坐席多开
6 Ways HR Can Promote Workplace Health and Wellness
Workplace health and wellness is critical to a healthy, happy workforce. Sick or unhappy employees aren’t operating at 100%, which means neither is your workplace. Building a culture of workplace health and wellness can take a bit of work to implement and get employees on board, but it’s worth the effort.
If you are an HR professional who is looking to build a culture of wellness, promote health, and improve the health of your workplace, here are six tactics you can use.
1. Create a flexible working environment
We’ve all heard about the term “work-life balance” but in reality, achieving that balance isn’t feasible. It’s more of a sliding scale, which is why we should strive for flexibility over “balance.” If your employees are chronically stressed, this can lead to many deadly illnesses. By working to eliminate or at the very least mitigate their stress at work, you can help boost morale and show them how much you care about their wellness.
So how do you achieve that? Consider the following:
Meditation rooms
Flexible schedules
Summer hours
Outdoor workspaces
Remote work options
Encourage employees to use their PTO (and mean it)
Mindfulness training
Unlimited PTO
All of the above help reduce stress, promote health, and work to achieve flexibility for your employees. If they have the option to work remotely or create their own schedules, then they don’t have to feel stressed about getting their car serviced, taking their kids to the doctor, or running errands that need to be completed during standard business hours.
Related Reading: The Remote Workforce is the New Normal
But this starts at the top. Employees need to see their bosses taking time off, working remotely, disconnecting, etc. It needs to be a part of the culture for people to feel comfortable actually taking advantage of some of these flexible options.
2. Ensure employee healthcare is a top priority
Employee health and wellness is an attempt to take a proactive approach versus a reactive one. The first line of defense when it comes to your employees’ health and wellness are the benefits that you provide to them.
Employees need to be able to afford their health care. How often do we hear about people not going to the doctor because they can’t afford it? By providing employees with affordable, low-cost insurance plans or even an onsite clinic, they can take advantage of preventative care. This allows them the ability to stop avoiding putting things off until they get so bad they become much bigger issues down the road.
3. Establish or reinforce an employee health and wellness program
If you’re looking to increase productivity, reduce sick days, improve employee health, increase retention, boost morale, promote health and have happier employees, we encourage putting an employee health and wellness plan in place. If you have one in place already, be sure you encourage employees to take advantage of it and actually participating. If you don’t have one and you’re looking to get serious about improving workplace health, now is the time to draft a plan.
Related Reading: What HR Leaders Must Include in Employee Wellness Programs
4. Get employees moving throughout the day
According to the Mayo Clinic, sitting for long periods of time is linked to a number of health issues: increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels, obesity, and more. Prolonged sitting can also increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Many jobs today require working on a computer leading to prolonged sedentariness. Encourage employees to get up and get move throughout the da. It can help break up the amount of time they’re seated.
Here are a few ways to encourage your employees to be physically active throughout the day:
Give extra breaks for people to get up, move around and stretch
Provide employees standing desks or under-desk ellipticals or cycles
Bring in a fitness instructor a few times a week. Things like yoga, Zumba, martial arts, or barre are all great examples of active exercises that don’t require much, if any, equipment.
Again, this is one of those things that management and HR need to practice what they’re preaching. If your employees see you taking advantage of the extra breaks to get up and move around, they’re more likely to follow suit.
5. Stress the importance of your safety policies
If you have safety policies in place, that’s great. If you don’t, you should. But your policies are only as helpful to the degree that your employees know about and practice them.
Job incident prevention is a key piece to working towards a positive workplace environment. Every seven seconds a worker is injured on the job, according to the National Safety Council. That equates to over 12,600 injuries every day!
How can you work to prevent your company from becoming part of that statistic? By providing ongoing safety training and additional training for management. Empower your management team with the tools they need to reinforce the policies and takeaways moving forward. Display visible reminders around your workplace on the safety guidelines. Especially in hazardous areas where accidents might be more prone to occur.
6. Encourage communication
All of these ideas are great to try and promote health and wellness, but if they aren’t working for your employees, they need to feel empowered to speak up. By the time most employers notice an employee is burnt out, physically, mentally or both, it’s often too late. Establishing an open line of communication can help you know about these issues well before they become an actual problem.
You can implement an open-door policy and make sure you have regular check-ins and connection with everyone on your staff. Encourage employees to express concerns. This can help foster healthy relationships so employees will feel comfortable telling you when they’re beginning to feel burnt out.
Key Takeaways:
There are many ways to promote health and have a happier workplace. We recommend starting with these six:
Create a flexible working environment by allowing work from home and adjustable schedules
Make employee health a priority
Establish an employee health and wellness program
Encourage employees to get up and move and exercise during the workday
Stress the importance of your safety policies to try and prevent workplace injuries
Establish open channels of communication to avoid employee burnout
About Author: Joe McErlane is the founder and CEO of NeoPath Health, where he has worked to improve employee health for companies looking to control the spiraling cost of employee medical plans. NeoPath establishes and manages onsite clinics that improve care, reduce costs and attract and retain employees.
3 Reasons Your Employees' Productivity is Lacking and How to Help
Have you ever shown up to work, but all day you just feel like you're in a fog? You can't concentrate, you feel like you might be getting sick, but your to-do list keeps growing instead of you being able to check things off of it. You don't feel like you're at 100% but you know you can't go home because you have so much work to get done. So, you continue to sit there and stare at your screen and try to get through it all. That is an example of presenteeism from an employee's perspective.
By definition, presenteeism is when an employee shows up for work but is unable to fully perform or function because they are sick, tired, stressed, injured, or any other number of conditions or distractions.
The issue of absenteeism is more commonly known, which refers to people being physically out of the office, oftentimes an ongoing issue, with no good excuse. Absenteeism is much easier to recognize and track than presenteeism. If you have low rates of absenteeism, that may actually be a warning sign that your employees are showing up to work when they are unwell.
Are you unsure if your employees are suffering from presenteeism? Here are three reasons they might not be productive and ways you can help them and your bottom line:
1. Insufficient Health Insurance and Time-Off Policies
America is behind the rest of the working world when it comes to paid time off. The US averages 10 paid holidays per year, while the highest 6 countries come in at 30-37 days. Many European countries provide several months or even years of paid maternity or paternity leave while the U.S.’s Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) only mandates that an employee can take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, only covers an estimated 60 percent of the workforce, and disproportionately excludes working parents.
In 2017, 27.4 million nonelderly Americans didn't have any health insurance coverage due primarily to the lack of affordable options. The American unemployment rate is at an all-time low, but millions of workers are actually working more than one part-time job to make ends meet. Typically, most part-time jobs do not provide any health insurance.
Insufficient health insurance leads to people visiting the doctor less and doing less preventative care which leads to more illnesses, chronic or otherwise, and the lack of time off leads to workers coming into work when they are sick so they don't miss out on paid wages.
2. "Sandwich Generation, " Single Parents, Dual-Earner Households, Unpaid Caregivers
Another reason your employees might not be as productive is if they fall into the “Sandwich Generation.” The "Sandwich Generation" is a group of people typically in their 30s or 40s who are raising their own children while also being responsible for the care of aging parent/s. According to Harvard Business School, three out of four (73%) employees reported having some type of current caregiving responsibility for the care of an elderly or disabled family member, relative, or friend. Caregivers working at least 15 hours per week indicated that this assistance significantly affected their work life. As baby boomers continue to age, the number of elderly people needing assistance is expected to continue to grow rapidly.
The need for caregiving and working individuals to contribute so much at home, either as single parents or dual-earner households, leads to workers saving their time off to care for others and coming into work sick, injured, or otherwise indisposed.
3. Nonexistent Focus on Mental Health
Things in the U.S. are improving regarding mental health awareness, but mental health issues are still largely stigmatized. If a workplace expects people to come in when physically ill, there is no way they are going to understand or respect that someone might need time off for "invisible" illnesses like anxiety or depression. In fact, a culture of presenteeism can lead to higher rates of anxiety and depression in the workforce.
American Medical Association studies found that on-the-job productivity loss (presenteeism) resulting from depression and pain was roughly three times greater than absence-related productivity loss (absenteeism) attributed to these conditions. Mental health issues can cause a lack of sleep which leads to chronic fatigue as well as memory and concentration issues.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
What Can You Do to Help?
1. Offer Adequate Time off
This may seem obvious, but it is important that you provide your employees with paid time off. If you absolutely can’t offer paid time off, at the very least, don’t allow a culture of shame and blame around taking an unpaid day off when someone is unwell, whether or not the reason behind the request is visible or invisible.
2. Invest in Comprehensive Health and Wellness
As a company that cares about the wellbeing of your employees, you should provide comprehensive health and wellness offerings that cover both physical and mental health as well as fitness and overall wellness in the workplace. Low-cost, value-based health coverage is a large factor. If you're having trouble finding what you need within traditional health offerings, you could consider a more contemporary solution like offering an onsite or near-site clinic.
3. Build a Culture of Trust and Understanding
One of the reasons employees may not feel comfortable taking time off when they are unwell is they have seen others come in in a similar state. They feel like everyone does the same, so who are they to stay home? This may be a result of a lack of communication and trust between employees and management. One way to build understanding and trust between coworkers is to encourage teamwork and cooperation. If the whole team helps cover when someone is out, it doesn't add a ton to each individual's workload. But it does take a huge amount of stress off of the person that needs it. Management can also jump in to help cover when someone needs to be out.
4. Educate and Empower Direct Management
It's important that all of management, especially your employee's direct managers, fully understand the issue of presenteeism and how they may be directly contributing to it. Consider holding a seminar with all of management to educate them on the warning signs and actions that exacerbate employee presenteeism.
Once all of management understands the issue, they need to lead by example. If employees see them coming in early, leaving late, and working even when they are sick, they absolutely won't feel comfortable staying home themselves.
5. Offer Tools for Employees and Their Managers
Paid time off can help take care of your sick employees, but what about those who have stressful issues they constantly handle while at home and can’t forget about while at work? Learning how to support working caregivers, single-parents, and employees trying to make ends meet is critical.
Presenteeism is a major issue within the workplace currently, costing trillions of dollars per year. But, with a little understanding and some direct action, it can be minimized or even eliminated.
Author Bio: Michelle Chaffee is the founder of Connected Caregiving, a comprehensive solution to help employers recognize and support working caregivers.
11 Ways to Rebuild HR to Support Fast Growth and Happy Employees
The Human Resources department has been perceived as a static aspect of running a company that can’t be upgraded or redeveloped for heightened efficiency. But the developments in the last decade or so have completely revolutionized the function. The latest research and technologies suggest that it is possible to make it the ‘key department’ that management takes notice of.
As a business owner or HR representative, there are many ways you can rebuild HR to support fast growth and happy employees. From setting policies to theonboarding process to the exit process, HR has an impact on how employees perceive the company. And the best way to meet their expectations is by creating plans to enhance their growth in the company. Here are the 11 best ways this can be done:
1. Promote agility and internal career development
Agile workforces that promote internal career development are the crown jewel in successful companies. An agile workforce promoting internal career development looks for ways to uplift and empower employees before searching for talent elsewhere.
There are many employees doing jobs they are not passionate about. That is why some companies have adopted the principle of allowing current employees to bid on new opportunities within the company. For example, if a new junior software developer is required, an ad might be sent to every employee.
Who knows? Perhaps Jim from accounting has been studying software development after hours and this career boost is all he needs to do what he loves. Promoting this kind of environment will keep employees on their toes and also give them unexpected career boosts that contribute to their happiness and satisfaction.
2. Be flexible when searching for talent and onboarding employees
If you are searching for real talent and would like to get the best cut, it is imperative to be flexible. Approaching this aspect of HR with a binary mentality of purely right and wrong can lead to losing real talent. For example, a lot of companies demand degrees or other qualifications from potential candidates.
Failure to produce the required qualifications means all bets are off. In some cases, this approach is just an unnecessary evil that creates a bottleneck to finding real talent and onboarding them. Instead, HR departments should have some flexibility and assess each case on its own merits.
Of course, certain jobs require a qualification to be produced when applying for the vacancy such as electricians, doctors, etc. However, some do not and in those cases, HR should be more flexible.
11. Improving the employees’ experience
HR departments should adopt a hands-on approach to defining a great employee experience. Unfortunately, some HR departments are not even aware of their employee experience and that is a huge mistake. Map out the journey of employees right from talent attraction to their exit strategy.
