what it can organically produce through activities like content creation, enhanced distribution, email marketing, and improved alignment with the rest of the business. This is a time to get nimble and take a bare-bones approach.

5. Prepare for the long haul

You’ve been running fast for a long time now, chasing growth and upside in every nook and cranny. But by now, your processes have become cumbersome, maybe even burdensome. Your tech stack is bloated, redundant, or insufficient. You’ve been patching things together, pushing off projects that never make the high-priority bucket, and saying “we’ll get to that later.”

Guess what? It’s later. If things are slowing in your market, now is that opportunity you’ve always wanted to focus internally and rebuild processes, tighten up your tech stack, streamline your workflows, and create the efficiencies you’ve craved for so long. Think about what the business will look like when things turn around and when your team is running at full speed again.

What will help them run faster and smoother? What analysis have you been meaning to do for months that will shed some insights into bigger, meatier opportunities? What tools have you been wanting to create for the sales team but keep pushing off because of non-stop emergency needs?

Get ahead of the future

Also, think about what the landscape in your market will look when business starts to rebound. Work will be different – how we work, where we work, and how we do business. Jamming a few thousand people into a tall building every day, cramming 10K people into a conference center for an industry event, running field events for your sales team – it all might be a bit different going forward, maybe a bit scaled back. How will you adapt? How will your customers adapt? Start thinking about your future state now and how you’ll need to – or want to – do things differently. Build towards that.

This thinking extends way beyond marketing. Hiring has slowed or come to an abrupt stop for many companies. But, if you’re in HR or talent, or are a hiring manager, you’re likely going to need to hire fast and rebuild some areas when things start to improve. Quality candidates that were previously so hard to find are now in abundance. Job applications will be through the roof and you’ll need to be able to screen and interview at scale without any breakdown in your process. Are you built for that? How can you set yourself up for what looks to be a seismic shift in recruiting and hiring?

Job applications will be through the roof and you’ll need to be able to screen and interview at scale without any breakdown in your process. Are you built for that?
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I’m sure there’s plenty to work on. It just requires a realistic assessment of the situation, some vision for the future, refinement and optimization of processes, and big reprioritization of opportunities.

6. Identify top talent in your team

You need to try new things and operate a bit differently. You might require different skills than you’ve needed before, or it’s possible you’ve had to shrink the team down and you’ve shed some skills that are still a necessity. Here is your chance to flex your existing employees – i.e. challenge them to tackle new initiatives and broaden their skills. See who steps up and finds ways to keep moving things creatively forward in the face of uncertainty.

Look for help from folks in other areas of the business, assuming that luxury exists. When things get tough, the all-stars will step up and your future leaders will shine. In the short term, your operational output will benefit, and in the long term, you’ll have a seasoned and motivated department that can quickly capitalize when the market recovers.

Keep your chin up

Uncertainty is tough, but it’s never the end of the world. There are silver linings in all of this and it’s important to remember that we will rebound – hopefully quickly. ‘This, too, shall pass,’ as the adage goes.

Things might look different on the other side, but that’s not necessarily bad. Those who adapt, keep moving, and stay close to their markets and teams will come out of this one step ahead of the competition. For now, stay safe, stay healthy, and stay engaged.

The post Marketing through uncertainty: 6 tips from a marketing leader appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The survey of 150+ software developers shows that the majority of respondents are very comfortable interviewing and beginning a new job entirely remotely, especially if they are actively looking.

Further, 39% of software developers in our survey reported feeling more productive since shifting to work remotely, compared to 30% feeling that they have become less productive (31% estimated no change). So not only is there available and eager talent, but many software developers may be operating at peak productivity. Of course, this is going to vary depending on each individual’s situation and experience, but perhaps it is one bright spot in a truly unfortunate environment.

“Development work doesn’t need to be centered on a physical location. With how wide-spread technology is and how responsive it can be, there’s no need to shackle people to cubicles and corporate offices.”

– Full-stack software developer with 5+ years of experience

Employers in growing industries need to quickly reinvent themselves to attract and onboard the best talent in this new work-from-home reality. Here is how you can rapidly implement a remote tech hiring process:

Set expectations internally and externally

It’s dangerous to assume that you can continue running the same exact interview process you’ve always had with the only difference being a Zoom or Google Hangouts link in the calendar invitation. Several things could easily go wrong:

• Employees may get too relaxed with attire, body language, and overall presentation.
• Internet connectivity, background noise, or other distractions could interfere.
• Sensitive or private Slack notifications and text messages could show up on screen shares.
• Interviews that typically include whiteboarding technical scenarios may lack the necessary tools to assess and qualify candidates.

To avoid these pitfalls, set expectations with the candidate and interviews accordingly:

• Emphasize to the employees conducting the interview that it is important to maintain professionalism despite the circumstances.
• Provide both the candidate and interviewer’s phone numbers in case there are internet issues.
• Remind employees to turn on do-not-disturb notifications before interviews.
• Do role play on a quick dry run with the interviewers and candidate beforehand to make sure all the necessary systems and tools are working.

Further, remember that your candidate (and interviewers) may have been severely impacted by the pandemic in ways you are unaware. Candidates may have recently lost their job or have a family member who is sick. Remind your team members to be sensitive, considerate, and patient.

Revisit your company culture and how to emphasize it

Does your engineering interview process typically contain bells and whistles to impress candidates? For example, do you often introduce a company executive or give an office tour? Do you take the candidate to a fancy lunch with their prospective coworkers? Here are a handful of ways you can rethink how to emphasize your company culture it during a remote tech hiring process:

• Develop an engineering culture packet that includes:
  • a note or link to a video from your VP of Engineering or CEO introducing themselves and how the company is continuing to operate given the circumstances
  • a demo video of your product and services
  • links to relevant Glassdoor, Built in NY, or AngelList pages and articles.
• Reimburse the candidate and interviewers for a coffee and lunch delivery from their favorite restaurants to enjoy during the interview (and support the local economy).
• Let the candidate sit in on an engineering standup (or another meeting where there won’t be sensitive information shared) so that they can see how the team is continuing to collaborate while quarantined.
• Share a snippet of a recent company email or All Hands video with the candidate that highlights the upbeat mood and tempo your company is maintaining during these trying times.
• Emphasize how you’ve transitioned your benefits packages to better accommodate and facilitate wellness during social distancing.

Even if your company culture has temporarily – or perhaps, permanently – changed during the pandemic, you still have the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage and impress prospective candidates. Going out of your way to deliberately and thoughtfully rethink your culture puts you ahead of the pack.

Update your recruiting technology stack

You may have to rethink sourcing efforts as meetups and events get postponed. Resumé review could become less relevant as rapid introductions from previous employers take precedence over an updated job history.

For sourcing, you need a new strategy for increasing visibility of your job postings. There are a number of aggregators online to post your remote job or list your company as hiring:

• https://candor.co/hiring-freezes/
• https://www.getsilverlining.com/
• https://www.layoffs.tech/
• https://www.wfhbuthiring.com/

Now is also a good time to monitor LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and trackers for layoffs and for potential candidates who have recently started looking for new roles.

To complement traditional resumé reviews, consider using a code screening platform. Overall, it’s less biased and more scalable due to being virtually automated once integrated with your ATS.

• Medium: The Best Technical Assessment & Code Screening Platforms of 2020
• G2: Best Technical Skills Screening Software
• Capterra: Pre-employment Testing Software

For live interviews where you need to assess coding, architectural, or critical thinking skills, check out Mural and Coderpad.

And, of course, you’ll want to be using a flexible and candidate-centric recruitment solution like Workable to seamlessly manage the entire hiring experience in a remote environment.

These are trying times but you are fortunate to still be hiring! Good luck getting your team aligned and reinventing your technical hiring process. I’ll continue sharing the latest proprietary employment and interview data for software development on Medium.

The post How to reinvent your tech hiring in a remote-first world appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. How can I train & empower our managers to manage their teams remotely?
2. How can we keep employees accountable and productive?
3. What are creative ways to maintain team morale, relationships and cohesion?
4. In-person companies are able to have social events and happy hours. How do you replicate this digitally?
5. How can you create a meaningful buddy system?
6. How can we train hands-on, direct-care, or field workers remotely?
7. I work for a school system and many of our employees are not tech-savvy. Have you put together trainings for employees like this on how to use video conferencing softwares and how to be creative with technology?
8. How do you find the right balance in over-communication and make sure important things don’t get lost in the noise?
9. What software do you use/recommend for remote working? (communication, conferencing, team recognition?)
10. If you had a friend who was going to move their business remote and they’re going to open their laptop at 9 a.m. tomorrow, what is the one piece of advice that you would give them?

1. How can I train & empower our managers to manage their teams remotely?

One of the biggest challenges of managing remotely is the relative isolation that a manager may feel from their team. There are logistical challenges in getting synced and on the same page. These can easily be overcome using technology and regular communications to maximize the connections and “team spirit” within a squad.

There are several ways you can help your managers succeed when their teams are remote working:

Utilize technology

Darko Jacimovic, co-founder of e-learning company Whattobecome.com, pointed to technologies that enabled his colleagues to overcome the physical remoteness between colleagues, mentioning Slack and Hubstaff as tools he uses to ensure teams are aligned and productive.

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, highlighted the power of video technology in maintaining connections. While it’s not a perfect substitute for in-person interaction, Hope says it’s still key to successful communication in a remote working environment:

Regular check-ins

If possible, set up regular checkins with your teammates at the same time every day or when it works best for you. These do not need to have specific agendas – you can save those for other, more targeted meetings. The purpose of this check-in is for colleagues to have an opportunity to give general updates on work projects, share ideas for future undertakings, talk at length about campaigns, or even just engage in regular chit-chats. Many colleagues within a team sync naturally as they’re desk neighbors or have a coffee break together – this is your way of making sure that energy continues in a virtual environment. Workable’s marketing department started doing this as soon as the company shifted to a fully remote working environment and it’s worked very well.

Ensure everyone is accessible – even at the top level

Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, encourages the concept of a weekly “virtual gathering” where even the top person in the company participates to talk about business as a whole:

“We actually do fireside chats where our CEO comes up on a weekly basis and we talk about the business and we all record each other. And we actually have different people who come in and talk about different pieces of the business.”

Also, work gets busy and managers need a bit of a nudge at times. If your boss is reaching out to you to see how you’re doing, that overcomes the physical separation in a powerful way, as Melissa says:

Communicate early and communicate often

Because you can’t simply walk up to your team and update them on something crucial at work, you have to be more diligent in using every virtual channel available to you – be it chat programs, email, even a quick recorded video that you share with the team as recommended by Smartbug Media founder and CEO Ryan Malone.

Ryan also notes that this communication outreach doesn’t have to be only professional. You’re both humans – it’s important to nurture that relationship. He admits that it can be “awkward” to reach out and dedicated time to that, but it’s still beneficial to open the channels and say, ‘Hey, I haven’t talked to you in two weeks. How are you?’. You just have to make it happen.’

Make sure your team knows you’re available

Ensure your calendar has regular 1-1s and team meetings each week, giving each team member the opportunity to sync with the team and meet with you one on one. Think of it as the virtual version of the “open door policy”.

Remember, it’s not about whether or not you can get the work done. It’s about making sure your team is fully accessible and your managers are available to them – and it takes a few proactive steps to ensure this continues to happen in a fully virtual environment.

2. How can we keep employees accountable and productive?

The easy way would be to introduce a productivity software that requires employees to clock in and clock out throughout the day so you can monitor how much they’re spending in work. While useful for workers who are paid by the hour or for contracted workers, it’s not an optimal setup for your full-time employees. If you’ve trained them well, and you’ve shown them that you value them, they will respond in kind.

A few tips for you to ensure accountability and productivity:

Results-based approach

Be clear to your employees that it doesn’t matter where, how, or what time they’re doing the work – the emphasis is on the results. If you’re looking for X project to be delivered by a specific date, simply specify that, and be confident in their ability to do it. Empower your teams to create their own ideal environment – be it time of day, location of work, surrounding scenery, accompanying music, etc. – in which they can thrive.

Train your employees to succeed independently

The best time to ensure an employee base that can succeed independently without intensive direction or micromanagement is in the hiring process, when you’re vetting their ability to work in ambiguous and remote environments – Smartbug Media founder and CEO Ryan Malone has that down to a T.

The second-best time is to train your existing workers to operate in that kind of remote working environment. Empower them to take steps without needing extra direction. Do this by communicating clearly to employees that you’re fully confident in their ability to do the job. Also, remember to include incentives for the best performers and stage regular “celebrations” where everyone gets a chance to be recognized for their contribution in front of the entire company. That’s a powerful motivator when people realize they can have their time in the limelight for something they’ve done well.

Regular check-ins

Instead of the “clock-in” approach, do the “check-in” approach. Check- in regularly with your staff, not to show them that you’re monitoring them but to keep that connection strong. The questions you ask can make a lot of difference, i.e. “How’s that project coming along? Can I do anything to help?” as opposed to “Will that project be ready for Monday?” Your staff knows Monday is the deadline – don’t talk down to them about that but show confidence and support.

Even as a CEO, Ryan at Smartbug makes sure he does that with people in his company:

“I personally call everybody at our company over a period of time to just say, what can we do to make [it] healthier? What does your roadmap look like here? And is there a path to see it? Because you don’t have that office kind of chatter that you typically see.”

3. What are creative ways to maintain team morale, relationships and cohesion?

Maintaining that all-important team morale is more challenging when you don’t get to see your team every day, because you’re missing out on the crucial nuances. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible – here are some tips to make it happen:

Be aware of the non-verbal signs

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, highlighted in response to question #1 the importance of video to catch the non-verbal cues. Ryan Malone, CEO and founder at Smartbug Media, agrees that those important nuances are harder to see when you can’t just walk by someone’s office:

“When somebody gets on camera during the work day, you know they have their game face on, but you don’t know what’s really going on,” he says. “In fact, we had an employee who had a death in the family like an hour before a call and when she got on the phone call, she was completely buttoned up. But you had no idea, if you were in the office you would have seen that and said you need to go home. Like you do not need to go on this call.”