Mapping out the employee experience can improve their well-being and increase the number of retained employees. You should fully understand what contributes to a great employee experience to be in a better position of suggesting and implementing necessary changes.
Doing this can benefit both employees and the company because the workforce will be more dedicated to working because of being well-taken care of. Defining the employee experience can also help direct HR departments to appropriate talent search pools.
Christopher BaggottChief Executive Officer of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
Final thoughts
HR departments can be rebuilt using these tips and techniques that support fast growth and happy employees. Implementing various technologies can help rebuild this department, such as using AI, VR, and analytical dashboards. At the same time, HR departments should not forget to map out their employee experience and improve the engagement of new recruits. If a company needs more hands on deck, it should consider establishing a remote workforce to have a cost-efficient solution.
Author Bio: Ashley Simmons is a professional journalist and editor working with a daily newspaper in Salt Lake City and has an experience of 4 years. She’s also a top-rated academic writer withbest essay writers UK. Her expertise is in writing essays, thesis and dissertation in finance, economics, statistics, sales and marketing and fintech.
The Era of Machines: What Automation Means for HR
What is Workforce Management?
Workforce management (WFM), sometimes known as Human Resources Management is simply the process of ensuring that you have the right number of right workers operating at the right time and place, and performing the right tasks. And the objective of this process is to meet your company's goals in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Workforce management software handles a broad range of HR tasks including employee time tracking, employee scheduling, demand prediction, payroll administration, talent management, benefits administration, training programs, vacation and leave planning, performance monitoring, and crisis preparedness.
Changes to the workforce has also made automation a real lifesaver for HR. No longer do we have long-term, full-time employees. Today’s workers are made up of full-time, part-time, freelance, and contingent workers. There’s also the increased importance of providing a work-life balance. Without automation, how would HR ever schedule these workers’ shifts in such a way that would mean less cost for the company but favorable outcomes for both the employee and the company? Naturally, with the rise of new types of workers comes rules and regulations that govern the pay and benefits that each type receives.
Automating workforce management does not only deal with recruitment, scheduling, and time tracking. With the right tools, HR can foster ongoing employee engagement and increases talent retention. Some companies use time tracking applications with pop-up survey questions which allows upper management to keep their finger on the pulse and provide appropriate reactions/programs.
In short, workforce management is not just about scheduling, time tracking, planning, and forecasting. Today, HR is required to strategically manage the workforce to ensure that the people are productive in their work. And what that means is that they are happy or content with their pay, their schedule, their benefits, and everything else that they’ve deemed important enough to influence their “employee experience.” Without automation, a company will have to employ another company just to perform HR functions and manage big data analytics correctly to ensure its profitability and success.About Author: Meggie is a freelance writer and communication manager atAMGtime. Meggie is deeply convinced that marketing is a key to get success in all spheres and it’s a crucial part of our lives. Regularly, she delivers various concepts on how to market products, services, and events effectively. Meggie believes in a win-win formula and utilizes it on a daily basis in staff management.
How Technology is Making Remote Work Easier
Prior to the current working situation, very few companies had active remote work policies in place. However, working from home has now become a routine practice used by all types of businesses and industries. A survey conducted by Buffer even found that 99% of current remote workers would like to work remotely, at least some of the time, for the rest of their careers. This new type of working condition has led to advancements in technology used by businesses for enhancing remote work.
Technologies like Zoom and Slack have already had a large impact on business’s ability to communicate and monitor their employees, but there are still more on the way. As companies switch to permanent or longer periods of remote work, managers are looking for ways to continue to connect with their employees and alleviate certain problems associated with working from home. But there is hope on the horizon as new technologies come into play.
Remote Training and Tracking
Although some businesses have had to cut jobs, others have had to bring in new talent. Onboarding new employees remotely is a challenge for both the trainee and manager. However, tools like video conferencing, instant messaging and webinar are making this process easier to execute. Screen sharing abilities and prerecorded training materials are also features that more businesses have turned to for onboarding procedures.
All these technologies help engage new employees. In addition, specialized tools like employee engagement software focus solely on team members, which helps reduce new-hire frustrations. HR managers can track individuals through this type of automated technology, and can upload all information to a data cloud for other team members to review.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
Once individuals have been onboarded, businesses need to know that they are working. The same goes for current employees too. Companies need to be able to facilitate feedback and check in on their team members. This is critical for maintaining engaged and motivated individuals, and helps acknowledge an individual’s hard work which in turn boosts working motivation and productivity. Checking in with team members frequently can identify any challenges they are facing, how they’re feeling and refocusing on goals. Tools like the Employee Experience Platform can make executing employee recognition easier for leadership.
Administrative Automation
An issue some organizations have with remote work is relying on employees to report their daily activities. Luckily, automation technology has stepped in to assist managers and individuals with monitoring remote work. Time tracking platforms can generate accurate timesheets for employees, scheduling applications can book meetings around each person’s calendar. Using receipt templates can help you keep your records organized and track your expenses and expense apps can scan receipts into a database via a mobile device.
In addition to reporting daily activities, there are tools to help people stay on task during the day. These platforms are meant to not only make employees focus on their jobs, but optimize their workflow, too. Certain tools review a person’s work patterns to provide insights on where improvements can be made. Anti-distraction tools can also turn off notifications when employees need to buckle down on a task.
Internet of Things (IoT)
Some companies are able to run all of their operations seamlessly thanks to the Internet of Things. Being connected to all of their machines and computers means workflow is not interrupted, and adjustments can happen in real time. Other types of businesses are using IoT to connect all of their owned mobile devices includingpostpaid and prepaid SIMsin order to rollout software updates to the whole system.
IoT also allows employees to work from home in comfort. Devices like smart refrigerators can keep lists of food to order, and in some cases order the food as well. Google Home and Amazon Echo act as a centralized hub in certain homes for controlling other smart devices
such as thermostats and plugs which can reduce energy usage. Having IoT connected technology in a home can also be a selling point in certain cases for remote employees buying a new house. Since the outbreak of COVID, many employees have started the process of buying a new home. There are numerous factors behind this home buying drive, including remote work, but as employees relocate, they still need technology to do their jobs.
5G
The rollout of 5G is still happening, but it promises to make cell networks better. With speeds up to 100 times faster than 4G, and made to handle more devices on a network, 5G will help people work from anywhere they can get a signal. That’s where remote work comes into play, people will not be limited by their connection to Wi-Fi or ethernet, but can work wherever they get a signal opening up more opportunities for distributed working. 5G will assist businesses with adding new talent to their teams no matter where they are located.
Remote work has been going on for some time now, but COVID has added all types of industries to the work from home category. Technology has been a driving factor in helping companies make this switch. From monitoring and onboarding employees to helping order groceries, technology is here to make working from home an easy task.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
10 Ways to Keep Telecommuting Workforce Engaged
Telecommuting has become a necessity in this current situation of the ongoing pandemic- Covid-19. Thus, organizations across the world have made a sudden shift to adopting themselves to the culture of work from home. Among all these organizations, many are experiencing the remote working culture for the first time. As a result, the HR professionals are wondering about ways to keep the telecommuting workforce engaged.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
This article elucidates 10 ways through which the HR professionals can keep telecommuting employees engaged.
1. Beginning the day on a positive note with motivation.
Motivation is an elixir which nourishes employee engagement. Thus, HR professionals hold a great responsibility of keeping the employees motivated to work. This responsibility gets further heightened, when the same employees are working from home. This is because the employees may not feel motivated to work in the restful and comfortable environment of home. Under such circumstances, the HR professionals can instill a wave of motivation in the employees by beginning every day at work with inspiring messages, audio clips and videos. Furthermore, it depends on the HR professional whether he uses individual communicating platforms or group communicating platforms to address the employees.
2. Letting the employees create their own work-schedule.
After having shifted to the remote working culture, it is also important to let the employees create their own work-schedule. This is because every household runs with a different kind of setting and thus, different employees may have a different set of hours during which they can work at the peak level of their productivity. Furthermore, flexible working is even more essential in the current period of pandemic. This is because many employees need to shoulder multiple responsibilities all at the same time such as handling the kids, taking care of the elderly and managing household chores. It is with the introduction of flexible working that the HR professionals can help the employees achieve a fine work-life balance and thus, succeed in keeping them engaged while telecommuting.
3. Keeping the employees involved through virtual meetings.
HR professionals are well aware about the importance of making the employees feel valued in keeping them engaged. Thus, they put their best efforts in making the employees feel important by involving them in decision making activities through meetings. No doubt, the current work from home setting has made it nearly impossible for the HR professionals to have real time meetings with the employees, but they can still keep the employees involved through virtual meetings. There are many online applications available on the internet, which offer the feature of conducting virtual meetings online such as GoToMeeting, FaceTime and ReadyTalk.
4. Instilling some fun with online group gaming.
Making the employees play games together is an effective way to cultivate cordial relationships, enhanced trust and mutual understanding among them. All these factors together work wonders in promoting the employees’ engagement at work. In fact, HR professionals can continue making use of the fun gaming strategy, uninterrupted by the commencement of remote working culture, amidst Coronavirus outbreak, with the help of online group gaming. It just needs the HR professionals to create a list of some virtual games which can be played together on group video calls such as Pictionary, Word games and charades.
5. Investing in the employees through online training sessions.
As discussed earlier, making the employees’ feel valued is an effective way to keep them engaged. Investing in the employees’ professional growth is an influential way to make them feel admired. Thus, the HR professionals can offer online training programs to the employees and promote their sense of being treasured assets of the organization.
6. Taking charge to keep employee communications intact.
HR professionals leave no stone unturned in promoting cordial interactions between the employees. This is because the work culture of an organization is built upon the basis of the employees’ conduct with each other. When the employees possess a friendly demeanor, the work culture of an organization gradually blooms into a cordial one, and thus, the rate of employee engagement witnesses an increment. Further, the current state of remote working due to the pandemic, has introduced the HR professionals with the challenge of preventing the relationships between the employees from being disrupted. Under such circumstances, the HR professionals can keep the communications between the employees intact by initiating conversations in the office group. This will ultimately stimulate the employees to interact with each other.
7. Refraining from micromanagement.
Micromanagement may pose a threat to employee engagement in the current situation. This is because the global lockdown has made it really challenging for the employees to manage their work from home while having to handle their kids and household chores simultaneously. Thus, micromanaging at such times when the employees are already struggling to establish a fine work-life balance, may negatively impact their engrossment in work. Thus, it is advisable for the HR professionals to refrain from micromanaging the employees under the current situation.
8. Extending words of appreciation.
Appreciation is a constructive tool through which the HR professionals can keep the telecommuting employees working with their absolute engrossment in work. Amidst situations like that of the ongoing pandemic, which has left the employees struggling to shoulder both their household as well as work related responsibilities with perfection, appreciation becomes even more important. Therefore, the HR professionals should make it a point to appreciate the employees who are performing consistently well, even while handling multiple responsibilities at home. Moreover, by appreciating the deserving employees, the HR professionals can ignite a spirit to work even better, within the rest of the employees.
9. Having a supportive conduct.
The employees devote all their heart and soul in their work, only if they feel a sense of emotional connection with the organization. This implies that an emotional connection plays a significant role in the employees’ engagement at work. Being supportive of the employees is the best way to promote their emotional connect with the company. Further, it is even more essential for the HR professionals to be naturally soft and understanding towards the employees in this ongoing situation of the pandemic. Thus, if at times any employee is unable to complete his target for the day because of his heightened responsibilities, the HR should be considerate of his situation and refrain himself from being angry or harsh.
10. Holding virtual get- together through video calls.
As discussed earlier, cordial relationships among employees are necessary for promoting the employees’ engagement at work. Telecommuting amidst the global lockdown has acted as a big interruption in the employees’ regular interactions with each other and thus, resulted in increased responsibilities of the HR professionals towards keeping the employee relationships intact. Conducting virtual get- together on conference video calls is an efficacious way through which the HR professionals can strengthen the bond between the employees. It is advisable to avoid discussing professional matters in the get-together sessions as they will make these sessions appear more like meetings. Instead, the get-together time should be focused on promoting informal interactions between the employees.
To conclude, the HR professionals can successfully keep the telecommuting employees engaged by following the 10 effective ways which have been discussed above.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Tips to Make Employee Self-Evaluations an Effective Part of Your Performance Reviews
In this article, we wanted to take a closer look at one important (but often overlooked) part of the performance appraisal process: the employee self-evaluation.