So, it’s crucial to be aware that there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. If your colleague walks into the office space with hunched shoulders and a sunken face, you know something’s up. Sometimes you just have to reach out with regular, personal check-ins and be actively observant of their current mood.

Don’t do texting/email if you can do video

While texting and emailing have their place in a work environment, there’s a tendency to resort to those even more often in a remote working environment because you just can’t shout over to your coworker about something in the moment. Hope at InVision urges video even in those quick one-off interactions, saying the technology shouldn’t be reserved just for meetings.

Ryan at Smartbug Media agrees, and says this is even more so for a manager when it comes to announcements and updates.

“If they’re going to do an announcement, do an announcement on camera and don’t script it,” he says. “Just let it rip, because when your team sees your own emotion, your own kind of non-verbal cues on your face, I think it’s really, really impactful to them. And it comes across really cold, if in a remote environment as a leader, you just send out email announcements all day. It’s a tiny little change. It’s actually easier than writing a big old email. And it’s really impactful.”

Be clever with your resources

Hired’s Head of Customer Success, Will Alexander, says we have the opportunity to be clever and innovative in boosting team morale in a virtual environment – and shares his own real-life examples:

Stage regular meetups

Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, admits that you can’t always replace those in-person interactions and gatherings virtually, but it can be done to some degree. She suggests breaking your company into regional teams to have virtual meetups – even with a budget::

Make it more personable

Ryan points out the importance of personal interaction even during those formal blocks in a workday set aside for meetings. As he says, in a virtual environment, “you miss out on that five minutes before a conference call where everybody is sitting at a conference table chatting about whatever.”

So, Ryan says “I always encourage people to take some piece of a call that they have with a client or with themselves and just shoot the breeze because that’s how relationships are made and if it’s all business, you miss that opportunity.”

Remember the ‘well-being check-in’ as well

Ryan also adds that it’s important to do a ‘well-being check-in’ – not for work purposes, but for making sure everyone’s doing OK within a team. Not only does it send the message to your team that you’ve got their back, but it’s also about looking after your employees to make sure they’re happy and healthy:

Technology may not be an ideal substitute for authentic human interaction, but when you set the stage for people to willingly participate – and help them overcome their tech hurdles – you may see a high level of engagement within your company.

4. In-person companies are able to have social events and happy hours. How do you replicate this digitally?

It’s definitely hard to have a ‘happy hour’ when everyone’s in a different location. However, Will at Hired has made it work at his organization. In his team’s ‘remote’ happy hours, they gather weekly in Zoom after work is done for the day:

“Everybody’s got their drinks together and everyone’s having a conversation. It’s a different sense of connection, because people are in their homes.

He notes there’s another kind of connection happening that doesn’t actually happen in the physical workplace:

“You’re dialed into the actual homes of your colleagues. […] And they’re preparing their dinner and their partner’s walking by, and we’re grabbing them and asking some questions. And [one colleague] has been showing us how to make particular drinks, and what’s she’s been cooking and stuff. And so, yeah, I actually find that more connection-driving than you could argue even in person.”

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, takes a similar approach, with a weekly ‘fun day’ free of the burden of an agenda. This, she says, can boost connections both between colleagues and with management:

You can also set up virtual ‘drop-in’ meeting rooms and online chat rooms. Have a chat channel titled ‘Cabin Feverrr’ – as Workable’s own employees have done. Distribute “happy hour gift cards” – i.e. $10 at the local supermarket to spend on something to consume during this time.

These events can also be gamified. There are numerous apps out there that support virtual games with participants tuning in from different locations. You can also stage competitions for best work-from-home environment, best ‘work companion’ (a pet, toy, kid, etc.), and more. Make it fun for everyone.

5. How can you create a meaningful buddy system?”

Touchpoints are as crucial in a remote working environment as they are in a physical work environment. Feeling socially distant from your colleagues is commonplace when someone’s a new kid on the block – that’s the importance of having a buddy system in place so they don’t feel so far removed from work social circles.

It becomes even more crucial in a remote setting. When everyone’s fully remote from one another, you need to replicate every part of a normal buddy or mentor system in the workplace. Those in the onboarding buddy or mentor system will touch base at regular times throughout the week – whether it’s dedicated meetings or going for lunch/coffee together. These can easily be set up remotely, bearing in mind that face-to-face interaction through video isn’t ideal but still very beneficial.

Do it the “mentor” way. Set lesser experienced/new workers with the more experienced. Don’t do them within departments – do them across departments and emphasize confidentiality “safe space” throughout.

6. How can we train hands-on, direct-care, or field workers remotely?

Regardless of the reason for it, there are many solutions for when you’re working remotely in a relatively normal situation and wondering how you might train new hires.

Get boots on the ground

When you’re setting up shop in a new location – whether you’re entering a new market, expanding, or opening an additional outlet – have at least a couple of employees native to that location who can be tasked with training new hires on site. When we reached out to organizations on their recommendations for successfully opening up business in a new location, hiring local talent was one of the most popular tips. It applies here as well.

Build a ‘training team’

A common strategy adopted by companies is to have a ‘mobile training team’ who travels to locations to train new hires and existing employees. The concept is widely utilized in the military, but has been adopted by businesses who have many workers in the field or are aggressively expanding to new areas. These training teams can be ‘trained’ at headquarters, and then carry their knowledge and expertise with them to multiple locations for team-building purposes.

7. I work for a school system and many of our employees are not tech-savvy. Have you put together trainings for employees like this on how to use video conferencing softwares and how to be creative with technology?

According to Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, it’s critical to have an educational system in place to make sure everyone is well informed on how to use that technology and tapping into the willingness of people to learn. She also recommends appointing two or three highly motivated employees as tech ‘champions’ to help rally their colleagues:

8. How do you find the right balance in over-communication and make sure important things don’t get lost in the noise?

Think of it the same way you would in a normal workplace setting. If you simply get an all-in email from HR or from the company at large communicating various things every week, that usually doesn’t have a lot of impact, especially if sent out at a frequent cadence. What carries a lot of power, instead, is what Ryan at Smartbug Media suggests above: record yourself, warts and all, talking about the ‘important things’ and put that in an email or a chat channel. Better yet – do it live, pulling everyone together into a virtual room.

You aren’t necessarily holding meetings that could be an email. That challenge doesn’t change if you’re working remotely. Emails, text messages, phone calls, video check-ins, 1-1s – they all have their part in workplace communications. A good manager should know when to bring all hands on deck for important messages and when a quick note to the team will suffice.

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, notes that every company will have a different threshold around how much is too much in terms of communication. If you’re finding your messages lost in the ‘noise’, you can switch things up a bit – and be creative and engaging at some point in your messaging to maximize the response:

9. What software do you use/recommend for remote working (i.e. communication, conferencing, team recognition)?

There are hundreds of tech tools out there – we have our own extensive list of the best tools that can get you operating in a fully remote fashion, broken down by function and purpose.

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, notes that it’s important not to get stuck in one software to get most of your work done. Keep it variable and interesting, and monitor what’s working and what’s not. She explains:

“Use your messaging, Slack, G Chat, whatever it is that you’re using, use that along with maybe a video. Right? […] Don’t overcomplicate it. Just do a quick video and look at [your] email. And if you don’t feel like something’s working, don’t be afraid to change that in the middle, and really think about how things are communicating.”

Primarily, look at what your team already does, and see how that work can be continued at a high level using a tool from our above-mentioned list. And keep monitoring the efficiency of that tool – not just for the tool’s capabilities, but the way in which your team is using it to excel in their projects.

10. If you had a friend who was going to move their business remote and they’re going to open their laptop at 9 a.m. tomorrow, what is the one piece of advice that you would give them?

It’s a hard thing to do, moving your entire operation to a fully remote working environment. It’s easy to think that not everything can be done fully virtually – but as the saying goes, there really is an app for everything. And It’s been done before – as proven by those who’ve been there and done that.

When your teams open up that laptop at 9 a.m. on their first day of remote work, Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, says it’s important to remind them to go easy on themselves:

“Give yourself a little bit of grace. You’re not going to be perfect at everything. You’re going to have some things that go amazingly well, and then you’re going to have some areas where you can learn from, and just make sure and give yourself grace. And don’t take yourself too seriously.”

Ryan Malone, founder and CEO at Smartbug Media, is more succinct:

“Trust people and don’t over-analyze things.”

Finally, Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, builds on that element of trust and having faith in things to work out:

“I would say trust that every interaction, that comes with good intent and that everybody wants you to succeed and that everybody wants the company to succeed, that intention piece where if you make a mistake, it’s really not a big deal. What Hope talked about, don’t take yourself too seriously. Because at the end of the day, we’re all in it together.”

The post Remote Working FAQs appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

His bull-by-the-horns approach – often criticized for being needlessly abrasive – is now being lauded by many for being the kind of leadership that people need. Nerves are rattled, the future is uncertain. And in these times, people turn to their leaders for support, affirmation, and direction. That’s where Cuomo has stepped up for New York residents.

For businesses, this crisis is not just about business survival and continuity – which of course are important. It’s also about keeping your employees engaged and motivated to work for you, and keeping your customers loyal.

After all, no business operates without the engagement of all involved. When you express your organization as part of the larger business community of employees and customers – as a key participant of society in this crisis – then that’s a powerful message that will be willingly accepted.

And it’s on you, as a business executive or entrepreneur, to demonstrate your leadership in these times.

The power of clarity

A core facet of maintaining that kind of business community and leadership is clear communication – as Cuomo does; no dancing around the topic, no smoothening over of rough edges, no diminishing of bad news. Transparency is key, particularly now. Don’t underestimate people’s ability to absorb messages and respond in the best way possible.

Kevin Hancock of the Hancock Lumber Company attests to that: “Employees are people, and as simple as that sounds, it’s important to treat them as such. Everyone deserves to know what is at stake and everyone is capable of leading a corporate transformation in times of crisis.”

Kevin learned the importance of transparency, based on his experiences from the fallout of the subprime mortgage crisis in the late 2000s when he was trying to ‘protect’ his team:

“In hindsight, our communication with our employees was not proactive enough or transparent enough. We tried to shield our employees from the potential impact of the disaster until it threatened to overrun us.”

Chad Hill, CMO of Florida-based law firm Hill & Ponton Law, which specializes in disability cases, also emphasizes transparent communications throughout the company:

“The least the company can do is to get everyone on the same page. Executives should be open to their employees especially if the company is facing some unfortunate event. Getting everyone on the same page could help you and your employees understand where each stands in the situation.”

Now that the importance of clarity is, well, clear – what message do you want to deliver?

1. Listen to your employees

Cuomo’s ‘social crisis’ comment is about the depth to which society has been impacted by the current crisis. It’s not just a handful of people in one area, nor is it one society or one country getting the brunt of it. It’s not just ‘the poor’. This crisis is far-reaching and very visceral, and everyone is being impacted to some degree, be they healthcare workers, restaurant owners, senior citizens, parents, etc. It’s not a stretch to say we’re all in it together. So, stating this outright is essential.

It’s a message you need to share with everyone involved in your company, be they employees, customers, prospects, or society at large. You’re not just the big boss, or some high-level executive, or far-away manager dialing in remotely. You’re in the thick of it with everyone. Convey that in your messages and actions.

Build unified teams and let them lead

Kevin at Hancock Lumber noted the challenge of keeping his workers unified through the work-from-home trend, pointing out that not everyone was able to work from home in his company. He monitored that closely and was sensitive to how it might impact his employees:

“[We] have decided during this COVID-19 crisis to stand together as a team. We felt that if we let certain work groups go home while keeping others at work that this might cause some division at a time when we need everyone to be united.”

Kevin turned it into a culture-defining opportunity by motivating employees to lead the charge:

“We immediately asked everyone to help lead the new work culture realities of cleanliness and social distancing, and I have been so impressed by how quickly everyone created positive change.”

He repeats the importance of turning the tables around and letting employees and customers set the tone throughout:

“The company is there to serve employees, customers, and the community in the first place and it is exceptionally important to operate that way right now. […] This is really about the people connected to the company – not the company itself. A company needs employees to create value and customers to consume that value. It can’t function without both groups. During a time like this, the company needs to follow the lead of the people connected to it.”

A rising tide lifts all ships

Bryan Clayton, CEO and co-founder of Nashville-based GreenPal, which he describes as a ‘Uber for lawn-mowing’, also talked to the spirit of getting your employees fired up about surviving as a group – because everyone benefits in the end:

“It boils down to getting your team galvanized around the idea that survivability and the business surviving is more for the benefit of the business family than the individual. If the business survives we will all be OK, and if people can make some short-term sacrifices to keep the business afloat then we will all have jobs when this blows over.”

Tristan Mermin, CEO and founder of Batiste Rhum, an award-winning eco-positive rum distillery in the French Caribbean that sells its products throughout California, also prioritizes the focus on the people both connected with and in the company:

“Set sights on what you want from your operation and its people. Encourage those that are committed and join with them in the effort to continue. Remove or downplay the need for glory and vanity. Be obviously thankful to your customers and their employees.”

Include your staff in the ‘why’

Bryan at GreenPal talked about the bulk of his company operations being managed by Guatemalan immigrants who he said were some of the “finest people [he has] ever known”. They would come to the U.S. for several lawn-mowing seasons and save as much money to support the building of homes, ranches, and cattle farms for their families.

“This became our company’s purpose, our ‘Why’,” says Bryan. “In weekly meetings, we would get progress reports from our men on how projects ’back home’ were coming along. In the halls of our office and in the shop, we displayed picture collages of all the homes, farms, and businesses that had been established by our people in Guatemala.”

That spirit carried the company through.

“Celebrating these victories gave us fuel to get through the tough times, particularly with the economic recession that began in 2009.”

That ‘why’ isn’t about the business’ bottom line. It’s about the bigger, overarching mission and vision – remember writing those when you first worked on your business plan? Better yet, identify a bigger-picture mission that motivates all of you, together. When you include your employees in that mission – and listen to them throughout – that’s a huge motivator.

2. Support your employees

People will always remember what you’ve done for them in the midst of a crisis – whether it’s subprime mortgage or COVID-19. They’ll also remember what you didn’t do for them. This is especially crucial when employees are devoting a great deal of their mental – and physical – energy each week to the productivity of your business, more so in the midst of the fray. If you show them you’ve got their back, they will respond in kind.