What is the employee self-evaluation and why is it important?
While the name alone may make it seem self-explanatory, the employee self-evaluation is an important step to make sure each employee thoroughly evaluates their performance and is as prepared for the performance review itself.
Employee self-evaluation can also serve as the essential framework in helping each worker think through their overall performance. For example, by asking employees to answer common questions, managers and HR will receive consistent assessments that include areas where employees think they can improve, feedback on achievements, and many other important insights.
This becomes important because, without the employee self-assessment, it’s possible that this information may have come as a surprise to those conducting the review, or it may also present information is a valuable new light that can contribute to improving future processes or outcomes.
What is the purpose of an employee self-evaluation?
The main point of the employee self-evaluation is that seeks to expand the amount of information covered in a traditional performance review by considering the employee’s point of view. This can be an extremely valuable way to give managers insights into details they might not have known before, or gain visibility into a project or employee achievement that they may not have considered as important (as the employee does).
Employee self-assessments also give you a great way to collect direct feedback from workers. This can include their point of view on specific goals, milestones, challenges, successes, and much more. HR can also ask for feedback on peers or even the manager themselves as part of a 360-degree performance review.
Not only is this important to get more information, but you will also get employees to be more involved in the performance appraisal process. Engaging employees and sending the message that you value their feedback is an important part of the process and will help employees feel that the process is fair and equitable by including their feedback and responses.
What should an employee self-evaluation include?
While there are no hard-and-fast rules, and it’s inevitable that employee self-evaluations will vary from company to company, there are many best practices to consider. For example, think about including the following categories in your employee self-assessments:
Key highlights from the past year (or review period), including specific accomplishments, milestones, project successes, and more. Ideally, this should also include clear details related to their role and how they influenced these results.
Career path, including how they’d like to grow, what they see as next steps, or even the chance for employees to request mentoring in this area.
The employee’s goals for the position and ideas for how they can improve.
Feedback for managers, which can include peer, process, or even manager feedback. All of this should help provide a more honest, open look at the organization.
Resource requests, which can include areas like training/certifications, learning, mentoring, or other ways for employees to get what they need to improve throughout the year.
How can you start implementing employee self-evaluations at your company?
If you haven’t used employee self-evaluations yet, we recommend starting by discussing the idea with your HR team. Chances are good that HR has valuable experience in this area and is likely to turn your good idea into an even better practice.
Additionally, you may want to include the leadership team in these early discussions. For example, it’s generally a good idea to let them know that this will be happening, but also to give them the opportunity to add additional ideas or even their own requests. If executives are not sure about using employee self-assessments, you can use this as an opportunity to compare the benefits of this approach, the opportunity it presents, and describe in specific detail how the entire process would be implemented.
You may also convince the leadership team to participate in the process in a high-profile way that demonstrates their buy-in and support. This helps send the message that “this is important” and encourages employees to take part in the process.
Once you’re committed to going forward, you should create employee self-evaluation templates, which may even consist of forms, questions, and templates for each position. These resources should include suggested questions to ask, areas to cover, and examples of “good” answers to help employees envision what the ideal self-evaluation looks like.
You should also establish the evaluation cadence. While many companies default to the once-a-year annual performance appraisal, many other companies see the value in asking employees to complete self-evaluations on a bi-annual or even quarterly basis.
Train HR managers who will conduct the evaluations. This is important to know what to look for, create baselines for reactions, how they can constructively process the information in the self-evaluation, and finally, how they can collaborate with the employee to focus on improving in the next time frame.
Finally, you may want to plan how you’ll communicate this information to all of your employees. You may want to hold an all-hands meeting and support the news with information in your portal or employee communication platform. Give them a chance to ask questions, hear any concerns, communicate the value (that it’s in their best interests) and more.
LIKE.TG can help
LIKE.TG offers a full suite of HR solutions, including specific applications to help manage employee performance and conduct more effective performance reviews. To see how we can help—with employee self-evaluations or other HR processes—request a brief, no-obligation demo of LIKE.TG today.
A Better Way to Communicate, Engage, Recognize, and Reward Remote Workers
An effective employee communications and engagement platform can help you make sure your employees are happier, more engaged, recognized, rewarded, and more productive.
As an HR professional, how can you make sure remote employees (or any worker) are happy, engaged, and aligned with your company’s objectives?
It’s an important question. Today’s employees want rewarding work and to feel valued and appreciated for their efforts. They also want to be connected to your company, especially when they’re not in the office, so they know they’re still an important part of the team and contributing to a common goal.
Communication is key. In fact, effective communication should be the cornerstone of any successful employee-engagement strategy. Yet in today’s workplace, “more” is not necessarily better. For example, many employees are already overwhelmed by the amount of emails they receive each day. This means sending important information by email may only add to the clutter and could miss the mark.
The same result is true for other tools and platforms, such as instant messaging, wiki pages, portals, or more. Employees may lose track of whereto find critical information or become frustrated by how many steps it takes to find what they’re looking for. These challenges only become exacerbated when employees are out of the office.
All of this adds up to an important question: What can you do to improve employee communications, especially with remote employees or field workers who may not even have access to a laptop?
The Value of Workmates
An Employee Communications and Engagement Platform: The Right Tool for the Right Results.
There is an answer. Innovative new employee communications and engagement platforms use mobile apps to improve the way you communicate, collaborate, and engage with remote employees and your entire workforce.
This blog will take a closer look at the traditional challenges companies face when trying to communicate and engage with remote employees or field workers. It will also introduce Workmates, LIKE.TG’s powerful employee communications and engagement platform. You’ll see how Workmates is changing the way we all think about employee communication and recognition, and in doing so, helps drive productivity, engagement, and advocacy to new highs.Most importantly, we’ll connect the dots by demonstrating how an employee communications and engagement platform such as Workmates delivers very real, and very significant, business benefits.
A Remote Workforce Requires New Communication Strategies
Today, more than 63% of companies rely on a remote workforce of some kind, whether it’s employees working at home; mobile or field-based workers; or just about any other employee who doesn’t come into the office on a regular basis.
For most companies, giving employees the opportunity to work remotely helps attract and retain top talent while also serving as a tangible perk to promote work-life balance, drive productivity, and enhance employees’ job satisfaction.
Workplace flexibility, and the option to work at home, has become increasingly important to the entire workforce, especially as employees become more tech-savvy and productive. Whether they’re looking to eliminate commutes, work outside of traditional 9-to-5 schedules, better manage childcare, or just generally gain more favorable work-life balance, working remotely delivers these benefits and more.
The concept of a remote workforce is here to stay and enables employees to continue to be valuable resources for their employers while gaining the flexibility and balance they crave. Yet many companies need to develop new communication strategies to make sure these employees consistently feel informed, valued, recognized, rewarded, and part of the larger team.
To learn more about giving access to vital HR and work information — even when they're not in the office. Download our ebook now.
Download now
Even if Employees Are Out of the Office, Keep them Close to Heart
According to the same research, a majority of companies (57%) report that they do not currently have an official remote work policy in place.
Without clear policies and effective tools, companies could face communication and collaboration issues that could even snowball into larger challenges. Currently 60% of employees admit to not knowing their company’s strategic vision.
This makes it difficult for traditional remote employees who may have a hard time staying up to date on new announcements or policies, but even more challenging for field-based workers who may only have access to a mobile device.
All of this points to a growing gap. On one hand, in order to recruit and retain top talent, employers should continue to offer the perk of remote work flexibility to increase productivity, encourage employee advocacy, and reduce costs. Yet if they’re not careful, or don’t embrace proven communications, engagement, and recognition tools—they run the very real risk of disengaging valuable employees.
Employee Engagement is a Valuable Advantage
Why should you care about disengaged employees? For starters, you could be in danger of losing top performers if they’re not engaged and motivated in their current role.
Yet to look at it another way, employee engagement can become a powerful competitive advantage.
According to research from Aon Hewitt, those companies with high levels of engagement (65% or greater) outperform the stock market, posting total shareholder returns 22% more than the average. On the other hand, companies with low engagement (45% or less) had total shareholder returns that were 28% lower than average. Additionally, from 2002-2012, the Top 40 Best Companies to Work for in the U.S. enjoyed nearly 4x better financial returns than the SP 500.
Clearly companies with higher levels of employee communication and engagement are proven to achieve higher growth rates, productivity, and financial success.
LIKE.TG’s Workmates: Effective Employee Communications and Engagement Starts Now
Now there is an extremely effective way to improve the way you communicate and collaborate with remote employees.
LIKE.TG’s Workmates solution is a powerful, proven employee communications and engagement platform that can help any company overcome common issues related to managing a remote workforce.
Workmates is so effective because it puts communication directly in employees’ hands. Say goodbye to trying to force cumbersome new processes on busy employees. Instead, Workmates becomes a tool they want to use since it naturally facilitates information sharing to keep employees in sync and improve overall performance.
With Workmates, employee communication and recognition becomes easy and fun and encourages mobile collaboration with any employee, no matter where they happen to work.
Christopher BaggottChief Executive Officer of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
Happy Employees = Engaged Employees
With Workmates, we have designed and delivered everything you need to foster an ongoing culture of communication. Workmates includes real-time social feeds, company announcements, an employee directory, direct messaging, surveying, and more—all to get teams talking. Employees can post light-hearted messages or animated GIFs on the feed. Share a company announcement for an upcoming team meeting. Or even give a shout-out to a fellow to recognize a specific accomplishment. With Workmates, employee engagement feels like fun, not work.
Keep Employees Motivated
Praise and recognition are extremely effective ways to keep the workforce motivated, productive, and aligned with your company’s goals.
Workmates now helps your company improve the overall employee recognition experience and keep the workforce as motivated as possible. Now a manager (or any team member) can recognize any employee’s accomplishment or contribution with a well-timed “kudos,” thank-you gift, prize, or other rewards. It all becomes the digital equivalent of a high five and will help drive employee engagement to new highs. Workmates offers customizable badges and other options to reward employees, share accomplishments, and celebrate milestones and successes with the entire team.
Workmates Fosters Communication, Collaboration, and Better Business Results
Managers and HR professionals simply can’t meet with employees individually to keep them informed and up to date on the latest company news. This is especially true when employees are not in the office. Workmates now overcomes this issue and enables all team members to communicate effectively in the way they prefer to get the information they need when they need it. This comprehensive employee communications and engagement platform delivers many advantages and benefits:
Streamlines communications
Personalize employees’ content experience and give them access to the latest company information on a variety of channels.
Promotes real-time messaging and feedback
Deliver critical information to the right employee in the right moment as constructive feedback, not after the fact, or worse, not at all.
Recognizes employees and says thanks
Workmates lets any employee reward a peer for any contribution or achievement. Highlighting exemplary behavior becomes fun and encourage future recognition and effort.
Increases employee advocacy
Happy, engaged employees will now become company advocates, willing and able to embody your company’s best interests, promote your products or services, and contribute to a stronger culture.
A Closer Look at All that Workmates Has to Offer
Company’s media hub:
Spread company culture and share information with pictures, GIFs, videos, and polls.
New hire announcements:
Automated email reminders help admins, IT, and the rest of your team welcome new employees.
Employee engagement surveys:
Whether they’re in another office or working remotely, keep a pulse on your team’s engagement levels.
Kudos and rewards:
Recognize employee accomplishments and motivate more with instant feedback and recognition.
Automated birthday and anniversary announcements:
Show your team appreciation and never forget to buy cake again.
Like, comment, and discuss capabilities:
Get information to employees quickly through a single, streamlined source, direct from the company.
Share knowledge with a team approach:
Connect teams and groups to the information they need to get the job done with personalized portals on desktop or mobile apps.
Easy customized integrations and reporting:
Integrating with and reporting on other applications is easy through LIKE.TG Custom Objects™.
Workmates in Action: Real Companies, Real Results
A Leading Management Consulting Firm Improves Employee Engagement and Transforms Its Company Culture with Workmates
A mid-sized healthcare management company recently determined it needed a better way to communicate, collaborate, and engage with all employees. This was important because the company has hundreds of employees in multiple offices in four different states as well as a large remote workforce constantly out of the office serving clients.
The company’s HR Director remembers what led the company to consider an employee communications and engagement platform. “First, we definitely wanted to improve the way we shared information with our entire workforce, even when employees weren’t in the office to make sure they were happy, informed, and fully aligned with our goals,” she says.