Ease the burden of tough decisions

You can help employees make those right choices, by giving them clear guidance – i.e. if you’re getting X symptoms, stay home. If the situation with your kids is Y, stay home. Many governments worldwide have already stepped ahead and mandated shelter-in-space, but it sends a powerful signal to your employees if you have clear guidelines to help them make tough decisions such as staying home and taking care of their family or whether or not they should come to work when they’re too anxious to do so.

It helps rid them of burdensome guilt that can hamper their ability to make good choices for themselves and for your company, if you just step up and make clear where their priorities ought to be.

To wit: Kevin’s rules right now are clear and to the point, ending with: “If you can work and feel good about working, let’s do it.”

Again, he notes, it’s about putting the employees first.

“It makes more sense for the company to serve and follow the employees than for the company to chart a mission focused on serving itself. So far, the support we have received has been nothing short of inspirational.”

He adds: “I have a lot of confidence in humanity. I believe that individuals will make the right choices for themselves when given a safe work culture to operate in.”

Make sacrifices for your staff

Wes Guckert, CEO/founder of Maryland-based traffic data and engineering consultancy The Traffic Group and an instructor at Harvard University, regretted having to lay off employees in 1992 and vowed never to do that again.

“As an owner, the way to mitigate is to put into play an economic plan that does everything possible to keep your team employed and keep them from losing their home or vehicle. If a small business owner has the wherewithal, part of the mitigation might mean taking personal loans to keep the business afloat and continuing to make payroll.”

He’s stepping forward to the front lines by putting his money where his mouth is:

“I am borrowing every bit of money that I can to keep our company afloat. […] I’m also ready to take all of my savings and put it back into the company to save our employees.”

That move can extend to the surrounding community at large. If you’re in a position to do so, you can look at those in need and take actions to support them.

Ruth Hartman at Coffee Creek Ranch, a ranch in northern California that has hosted fishing and other nature expeditions since 1900, emphasized the importance of kindness and empowering employees:

“Be kind. Think of ways to give back. People in the restaurant business had lots of food and most have given to their employees here in California and other states. Some gave to the homeless. And some reinvented themselves and did takeouts when they were a sit-down eatery.”

Remember, it’s a long game

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said as much in late March, telling CNBC in an interview on the topic of rushing employees back to work in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis: “How companies respond to that very question is going to define their brand for decades. If you rushed in and somebody got sick, you were that company. If you didn’t take care of your employees or stakeholders and put them first, you were that company.”

You don’t want to be that company. You want to be the company that stood up for those who work hard to keep the company – and the community – afloat. Not only is it benevolent, it also pays dividends down the line.

3. Support your customers

Just as supporting your own employees can be immensely powerful for the morale of your company, you need to also ensure your existing customers are well taken care of. They’re also nervous and rattled, and most likely as impacted by the crisis as you are.

To do that, you need to communicate directly to your customers that you’re still operating, and tell them about the tangible steps you’re taking to survive through the crisis. That kind of reassurance is powerful in long-term customer loyalty and can position you as a reliable member of the business community.

John Crossman, a writer and speaker for college students on career planning and growth – and president of Florida real estate company Crossman & Company – recommends getting ahead of that right away:

“Be visible! Make sure to tell your story or someone will do it for you. You want all of your clients and potential clients [to know] that you are available and open for business.”

John didn’t just communicate that – he followed up by putting his company’s words into action:

“We survived because we hunkered down with a handful of clients and worked hard to take care of each other. We worked huge hours and did things for free for clients. We did everything we could to cement the relationship.”

Keep that personal connection

Dave Munson at Saddleback Leather Corporation, stepped up and made sure his customers knew there were empathetic people caring for them behind the scenes:

“I was very involved in the customer side of the business and shared all of the behind the scenes struggles and fun times we were having. It brought about sympathy and a friendship with our customers. They were no longer dealing with Saddleback Leather Corporation, but rather with Dave and his leather company. One of the most important things a business leader can do right now is share their concern for their employees and customers.”

Strong messaging like that can go a long way in keeping a customer on board. When you’re running a $15-million-per-year operation, personal connection with those who keep your business alive becomes even more important.

It’s not ‘me’ – it’s ‘we’

Wes at The Traffic Group testifies to the lack of precedence in the current crisis while pointing out the importance of working together:

“This is a stressful time, no matter who you are, where you live, or what industry you’re in. We have never experienced a pandemic like this before and recognize the unknown brings fear and worry. At the same time, we must keep in mind that the best and brightest the world over are focused on combating this virus. We will get through this together and are confident we will come out stronger on the other side.”

Muhammad Ali once recited what’s widely considered the shortest poem of the English language: “Me… we!” Albert Cuomo’s ‘social crisis’ comment is designed to appeal to not just the business community, but the collective strength of a society that comes together.

Communicate that “all in” spirit, make your employees feel valued as part of your business and your customers feel appreciated, as well as empower both in knowing they, too, have a part in the play.

Businesses don’t run on their own. If you show others that you’re with them through thick and thin – be they employees, colleagues, friends, customers, prospects, or other – they will remember that.

The post Business community building: We’re all in it together appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We turned to the experts, those who have been working remotely for many years, to get useful insights and tips on how to hire employees remotely. Here’s what they had to say:

• Should a remote time-to-hire be shorter or longer than an in-person time-to-hire?
• How can we structure a remote hiring process? For example, should we invest more time in final interviews?
• How can we get old-school executives/upper management to be more open to virtual interviewing?
• How can we engage candidates during a hiring freeze and build interest so they’re ready when we are?
• What software do you use/recommend for remote hiring?
• How can we explain the virtual hiring process to candidates, especially to those who are less tech-savvy?
• How can we prepare candidates for remote interviews?
• How does the remote hiring process for executive-level employees differ?

1. Should a remote time-to-hire be shorter or longer than an in-person time-to-hire?

A remote interview process doesn’t have to be sloppier than the traditional, in-person interviews. You can still have different hiring stages so that various team members meet and evaluate candidates. However, when you interview candidates remotely, you have the chance to speed up hiring, which eventually benefits your overall time-to-hire. Here’s how:

• One-way video interviews are pre-recorded, so you can evaluate them at any time, at your own convenience.
• You don’t have to block specific time for each candidate and you don’t have to reschedule if something else comes up.
• The entire hiring team can view recorded video interviews and decide whether they want to move on with a candidate or reject them. Otherwise, each interviewer will have to meet with candidates separately which is more time-consuming or you’ll have to conduct a panel interview which is harder to coordinate.
• You cut back on time spent sending directions, welcoming candidates to your offices, making travel arrangements if you’re in different locations, etc. Video interviews allow you to meet candidates without leaving your desk, which can make a huge difference when you’re scaling and have multiple interviews per day or week.
• When screening candidates through one-way video interviews, you can simply send one email with the questions or instructions to all candidates. Instead, if you rely on phone screens, you have to interview candidates one-by-one.
• It’s likely that some candidates will drop out of the hiring process if they have to invest time to record a video of themselves instead of the more traditional application form or phone screen. This leaves you with the candidates who are truly interested in the job and your company – i.e. you avoid spending time interviewing candidates who doubt whether they’re a good fit for the role.
• If you rely only on local talent, it might take you longer to find the candidate who fits your requirements. On the other hand, when you cast a wider net, by interviewing and hiring employees remotely, you increase your chances of finding the skills you’re looking for faster.

Brandi Hale, Head of People and Culture at Salad and Go, has found that video interviewing is a great solution when you’re scaling and can help you keep hiring in times of a crisis and mandatory social distancing:

“We’re using the new Video Interviews tool to pre-screen candidates and move quickly into the interview step. Normally, we have daily open interview sites, where any interested candidate can come by. This process is not possible for us right now due to the crisis. This tool has helped us be more efficient during this time and get our jobs done.”

2. How can we structure a remote hiring process? For example, should we invest more time in final interviews?

During a recent webinar on remote work that Workable and Hired co-hosted in light of COVID-19, Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, mentioned that a remote interview process shouldn’t differ much from a regular, in-person one; it’s all about finding whether a candidate would be a good fit.

There are some nuances, though, when you hire candidates remotely, which means that you might need to tweak your interview process to make sure you hire the right people.

For example, founder and CEO at SmartBug Media, Ryan Malone, notes that it’s important to measure candidates’ resilience as well as their ability and willingness to work remotely.

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, shares some inside tips on how they run interviews at the final stages. As she explains, they’ve chosen to run brief interview sessions not only with team members the candidate will work directly with, but also cross-functional teams, from various levels.

“We really make sure that they’ve got a wide view of what it’s like to communicate in a 100% kind of a remote environment; the advantages that come along with that, and then also that gives us an opportunity to really get to know them.”

“At the end of the interview once everybody has gone through what we call their interview loop, we have all of the team, the interview team, come back together and we run a debrief the same way that you typically would if you’re going to go grab somebody in a conference room and talk about the candidate that you met. These debriefs can last anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. Ideally, at the end of those debriefs, we walk away with a decision. It feels very similar to what would happen if somebody were coming in, in an all-day interview.”

Hope also shares how the interview process slightly changes for senior-level positions:

“If it’s a manager or higher position, we spend about 30 minutes really talking about and learning more about the candidates, in terms of how they lead or potentially see themselves as leaders in a remote environment.”

3. How can we get old-school executives/upper management to be more open to virtual interviewing?

Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, reminds us that if the company is not tech-savvy, you will have to start from the basics.

“The first thing I would do is probably run an education class to help people get up to speed with some of the remote tools that we would be using. And I would probably start with the very basic Google Hangouts type of tools, because it’s the easiest to use.”

She also reminds us that leading by example can make a difference, so look for the people who are more willing to use virtual tools for hiring. “When you find those two or three people, make them your champions, teach them and help them spread the word. And then, they share and spread the really great things that we’re trying to initiate in the organization.”

Ryan Malone, founder and CEO at SmartBug Media, says that reluctance to use some of those tools is often a matter of confidence. So, he encourages supporting employees who feel less tech-savvy through mentorship, small videos, exercises and small wins where they can build momentum. He also notes that work friendships can be very helpful, as employees can address people they feel most comfortable with when they have quick questions instead of feeling they’re the ones raising their hand every time.

4. How can we engage candidates during a hiring freeze and build interest so they’re ready when we are?

A hiring freeze – whether it’s due to a global crisis like COVID-19 or internal company processes – is an uncomfortable situation. Since you can rarely say for sure when the hiring process will start again, it’s best to be honest about it and show empathy towards candidates.

For example, ClearScore, a UK-based fintech company, talks openly about the current situation and prompts job seekers to apply so that their hiring team can quickly reach out in the future:

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision explained how a slowdown in hiring gives recruiters the chance to create meaningful relationships with candidates for future job opportunities:

Hope highlighted the importance of ensuring that candidates know these are just conversations:

“Because the last thing that you want to do is by no ill will, this candidate will think, ‘Oh, gosh, I’m interviewing for a job that I could start in three weeks or a month,’ or something like that. But just saying, ‘Hey, just being very open and upfront that we’re having conversations and we expect to hire this position at X amount of time.’”

Ryan Malone, founder and CEO at SmartBug Media, added:

“Be upfront with them and let them know that it’s not there yet, but that you care about them enough to invest the time. It means a lot.”

In uncertain times, you can’t talk about the things that are out of your control, but you can emphasize on what you know, as Hope said:

“While we may not know what tomorrow brings, we know the values and the principles in which our company lives by and we know, from an industry standard, where we stand, and where we anticipate to go.”
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5. What software do you use/recommend for remote hiring?

To run live video interviews with candidates, you can use popular tools such as Zoom, Google Hangouts and Skype. Candidates will be able to join the interview easily by following a link, so make sure to send them an invitation in advance.

If you want to conduct one-way video interviews with candidates, you can ask them to record their answers through software such as Vidyard or SparkHire. If you’re using an ATS, check whether it’s integrated with a video tool; this way the process will be more seamless. Here are some additional tips on how to choose the best video interview software to hire remotely.

When you want to evaluate candidates, beyond written assessments, you can use virtual whiteboards that facilitate interaction, such as FreeHand and Zoom Whiteboard.

For a better collaboration with the entire hiring team, make sure you use cloud software, like Google Docs and sheets, to share documents, an Applicant Tracking System to manage the hiring process and communication tools like Slack for quick updates. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of tools to help you run a virtual workplace.

6. How can we explain the virtual hiring process to candidates, especially to those who are less tech-savvy?

Even for people who are familiar with technology, video interviews can be a bit intimidating if they’re used to being in an office setting. That’s why getting them comfortable with the remote hiring process is essential.

Start by making it clear that you’ll connect through video. Share some simple guidelines, explain how they’ll join the call or how they’ll record their answers and help them set up their equipment.

A good idea would be to create a guide with useful tips on how candidates can prepare for a video interview. You might also want to record a video where a recruiter or hiring manager from your company talks about the company or welcomes the candidate to the hiring process, in order to set the tone and give candidates a glimpse of your team before the interview.

Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, adds that the virtual hiring process and the way you describe it to candidates should be aligned with your company culture. For example, at Stack Overflow, where they’re more casual, they encourage candidates to bring their true selves during the video call. “We actually invite people if they have a cat or a dog they want to introduce in their interview, they can do that, because I think it starts to build rapport.”

7. How can we prepare candidates for remote interviews?

While remote interviews don’t differ much from regular, in-person interviews, consider helping candidates prepare themselves before a video call. This way, both parts – interviewers and candidates – can focus on the actual interview. Here’s what you can do:

• Help them set up their equipment (camera, mic, video software)
• Share some quick troubleshooting tips (e.g. what to do if the internet connection is flaky)
• Give some alternatives beforehand in case of technical hiccups (e.g. “If you have trouble connecting to Zoom, call me at [number]”)
• Advice on how they can look better on camera (what colors work best, how to fix the lighting, how to choose their background, etc.)

An interesting aspect to take into account is the role you’re hiring for. If you’re looking for tech employees, the way they use the video technology could be part of the evaluation. Likewise, if you’re hiring for customer-facing roles, you’re probably measuring for ease of speech and good self-presentation.