The firm also wanted an employee engagement solution that could begin to transform the culture. HR envisioned a new platform that would go vira throughout the company and let employees post pictures, celebrate achievements, and have fun posting pictures, GIFs, surveys, polls, and more.
To learn even more about improving the employee experience and increasing your competitve advantage while providing a fast return on investment, download our ebook now.
Download now
Summary and Conclusion
Improved Employee Engagement Starts Now
Companies of all sizes need a better way to communicate with remote employees, field-based workers, or any employee looking to feel more connected. This idea is much more than a “nice to have” improvement on HR’s wish list. Instead, improving communication with remote employees is proven to increase engagement, retention, productivity, and financial performance.
LIKE.TG’s Workmates platform helps promote and foster employee communications and engagement. With Workmates, employees communicate and collaborate more effectively, positioning your entire company to achieve results that matter most.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
A Definitive Guide to Rewarding Employees: The Proven Benefits of Employee Recognition and Rewards Programs
According to recent research by Gallup, the employee engagement rate dropped to 31% in 2020. This was an all-time low and leaders and remote workers were the most affected by the changes.
When it comes to turnover rates, the truth is that employees don't leave a company. They leave bad company cultures, bad managers, and bad salaries. Feeling unappreciated for their time and effort can make employees not give their best. This leads to low productivity and engagement.
Keep reading to discover the most effective ways of rewarding employees to improve productivity.
Improve Productivity and Engagement Levels in the Workplace
Employee engagement or disengagement is a real problem in many companies, no matter the size or industry. It happens when employees don't feel appreciated for their work or feel taken advantage of. It can also happen if they don't like their job or don't feel like they can grow in the company.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
Low employee engagement can affect productivity and performance. This leads to many other internal company issues. Luckily, improving employee engagement is easy if you ask employees for feedback. Once you have the results, you'll know what steps to take and reward programs to create.
For instance, you can create personalized career plans for each employee. Then, offer paid mental health days, and invest in health and wellness programs. Recognition from bosses or managers is another important way to keep employees engaged and productive.
Create a Positive, Encouraging Company Culture
A healthy, encouraging, and positive work environment creates happy and productive employees. Whether you're a small business owner or a big corporation, company culture is a key motivator for employees to give their best.
Negative company culture can lead to low engagement, high turnover rates, and making more mistakes. The solution is asking for employee feedback so you can create a new company culture.
Ask for suggestions so you can make the workplace better for your employees. This will also help new hires fit in and adapt better to their new roles.
Ask Your Employees for Feedback
When creating rewards and recognition programs, make sure to ask your employees for feedback first. This includes all levels and departments, from entry-level workers to the highest managers. Create an anonymous poll or a survey so you can get honest answers.
Ask employees what they like or don't like about their job or their managers. Ask them to write suggestions about employee rewards and ways to feel appreciated. Then analyze the results to see if there's a recurring answer or a topic that needs improvement.
Don't forget to ask the remote workers for feedback as well. Their questions might be different, but their well-being matters too. Try to find ways to make them feel included and important. Create separate groups or channels to communicate with them. Have separate company culture guidelines to adapt to their needs.
Show Appreciation to Remote Workers
With so many companies working remotely, employee engagement levels are lower than ever. People are having a hard time focusing and engaging. Communication between teams and managers is even harder, so you need to find ways to motivate everyone equally.
If you have an in-house team as well as a remote team, show the remote workers an equal level of appreciation. Praise them publicly on social media, invite them to in-house company events, or send them personalized gifts.
Another great way to show appreciation to remote workers is to offer them the perks and benefits of the in-house staff. For example, if you have a Friday happy hour after work, include the remote team via Zoom or similar apps. Offer them the same health and wellness packages, healthy snack deliveries, and pay for childcare if needed.
Retain Talent and Reduce Turnover
Each company, no matter how big or small, has a handful of top talent that needs special attention and recognition. If you don't appreciate your top talent, they won't hesitate to leave. Most top talent employees care more about career growth and feeling appreciated than they do for getting a raise.
At the same time, high employee turnover can be a huge expense for a company. It takes a lot of time, effort, and money to advertise job positions and interview candidates. Then, there's training and mentoring new hires for a smooth onboarding process.
If employees don't stay at your company for more than a year, you need to make some changes within the company. For example, rethink the company culture or offer better career growth.
You can reduce your company's turnover rates by creating recognition programs. Examples include monthly rewards, team-building trips, birthday day off, or public recognition. Don't forget to include monthly bonuses, incentives for big projects, end-of-year bonuses, extra vacation days, and opportunities for career growth.
Improve Manager-Employee Relationships
In large companies, there are many levels of management in different departments. Clear communication between team members, team leaders, and managers is key to a job well done. However, managers often can't connect with their employees which leads to low productivity and mistakes.
To improve employee engagement, HR managers should work on manager-employee relationships. Managers need to get to know their employees better and use their strengths. Employees need to express their needs to managers more clearly so they can take steps to improve the work environment.
For example, you can organize fun team-building activities, pay for manager training, bring an expert to help or have a meeting where both sides can express their needs.
Start Rewarding Employees With These Employee Recognition and Rewards Programs
Whether you're a small business or a big corporation, rewarding employees should be an essential part of your company culture. Happy employees working in a healthy workplace are more productive and engaged. With the right employee recognition and rewards programs, you'll see growth and improved engagement in no time.
Christopher BaggottChief Executive Officer of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
Want to boost office productivity even more? Discover the reasons why employee productivity is lacking and what you can do about it.
10 Examples of Successful Internal Communication You Need to Know
Collaboration is an instrumental part of the workplace, but how can you ensure that it is effective? Collaboration for collaboration's sake might translate to unnecessary meetings or a decrease in productivity.
On the other hand, successful internal communication can lead to meaningful collaboration. If your company drives internal collaboration with a thoughtful strategy, it will have a positive impact on your workforce.
The best internal communication has a purpose and achieves results. Let's take a look at some strategies that can engage all levels of your company.
1. Make the Communication Accessible
In an increasingly remote and on-the-go workforce, accessibility is critical. You want communication to be accessible across devices and time zones. Nothing will make employees feel more "out of the loop" than communication that is more available to some employees over others.
2. Connect the People
An enormous source of frustration is a lack of transparency. If guidelines or expectations are not clear, the path to success is impeded.
Employees should have easy ways to connect with managers. Consider an open door policy, and encourage productive conversations between managers and team members. You could also start a forum to share ideas and suggestions.
3. Share Knowledge
The water cooler used to be the place where information was exchanged. It is still critical in the modern workplace that domain knowledge be shared, but the proverbial "water cooler" needs to be reimagined.
Give employees opportunities to learn from each other. Knowledge management needs to have a dedicated effort. Putting off or de-emphasizing knowledge sharing could lead to disastrous consequences in relying too much on too few employees.
An internal Wiki can also be a place to share knowledge. Relatively easy to set up, employees can contribute to the Wiki over time and turn it into an excellent source for information.
4. Understand Leadership's Vision
Across the company, there should be a clear understanding of the leadership's direction and goals. By communicating the overall company strategy, employees can see how their individual roles contribute to the company's success.
Offer employees a chance to ask questions. It will make them feel invested and also be an opportunity to address concerns. All levels of the company should feel that they are working together for a common purpose.
5. Share Good News
Everyone should be aware of the company's success stories! Whether it is meeting quarterly goals, news recognition, or positive reviews from customers, ensure that all employees can share in the good news. It fosters good company culture and aligns the work with the end result.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, bad news should also be shared. You want the environment to be supportive and trusting, so if there are struggles or other changes, it is better to be transparent. The thought that goes into the message will significantly impact how the information is received.
6. Recognize Employees and Teams
In addition to celebrating the wins of the company, highlight the achievements of employees or teams. Give employees the opportunity to congratulate each other for their hard work.
Here are some examples of things to recognize company-wide:
A customer service employee that goes above and beyond
A team's project completed ahead of schedule
Deployment of a new product or service
Promotions earned
The top-performing sales reps of the month
Assistants who are excelling at their work
You can also highlight accomplishments outside of work. Did an employee run a marathon or speak at an event? A lot of pride goes into a job well done.
7. Check-in on Employees
You may have annual reviews or regular meetings with employees, but how often is the question asked, "How are you doing?"
A one-on-one check-in shows that the thoughts and feelings of the employees' matter. It builds trust and allows the employee to share. It also opens the door for a conversation about what is going well or not going well at work.
Conducting a "stay interview" digs into what the employee likes about his/her job or what the employee wishes could change. In some cases, this may reveal a problem that can be addressed before the employee begins looking for other employment.
8. Centralize Your Internal Documents
Procedure guides in one directory. Policy documents online. Change in a process outlined via email.
It is common for companies to have documents scattered in many locations. This leads to inconsistency and miscommunication. By centralizing everything, you can have a single "source of truth." Employees will be able to locate what they need more quickly.
A content management solution should manage documents and have flexibility. It should be easily accessible so that your employees can find and get what they need, no matter where they are.
9. Share Industry News
No company operates in a vacuum. It will help employees to understand the external factors of the business by sharing industry news.
What is the competitor landscape? What are the new trends in the marketplace? From the sales reps to the customer service department, everyone should have a handle on what is driving the company.
10. Use an Intranet for Internal Communication
A company-wide intranet can be the driving force behind your internal communication. From driving engagement among employees to social features, it represents the hub for your collaboration.
You want your employees to have the ability to communicate in real-time. It is more than company-wide announcements and occasional updates. Your company's intranet is a reflection of the overall company culture.
Having the Right Tools in Place
Your employees are the driving force of your company. Communication should be easy, straightforward, and useful. Lack of good internal communication can have a negative impact on company results, from mistakes to missed opportunities.
By fostering good internal communication, you can make the company a place where employees are engaged, productive, and satisfied.
But do you have the right tools to put internal communication strategies into practice? Workmates by LIKE.TG has the solutions to boost employee engagement and enable effective communication. Request a demo today.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Top 6 Recruitment Trends to Look for
The recruitment process has seen a huge shift from traditional recruiting to new recruiting techniques in the past decade. Due to the agility in modern technology, recruitment specialists are obligated to adapt to the new changes if they want to stay in the game.
We live in an era where revolutionary technologies are introduced one day, and the same technology is replaced by the more revolutionized idea the other day. This applies to all the industries and the recruiting industry is no exemption.
To stay ahead in the recruiting process and to improve the efficiency of recruitment, you must brace yourself for such changes. Recruiting will see a major shift and you might be forced to bury some of your old school staffing habits.
Based on the numerous years of experience in recruiting, we have listed six recruitment trends to look for in 2020.
1. The rise in Inbound Recruiting
Inbound recruiting is the method of attracting employees through different marketing strategies like content marketing, social media marketing, and branding. This method helps you build a rapport with the top talent and the chances of these candidates opting to work for your company are high.
Many companies will give importance to inbound recruiting over outbound recruiting. The inbound recruiting method must be designed carefully, and it might take some time to fetch results, but inbound recruiting can bring really good talent in your company.
2. Emphasis on Candidate Experience
Candidate experience will be given higher priority. The overall experience of the candidate during the whole recruitment process will be very important. Based on this recruitment experience, a skilled employee will decide whether to join your company or not. If the candidate feels valuable and excited to join the company, then the chances of retaining him will be high and at the same time, he might provide the reference of some great talent in the future.
Many companies will come with strategies to provide positive candidate experience as this will have a huge impact on the recruitment process.
3. Artificial Intelligence will be the Game Changer
Artificial intelligence is spreading fast and it is important for all the industries to adopt it in their business. AI will be a vital strategy as you can automate the recruitment process and save your time. For example, if you post any job opening, you will receive hundreds and thousands of applications. Screening all those resumes and finalizing the candidates will consume more time. If you use AI in screening the resume, then the whole task can be done within no time.
There are a lot of things such as candidate screening, candidate matching, and resume updates that you can achieve through AI. AI will improve the accuracy of the recruitment process.
4. Automating the Recruitment Process
Automation has been the trend in the past few years and all the businesses have now got used to automating things as much as they can. The main benefit of automation is that it saves your time. With the evolution of technology, the emphasis is given on automation tools by all business owners.
To learn more about recruitment methods, download our ebook now.
Download now
Automation in the recruitment process will save time in the job posting, screening resumes, zeroing on candidates, onboarding, and much more. Therefore, HR tools are going to get more and more popular in 2020 and most companies will start using at least one or the other tool to automate their recruitment.
5. Social Recruiting
Recruiters will rely on social recruiting in the year 2020. Social recruiting is the process of recruiting using social media channels like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, etc. There are other job portals and advertising websites where you can post your job.
The social recruiting process can be more than posting jobs on social media channels. You can use social media channels to build your brand reputation and connect with the candidates.
6. Recruitment Marketing
Recruitment marketing will boom. It is the process of applying marketing strategies in recruitment. The agenda of recruitment marketing is to attract the right potential candidates. Recruitment marketing can be achieved through both paid and organic methods. You can search for the latest marketing trends and apply the same in recruitment. You might have to tailor those marketing strategies according to your recruitment requirements.
Bottom Line
Recruitment is going to take a major leap. Predicting those changes and adopting those changes will be challenging. So, knowing the upcoming trends in advance will help you in adapting to those changes easily so that you can stay ahead in the business.
Author Bio: Lingappa is the General Manager of Payroll Operations at Paybooks. He has worked in the payroll industry for 13 years gaining unparallel experience in managing payroll, payroll outsourcing and payroll implementation. He is passionate for helping people in all aspects of payroll industry and enjoys sharing his knowledge about payroll with his peers.
12 Reasons Why You Should Be Rewarding Your Employees
It is important to recognize and appreciate employees' achievements. It is a challenging task to lead a team and be a good mentor to your team members. When employees learn that their work is being valued, it enhances their engagement and loyalty toward their job. Their bond with your firm is strengthened and tension in the workplace is reduced.
Some reasons why rewarding employees is important are as follows:
1. Enhanced productivity
When an employee does his task sincerely and produces great results, the employer needs to appreciate and thank him. When an employee sees that his work is admired, he will feel motivated and will try to produce better results in comparison to the previous ones. It boosts his engagement and aids in increased productivity.
2. Happy workplace
There is no doubt in the fact that happy employees will lead to the creation of a merry workplace. The employer not only needs to say ‘thanks’ or ‘great work’ but also give the employee a significant reward so that he feels motivated and proud. This will enhance his confidence and he will be more inclined towards doing better for your company.
3. Bond between the employee and the employer
When you appreciate and recognize an employee’s work and efforts, it builds a great bond between manager and employee. The presence of a good bond between the two will automatically lead to a positive and healthy environment, avoiding a toxic workplace atmosphere.
It is important that employees feel comfortable talking around you and can present their views and opinions for the betterment of the company. Both should be able to identify and appreciate each other’s abilities.
4. Recognition programs
This is crucial to employees since they are rewarded for their hard work and efforts. However, it is not just employees but also the management which gets recognized and praised. It helps in identifying A-players and stars. This also aids management to promote their work and enhance their business.
5. Work as a family
The improvement of employee recognition is not just felt from the eyes of managers but peers too. It is important that your colleagues too identify and praise your abilities. They should be able to see the kind of effort you are putting in your work to make it a success. It establishes comradeship between colleagues and happens to increase teamwork. It helps to make everyone work as a unit.
6. Retention of loyalty
An employee’s loyalty is retained when he receives recognition and appreciation from his manager. It is necessary to celebrate the achievements of your employee and praise him timely. This will also let the employee have maximum time to work. They will work longer for your company and therefore help in increasing the retention rates.
7. Stay engaged
A certain amount of recognition and appropriate reward will make the employees engage more in their work. They will be more than happy to work with you.
When you know that there is a better offer waiting for you, you tend to work harder to achieve that goal. The reward sometimes acts as bait and the employee gets a clearer picture of what he is supposed to do.
8. Company values
No matter how successful you are there are a certain set of rules and values that your company follows. These need to be enforced as much as possible.
Some methods to promote the work of employees and appreciate them are:
-Apply their pictures as wallpaper on desktop wherever possible.
-Name your meeting rooms after them.
-Provide name templates to everyone in their cabin.
-Welcome them with warm words.
-Make them feel like an integral part of your firm.
These small gestures will make them feel good and motivated. Appreciate everyone for their efforts and strategies and not just the ones who increased sales. Appreciate everyone who worked behind you. Treat them as equals. Everyone’s unique ability makes them special in their way.
9. Instant recognition
You don't need to recognize someone’s effort and hard work only when results are obtained. It is all about timing. If you see that your team is working extremely hard towards achieving the target goal and is not leaving any stone unturned to prove an asset for your company, why not appreciate them on the spot.
You can call for a meeting, make a presentation, and praise them for being super productive. This behavior can be repeated time and again to improve employee loyalty and to keep them motivated.
No credit card needed Less than 5 min to set up
10. Bliss
When you will spend some time recognizing and admiring your employee’s work, you will see that the overall feeling in the office will be soothing and relaxing. There will be a sense of calmness. The employees will be much happier and productive.
They will be more comfortable working with you. They will feel wanted and the tension will be decreased. Your few minutes of appreciation and care will make their day. They will be more inclined towards doing your work.
11. Offer a gift
This is going one step ahead in the process of recognition. You can give a gift card to your employees who excel in doing their work. This gesture of yours will go a long way for you. The gift card will act as something personal to the employee and he will be happier. He will try to work harder to regain your appreciation and reward.
12. Open gates for recruits
Your recognition and good behavior towards your employees will make them refer you to others also. Employer branding is a great technique in today’s workplace. Your efforts and praise skills will let employees recommend you to some of their other colleagues too who may be interested in joining your firm.
This is very tricky and smart to take when looking out for more recruits. Always remember to treat your team with dignity and respect as your behavior and image will be naturally reflected in their work and increase employee advocacy.
Conclusion
All the above-mentioned methods can help you in creating a healthy working environment and boosting your employee’s confidence and production, which will ultimately benefit your business.
About Author: Sunil Gupta is the CEO of ACG Digital Marketing, and their company specializes in guest blogging, content marketing services, and many other SEO services. Sunil Gupta is a fun-loving person, but at the same time, he believes in providing high level of professionalism and compliance with deadlines.
How to Organize Your Workspace to Boost Productivity?
You’ve sat at your desk, the computer turned on with emails staring back at you - but your productivity levels are low. You’ve had a good breakfast and are well prepared for the day ahead, so what could be the issue? Have you ever thought your workspace could be hindering your productivity? We’re going to take a look at some of the ways you can organize your workspace to boost productivity and motivation.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
Keep it clear
Have a nice clear work zone; as the saying goes: “A clear space is a clear mind”. Clutter can clutter the mind and take your focus off the job at hand. Are you working from home and staring at a pile of ironing? Remove any distractions from your workspace so you can block out any distractions.
Don't use your desk as a dining table
Don’t eat lunch at your desk. This is important to remember as eating your lunch at your desk can encourage you to work through your break. Taking a break allows you to recharge and reflect ready to be productive well into the afternoon.
Go green
Every workspace should have a plant. As well as being a lovely decoration to the area, plants have many health benefits including:
Reduce stress
Clean the air
Increase productivity
Boost creativity.
If you’re not much of a green thumb, you can’t go wrong with cacti. They only need watering once a week in spring/summer and every three weeks in autumn/winter and they thrive in natural light.
Get personal
Personalizing your space can be a real motivational boost. By adding family photographs (you don’t need to add your whole wedding album), but maybe a couple of great memories you can see what you’re working for and what the hours of dedication achieve. Are you working hard for your family (a photo of your children), for your wedding (a picture of your engagement), or for that dream holiday (a picture of the beach)? Whatever you’re sitting at your workspace for, adding a personal touch can encourage a positive vibe.
Give tech its own space
This is a big one: Give technology its own place. Keep your phone and tablet in its own place. By keeping your phone separate from your working zone, it will discourage you from picking it up, getting distracted, and breaking your concentration. If you get distracted easily, why not keep electronics in another room? That way the temptation isn’t there to have a quick check of your social media.
Keep your printer stocked up
The last thing you want to do is to go and hit print to find you’re out of paper or ink, you can waste so much time trying to get it to use the last few drops in the cartridge. Keep your printer supply topped up ready when you need to use it and keep spare cartridges and paper organized in a box close to your desk. And if you do leave it to the last minute and need your ink in a hurry, visit tonergiant.co.uk where you can benefit from free next-working-day delivery.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
What is the Difference Between HRMS and HRIS software?
What is the Difference Between HRMS and HRIS software?
If you’ve been researching HR software or even HR suites, the terms HRIS and HRMS will have undoubtedly caught your eye (as well as a third HR software category, HCM).
Unfortunately, as straightforward as these terms seem to be, there is a bit of confusion: What do all these abbreviations mean, what is the difference between HRIS and HRMS, and how can you choose the right system for your organization?
To help, we wrote this blog as a way to take a closer look at the differences between HRMS and HRIS software, but also to help you understand what each one includes and even which approach could be right for you.
For starters, here’s what these two terms stand for:
HRIS: Human Resource Information System
HRMS: Human Resource Management System
Many people use these terms interchangeably, and for good reason, since both types of solutions help companies manage their workforce using a variety of specific, specialized HR-focused applications and systems.
Yet by definition, there is a difference between the two, most notably in the various systems included in each one. Let’s take a closer look.
What is an HRIS?
Most purists agree that HRIS is the smallest bundle of HR software. HRIS platforms are designed to get you up and running quickly while providing the most essential HR systems, applications, and functionality most companies need.
HRIS software does a great job in helping companies manage and organize employee-related data such as demographic data, job information, benefits information, performance reviews, and leave balances.
While many HRIS software solutions may vary, most tend to include the following applications or features:
Application tracking systems: These systems help improve recruiting efforts: post jobs, receive and track applications, and create a resume repository.
Onboarding: HRIS may also include software to automate onboarding tasks, such as checklists and workflows, to improve the new hire experience.
Leave and absence management: Manage employee time off, unplanned absences, and other forms of leave.
Workflow management: Create and manage business workflows to boost productivity.
Benefits administration: Manage employee health insurance, 401(k) plans, and help employees track relevant information.
Compensation management: You can set up salaries, paid time off, overtime compensation, and other forms of compensation.
Training: Set up and provide continuing education and development programs for your employees.
Self-service: Your employees can log into a portal, use E-Sign to complete forms, and manage their information.
Personnel tracking: Manage all relevant employee information in a single repository.
The expanding scope is the major reason people get confused between HRIS and HRMS. Many functionalities that were solely the domain of HRMS are now present in HRIS software.
What is an HRMS?
HRMS software is an all-encompassing solution that allows companies to manage every aspect of their HR. They contain all the features of an HRIS, with additional systems and features built on top of it (most notably, time and labor and payroll). For example, these systems tend to accommodate a global presence. You can create country-specific silos within your system to cater to employees at a particular location.
Since laws differ from one country to another, HRMS software allows you to customize your workflows and employee management according to local regulations. The most striking feature of HRMS software is payroll management. You can set up direct deposits and pay your employees from your software. Taxation and other legalities can also be handled automatically within your software suite.
A system that used to be present solely within HRMS was time and labor management. These solutions allow you to track your employees' productivity and the degree of collaboration that happens between them. This can help you create better workflows and increase your ROI.
Another feature that HRIS has encroached upon is analytics. While the depth of analytics available in an HRIS versus HRMS differs, many HRIS software provide some degree of analytics. Some examples of these include employee advocacy. You can monitor which of your employees are your most loyal brand advocates through social media shares, and so on.
HRMS analytics tend to be more powerful. You can roll up metrics at various levels, be it at the branch, country, or region level. These systems also support ad-hoc reporting that allows you to create your own reports, instead of relying on fixed templates. The number of integrations that HRMS supports also tends to be greater than the average HRIS.
HRIS supports integration with third-party apps, but on a smaller scale, and is aimed at helping you achieve basic functionality.
Choosing the right solution
The lines between HRIS and HRMS are increasingly blurred. The clearest distinction lies in the global scope of an HRMS versus the local scope of HRIS. To choose the right solution for your organization, analyze all the features available in the software.
You might need just basic HR capabilities, but don't automatically assume any HRIS will fit the bill. Vendors define the scope of their HRIS software differently, so make sure you conduct thorough research into them before choosing a product. One vendor's HCM might be another's HRIS and a third's HRMS.