Ryan Malone, founder and CEO at SmartBug Media, attests to that:

“Since we’re a digital agency, if somebody is really having a hard time creating a video, that might be a little bit of a red flag for a certain role,” he says. “But we try to make it as easy as possible and we don’t want people to spend two days producing some video. We just want to hear you talk. Are you articulate? Can you convey an idea? Is your space well kept? They’re going to represent our brand so, short of telling them who they’re going to interview with, we don’t give them any preparation at all, because that’s part of the interview for us.”

8. How does the remote hiring process for executive-level employees differ?

For executive or C-level roles, it might be useful to schedule in-person interviews during the final hiring stage. You’ll be working closely with them and they’ll be driving many business decisions, so it’s crucial to build that more personal connection.

Ryan Malone, founder and CEO at SmartBug Media, explains why and how they schedule these in-person interviews:

“We do try to meet people face-to-face, because at the end of the day, you want to spend a significant amount of time with that person. And I think they appreciate the investment,” he adds. “There’s an opportunity cost of not taking something else. So, you want to meet [C-level candidates] in person, because it’s also a chance for you to demonstrate for them that you have your act together. We recently hired a COO. Everything was remote except for the last couple interviews and those were in person over a full day basically.”

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, highlights the importance of a strong communication path and multiple check-ins throughout the hiring process.

“We have our CEO do multiple check-ins and deeper dive conversations as they’re going through the interview process, just depending on the specific role. And then, when we get to that final conversation, that’s the in-person conversation, it flows a lot better and it’s not nearly as uncomfortable.”

Whether final interviews are remote or in-person, talking to the CEO – or someone from the senior management – of the company you’re interviewing at can impact your decision to accept a job offer or not, particularly if you’re a senior-level candidate yourself. Ryan elaborates on that:

“We’re still of the size where I interviewed the last interviewer and it’s not a control thing. It goes back to that unwritten rule, which is, you’re choosing us versus something else. And you should be able to ask anything you want of the person who’s driving the strategy of the company. It’s also a chance for me to convey what we’re trying to build. I think hearing that from somebody high up at the company means a lot to a candidate.”

Want to learn more about how to make remote work successful at your company? Read our guide on remote onboarding.

The post Remote Hiring FAQs appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Table of contents:

1. How can a company adopt a virtual onboarding approach when it is not tech-savvy or/and doesn’t embody a learning culture?
2. Can you share a sample agenda for a new hire for the first week of onboarding remotely?
3. Do you conduct “culture trainings” to communicate what culture looks like at your organization? If so, what do these look like?
4. How can you replace the experience of a new hire meeting coworkers over lunch?
5. What is the most important thing we shouldn’t miss or the best learning/best practice you’d share with a company who is looking to onboard remote employees soon?
6. How do you complete I-9s & W-4s remotely?
7. What software do you recommend for remote onboarding?
8. Do you have experience with hiring independent contractors? If so, does the onboarding look the same for them as it does for a W-2 employee?
9. How can we execute drug tests that are required as part of onboarding?

1. How can a company adopt a virtual onboarding approach when it is not tech-savvy or/and doesn’t embody a learning culture?

If your company is not tech-savvy, you’ll need to invest some extra energy to lead the “tech way” – at least in the beginning. First off, do a thorough research to find what kind of software and tools you could use to onboard new hires successfully, and learn how they work. Opt for platforms that seem easy to use, match your business requirements, and integrate well with other platforms you’re planning to use. Use this list to find the tools you’ll need to communicate with remote employees virtually, such as a video-conferencing solution, and manage essential onboarding steps (e.g. completing HR paperwork).

But, how can you ensure that employees will learn how to handle these tools effectively, too? Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, suggests organizing online class sessions where you can train new employees on how to effectively use these tools. This will boost their confidence in using tech gear, which according to Ryan Malone, CEO and Founder at SmartBug Media, is necessary, especially in a work culture that isn’t initially tech-savvy:

“What we found [at the company] is that if you mix mentorship and small videos and exercises, and give people small wins where they can create some momentum, then [onboarding is] not as daunting.”

In the absence of a learning culture, Melissa adds that even when there are not officially established onboarding trainings for new hires, there are always people who can voluntarily train or mentor their new colleagues on how to best utilize tech tools. She suggests identifying those employees and assigning them an active training role:

“In every single program in an organization, I look for my champions, the people who really care deeply about these things. I engage them, and then they go out. […] They share and spread the really great things that we’re trying to initiate in the organization. That’s how I would approach it.”

2. Can you share a sample agenda for a new hire for the first week of onboarding remotely?

When onboarding new remote employees, during the first week you can focus on:

• preparing gear and tools
• completing necessary HR paperwork
• explaining company culture
• connecting with team members

Use this remote employees onboarding checklist as a guide to schedule the first week’s events and tasks. But don’t forget that you’re still onboarding in general – this how to build a new onboarding process guide and this onboarding new hire checklist will help you succeed.

Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, describes her company’s remote onboarding process and which areas they focus on during the first few days:

Successful onboarding, of course, at the core of it all – whether remotely or not. This step-by-step new employee onboarding process guide will help you refine your strategy.

3. Do you conduct ‘culture trainings’ to communicate what culture looks like at your organization? If so, what do these look like?

It’s to be expected that a remote workplace has different norms and culture as opposed to a typical in-office one. There’s more room for flexibility, which even though it is worth savoring, it can also impact the employers’ – and employees’ – ability to set clear expectations and boundaries. That’s why you should dedicate the first onboarding days to showing the culture and company norms to the new hires.

As in the video above, Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, shared tips on delivering ‘cultural trainings’ virtually, through official or less structured calls and video meetings (you can also jump to the video in question 2):

“The ultimate goal is to really teach our InVision operating system, and how we work, what our culture’s like, what you can expect; [it’s about] really being able to bring your whole self to work, which a lot of times you’re not able to do in an office setting. We talked about kids walking around or maybe a new puppy that you just got, that is barking in the background and wants to jump up and see you all day. Those are things that we expect. Those are things that we appreciate.”

Ryan Malone, CEO and Founder at SmartBug Media, says cultural marketing plays a pivotal role in understanding what type of family employees are joining. Moving to an earlier stage, you can demonstrate your culture to candidates early on, for example, at the interview stage or through your careers page and prepare them beforehand. Share glimpses of your daily virtual work life through posting photos and videos, and allow new hires to get a sneak peek into what a working day looks like at your company.

4. How can you replace the experience of a new hire meeting coworkers over lunch?

There are many creative ways to integrate new hires to your existing teams and nurture a friendly atmosphere among colleagues. For instance, Hope Weatherford, Head of Talent Attraction at InVision, suggests scheduling a weekly video call with a loose agenda, where employees can jump in to socialize:

“We call it Friday fun day and we just come in and we just chat about anything and everything; sometimes related to work, sometimes not. And sometimes there’s an agenda and most of the time there’s not. Jump in if you want, you don’t have to join if you don’t have time. And that’s been helpful as well.”

She also encourages employees to use video-conferencing tools for chit chat, too, and not just for scheduled work meetings.

Ryan Malone, CEO and Founder at SmartBug Media, sets up 20-minute calls with team members for new remote hires, where they can discuss non-work-related interests and get to know each other better. Also, you could plan a large-scale event, such as a corporate retreat, for all teams to get together and bond:

5. What is the most important thing we shouldn’t miss or the best learning/best practice you’d share with a company who is looking to onboard remote employees soon?

In the first days of onboarding, it’s important to keep employees motivated to understand company culture and goals, connect with co-workers, and gain new skills. Ryan Malone, CEO and Founder of SmartBug Media, says this is the first practice he introduces to nurture healthy communication among co-workers:

“The first thing that you do when you come here, is you set up a get to know you call, which is a 20-minute call with everybody at the company. And the only rule is you can’t talk about work. And it’s a way for people to figure out who their crew is and what they have in common with people, so that they can quickly get integrated into teams that are like social teams.”

He also advises managers to avoid providing the new members with an extensive list of videos to watch as part of their training – and instead, putting the onus on on-the-job learning. They should support new team members to build core job-relevant skills and learn their role’s primary tasks, to build confidence and feel valuable.

6. How do you complete I-9s & W-4s remotely?

Normally, employers should examine and verify I-9 forms only in the physical presence of the new hires*. But when you hire and onboard a remote employee, this is not always a feasible step. In these cases, the employer can assign an authorized representative, a notary, or partner with a I-9 completion center to fill-out the I-9 form on their behalf, in the physical presence of the employee. You can also use a software, such as i9advantage, to help you out with this process.

As for W-4s and other HR paperwork that doesn’t typically require physical presence, you can ask the employee to complete and sign them digitally. You can easily manage this process with a digital onboarding tool, such as Rippling, and by enabling an e-signature solution such as HelloSign.

* The DHS recently announced that during the COVID-19 pandemic, completion of I-9 forms in businesses where physical distancing precautions are being applied, can be temporarily examined virtually by the employer within three days after the initial hiring date, as long as certain criteria are met.

7. What software do you recommend for remote onboarding?

Rippling and Click Boarding deliver digital onboarding solutions that enable you to streamline onboarding effectively (and both seamlessly integrated to our recruiting solution). Other useful tools are:

• An HRIS – e.g. BambooHR
• An online chat platform – e.g. Slack
• A video-conferencing tool – e.g. Zoom
• An e-signature solution – e.g. HelloSign

Find more tech tools, easy to implement in the virtual workplace, in this guide.

8. Do you have experience with hiring independent contractors? If so, does the onboarding look the same for them as it does for a W-2 employee?

Melissa Bruno, VP Head of People at Stack Overflow, advises employers to follow these two steps when hiring independent contractors:

1) Consider moving to a global provider employment organization (PEO) to ensure compliance with the legal requirements of each jurisdiction or country (e.g. local tax laws or statutory benefits), and

2) Follow the same onboarding agenda from day 1, as you would with other employees. In her own words:

9. How can we execute drug tests that are required as part of onboarding?

Employee drug testing is a sensitive matter. Considering that drug testing rules vary in different countries and jurisdictions, it’s easy to lose sight of local laws and regulations. That’s why you should always consult with your legal counsel to ensure compliance and transparency for each individual case before requesting or conducting pre-employment drug tests.

If you have a drug-testing policy, all candidates, both in-office and remote, should know what to expect beforehand. Hand over the drug testing policy to them, including all the recent updates and individual steps they should follow. Once you’ve ensured you’re fully legal and compliant, you can set an appointment for them at a state-certified lab that conducts the drug screening process.

The post 9 remote onboarding FAQs to level up your process appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Kevin Hancock of the Hancock Lumber Company shared one of his favorite quotes with us in terms of business survival planning: “In this life, there will be lessons. Those lessons shall be repeated until they are learned.”

So why not find out the lessons firsthand? We did, and picked up some great insights from those who’ve been at the front lines and lived to tell about it. Here are five major takeaways from what they shared:

1. Act quickly

The worst thing you can do is be idle in the midst of the storm. This is regularly advised by one-time Workable COO Grigoris Kouteris, who himself has been through 2008 in a management capacity. Doing nothing means your ship continues to sink.

Kevin – whose Maine-based family-owned lumber business was hit hard by the housing and mortgage market collapse of 2007-2008 – regrets that he didn’t do enough to keep the boat afloat at the time:

“One of the biggest lessons for me is to manage in real time. As a company, we waited much too long to respond earnestly to that crisis. We kept convincing ourselves that perhaps markets were about to recover. The longer we waited, the bigger the required adjustments became and the more perilous our situation got.”

In hindsight, Kevin realizes waiting it out was not the best approach.

“Any time there is economic risk, it is imperative […] to start making adjustments quickly, in real time.”

John Crossman, a writer and speaker for college students on career planning and growth – and president & former CEO of Florida real estate company Crossman & Company – regretted that he had to lay off people for the first and only time in company history, and acted quickly to mitigate further damage from the crisis:

“Once we restructured, we then pushed very hard into marketing and client relationships. We also got very active with trade associations. We felt that it was important to be as visible as possible. This was in the beginning of the social media era and we became very good at social media.”

Kean Graham, the CEO of MonetizeMore, an ad technology company headquartered in Victoria, Canada, found himself in the tough position of having just started his business in the midst of the downturn. He moved quickly to benefit not only his client base but himself as well:

“Getting my first clients was very difficult! In fact, my first client couldn’t even commit to a retainer. Instead, I convinced them by only getting a percentage of the increased ad revenues my company would earn for them. If I didn’t increase their ad revenues, they wouldn’t have to pay anything.”

Kean’s quick thinking set MonetizeMore on track to becoming an eight-figure company with 100-plus staff all around the world.

In short – even if you’re in a stage of damage control or mitigation, there’s always something you can do to soften the impact on your bottom line. That’s essential in business survival planning.

2. Make many small corrections

Imagine you’re driving an 18-wheeler truck down a highway in wintertime. You hit a patch of ice, and your truck loses its grip on the road. You start skidding to the side. What’s the worst thing you can do? Over-correct by turning the steering wheel too hard to bring the truck back under control.

A common token of advice in maintaining control of that truck is the ‘small correction’. When you’re moving at that kind of speed, even the smallest change in direction will have considerable impact. That’s very hard to do in a state of panic, but do it, you must.

Cass Bailey, CEO of Philadelphia-based marketing and communication firm Slice Communications, recounts that she started making quick changes as soon as she realized clients were being affected by the 2008 downturn. She noticed a decrease in overall marketing spend – a major source of her company’s revenue stream and a leading indicator of upcoming trends.

“Quite often, companies will cut their marketing expenses first, so we were able to act quickly. We made some changes to staffing, eliminated software that was used to make the business more efficient, renegotiated contracts with subcontractors, and reduced our fees. All of these things made us more competitive.”

Her company’s quick thinking in her business’ survival planning meant a rosier future: “We survived and had great years in 2010, 2011, and 2012. We made the hard decisions quickly, kept an eye on cash flow, and were willing to hustle.”