Define your requirements clearly and choose the right vendor for your needs.
Interested in learning more about LIKE.TG’s comprehensive HRIS solution consisting of Recruiting/ATS, Onboarding, Performance Management, and more? Please visit www.LIKE.TG.com or request a personalized, no-obligation product demo today.
The LIKE.TG Interview Guide: The Anatomy of an Effective Job Interview
Hiring the wrong employee or manager can cost your organization tens of thousands of dollars. Minimizing bad hires means investing time and preparedness (not necessarily dollars) to conduct effective interviews. To help, we created the following interview guide to help you stay on track.
How can you improve? Let’s take a closer look at many of the most important parts of an effective interview.
Pre-interview research.
As you might expect, the most effective interviews begin well before meeting candidate. No doubt your recruiting and hiring managers are reviewing the candidate’s resume or application, but there are other ways to determine if a candidate will be the right fit for your team.
Take time to research the candidate online—Google him or her to learn more about the candidate’s professional history, and examine their social presence to get a sense of his/her character. You might learn what you need to know before the interview and even start to think about what questions to ask when interviewing.
Be prepared.
A strong candidate will likely invest hours preparing for an interview—researching the company, looking up interviewers on LinkedIn, and more. Are your interviewers preparing as well? If not, could they benefit from interview skills training?
Take time to review pre-planned questions with interviewers to ensure they will help make the right determinations for the position. Ask yourself if they are effective interview questions by including enough open-ended questions that will allow a candidate to demonstrate his or her strengths.
At the same time make sure interviewers understand up front the type of interview being conducted—is this an initial screening or a second interview? Face to face or video? Is the hiring manager close to a decision? Do all you can to remove the element of surprise for interviewers.
Conducting a good interview.
It’s time. Your interviewers are sitting down with candidates and discussing their fit for the team. What is the first step in conducting an effective interview? Make sure you communicate the do’s and don’ts before they begin.
When it comes to the questions to ask when interviewing, make sure the interview is a two-way conversation, allowing the candidate to ask questions. Identifying the right fit has as much to do with your company as it does the candidate.
Pay attention to body language and mannerisms as they may tell you something about the candidate’s confidence, preparedness and professionalism.
As part of effective interview techniques, make sure to focus on the candidate’s qualifications for the job and avoid personal questions. Don’t let superficial impressions influence your decision.
Avoid stereotypes, especially those that can get your organization in hot water. Remove any risk of discriminating questions related to age, citizenship, disability, service, or religion.
Allow silence during the interview to let the candidate process his or her thoughts. If there are multiple interviews in a day, give candidates a breather in-between.
After the interview.
Stress with your hiring managers that an effective interview doesn’t end when your candidate leaves the office (or closes the video chat). Emphasize the importance of taking notes during and immediately after the interview and share them with the hiring committee. If there is a large number of candidates, encourage interviews to rate them as a way to make it easier to pare down to the strongest candidates quickly. And no matter the outcome ensure someone from HR is keeping each candidate updated as decisions are made.
This overall interview guide is your team’s best if not only chance to assess a candidate’s strengths, weaknesses and suitability for the job. Emphasize the importance of face-to-face interviews (use video if interviews must be remote) and encourage everyone in the process to prepare. Only then will you have the information to make the best hiring decisions.
To learn more about effective interviews and how LIKE.TG can help you deliver better HR and business results, please visit www.LIKE.TG.com today.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Business Process Modelling for Management Efficiency
For an organization to cater to diverse business processes may be quite a challenge. Business process management is vital for your business regardless of its size. This article will walk you through all the information you need to know about managing your business processes using automation.
What Is Business Process Management?
Business Process Management is the way a company assesses, creates, or edits foreseeable processes that seek to establish the core of its business.
Every department may cater to several or more core processes. The departments are responsible for transforming data or raw material into useful information.
It is an organizational discipline allowing a company to perceive all of the processes individually and overall. The process realizes the current state of the business, thereby identifying areas that can be improved, creating an effective organization that operates efficiently.
Importance of Business Process Management
Living in an era where technology continues to evolve, business owners are constantly challenged to resist market pressure and remain competitive while cutting costs and raising productivity levels by improving business processes.
To overcome these challenges, a lot of companies are in search of business process management software tools that can provide benefits, such as improved customer experience, better service, and product innovation, and more.
It is important as it gives project managers a competitive edge over other companies by helping leaders enhance the performance of the organization through different controls of the business processes. Business Processes are also convenient for CEOs and managers, as it allows them to control, respond, and apply appropriate IT solutions over operational activity.
Implementing a solid business process solution in your company can help you overcome several challenges and capitalize on opportunities accordingly, which ultimately leads to inevitable growth for the business.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
How Does Business Process Management Improve efficiency?
Business Process Management solutions establish proper networking and functioning of tasks, by improving the performance of staff by updating the workforce tasks automatically instead of manually (as it would have been if it were not for BPM).
Implementing BPM for your organization would mean you can easily decrease your costs while your productivity rises. Some of the benefits it may include are the ability of the process to function under favorable conditions, adjusting them to establish high performance, and following controls to analyze the future output of these processes.
The level of productivity enhances after the implementation of automatic manual tasks and getting rid of redundancies to lower the possible risk of errors or rework.
With the increase of pressure that businesses have to go through to enhance their business process management strategy, the importance of the software will seemingly increase simultaneously.
Added transparency of business process management assists in making adjustments that maximize productivity and profitability, helps in monitoring processes while setting a company’s objectives alongside business processes.
What Is the Importance of Creating Business Process Models?
A well-established business process model could consist of one or multiple business processes. These processes illustrate methods of operations that are being carried out to the side with the intended goals of a company.
To model business processes effectively, a company must communicate and document the business processes. Process modeling offers a standard method and unified language to communicate the processes and information about the rules and processes. It is often in the form of a graphical representation of a company’s workflows to identify any room for improvement and is achievable with several techniques.
Benefits of Modeling
Improves Efficiency: Proper implementation of business processes allows companies to see a significant decline in their cost with rising levels of productivity. Constant assessment of the processes can lead to high performance and efficiency.
Enforces Best Practices and Standardizations: Organizations will have to go through a set framework to achieve their goals, which they can revisit and amend according to the challenges and opportunities they come across.
Process Agility: With BPM software business processes can be more agile with a structure that needs constant documentation of the methods and steps in a process. The knowledge organizations receive from this allows them to realize the impact of changes in their business processes.
Transparency: BPM makes use of complicated software programs that evaluate business performance, automate processes, and unveil information on the business process’s operations and well-being in real-time. The increase in visibility allows the management to understand, modify the framework of processes, and track the outcome.
Competitive Advantage
Companies have a competitive edge over one another with an increase in service and product innovation by implementing business processes that may help to reduce costs without compromising on production.
Techniques
Process Flow Charts: Represents a sequence of activities but does not elaborate or break down on each of the business activities.
Data Flow Diagrams: Organizes data in its raw form, illustrating the flow of information in-between places.
Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN): Standard or graphical set objects that are used to illustrate the business process and interpret the links between the objects.
Steps to Business Process Modeling
Communication and inform the company of a business process model in the making
Establish a business process office
Define the company’s value-added chain
Link cooperative strategy to the business processes
Set objectives for the business processes
Draw out the AS-IS processes
Evaluate and identify the processes
Look into the potential of the business with the business process model and it’s set objectives
Implement and remain consistent with the new business process mode
Update the process constantly to achieve the best results
Conclusion
Business Process Model may seem like a lengthy framework for your company, but it might as well be a necessity in the near future. It is best to establish one now and attain the most out of the benefits for your management and company to get used to the processes and the way they are tackled so your organization is met with inevitable prosperity.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Steps for Developing an Internal Communication Strategy
60% of businesses do not have any type of long-term vision for their internal communications plan. For a strategy that has such a huge impact on company culture, this is incredibly haphazard.
Internal comms dictate how employees receive information from management, peers, and high-level executives.
Onboarding new employeees? Starting a painful round of layoffs? Making big brand changes?
Employees deserve to hear it from their leadership first. When coming up with an internal communication strategy, remember that real human beings are the ones powering a corporate machine. How those humans receive information impacts how they feel about the company.
What does that mean? Communications impact what kind of work they do, and how well they do it.
The Benefits of an Internal Communication Strategy
Effective communications help retain revenue. Experts suggest that team members spend up to two hours a day looking for information, gossiping, or worrying.
Every employee possesses strengths and weaknesses, especially when it comes to focusing. But this hinders business goals and personal productivity at an unprecedented level.
All these behaviors indicate that time is being lost because employees don't know where to look for information. Sometimes, they rely on this information to do their job. Sometimes, this information helps alleviate worry. Are they going to be the next person laid off?
When employees feel like communication goals are being met, their productivity is elevated by up to 25 percent. Because they're saving time by not seeking out information that isn't being given to them, and because they can focus on their work, employees actually give more.
Communication best practices include transparency, consistency, and brevity. Your internal communication efforts will land best with employees when you focus on these three traits.
Don't Communicate, Overcommunicate
Employees who feel like they're being kept in the dark are more common these days. This is a result of the fact that they're living in the social media age.
It can feel challenging to connect with millennial or Gen Z employees. Rather than pandering to them with cute gifs or chipper messaging, meet them with honesty.
At every turn, they're confronted with the latest Twitter hashtag or New York Times headline. By providing an atmosphere of transparency, you'll build company loyalty. This will promote employee engagement, too.
Only 15% of employees are currently pleased with how internal communications are handled. Employees who aren't satisfied won't come to management with their problems.
This results in more conflict, productivity loss, and employee loss if they feel like their concerns aren't being heard. The mark of successful internal communications is the existence of a two-way street.
When do employees hear from the CEO? Is it only a canned message when rounds of layoffs are happening? Do they even know what she looks like?
If employees consistently receive information from higher-ups and return employee communication is welcomed, they'll feel comfortable bringing problems and ideas to the table.
Brainstorming an Internal Communication Strategy
It's time to embrace honesty when it comes to effective internal communications. strategy. What employee feedback have you received? Those exact terms may not have been used.
Think about all the ways people express communication dissatisfaction.
"I do not remember seeing that in an email."
"I cannot find that anywhere."
"What is the rule on XYZ?"
"I have no idea what is going on."
"I am not sure, ask XYZ."
Of course, these could be excuses or indicators of other issues. But at the core, the deficiency is communication with employees.
When you've got a list of complaints ... or even better if you have access to a complaint box, start identifying the problems these complaints stem from.
These complaints point to how this strategy is currently impacting customer culture. There is no such thing as a no-impact approach to communication.
If a strategy exists, it has an impact. If no strategy exists, that has an impact! It's also worthwhile to collaborate with internal communications teams.
What trends are they seeing? What concerns do they have? With their finger constantly on the company pulse, they'll offer some great insights.
Creating a New Strategy
Consider your target audiences. That's a marketing mantra that everyone knows. If you're trying to reach wealthy, elderly men in the market for diamonds, a witty TikTok probably isn't the best way to do it.
The same thing goes for your work 'audiences'. Are you trying to talk to mid-level managers, and what does that demographic look like? Or are you trying to amp up your onboarding communications? What about conversing with key stakeholders?
Let's say your goals are broad. You want to spend 2021 revamping the way your company talks to each employee.
You need to start with a method for top-down communication. If the CEO is sitting on a distant throne, there's no personal connection. If your company is a sprawling corporate entity, new employees might not even know the CEO's name.
Top-down communication is usually reserved for new strategies, changes, or initiatives that affect the entire company equally. Change announcements and onboarding communications can also be categorized as top-down.
Choosing a Communication Channel
What communication channels should be used to do this? It depends on the tone you're going for.
Face-to-face communication
Printed handouts
Videos
Emails
Instant messaging
Regular standups and meetings
Many businesses learned a lot about communication, internally and externally, in 2020. Now's the time to apply all that knowledge to a new year.
If it's safe for employees to come back to the office, face-to-face interactions can't be replaced. Use this method when tone means everything, when you may have a difficult conversation, or when you're trying to initiate big changes.
Of course, all face-to-face conversation doesn't have to be particularly scary. It's also more efficient. And if you're not capable of bringing employees back to the office, Zoom meetings can help duplicate the experience.
If there are details that must be memorized, such as event dates, times, and places, handouts are great. They can be easily referenced or pinned above someone's desk.
Videos are fast becoming a popular top-down communication tool. It's like receiving a casual FaceTime from a friend and can cultivate familiarity.
If you're trying to tell a story or build a personal connection with a high-level executive communicating to the entire company, video is the appropriate tool.
Email isn't obsolete yet, which means this tool should be used to cover minute strategy details. Avoid the temptation to Reply All, and you'll likely succeed.
2020 taught us the value of remote messaging tools. Slack, Skype, Discord - shooting off a quick message clarifies details fast. It's less time-consuming than an email, and also helps build camaraderie.
When surveyed, employees stated that they preferred regular small meetings with their manager. No one feels seen in huge company-wide meetings, and it's hard to cover all the questions that might crop up.
Moving Forward
Here are the primary steps thus far.
1. Conduct an audit of your current internal communications systems
2. Identify problems by listening to complaints
3. Identify the best comms channels to tackle gaps with
Once you've done all that, what next? You need to establish clear expectations. 65% of employees say that internal information provided by the company isn't comprehensive enough.
That sort of problem can hobble your new strategy before it actually launches.
Whether you're trying to set individual New Year's resolutions or help transform your company, the principle of SMART goals is still the same.
S stands for specific—there should be an overabundance of clarity on what you're trying to achieve
M means measurable, so embrace numbers
A equals attainable, so don't veer outside the company's budget or personnel resources
R stands for relevant, which means that just because a tool is glossy, doesn't mean it relates to your company's mission
T stands for time, which you need to be conscious of if you want to make 2021 your best year yet
Who's in Charge?
Once you set SMART employee communication strategy goals, it's time to assign responsibility. You can have a world-class strategy in the works, but it will likely fail if it isn't placed in motion.
This will also help you navigate the communication process. There's nothing more demoralizing than doing work and seeing it have no impact.
Build respect and get approval
Democratize the strategy
Improvise, adapt, overcome
The most senior members of your company should review the plan. Then, they can promote it to the team. This is a great chance to initiate that top-down communication!
Once it's been introduced to the company at large, all eyes are on your new strategy. Will the company pull through and make big changes? Or is this just another case of big talk and no action?
After the initial announcement has been made, mid-level managers come in. Think of them as customer service representatives! They'll be your boots on the ground, implementing new ways of communicating directly with their teams.
Be wary at this step, though. After the initial thrill of execution, this is the ground where great strategies go to die. You'll need to keep a finger on the patient's pulse.
To learn even more about improving the employee experience and increasing your competitive advantage while providing a fast return on investment, download our ebook now.
Download now
Reviewing Performance Metrics
How will you know if your new strategy is working? Metrics. There are a few great options to measure how employees are engaging with these tactics.
Companies have reported $37 billion in losses due to employees suffering from poor communication or misunderstandings. The stakes are high, so here's how to ensure that you're nailing it.
Compare productivity and profits
Check employee referral numbers
Employee engagement
Turnover rate
Safety incidents
Measure engagement and interest
In some ways, gauging internal interest is no different than a marketing campaign. You'll need to treat it just like that and live by the numbers.
When miscommunication errors drop, positive numbers should go up. Productivity and profits should increase because hours are no longer wasted looking for information that isn't there.
And when employees are working in a transparent, high-energy environment, they're excited to be there. That means they're reaching out to their networks and encouraging them to come work there.
If you're actively hiring, referral rates should rise when compared to what they were in previous numbers. On this note, turnover and safety incidents should also drop.
One of the best ways to track employee engagement, though, is to look at the numbers. Especially if you have your own employees-only social networks, you can see what's happening.
What emails and posts are being opened? Are posts being liked, commented on, or clicked on?
If an employees-only network is new, you won't have old numbers to compare to. That's okay! Compare it to the total number of employees in each team, or at the entire company. With the right tools, it isn't hard.
When in Doubt, Ask
Isn't that what you tell new employees during the first days of onboarding? That's savvy advice no matter how long you've been with the company.
Honesty is the cornerstone of communication, and it should always be a two-way street. So what does that mean? Ask employees about new initiatives.
When you first asked for complaints, what changes did they hope to see? Is the company's new approach what they wanted, or is it just more frustration heaped on them?
The act of listening will help you course-correct better than any numbers will.
This guide was designed to help you navigate through those difficult tasks and help determine the right software for your organization, download our ebook now.
Download now
Crafting a World-Class Strategy
Whether you're an engineer, a graphic designer, or a content marketer, communication is everything. It's how we make sense of the world, translate it to our work product, and share it with our colleagues and a broader audience.
Everyone has to communicate. So taking on the act of creating an internal communication strategy, something that shapes every facet of someone's career, can be incredibly daunting.
Don't be intimidated. Instead, reach out and request a demo today to learn how we can identify problems in your organization and fix them.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
12 Employee Feedback Tools to Enhance Employee Experience
Employees are the pulse of the organization. They can make or break the working landscape. Hence, continuous employee feedback is the best way to track employee progress and improve them on time. Such feedback will help the team and the entire organization performs better. One employee feedback is a survival guide for another.
Every employer wants their employees to be satisfied and content. But due to the rapidly changing dynamics, it becomes difficult to maintain consistency in the feedback process. It's an obligation on the management team to conduct timely employee health-check and understand what their employees feel about their organization. So how do HR managers identify what their employees feel? With the right survey questions and the right employee feedback tool.
Does Your Work Style Align With Your Zodiac Sign?
Take our workplace Zodiac quiz to find out!
♉♊♌♍♐
Start the Quiz
To keep up with the many challenges an organization faces daily, companies are now resorting to frequent employee experience surveys. It'll help re-examine the existing processes and focus on enhancing their company culture. In today's time, hiring top talent is difficult when they have plenty of options before you. Most of them prefer being a part of a company where employees are given equal opportunity and treated fairly and justly.
Why conduct an employee experience survey?
An employee experience survey reveals how comfortable employees feel being a part of your organization. It speaks about the overall employee association and the various interactions during their tenure with the company. By conducting an employee experience survey, organizations can determine the factors contributing to satisfying employee experience and what factors they miss. Employee experience survey has great importance in measuring organizational imbalances. They show you the loopholes and point at people responsible for such lag in the process.
Why invest in company culture?
It's not easy to hire or retain top talents. Many candidates prepare to join or stay with an organization with higher cultural values. While money or top clients is the deciding factor, many candidates lookout for the kind of people they share space with and the cultural difference. To create a decent company culture, the company should invest in employee happiness and engagement. Management should focus on engaging employees at all levels and ensure every employee is satisfied working for their company. You've to create a home-away-from-home feeling.
How to track employee feedback
To ease employee experience, companies should understand their employees first. Identify how satisfied, content, challenged and committed your employees are. Then work on a system for soliciting feedback and track issues and improvement over time. With this information's help, the leadership team can identify concerns, make amendments, and improve the employee experience.
How employee feedback can help your company
Timely feedback from employees will help you understand their concerns and resolve issues instantly.
It will keep employees and management on the same page as to what is happening in the company, organizational updates, etc.
Employees can share feedback on any matter through public or private chat, photo sharing etc.
Employees feel valued and respectful that their feedback is being heard and acted upon.
You can work on real data derived from the feedback rather than assuming or depending on gut feeling.
The collected response can be formulated into reports and shared with the management as actionable insights.
To ace up your employee experience program, and to start collecting feedback from your employees instantly, we've collected a list of employee experience tools.
LIKE.TG
Workmates is an online engagement platform that helps managers keep track of their teams' performance and improve their efficiency. You can ask your employees to share how they feel, respond to surveys and scrutinize survey results. The platform helps in employee engagement, streamlining onboarding processes, conducting employee recognition programs, etc.
Pros
Great reporting dashboards metrics
Quick and easy to survey employees
You can expand the areas in which you need feedback.
SoGoEX
SoGoEX is a powerful online employee experience survey tool that instantly helps you gather and analyze employee data to improve workplace culture. It provides end-to-end employee experience management from day one and gathers quality data at every touchpoint in the employee journey. With SoGoEX, you can identify the gaps, provide regular feedback, increase engagement levels, and enhance productivity. If you are uncertain of what to ask your employees, you can pick a template from the library of resources.
Pros:
Easy, intuitive, and flexible user interface
Smart, secure, and anonymous survey
Real-time reports on different trends in employee behavior
15Five
15Five is a continuous employee improvement management tool that prioritizes the organization's most important aspect – people. The idea behind 15Five is employees giving feedback in 15 minutes, and the employer responding in five minutes. With 15Five, you can uncover your employee's challenges and make better decisions to drive productivity and growth. You can share employee's feedback with others in the organization such as senior-level management who would like to see and act.
Pros
The interface is easy to use and set up.
You can tag people and give shout-outs.
User-friendly performance review
TinyPulse
TinyPulse is for managers who care for their employees. It's an online engagement tool that gets you real-time feedback from employees. You can schedule one survey per week to a team of 10 to 100,000 employees and include NPS, open-ended, or yes or no question types. With TinyPulse, you can find the root cause of the issue, take on critical feedback anytime, and keep conversations anonymous. Also, managers can identify top performers through data and insights, send cheers and gift cards.
Pros
Helps identify current issues through anonymous surveys
Increase team rapport by showing support to team members
Easy to send a survey to a large batch of employees
Kazoo
Kazoo online employee engagement platform will keep employees engaged and improve employee experience with features like performance management, recognition, and rewards, all in one platform. It brings employees and people team to come together and strengthen the culture. With Kazoo, you can embrace workforce development, give your employees a voice, and create an employee-centric culture. Its simple and straightforward dashboard lets you track employee activities in a go, like who is doing well and who needs support.
Pros
Quick customization of colors and fonts
Easy to recognize employees, reward them, earn rewards, and assign points to them
Performance management, rewards, and recognition are all in one system.
Energage
Energage helps companies collect, analyze, and intensity the voice of their employees. The four-pronged integrated solutions help companies recruit and retain the best talents. The tool can be used to collect feedback, communicate with employees, maintain employer branding, and give regular coaching to your employees. After initiating conversations, you can follow up with your employees based on communication and align employees' needs to the company.
Pros
Straightforward to set-up by location and department
A robust dashboard that can be drill down to minute details
Easy to access and integrate with external analysis tools
Reflektive
Reflektive software helps you build a high-yielding employee culture with performance data, employee engagement, and accurate analysis. It means it allows people teams to share goals and OKRS, track progress, and detect early issues. Managers can create team and individual goals and align the organizational matrix to each goal. Using feedback, check-ins, and 1:1s to track performance, you can discuss employees' improvement areas, leading to organizational growth and improvements.
Pros
The interface is clean, modern and intuitive.
Helps provide feedback to other team members
Easy to send quick reminders to employees who haven't completed their reviews
7Geese
7Geese is an employee-first tool that helps HR teams with OKR goal management, performance reviews, and set career goals for employees. Align easy goals with strategic objectives from the bottom to top approach. Managers can get real-time updates on employees' performance and work together to overcome roadblocks. Its flexible and customizable tracking mechanism gives you transparency in data and compliments your company processes.
Pros
Easy to maintain and balance OKR's
OKR process is easy, dynamic and functional
Easy to navigate and implement features without any training
Emplify
Emplify is an employment improvement platform that allows managers to set assessments for employees, offer timely coaching to them, and guide top-level executives and senior-level teams with a further course of action. Employees can share feedback without hesitation and worry. People Insights Expert will help dissect the data and align individual goals to organizational goals keeping senior executives in the loop. It also coaches and trains frontline managers to assist and guide people in their team.
Pros
Easy breakdown of categories for employee engagement
Data can be drilled down into many forms to focus on issues.
User-friendly People Insight Consultants for any help needed
Motivosity
Motivosity is a modern-day platform that combines four integrated products to address various aspects of job satisfaction into one platform. It approaches employees in four parts: connect, recognize, lead, and listen. With Motivosity, you can help team members connect, appreciate employees in public, train managers to grow into leaders, and listen to employee sentiments leading to a motivated and engaged workforce.
Pros
Send appreciation to employees across the organization.
Multiple ways to recognize and incentivize people
Motto bucks can be encashed at your convenience.
Peakon
Peakon is an employee data platform that provides actionable insights to transform your business. These data help managers segment employee data into various demographics and show appealing real-time trends. The team across geographies can connect through Peakon. It also helps in improving productivity, manage business performance, and employee retention from onboarding to exit. You can give feedback to upcoming managers and train them to become future leaders.