Kevin, who also shared insights on shared leadership in business in his book, The Seventh Power: One CEO’s Journey into the Business of Shared Leadership, attests to this as well in navigating a development that directly impacts your business.

“It’s better to make a hundred small adjustments based on the actual conditions on the ground than to wait, and wait and then a few massive corrections at the end.”

He also emphasizes the importance of everyone being involved in that process to mitigate the overall damage:

“Lots of small sacrifices shared by everyone (including the company) are better than cataclysmic change at the very end.”

The benefit of quick, small corrections and fixes also means that if you’ve made a wrong move, you can act on it right away. It does require greater attention to detail from one day to the next, but in the short-term it’s crucial to your business survival planning.

3. Maintain a healthy cash flow

Money, obviously, is the lifeblood of a business. Without it, there’s not a lot you can do. You must act quickly and make adjustments so you can stay afloat in the midst of the storm.

Wayne Lorgus, partner of Arizona-based advisory and consulting service B2B CFO, recommends thinking about cash flow at the first sign of trouble:

“The first question a business owner needs to answer is: if my customers delay payments, how long can I afford to keep paying my employees, suppliers, and landlord? Knowing that point is critical, and to conserve cash, the business owner may need to contact those suppliers and landlords to notify them they will be paid when business restarts. Employees may need to be furloughed or laid off to preserve cash.

“[…] Cash flow needs to be watched intensively to make sure the business can keep going.”

Wayne also recommended keeping an eye on new developments in government-supplied emergency funding such as the recently passed $2 trillion stimulus package which includes $500 billion for a major corporate liquidity program and $377 billion in small business aid.

Brooklyn-based Marc Prosser, currently CEO and co-founder of Choosing Therapy, a mental health content site connecting people with therapists, lived through the dot-com bust, the housing market collapse, 9-11, and now the COVID-19 crisis as a New York native. He says many small business owners are too slow to make decisions on closing or ramping down business due to the personal and community-based nature of running a small business. He suggests SMBs need to look at the numbers right away and start planning for different scenarios:

“I strongly encourage business owners to map out the financial forecast of their business over the next 3, 6, 9, and 12 month period. What would a 50% drop in revenue look like over this period?”

Wes Guckert, CEO/founder of the traffic engineering and planning consultancy The Traffic Group and an instructor at Harvard University, lamented the pain of having to let employees go in the wake of the savings and loan crisis and subsequent real estate crash in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Vowing never to do that again, he has a different strategy for business survival planning this time around:

“We have put into effect cost-cutting measures, including travel restrictions and, unfortunately, temporarily suspending monthly donations to charities. There is always ‘low hanging fruit’ that can be plucked from monthly budgets. Find it and act.”

Wes also looked at other cost mitigation measures in the spirit of ‘every little bit helps’: “We are contacting our banks to delay payments, we have suspended 401(k) matches, and I have suspended taking a personal salary. We have stopped with auto allowances since driving is limited.”

Money isn’t just a Pink Floyd or ABBA song. There’s a reason why “streamlining” is such a popular term in the business lexicon – it’s about making things less expensive and less wasteful budget-wise. You already have some funds in your account – the key is to live longer off what you’ve got right now because you don’t know when new revenue will start picking up again.

4. Innovate and adapt

Business agility is crucial at a time like this. There are always new opportunities, new sources of revenue, new markets you can pursue. Look for them in your own area of specialty – and capitalize on them.

Paige Arnof-Fenn of Mavens and Moguls, a marketing consultancy based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, saw three six-figure projects get postponed within a few days just as the stock market started to free fall in 2008. She acted quickly in her business survival planning, adding a “Listening Tour” in each city she had scheduled to visit for presentations and board meetings – including NYC, Chicago, the Bay Area, and Boston.

Likening it to what politicians do when on the campaign trail, Paige notes the idea was to not speak, but hear what others had to say. She made a list of big-name players, people she admired, and prospects, and heard them out – and they responded in kind, much to her pleasant surprise.

“With things so slow they were more than happy to get together and tell me what was on their mind,” says Paige.

“If you listen to what they share with you, there will be plenty of opportunities to help them. I did it when business slowed then and picked up several new clients, but you can do it any time.”

Paige picked up some valuable lessons that made her business stronger as a result, noting a shift in the services being offered:

“Our growth rate slowed and we shifted from doing mostly monthly retainer-based work to a project-based approach but, in the end, our clients spent roughly the same with us over the year. It just required us to sell in multiple projects as each one ended versus just sending out a monthly invoice automatically. The listening tour added some new project offerings for us to include which was great.”

She emphasizes that companies can easily do it now with the technology at our fingertips: “It does not cost anything; with social distancing now it is all video & conference calls and virtual coffee meetings anyway and you will get an earful.”

Mark Evans saw his summer camp operation collapse in the midst of the 2008 recession. Looking back, he recognizes where he could have been more adaptable with his existing resources as a part of his business survival planning.

“I could have used my sports fields to host sports leagues which would have really helped with side money. I could have also offered after school activities or even make deals with schools to have field trips to my facilities. If I had done this, I would have at least been able to survive one more summer, and by 2010, things were stable.”

Rick Terrien, a self-declared entrepreneur who has run businesses through multiple recessions, including a regional economic development agency in a rural area in the Midwest in 2008-2009, urged a quick pivot in the business plan as the crisis reared its ugly head:

“We needed to abandon traditional economic development strategies to focus exclusively on entrepreneurship and innovation,” says Rick, whose new book, Ageless Startup: Start a Business at Any Age, is scheduled for general release in late April 2020. “Our own economic development agency lasted until the recovery had fully kicked in and it wasn’t needed on the front lines any longer.”

To that point, Rick highlights the importance of business agility:

“Innovate, innovate, innovate. Launch new products and services. Enter new markets. Launch new businesses. Create new partners. The world will emerge from this but it will need new approaches to most everything.”

You can act quickly – and many of those actions can be positive rather than mitigative.

5. Diversify, diversify, diversify

It’s always interesting to see what kinds of animals would survive if their main source of survival was taken away or if they were moved to a different and unfamiliar environment. Panda bears, for instance, are notoriously fragile because of their limited diet which consists almost exclusively of bamboo stems, leaves, and shoots. If they lose their one source of survival, that’s it.

Raccoons, rats, cockroaches, and yes, humans, are far more adaptable – all survive relatively anywhere because they can eat just about anything. That’s the power of diversifying your sources of survival. Same applies to business survival planning.

Rick focused on helping companies develop and launch new products during the recession so that they’d be ready to grow through new and differentiated products.

He’s now moved to Pittsburgh to continue this work and urges other entrepreneurs to recognize the opportunities in this new crisis:

“The story seems eerily similar. […] Existing companies, especially those in food, need to use this time to develop new, stronger product lines, with more secure and stable supply chains.”

Wes at Traffic Group advises the same:

“Our businesses survived the last recession because we were not tied to a single portion of the real estate and traffic engineering industry. We diversified after 1992. We provided services to both government and the private sector. This became a goal of mine as a result of the 1992 real estate crash caused by the savings and loan crisis.

“Our sales dropped 33% as part of the Great Recession, but we survived because we had been through trying times before and knew what it took to be successful.”

What’s unique about the COVID-19 crisis is the way in which some industries – such as hospitality and events management – have been hit hard while others including supply chains and e-commerce have benefited hugely. If you have a business with a unique niche serving more than one industry, you can survive on the healthier revenue source for the time being. Just don’t be the panda bear.

The ground is always fertile

John F. Kennedy famously said: “The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis’. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger – but recognize the opportunity.”

In the current crisis – and in previous ones, too – there are many dangers that need to be recognized. This isn’t about hoarding toilet paper and masks and reselling them at a hundred times their value, but rather, being the kind of nimble and agile business that can survive and even thrive in the face of adversity.

Mike Kawula, founder of HelpaTeen.com, a service aimed at supporting teenagers at the start of their career paths, noted that the birth of one of his previous operations stemmed literally from the ashes of the 2008 economy. At the time, he owned and operated a cleaning franchise in South Jersey of 40-plus employees.

“I was bored, saw opportunity and wanted a place to employ my team, should the market impact our cleaning company. I started an online company that week selling cleaning supplies and office supplies via a dropship model and by 2012 we were ranked the 144th fastest growing business by Inc. Magazine and had three warehouses.”

Even at the time, he wasn’t sure if it was a great idea to start a new operation in the midst of the fray. But, he adds:

“I’ve learned that the best times to start and claim your stake is when others aren’t thinking rationally. I know it’s hard for entrepreneurs, but don’t panic. Be nimble, be customer-focused and buckle in during tough times.”

Even if your business collapses altogether, that’s not necessarily the end of days. Mark’s own story is a testament to that. He now operates Summer Camp Hub, a consulting firm for summer camps that sprouted from that collapse:

“On the bright side, with my knowledge of summer camps and with the experience I had built over the years of running them, I ended up creating my consultation firm which has grown to be successful over the years.

“I am in a much better place than I was before the recession occurred, so like I always say, when one door closes another one opens.”

As in life, be nimble and adaptable in your business – and be open to whatever comes. That kind of optimistic yet pragmatic approach coupled with quick thinking and acting, can make all the difference in business survival planning through rough waters ahead.

The post Business survival planning in a crisis: Lessons from the front lines appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

“It’s a good time to start looking at optimization [in your business], at some of the things that are in the pipeline that aren’t getting done. Now’s a time to set up the right infrastructure and set up the right process in place.”

We get it: there’s no exact science to how a business can capitalize internally during an economic slowdown. And there will be many organizations that don’t have the cash fund or other luxury at the ready in terms of time and resources – and there will be many who do. If yours is one of the latter, consider these seven tips to take advantage of a business slowdown.

1. Fine-tune your internal operations

Because of reduced demand for your product or service, your business doesn’t have that steady stream to keep things firing on all cylinders. That slowdown can be worked to your benefit – with the freed-up time and resources, this is a good time to go inwards and do a full audit of your internal operations.

For instance, start with identifying and improving:

• Breakdowns in processes
• Slowdowns due to asynchronous tasks and poor project management
• Clumsy handoffs of projects from one task to the next
• Redundancies and overlaps in expenses, job functions and organizational structure
• Breakdowns in communications – both internal and customer-facing
• Lack of integration in tech stack

You can look for, identify and improve on each either from your own desk, via meetings with other upper management, team managers, full teams, or even the entire company in an all-hands. Think of it as optimizing your machine so it can run more efficiently with less drain on your resources.

2. Research your market

You can also use the opportunity to look externally as well as internally. Organize a task force to take a deep dive into the current market and understand it at a much deeper level. Think of it as updating the business plan on which you initially built your business.

For instance:

• Learn about your competition. Look at what they’ve done up to this point and what they’re doing right now.
• Research other companies. Study companies from the past who were in a similar stage as where you are now. Understand the steps they took to go from that point to further success.
• Look at upcoming trends. What’s happening in your industry and what’s predicted to happen in the near future? How can you capitalize on those?
• Look at recent innovations. What’s happened and what’s about to happen in the market that you need to be aware of to stay relevant?

You always want to be thinking on your feet; with the resultant market data at your fingertips, you’ll be better equipped to make quick and impactful decisions for when the economy is back on the upswing.

3. Nurture your existing customers

One of the painful aspects of an economic downturn is the slowdown in revenue. It’s going to be harder – and just as expensive – to try and get new customers, with decreased ROI to boot.

It’s been documented that it costs five times as much to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Not only will current customers benefit you by staying with you now, their loyalty can reap dividends down the road. It’s been found that you get 25% more profit for every 5% increase in customer retention.

So start thinking about your existing customers and how you can retain them for the long term. To strengthen those relationships, you can:

• Help customers through this trying time by extending supportive messaging and special deals (such as three free months to try out a new feature)
• Connect with customers for case studies, testimonials and features
• Partner with customers in cross-promotional initiatives
• Build out relevant content through customer interviews
• Have one-on-ones with customers to understand their existing and future needs and how you can meet those needs
• Shift outbound sales reps to account management to increase interaction with existing customers

Any and all of these can be doubled-down for prospects as well, both now and in future. Plus, if done right, your brand reputation will get a big boost.

4. Update your product or service

Once you’ve gained a stronger understanding of your marketplace and the needs of your customers, you can use your time and resources to think and plan for upcoming new features, releases, evolutions, or innovations in your product or service.

For instance:

• Build out your R&D team to come up with new innovations based on market needs identified in #2 above.
• Assign a team of developers to build out a new integration or add-on for your software.
• Move your existing manufacturing talent to another area to build a stockpile of products slated for release in the fall.

Through some smart decision-making and planning, you can utilize your existing talent to these new initiatives rather than going down the road of mass layoffs only to go through a difficult and expensive rehiring process down the line. Keep the gang together, retain the loyalty of your teams and hit the ground running with something new once the economy recovers.

5. Train/upskill your teams

The phones aren’t ringing nearly as much. The demand for product isn’t as high as it used to be, and may not be for awhile. Your marketing team budget has taken a hit, but you still have a full team.

There will be moments where your teams really are at a surplus for time. There’s a danger of disengagement there. If you have an emergency cash fund in place, you may consider investing some of those funds in training, retraining, and upskilling your teams.

One of the biggest hindrances for training is that you don’t want to pull your talented colleagues off the line – but when there’s not much “line” to work on or maintain, this may be the perfect time to pull everyone into the clubhouse and build up those skills that’ll help your business thrive later on.

Again, this is a long-term opportunity. Think of the ROI in terms of increased employee loyalty and retention as well as increased productivity from better skilled talent. Plus, because they’ve learned new skills together as a team, you’ll have a more refined workforce that’s keen to succeed with their newfound talents. It’ll be better than trying to rebuild teams later after a series of layoffs.

6. Repurpose your teams

If training isn’t a feasible option, why not repurpose some of your talent? This is an opportunity for you to pull those teams together and have a discussion about how they can continue to make a major contribution. For instance:

• Leads and prospects do dry up, meaning less work for sales. So, as suggested in #3 above, underworked sales reps can be moved to account management for a temporary period to nurture existing customers and keep revenue streams alive.
• Hiring freezes are common during this time. Your recruiters can build out future hiring plans (i.e. playbooks), research competing salaries, update their existing interview guides, etc. so they’re prepared for a hiring spree down the line.
• There’s less urgency for developers to jump on bugs or meet unique customer needs. Developers tend to be tinkerers and innovators. So, tap into that energy. Organize a hackathon for them to build out ideas for potential future products.

You can even enact some of this at a team or even departmental level, assigning task forces to jump on #1 (fine-tune internal operations), #2 (research markets), and #4 (update product or service). All these different departments and teams are mini-businesses of their own contributing to the overall business as a whole – and there will be opportunities for improvement, repurposing, and refinement in each.

Another kind of repurposing: In the early days of the crisis, many companies in China shared their employees with other companies more in need during the crisis – for instance, restaurants experiencing severe downturn would lend their staff to supermarkets desperately in need of workers, helping both in the process. Of course, experts do warn of the legal considerations of entering into an employee-sharing scheme – for instance, look at existing worker contracts before you set out to do something like this.

7. Encourage downtime for you and your staff

In these bleak times, it may not make a lot of sense to carry on, but it may be worth doing so if you know you’re able to tough it out and come out the other end in relatively good shape. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for a short-term sabbatical – a spring break, of sorts – for the entire company or for specific teams.

Consider the following scenarios in which you can encourage a fully paid sabbatical for your staff:

• There’s no work-from-home opportunity in the industry where you operate – as is the case for many businesses deemed non-essential during the current COVID-19 crisis.
• You’ve issued a full work-from-home, remote work order across the company and your workforce isn’t fully equipped for such a sudden transition in the short-term.
• In the case that the remote-work transition is smooth, you still have many employees struggling to get work done because they’re home with children, other family members, or roommates – whether they need care or the home environment isn’t conducive for work.

Perhaps a full shutdown of one week or more can be a huge benefit to the company at large. Give express permission to your employees to take that time off on their own or with their loved ones without taking away from their vacation pay or PTO.

Many companies stage an all-hands summit from time to time, Workable included. Even if an actual summit cannot be planned in these times of physical distancing, you can still think of this sabbatical as a kind-of morale-boosting exercise when you encourage people to check in at the same time for a virtual social event regardless of where they are.

Plus, your employees can return from that time off with a refreshed energy and a stronger loyalty to your company. It’ll also benefit your employer brand once others take notice. This can be a boon for your business operations and bottom line.

Consider the long game

Whether it’s operational efficiency, understanding of your market and competitors, a better/different product or service, a more loyal customer base, or a more skilled and motivated workforce, it can better position your business for success when the economy is back in full swing.

Take advantage of a business slowdown. Optimize now, benefit later. Your future business will thank you.

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It’s scary stuff, indeed. This is a time to turn to the experts for insight and direction on your COVID-19 business continuity plan, so we turned to one-time Workable COO Grigoris Kouteris, who’s been through it before. In 2008, when the market crashed, Grigoris was in a company that was running large scale mobile and digital marketing programs for telecom clients.

He gets straight to the point – the money.

“[The 2008 crash] obviously affected the liquidity of a lot of businesses,” he says. “Cash flow management was very important.”

“We had quite a few projects where we were underwriting the costs and the business risk so we found ourselves with big exposures in terms of open positions. It was a situation of trying to manage the financial requirements of our customers and obviously, internally, the business. Making sure that we had enough liquidity to outlast the crisis and at the same time not losing track of the growth potential.”

The key component here is outlasting the crisis – again, flattening the curve. Every business wants and needs to do that in order to survive. Weathering the storm and coming out the other end in one piece is crucial, and can even have a huge payoff in the end if you hit the ground running once the economy recovers.

With that in mind, Grigoris immediately took action to ensure a smoothly operating machine.

“The measures that we took back then were mostly around optimizing the business,” Grigoris says.

“Streamlining processes, improving the systems and the infrastructure we had in place. Improving business practices set us up for 2010 being our most successful year.”

You can’t predict, but you can plan

Never mind all the predictions from experts. One of the biggest challenges as a business facing an economic crisis is not having a crystal ball handy. Grigoris notes that this was a problem in 2008 as well, and that it’s an issue again in 2020 during the COVID-19 crisis.

“You don’t know when the situation will peak and when we start resolving, so I guess that uncertainty on the timing and the magnitude is difficult to deal with.”

So how do you navigate that uncertainty? Grigoris notes there are two things you can do.

“First of all, make sure that you’ve got a number of contingency plans in place. Work out a lot of different scenarios which you are ready to deploy as the situation evolves.

“Secondly, don’t lose track of the more short-term or tactical objectives. Essentially, make sure that you also have a weekly plan on how you want to manage this.”

The worst thing you can do, Grigoris says, is doing nothing or even trying to predict what might be down the road:

“You shouldn’t be sitting idle waiting for the peak or trying to outsmart or second-guess when that is coming.”

Be agile as a business

Just as a boxer is trained to stay on the balls of their feet and keep moving, a business needs to be consistently in action. There are no ideal solutions. You can only prepare your business to adapt quickly to what may be around the corner.

(Note: Learn more about business agility and why it matters.)

But there’s another thing, too.

“It’s not just risks or challenges that the situation is generating,” Grigoris says. There are actually opportunities presented in such a scenario. Externally, you can identify certain market niches or openings where you can be relevant right now, and fully capitalize on those.

“And internally, it’s a good time to start looking at optimization [in your business], at some of the things that are in the pipeline that aren’t getting done. Now’s a time to set up the right infrastructure and set up the right process in place.”

If optimizing internal processes rather than hunkering down into survival mode seems counter-intuitive, remember that a business doesn’t succeed or fail on the turn of a dime, so to speak – it focuses on long-term results. What you do now can have an impact on what happens down the road. Even if you don’t know the severity of the downturn, Grigoris says, it’s worth thinking ahead and building for that.

“It’s a good time to look at what the next one, two, or three quarters will be once this thing is over.”

Consider the paradigm shifts

Step back and look at the bigger picture as well. The widescale impact of the COVID-19 phenomenon is larger than just your business – numerous business and thought leaders have offered insights on the paradigm shifts that can and will happen as a result of the crisis. Healthier remote-work lifestyles, a reduction in polarized politics, a shift to a more collective rather than individualistic mindset, and other predictions are being reported by many media, based on previous large-scale events such as 9/11 and the 2008 crash. Those, and now COVID-19, are precursors to change.

Grigoris highlights that shift especially as it pertains to employees. “This global drive towards remote working will have a residual impact and it will change behaviors both in terms of how all companies approach remote working, but also employees themselves.”

A shift in personal values can’t be ignored as well.

“This current situation will sensitize a lot of people around the topics of health, sustainability, sanitizing.”

You need to take these into account when you plan as a business – better now than later, to get ahead of the change.

“If, as a business, you can formulate strategies that will support those new behaviors in the new paradigm, then it’s something that should be looked at right now. What will the next day look like and what can you do to be relevant the next day?”

How this impacts hiring

The standard of hiring is generally an online application followed by phone screening, and then a series of in-person interviews, plus assessments, executive evaluations, reference and background checks, and ultimately the job offer. These haven’t changed much over the years but with the emphasis on physical distancing prompted by COVID-19 for an indefinite amount of time, that’s changing rapidly.

This is a microcosm of the large-scale shift in business operations, Grigoris notes.

“I believe behaviors will change a lot more the day-to-day interactions will move to the online domain. So what we’re doing right now [online interaction] instead of having this in the office will start becoming more and more of the norm. Workable with our video interview platform and our collaboration tools, essentially, is enabling those behaviors internally within a company.”

This optimizes the process of building teams and hiring, entirely online. What was once a far-fetched idea – hiring someone you have never met in person – is rapidly becoming the norm, and the COVID-19 crisis may be the catalyst for a quicker shift to the ‘new normal’.

As a business, you need to put the tools and platforms in place to enable that shift to an online world. Workable and other tools can be useful here, Grigoris notes, due to its collaborative capabilities and ease of use in the software for both the hiring team and the candidates themselves.

“In a situation where you have remote working or distant working, Workable provides the infrastructure for the HR department and the recruiting team, as well as hiring managers to collaborate in real-time and using an environment that is conducive to collaboration. Also, obviously, it enables the candidates to participate in a streamlined seamless recruitment process.

“[The solution] essentially attacks on two fronts – internally as a collaboration enhancer, and also connecting the company, the brand, with a candidate. Put those two together, and these are the behaviors that we’ll see more and more coming out of this [crisis].”

Workable’s own business response to COVID-19

So what did Workable itself do as a company to get ahead of this new crisis? Grigoris was quick to answer that, noting two main priorities from the get-go. First, the people in your company:

“Our first response as Workable – and my first response as a C-level executive – was to make sure that our employees were safe. We were very quick in implementing remote work. Our employees had all the tools and infrastructure to be able to adjust to this new way of working and all the support from their managers to continue being successful.”

Once you’ve got that covered, Grigoris reminds us about the deeper impact of the shift to a fully remote environment:

“We want to make sure that our teams are motivated and engaged, that people have things to do. The worst thing you can do to your teams is people just being bored. They’re at home, they’re alone, they’re not in an office environment. A lot of them are not used to it. The worst thing that can happen is idleness. Support your team, keep them engaged at the manager level.”

The second priority? Maintain that strong relationship with the client base and keep that finger on their pulse – they are, after all, the reason your business thrives.

“We understand that the current situation is causing disruption across a number of industries all over the world and we’re trying whatever we can to enable our customers to continue being successful. It’s about being conscious of their current needs and how the situation evolves on that daily basis.”

The light at the end of the tunnel

So, if you were in a coffee shop sitting with another C-level executive from another company, and they were understandably nervous, what advice would you give them?

Grigoris thinks for a moment, and answers:

“Plan for the downside, for the worst-case scenario, but remain focused on the upside coming out of this. You need to plan for the downside, but you need to keep your motivation, your ambition, your inspiration, your optimism to be able to exit this with a good level of momentum and continue being successful despite the impact that this crisis will have on everybody.

“I mean, we’re most likely in a recession, but it doesn’t mean that you have to focus on the negative impact. Plan for that mitigation of damage that you’ll have on your business, but stay focused on exiting the tunnel and continue growing. Continue being successful, because there will be a big gap [in revenue] after the recession.”

Don’t get caught idling

There are three animal instincts in response to a threat or a crisis – fight, flee, or freeze. Freezing is the worst thing you can do right now, even if it’s the easiest response.

“It’s important that you maintain the rhythm throughout this. Don’t be idle. Invest time internally.”

To circle back to the metaphor of flattening the curve – imagine that curve in inverse. You’re at the top of one end of the curve and, as if on a rollercoaster track, about to start hurtling downwards at increasing speed to the bottom of the curve. It’s a terrifying moment – the feeling that you’re headed to your doom. And if you do nothing right now, you’ll hit the bottom and stay there.

Instead, you want to build up your speed. The faster you can get going, the more control you have over your business, the greater your chances of carrying that momentum out of the bottom and back up the other side. And finally, not only for survival, but to set yourself for future success with a solid COVID-19 business continuity plan:

“Understand the market, and plan for what’s about to come beyond the crisis, once it is over.”

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What is business agility?

Business agility, also known as organizational agility, is the capability of a business to be adaptive, flexible and creative through a changing environment. Agile businesses respond quickly to opportunities or threats, whether internal (e.g. failing business operations) or external (e.g. shifts in trends or competitive markets).

“Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and reinvent.” – Bill Gates

Other core characteristics of agile organizations are:

• They are customer-centric: They tailor their services and products to customer demands. Agile organizations are eager to restructure resources and operational systems to adapt to customer needs.
• They reinforce stable team dynamics: They emphasize on building well-coordinated teams that respond collectively to crises and changes. They achieve that by promoting clarity in task division and responsibilities, and by creating stable internal systems and processes.
• They nurture a growth mindset: They welcome failure as part of learning and don’t label it as a hindrance to their progress.

“Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.” – John C. Maxwell

The COVID-19 crisis has posed numerous challenges to businesses. Many companies are already financially impacted and the global economy is predicted to be hit to the tune of $1 trillion according to the World Economic Forum. To overcome all these burdens, employers are becoming more agile. When the COVID-19 outbreak evolved into a pandemic, companies took drastic measures to protect employees on very short notice. Provided that most businesses take a long time to make a decision and then act on it, this was a desperate call for greater agility on very short notice. The emphasis of agility is – and will continue to be – in three areas: employee needs, customer expectations, and economic uncertainty.

Addressing and responding to employee needs

What are the biggest needs of employees amidst a health crisis? Staying healthy, feeling safe, and being close to their loved ones are definitely their biggest priorities. That’s why employers search ways to adapt to these needs and protect their employees’ wellbeing.

These are some examples of how companies have altered their policies and practices to respond to these needs so far:

• They have created COVID-19 crisis management teams
• They have crafted COVID-19 policies with office rules to avoid spreading the virus
• They have adapted or built work-from-home policies to respond to current circumstances
• They have expanded their virtual tools to transition smoothly to a fully remote workplace

In cases where working from home is not a realistic option, such as in production or retail services, companies have introduced other types of alterations to existing policies. For instance, Walmart and Starbucks, at the beginning of the pandemic, offered a more generous sick-leave package to their employees, showing that they prioritized their health and security. Also, Facebook and other companies restricted office visitors to limit the spread of COVID-19 in the premises.

As the events evolve, companies enable new measures; this situation unfolds so quickly that regulations and precautions become quickly outdated and require reconsideration. By remaining flexible and agile, and available to listen and help, employers will be able to identify future employee needs and act fast upon them (e.g, new policies, safety regulations, etc.).

Understanding customer needs and expectations

The ongoing socio-economic crisis has also affected consumer behavior. Most physical stores are closing until further notice and many companies, for example in the hospitality or entertainment sectors, have “frozen” their services to respect the rules of social distancing and self-isolation. In response, some businesses are offering digital solutions or are altering their services. Some of them are moving their customer support to online, with live messaging and/or video-calling options. Others, for example in retail or supply sectors, have started to expand and adjust delivery services to meet and adapt to customer expectations.

Also, some companies responded quickly to customer needs and gave some of their products free of charge to support customers in these uncertain times. For example, Google is offering its premium feature Hangouts for free until July 1 to help companies continue their meetings via video-conferencing.

Based on the type of services and products your business offers, here are some tips that can help you stay aligned with your customer needs:

• Listen first, fix second: Reach out to your customers and listen carefully and empathetically to what their problems are. Once you’ve heard their stories and concerns, consider what you can offer them, and how you’ll make it happen.
• Restructure your resources: To be relevant and helpful, you might need to tweak some of the services you provide, re-allocate your budget, or redistribute tasks to employees from scratch.
• Nurture relationships with customers: Even when you have to close your stores or pause operating for a while, stay in contact with your customers and build honest relationships with them. This will enable you to sustain a good brand reputation and motivate customers to be around when the crisis is over. The same advice applies for vendors, suppliers and other partners. Remain available and stay connected.

Surviving the economic turmoil of a crisis

The adverse financial effect of this ongoing crisis on businesses has already started to show itself. Some companies, especially in the travel, hospitality, and entertainment industries, are hugely impacted and forced to take difficult measures, including layoffs or reducing quality in product or service, in order to survive. But decisions such as these – while beneficial in the short term – can severely hurt your employer brand and customer satisfaction in the long term.

There is no perfect formula to predict the future of each sector; business leaders can picture the next day based on each company’s unique characteristics. What is the current cash flow and how will it change? Are the offered products or services useful to consumers during – and after – the crisis? If not, can you transform them and make them more relevant?

Business agility has a crucial role here; being able to consistently evaluate all necessary information to adapt to current effects is essential. So is foreseeing trends of the next day, month, quarter, or year. After meeting with your financial team, shareholders, and vendors, and with a clear overview of the company’s financial status – including current cash flow, credit situation, revenue and expenses, etc. – on hand, here is what you can do to reinforce agility:

• Be active: It all starts with your attitude; if you perceive it as a challenge and not as a threat, you’re more likely to have a positive approach. Find the silver lining between sustaining and innovating. You might need to adapt some of your products or services; be available, listen to customers, and explore new territories.
• Be competitive: Observe what your competitors do and get ahead of them. Remain aggressive; bring your marketing and sales onboard and get your best services out there. Keep your brand reputation strong. Your customers will appreciate that in the long run and you’ll benefit from their loyalty.
• Be resilient: The next step after business agility is safeguarding organizational resilience – the ability to recover and learn from failure and loss. Use this experience to understand your operations’ pros and cons, and what you can improve in the future to thrive.

A final note: the ongoing crisis is just a large-scale reminder that businesses are constantly facing changes that threaten their bottom line – some minor, some major. Being agile, flexible, and resilient will better position you to overcome these challenges as they surface, with minimal impact to your business.

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I hope everyone’s healthy and you’ve had the chance to adjust to new schedules and habits. Years from now, entire books will be written about the next few weeks. So, if it all feels very strange, that’s because it is. Let’s keep our spirits up, be helpful to each other, stay in touch with friends (remotely) and preserve our optimism about the future.

We may have to adapt to life and work in these conditions for a few weeks. We should consider ourselves lucky. We had the prescience to move ahead of the crowd, and the luxury to be able to continue our work from home. Other people are experiencing a bigger disruption – and many of them will be putting themselves at risk, caring for the sick, restocking our grocery stores and picking up our garbage. They’re neighbors and friends and family. Let’s think about them for a moment.

Some of our customers are confused and overwhelmed. We tried to respond as quickly as possible and lend a hand. Our marketing team has put together some fantastic guides and resources that companies will need. We’re giving our video interviewing add-on for free, and dozens of companies are signing up and starting to use it. We stood out among competitors with a responsible and helpful reaction. I want to personally thank the team that worked day and night, including over the weekend, to build things that make us all proud.

Last week I asked you to be very deliberate about being your best self during this crisis. And you did. I hear from all members of the management team that people have put in the effort, adapted to work from home, stayed productive, stayed helpful and stayed focused. I know it wasn’t easy. It’s hard not to get distracted by all that’s happening, and we all need to make more time to look after family and friends. The way the Workable team has reacted is setting an example. Strong, pragmatic and positive. Let’s keep it up this way. Our resolve will be put to test.

I don’t have much in the way of advice, but here’s a few things that have helped me personally over the last few days. Maybe some of them will work for you.

1. Establishing some new routines and habits for my day.
2. Creating some boundaries, either physical (what part of the house is “office space”) or temporal (“now I stop working and have family time”) to create a sense of time and place for work and family.
3. Respecting my family and being thankful for suffering my need for keeping quiet, taking calls with remote timezones, etc.
4. Remembering to call friends and family who are alone, or more fearful, or in need of some emotional support.
5. Staying away from twitter/news for a couple of hours a day, so that I don’t spend all day consuming Coronavirus “news”. Most of it is not news, just information junk and instant reactions that will ultimately not be important. Plus we all need some calm.
6. Thinking about people who have harder challenges and cherishing the fact that I get to see my family more, even in strange circumstances.
7. Reminding myself that this will also pass, the future is long, and I can do things today that will put us in a better place for the day after.
8. Using work not merely to stay productive but also as an anchor to a “normal reality”, a time to focus on something that produces a result and isn’t about the damn virus.

I think that the scary thing about events like the one we’re all experiencing is a sense of helplessness. They feel bigger than we are and this leads us to believe there’s nothing we can do. But it’s not true. We can make a difference by good citizenship, by maintaining our daily work, maintaining our social relationships, finding a way to entertain ourselves, keeping some sense of humor.

In difficult times, the things that make life what it is are still there – they just need a little bit more effort. Our grandparents lived through wars. Worse, they didn’t even have Netflix and Amazon Prime. But they prospered. Let’s focus today on preparing for a better future – it is ours to make.

Thank you all – I’ll keep sending updates and thoughts as we figure out this strange situation.

Stay safe.

Nikos Moraitakis
CEO
March 18, 2020

The post COVID-19: Workable CEO Nikos Moraitakis’ message to employees appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

NOTE: Those tools marked with an asterisk (*) are seamlessly integrated with our recruitment solution.

CONTENTS:

1. 1. 1. Tools for the recruitment process
      2. Tools for HR
      3. Tools for overall communication
      4. Tools for projects involving multiple people
      5. Tools for organization
      6. Tools for compliance/security/legal purposes
      7. Tools for finance

Tools for the recruitment process

Your recruitment process can be a huge beneficiary of your digital transformation. Learn more about how and why.

1. Virtual recruiting/screening/hiring

Hiring remotely can be a challenge at times, but with the right software in place, it’s a very easy process even if the final hire is someone you have never met in person. Workable’s own ATS – with its new one-way video interview feature – is equipped with all the tools you need to build teams virtually.

• Workable

2. Assessment tools

Assessments are an integral ingredient in the hiring process, to help you identify the best candidates for the position. Workable has numerous integrated tools that will help you along the way – the full list is here, and some top tools are below.

• HackerRank* (technical skills assessments)
• Hireselect – Criteria Corp* (aptitude, personality, skills)
• Bryq* (cognitive skills, personality traits, job match, etc.)

3. Onboarding

Just as hiring can be done entirely remotely, the onboarding process can be done via an online platform as well to bring your new hires to full production mode. These tools will help you get there quickly.

• Rippling*
• Click Boarding*

4. Background Checks

The background check is an integral part of the recruitment process.

• Checkr*
• InfoMart*

Tools for HR

5. HRIS

Benefits, payroll, compliance, all these things that are part and parcel of human resources management can be done entirely via digital tools such as the following.

• BambooHR*
• Bob*
• Namely*

6. Training/Knowledge Base

Upskilling and retraining your workforce is a crucial part of company success. Also, all company-wide documents, policies, know-hows, etc. need to be accessible by everyone at any given time whether it’s for training, best practices, or other purposes. These tools will help you get it done.

• TalentLMS
• Confluence

7. Employee feedback

When you’re not regularly mingling with your colleagues, it’s hard to gauge employee engagement or happiness. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it at all.

• Chimp or Champ

Tools for overall communication

8. Email communication

Obviously this goes without saying. But if you’re in a company that operates largely in face-to-face communication and paper-based processes – and not email – it will be a good idea to quickly get your team signed up with email accounts so you can share crucial documents in a pinch.

• Gmail*
• Outlook*

9. Online chat functions

Sometimes it’s cumbersome to write out an entire email. Quickly pinging a colleague with a pertinent question can save a lot of time. Think of it as texting via your computer.

• Slack
• Microsoft teams

10. Virtual Meetings and presentations

When everyone is working remotely across locations or checking into meetings from home, a virtual meeting platform will work wonders for having everyone together in one place. Many platforms have options for you to share your screen to assist you in your presentation to the team.

• Google Hangouts* (available when sending interview requests within Workable)
• Zoom
• Zoho Remotely

Tools for projects involving multiple people

Note: You can see a full list of collaboration tools here.

11. Documents

Many of us need to collaborate within a single document, which is easy enough when you’re sitting together in front of the same computer or a single paper document together. You can still work together in the same document online from different locations.

• G-Suite
• Office 365

12. Cloud Storage

It can be a nuisance when colleagues update a document and then email it around as a new file, making it hard to track which one is the most updated. Why not save it in an online drive – in other words, cloud storage – so everyone has access to the same document at any time?

• Google Drive
• OneDrive
• Dropbox

13. Project management

Seeing a big project reach completion requires clean collaboration and careful planning between individuals and teams. This is especially challenging when teams are distributed across locations, but these services can help you keep watch from the big picture down to the granular level to ensure things keep running smoothly.

• Trello
• Asana
• Jira
• Wrike
• Jell
• Podio
• Project Manager

14. Timezone management

Many companies work across different time zones, which does make collaborating on projects somewhat of a challenge. Face it, it’d be incredibly useful to be able to see what time it is for each colleague in each location so you can better align efforts.

• TimeZone.io

15. Screen sharing

Sometimes you don’t need full video integration to make presentations – you just need to be able to share your screen so you can walk colleagues through something. These will do the trick.

• Join.me
• TeamViewer
• ScreenLeap

16. Dev & design

Your dev and design teams are unique such that simple document collaboration won’t cut it. They’ll need more specialized software to continue working together at peak performance – these softwares should do the job.

• GitHub
• Cloud9
• CodePen

Tools for Organization

17. Calendar Management

A work calendar is crucial not only for your own organization, but also for aligning your efforts with others via mutual touchbases, meetings, 1-1s and other purposes. Also, with the right integration, you can see how busy your colleagues are at any given time during the work day without needing to walk by their work station.

• Google Calendar*
• Calendly
• Schedule Once

18. Time management tools

When a portion – or all – of your staff is contracted or paid by the hour, tracking their time when they’re on the clock is a must so you can ensure they’re paid appropriately.

• Teamwork
• Hubstaff

19. Notetaking apps

Having a notebook handy is always useful for keeping track of what you’re doing. You can also do this digitally as well – and even invite others to collaborate in team notetaking sessions.

• Evernote

20. Social Media Management

Social media isn’t just about tweeting photos of your dinner. It’s integral to external business communications. It’s easy enough to go directly to Twitter, Facebook or LInkedIn to push out your latest news, but it’s much easier to do it all via a single portal.

• HootSuite

21. Business Intelligence

Tracking and reporting is essential to business success. Fortunately there are great tools to help you take a deep dive into your business processes to fine-tune your processes to maximize your results.

• Tableau* (can be used with your Workable data)

Tools for compliance/security/legal purposes

22. E-Signature

There really is a digital tool for everything – even signatures for contracts if you can’t be in the same room at the same time to sign those urgent papers to keep things moving along.

• HelloSign (native integration with Workable’s offer letter feature – no separate HelloSign account needed)
• DocuSign

23. Password Management Solutions

Password management is an absolute must when it comes to IT security and compliance. Data breaches can happen via hacking, but sometimes all it takes is for the wrong person to have the right password for things to go haywire. Keep it all contained using a centralized password management system.

• LastPass*

Tools for finance

24. Receipt & Expense Management

Collecting and processing receipts from your team can be a nuisance. It’s also a pain for your colleagues when they need to pull it all together into a report for you. Not to mention – finance has to process this stuff. You can manage all this in one place via these tools.

• Expensify
• Rydoo

25. Accounting Software

Accounting is a real part of business. Manage and keep track of it all in one place, so you can keep those books balanced.

• QuickBooks
• Xero

26. Billing Tools

Billing and invoicing goes without saying. In a remote environment, those paper invoices don’t go very far even if your postal delivery system is great. These tools will help you manage invoicing virtually – for tracking who’s paid what, and collecting on those outstanding.

• FreshBooks
• Bill.com

27. Financial Dashboards

Optimize your business plan so you can get off on the right foot during your growth and expansion initiatives, and line up your expectations with industry benchmarks while consulting with experts.

• LivePlan
• InDinero

28. Budget Management

Manage your budget in every area, from cash flow expectations to real-time financial performance – so you can make quick decisions to capitalize on current trends and mitigate what might come ahead.

• Float
• Scoro

The post Best tech tools for the virtual workplace appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

As leaders, I believe it’s our responsibility to do our part, and to explore all options for how we can help other companies do the same.

We’re creating a library of resources based on best practices, our own experience going remote and the experiences of our customers and partners. You’ll find response plans, recommended tools, employee communication templates, WFH policy templates, tutorials and more. All of those resources are available here.

Because staying informed is the best thing you can do when facing a situation that’s changing fast, we’ll also continue to share useful materials and things we learn from your colleagues around the world via our Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Materials like this public document, which collects response plans and policy decisions from well-known companies and can be used as a way to calibrate your response to what other professionals in your position are thinking and doing.

Additionally, our account management and support teams will be standing by to provide tips and help optimize your account for remote collaboration.

And finally, starting today, we will be providing free access to our Video Interviews add-on for all Workable customers on an annual plan. Whether you’re planning to work from home, or just reduce commutes and on-site visits, Video Interviews can help you keep screening candidates efficiently while remote. It won’t solve all of your problems, but we hope it can make it easier for you to transition to a practical and safer way to screen candidates immediately.

Nobody knows for sure how this health crisis will play out. What we do know is that businesses who respond quickly and decisively will reduce the impact on employees and business results.

Remember, you are not alone. Every business and every HR professional in the world is facing this, and none of us had a lot of time to prepare. Every employee on your team is looking up to you for guidance, a sense of security and a sense of continuity. We’ll be with you and we will support you in every way we can, during what could be a career-defining call of duty.

Take care,
Nikos Moraitakis
CEO, Workable

The post COVID-19: A message from Workable CEO Nikos Moraitakis appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Need help with your COVID-19 company policy? We’ve got you covered with this template.

We reached out to those who either went fully virtual well beforehand and are in a good place now or are doing it in a pinch. What we quickly learned is that going fully virtual, with WFH and remote work policies in place, was not just as a result of the coronavirus pandemic but for other reasons altogether.

For instance, Anh Trinh of the online review publication, Geek With Laptop, said it made financial sense to do so:

“I wanted to cut costs. I was tired of paying rent for my office as well as commuting daily to work.”

Simon Hansen, founder of a website focused on “lesser-known sports”, Best Sports Lounge, looked at it as a positive for business and overall health rather than a mitigation of cost:

“I opted to go fully virtual because I believed that it made me more productive, and the option gave me more time to spend time with my family and take care of my health.”

Great. Combine that with the sudden urgency due to the pandemic, and you have good reasons for going all-in on a quick virtual transformation of your workplace. But let’s be aware of the pitfalls, some of which you may have thought about already.

Some challenges are inevitable

One aspect of business success is being able to monitor productivity and engagement. That’s easy to do when you can look over and see your colleague or direct report doing what they do best. Reminders of “Hey, how’s that project coming along? Think we can deliver for Friday?” are loaded with nuance, so those benefit from in-person delivery.

Mark Lee, CEO of Splashtop, a remote-work and WFH SaaS provider headquartered in San Jose, California, is pragmatic about that missing element in a fully virtual environment:

“Employees walking over to a group, asking a question to whoever seems available at that time, water-cooler discussions – it’s so different than communication with a virtual employee.”

Anh, who also has distributed teams, notes:

“One of the biggest problems was the well-being of my staff as well as their productivity. I didn’t know if they were doing their jobs or not. I couldn’t see them personally so I really couldn’t tell.”

Simon agrees:

“It’s harder to communicate and motivate your workforce with such limited methods, making it more difficult for you to ensure your workforce’s productivity.”

Mark echoes the same sentiments, adding that it impacts teamwork as well:

“Productivity of teams being impacted is the biggest worry. It is hard to ‘see’ team activity at a glance. Some of it can be captured in dashboards but it’s hardly ever the whole picture. Potentially reduced collaboration and its impact is another worry. Despite multiple collaboration tools, it’s hard to replace the ease and efficacy of face-to-face conversations.”

Matthew Barton, Operations Director at Virtual Internships – with offices in Philadelphia, London, Shanghai and Brisbane, connecting interns with companies online – noted a more significant hurdle: the employee buy-in and adoption of tools.

“Some of the biggest challenges in being fully virtual for us would be making sure that all employees are fully attuned to virtual ways of working and understand the full capability of the tools that we use to collaborate.”

So, herein are the challenges. Productivity, communication, collaboration, monitoring, tracking, buy-in and adoption, the whole bit. To help you in your short-term digital transformation efforts, we share with you five digital workplace best practices as you go fully virtual in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic:

1. Equip your employees with tools and best practices

Let’s face it. Not everyone in your team is going to be fully versed in using tech. Some will, of course, but others may be accustomed to a certain way of doing things at work. Changing that on the fly can be a big ask for some employees, especially when it’s tech-oriented, as Matthew says:

“There are … residual feelings towards the underperformance of technologies and networks that people are concerned about.”

Also, when people are accustomed to meeting in person, they may not be wholly familiar with online meeting etiquette. Peter Arvai, CEO of the presentation software company Prezi, with offices in Budapest, San Francisco, and Riga, has plenty of experience on how to maximize productivity in virtual meetings. He recommends sending the presentation to attendees in advance, to give them time to digest beforehand. Another suggestion is to cut down on the number of meetings, most of which are status update-driven and brainstorm-focused and may not be as required as meetings designed to sync teams.

Also, Peter has recommendations on how to best connect with busy colleagues, such as your boss:

“If your boss’s schedule is booked or they are traveling with a fluid schedule, send them a video of your thoughts [using a webcam, voice mail, etc.] and let them decide if you need to talk. Usually, they’ll be able to answer your question based on the one-way video.”

Mark at Splashtop suggests some quick solutions:

“To ensure remote employees don’t miss out, we set up a Teams channel [e.g. in Slack or another chat software] for such ad-hoc conversations so everyone’s included. We encourage calling and chatting with remote employees for quick discussions, just like you would discuss with someone sitting next to you in the office.”

Help them understand why

It will also be helpful to address your employees on the “why” of it. It’s not because you want to have a check-in, check-out policy – it’s more because teams operate better when we’re all in sync with one another and we all know what everyone else is doing. That’s easy in the physical office – but with the aforementioned tools, you can succeed virtually as well. Helping your employees understand that and know how to use the technology you equip them with will go a long way.

Mark emphasizes that:

“With a bit of extra effort from everyone to over-communicate, distributed working becomes much more effective. Setting aside time for individual 1:1s with remote workers as well as regular team meetings to sync up on activities is important. There also should be a mindset to continually see what is working well and what needs improvement.”

Mark also attests to the importance of a shift in thinking – out of sight does not mean out of mind:

“There needs to be a mindset change that colleagues who are not in sight are just as available as a colleague sitting next to you in an office.”

He also clarifies the importance of making sure each employee has all the physical tools they need:

“We also made sure each employee had the right setup to work from home. This includes computers, headsets, right tools/software installed natively for real-time communication with team members.”

If there’s concern from employees about not being in the same physical space and losing connection with colleagues, you can reassure them by explaining that tech can be a powerful human connector – citing examples such as using WhatsApp, Skype, or Google Hangouts to socialize with distant relatives. Any parent who’s seen their kids animatedly conversing with their grandparents through a laptop can attest to that. It doesn’t need to be different at work.

2. Show trust in your employees

While using tech to track productivity is an understandable solution, sometimes you need to turn to other measures to ensure your workforce stays motivated while working remotely. Simon at Best Sports Lounge focused on the value of positive affirmation:

“I realized that the best way to go around this issue is to establish open communication that’s focused on reward and appreciation. Making sincerity and concern for progress evident in short messages is bound to motivate and inspire your time.”

Matthew agrees:

“I think things such as productivity and engagement are always worries when people discuss virtual, however, managers and leaders will have to adapt to this and give greater trust and empowerment to their employees.”

To succeed in this, transparent and effective communication to your employees is an absolute must. Not only do you need to have clear WFH and remote-work policies in place, but you also need to be clear about your expectations of employees in the actual work. For instance, you might shift your emphasis to a results-driven working environment, as Matthew explains:

“We encourage employees to be task-oriented and deliver results rather than be overly concerned from where they are delivering those results, being a lean team and spaced out around the world means we have to be prepared to deliver virtually.”

Yes, there will be some outliers in your workforce who delight at not having a boss breathing down their neck from one minute to the next, but the majority will respond positively when you show that you trust them to really deliver results for your company. Not only does that reap rewards in the short term for maintaining productivity in the midst of an upheaval in work processes, but there are also long-term boosts in engagement and retention when your employees realize you’re confident in their abilities to deliver.

3. Learn from other experiences

If your company has multiple locations affected to varying degrees by the spread of COVID-19, you can look to those offices that were impacted earlier and learn from their experiences.

Mark of Splashtop speaks to this firsthand:

“One of our offices is in China. After the Chinese New Year holiday, all the 25 employees there worked from home for a month. This measure was taken for the employees’ safety from coronavirus. The office was productive even though virtual. Only last week employees began returning to the office gradually.

“We are now testing in the other offices to make sure everyone can be productive virtually. Right now, employees coming face-to-face with each other, as well as with customers poses a risk to their well-being.”

The scale of response across different companies varies widely, but it’s also worth looking at what other companies are doing – and what they’re sharing about their own experiences.

For example, Boston-based marketing and sales software service HubSpot went fully remote for a week and shared their insights and experiences.

Also, programmer Q&A site Stack Overflow has valuable tips on successful remote work including assigning a remote-work point person, ensuring awareness of and adherence to compliance measures, and even holding regular ‘bev bashes’ to bring colleagues closer together.

4. Share WFH tips and tricks

Let’s face it, not everyone is fully experienced in the art of working from home or across distributed teams in different locations. Some – many, actually – are accustomed to the standard commute 9-to-5 grind, and often don’t have laptops that they can carry around at will.

The other aspect of it not knowing exactly how to get set up in the home. You can quickly train your staff on best WFH practices. For example, certified professional organizer Darla DeMorrow – who has been working out of a home office since the 1990s – suggests organization above all else.

“The objective is to create an upbeat office that minimizes distractions while honoring your taste and style. Gather your supplies in one place. Not everyone has a room dedicated solely as a home office. You can turn an alcove, a loft, a corner of your bedroom, or a section of the kitchen island into an upbeat home office.”

While working online and in the cloud, it’s easy to be distracted and scattered in your work processes – it’s more so when you’re at home and more susceptible to those non-work distractions.

Darla suggests a quick fix which applies anywhere, even for those still in the office:

“Close down browser tabs and apps: Keeping apps and tabs open is like leaving an electrical circuit open just in case. It drains brain resources. Every time you glance at that open tab, you briefly think, I have to get back to that, and there’s the possibility of being distracted. When you finish the work on a subject or task, close the tab. This goes 10x for social media like Facebook and Snapchat.”

5. Ensure security and compliance

Online security and compliance are key to the success of your short-term digital transformation strategy. Breakdowns in IT security are commonplace and can be expensive, with the average cost of a data breach worldwide being $3.92 million according to IBM Security. You don’t want to be one of those victims, especially when you have numerous computers operating via various outlets and different internet providers. Add to that the numerous increased risks for data breach via an employee working on their own home computer.

Mark attests to this challenge in his own company:

“We … have different office locations across the globe that work with each other closely. Additionally, we work with a few business systems which although are web-based, we lockdown to trusted IP addresses for security. We remotely access these on a regular basis, i.e. we remotely connect to a computer that’s secure on our office network to access these systems.”

Will Ellis, the founder of IT privacy consultancy Virtual Australia, agrees that security is paramount, encouraging pre-testing as a precautionary measure:

“We have started to see companies start to test their VPNs as one of the security procedures. VPNs will add a level of security for employees (and the business) who work on a Wi-Fi connection that others might be able to connect to. This will ensure that data can’t be obtained by cybercriminals and keeps this data safe.”

Will, however, notes the issue of a widely dispersed network that’s not contained to a single office or internet outlet:

“Management of different desktop securities, anti-ransomware and anti-malware on each PC, prevention of phishing scams, etc. Security might be a big challenge for companies to focus on, as they may now need to move funds into those areas, but it is worth it to use those funds to keep the business safe rather than having to deal with the implications of a breach of security.”

Wait a sec. VPNs? Anti-malware? IP addresses? Don’t worry. Go to your IT department – and if you don’t have one, bring in a consultant – and put them to work. Also, Gartner has released a helpful and actionable resource for CIOs who need to implement a quick digital transformation strategy in light of the outbreak, speaking specifically to supply chains, security considerations, technology leverages, and other valuable tips.

There’s gain in the short-term pain

Driving costs down is usually a motivator in going fully virtual or remote. But if you’re forced to take the steps in a quick turnaround time, it’s hard to assess how it impacts your bottom line. You can take some relief in knowing it can actually benefit your business in the long term. You might be surprised at the increase in your workforce’s output, says Mark:

“We have all read multiple reports that virtual employees show increased productivity. It’s true. Many employees can focus on their tasks due to lesser distractions. In places like Silicon Valley, traffic oftentimes results in long commutes, which is eliminated for a virtual employee. That way more time is spent on work-related tasks.”

And yes, this affects hiring

Anh noted that a virtual work environment enables him to widen the net when it comes to recruiting:

“I can also cut costs by hiring people from different countries which is a big help in expanding the business. [… Having remote workers makes it easier to expand my business since hiring new staff won’t cost as much as well.”

Matthew also supports this perspective:

“Long term virtual working can help to drive down facilities costs and open up companies to the best talent available, not just the best talent available in their location.”

Recruitment is a huge element of a company’s lifeblood. Not only is turnover a reality in any business, bringing in new employees is also an offshoot of changing priorities, expansion and growth, new market penetration, product launches, and so on. This means a great deal of hiring – and if you’re going fully virtual, guess what? That means your recruitment will have to keep up with that trend by adopting the most up-to-date recruitment technology.

Mark Lee has already stepped ahead of the curve:

“[Splashtop] is expanding and actively hiring. We haven’t begun it yet, but we are set up to conduct interviews virtually. We also hired senior members in remote locations where they are going to start new offices. We heavily incorporate remote work and collaboration in our day-to-day activities, and this can be easily extended to hiring processes as needed.”

In crisis, there’s opportunity

The old adage of “technology giveth and technology taketh away” may ring true to some extent, but perhaps it’s more accurate to say, “technology taketh away, and technology giveth.”

Matthew notes it’s a new reality that we can willingly embrace.

“I think we will be increasingly more virtual given the type of colleagues that we work with as it is important to us and them to have freedom to organize your day, work, and life in a way that suits them and not necessarily be constrained by the need to be co-located in the same location every day of the week.”

For many, going fully virtual is here to stay. Perhaps we can’t hold the dam forever. Banks are giving way to fintech. Shopping malls are giving way to e-commerce. And perhaps physical offices are giving way to fully digital environments.

Anh’s pragmatic about the realities of going virtual and staying there, and it’s not just because of the coronavirus pandemic:

“I think the coronavirus is a catalyst for this trend. People have been shifting to remote companies way before the coronavirus was spread. However, the spread of the coronavirus might convince more companies in the future to go online.”

He sums it up:

“I’ll be staying virtual because this is where the future is at.”

The post COVID-19: 5 short-term digital workplace best practices appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.