Pros
Ability to handle feedback anonymously
Excellent support team
Easy to implement within the organization
Culture Amp
Culture Amp provides employees with feedback under one roof. Its three-layer interconnected approach – engagement, performance, and retention takes employee experience to the next level. Through machine learning algorithms, you can combine the employee's past and present data and retain the best talent. You can also create training modules based on the top-performing employee lifecycle and set the right examples across the team. What more, you can segment data to evaluate employee's performance and document all the feedback and conversation for easy future references.
Pros
User-friendly and easy to navigate interface
Easy to segregate data based on department, location, tenure, etc.
Easy upload of CSV. Files to upload emails of users to send surveys
Conclusion:
Employee feedback plays an important role in employee experience. It helps in reducing employee attrition and improves employee satisfaction. Employee experience is related to many factors like work environment, motivation, satisfaction, and productivity. When employees feel happy, safe, and motivated at the workplace, employee experience rises suddenly. It's a continuous effort and not a one-time activity. Hence, you need to continuously nurture your employees to get full marks on employee experience.
Using employee experience tools, you can listen to your employees and work on feedback more sophisticatedly than before. Although these tools will make your work easier, all your hard work will turn futile if you do not have a human connection with your people. Remember, it's always people that connect and relate to people. So, pick the best one from the options outlined above.
About the author: Rose Moore. Strategic HR generalist professional with expertise in HR Operations, Compensation Benefits, Business Partnering, Labor Laws, Talent Acquisition, and Development Activities. A voracious reader, you will almost always find me reading or digging information on the latest trends, collating articles on trending software and solutions, reading the why’s and how’s of a phenomenon.
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rose-moore/ Twitter:https://twitter.com/Moi_rose_moore
HR Mistakes Impact Your Entire Organizaion
Lear how to avoid the 12 most common mistakes with our free ebook
Download Now
hbspt.cta.load(549864, '728c69f5-dcbd-411d-845d-945a82deaa2e', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});
if(checkPopupCookie("popupcookie-wm","close-wm-popup")) {
setCookie('popupcookie-wm', 'close-wm-popup', "10");
};
$('#close-homepage-popup').click(function () {
$('.homepage-popup').fadeOut()
$('.homepage-mobile-overlay').fadeOut();
});
$('.homepage-mobile-overlay').click(function (e) {
$('.homepage-mobile-overlay').fadeOut();
$('.homepage-popup').fadeOut();
});
$('.btn.btn--orange-action').click(function (e) {
setCookie('popupcookie-hrc', 'close-hrc-popup', "10");
$('.homepage-mobile-overlay').fadeOut();
$('.homepage-popup').fadeOut();
});
12 Tips on Creating Your Own Intranet Communications Plan
Internal communication is a crucial aspect of teamwork. That’s why every business manager should have a well-defined internal communication strategy that can propel the company towards success and enhance teamwork in various work conditions.
What does an intranet communication plan mean?
To deliver cutting-edge customer service, your company’s internal communication structure must incorporate every employee. Furthermore, the communication must be smooth, effective, and passed on promptly.
The best way to achieve this is to have a comprehensive internal communication guide that keeps workers updated on the company goals and initiatives. The guide must direct on the mission, timelines, implementers, and measures the progress as discussed in the 12 tips on creating your own intranet communications plan below.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
Know your current internal communication status
Before you start working out on the 12 tips on creating your intranet communications channels, search out, and establish if your company has any communication strategiesengaging remote teamsthat are working. Build on what you have or start from scratch.
It is important to engage your key stakeholders in a brainstorming session to know where to start. Establish who will be responsible, what kind of effective communication they need, and how the information will be disseminated. You can engage your employees in focus group discussions and you will likely get important outcomes.
Understand what communication tools are at your disposal
Knowing the tools you have will help you when setting up your business goals because you will know who shall use them, how they shall be used, and when they shall be used. HRassignment helpexperts say that you will know if you need to buy one if the one you already have does not have every required feature or functionality.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
You may ask yourself questions like:
Is every worker able to use the tool?
Can the workers express themselves freely using the tool?
Can it handle the quantity of information that needs to be disseminated?
Is the tool friendly to running surveys or polling?
Write down your goals
Before you look into the team member’s needs, first look into what the business needs and, more specifically, why the business needs it. When the business becomes sustainable, the workers shall be sustainable.
Next, look into what the workers need to communicate effectively. Ensure your goals are measurable, effective, and relatable to each worker. To get better results, have a definition of who your workers are and who are the influencers within your workforce.
Tackle the business challenge first
Your business goals must be addressed first before building your internal communications strategy. It is important to look into yourbusiness process modelingstrategies to determine if they are working or not. Engage your team members in a high-level business goals building plan and have a solid and workable plan.
During your high-level key holders meeting, ensure the 12 tips on creating your own intranet communications plan is your central guide. Address business issues like how good your customer service is, how effective is the HR as well as the marketing departments.
Breakdown your teams into audiences
Next, separate your team members into separate groups depending on how they consume information. Employee engagement audiences are different from key stakeholders. Team audiences are the consumers of information, while key stakeholders are those that influence the expected results.
To achieve successful internal communications, look into the mindset of each audience in terms of their work. For example, the sales team has a selling mindset, while the accounting team has a balance sheet mindset.You need to keep the work profiles in mind before laying out the pointers.
Build your communication points
Next, build your internal communication strategy points that you want to disseminate to your audience list. It is relevant to stick to fewer points that can be easily consumed by the intended audiences. For each point, build several sub-points to support your main points.
You can build your points by asking yourself questions like what, why, where, when, how, and who. Additionally, remember to have your points as simple as possible for a successful internal communication strategy. Sometimes it works better when you send your communication when least expected.
Be relevant
Your hard work in building strong communication points could go to waste if you are not relevant in your communication. Having communication points is different from having the right information.
To build relevant internal communications, look into the need of every audience, and let the communication inspiring. Remember to use a professional tone and do not let the workers feel like you are commanding them or pushing them too hard. The information must be informative as well as clear and engaging.
Strategize for creating intranet communications plan
At this level, draw the strategy you will use in communicating your business goals as well as the most effective communications channels. If you pass on the message wrongly, your team members will not connect well with your messages and you might find it difficult to build trust both internally and externally.
Your communication channel of choice must be able to deliver your intended message perfectly. Different channels can be used for different audiences like social media, video, chats, paper, emails, virtual meetings, and physical meetings.
Have measurable progress
For best outcomes, design ways to help you understand how your employees feel about your effective communication strategy of choice. The bottom line is; you must be ready to adapt to a new strategy if the one in place is not working.
You can know through active employee engagement in submitting feedback. Once in a while, send five-minute surveys online and let the employees send their feedback. You can also allow employees to write and submit which points they feel should be improved on or removed. Your internal communication strategies must be embraceable by the whole team at the individual and corporate level.
Set timelines for each level of communication
After settling on the most effective communications strategy for your business goals, set timelines on how the 12 tips on creating your intranet communications plan shall be communicated step by step progressively.
You may have twelve months dived into three-month sections and which set of points shall be communicated in each. To kill monotony, you can adjust your communication channels keeping in mind the best channel applicable to each group.
Be consistent
Consistency brings perfection. Without overdoing, have a consistent flow of information until your business goals stick into the mind of every worker. Apart from emails and social media communication, create internal monthly magazines or three-month periodicals and let the employees contribute to the columns.
The good thing with magazines is that the employees can keep perusing through whenever they have free time. It can even be more captivating if the internal magazines contain pictorials of the workers while on duty.
Create a follow-up strategy
Your workers must not be consumers of your internal communication strategies only. After they receive information, there should be channels of feedback. The follow-up strategy should be open and periodical to give ample time for the workers to digest the information they receive first.
If you allow instant feedback, you will likely receive negative feedback all the time because there was no time to digest the information. During follow-ups, alert your workers about a week earlier so that they prepare psychologically and be ready to give their best and sincere feedback.
Conclusion
Evaluating a communication plan is an evolving process that will continuously grow as the organization progresses. Each strategic objective affects the methodologies which you adopt and will determine the performance of your company. Note, the purpose of internal communication is not merely to exchange content. Internal communication must also captivate, encourage, and energize as much as possible.
Author Bio: Ashley Simmons is a professional journalist, editor andcollege paper writer. She has been working in a newspaper in Salt Lake City for four years and has assignments from leading onlineessay paperwebsites. She has expertise in writingcustom essay papersand covers various subjects with great ease and delivers high-quality work, which has made her popular in the writing circle.
5 Best Practices for Your Internal Communications Strategy
You can promote optimal daily operations with an effective internal communication strategy.
Most companies have best practices for communicating with customers and partners. Companies even create policies for communicating with new employees.
However, it’s important to maintain the same level of planning when communicating with existing staff members. It’s also essential to provide tools that help employees communicating with each other.
Effective internal communication is not nice to do—it’s a must. It improves employee engagement. Effective communication also helps to align employee ideals with company goals.
Revamping internal communications is a considerable undertaking. However, it’s more than worth the effort for the positive results.
For five best practices for your internal communication strategy, keep reading.
1. Understand the Current Internal Communication Strategy
Some organizations already have established internal communications policies. In this case, your existing systems are a good place to start with revamping your practices.
You’ll need to begin by rethinking your internal communication processes. For this best-practice, you’ll need to conduct a detailed introspection.
However, some organizations do not have an official internal corporate communications policy. In this instance, you can move on to identifying unique metrics. These metrics will quantify internal communication success for your organization—more on that in a moment.
If you have existing policies in place, you’ll need to examine your current strategies. For example, you’d need to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your internal communications policy.
You’d also need to figure out who’s involved with the planning of internal communications. More importantly, you’ll need to figure out how to improve your existing processes.
2. Identify Key Metrics
Most likely, your organization uses key performance indicators (KPIs) for processes such as sales. You might also use them to measure customer service. However, you can also use KPIs to analyze your internal communication strategy.
To begin, you’ll need to choose core metrics. These metrics will show you what parts of your strategies work—and what doesn’t.
For example, your company might measure success based on how many employees use your intranet. This metric will also provide insight into how employees use company tools. It will also help you to determine if you’re reaching employees.
You may also measure employee social media shares. Alternatively, you might keep track of how many employees read internal content.
Metrics allow you to dissect your corporate communications strategies. They help you to learn what areas need more attention.
3. Choose Tangible Goals
It’s important to establish realistic goals for your organization. Reasonable goals can help you to assess obstacles.
They can help you figure out the challenges of deploying a new strategy. Realistic goals can also help you to work more efficiently toward updating your policies.
Your internal communications metrics can help in this regard. These benchmarks can help you to figure out where you can make immediate improvements.
As for your goals, you may want to know what improved internal communication can do for your firm. You may also want to know how quickly you can achieve new goals.
4. Identify the Stakeholders
When publishing internal communications, it’s vital to know your audience. Marketers, for example, learn intimate details about their ideal consumer.
In the same way, it’s important to understand your employees. By doing so, you can figure out what messages you need to communicate to select staff members.
Many organizations mistakenly think that all employees need to receive all messages. They believe that this policy promotes transparency.
Employees need to have current information about your firm. However, it’s better to segment your internal corporate communications.
By segmenting internal messages, you can ensure that important messages don’t get lost in a sea of information. You can also prevent employees from suffering from information overload.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
5. Pinpoint Internal Communication Tools
It’s essential to identify the channels that you use to publish content. It’s also important to consider the internal tools that you use to share company information.
Some messages are better suited for certain channels. For example, you might publish a positive company announcement on an open platform such as Twitter. You might post job openings on LinkedIn. Meanwhile, you might limit propriety information to the company newsletter.
It’s also helpful to consider your communications tools. For instance, team tools such as LIKE.TG Workmates help you share important information with staff members. It also allows enterprises to stay focused on employee engagement and company culture.
Finalize Your Internal Communication Plan
It’s also important to formalize the approval process for communication in the workplace. By doing so, you can avoid needless errors.
For example, you can ensure that you don’t accidentally promote closed comments from internal forums. Alternatively, you can make sure that you don’t send the wrong information to the wrong staff member segment.
To develop an approval process, you need to figure out who’s in charge of your internal communication strategy. Typically, this is the person or group that writes messages to the team. However, you’ll also want to consider the best stakeholders who can contribute to the approval process.
You might also consider hiring an employee engagement manager. However, most companies usually put their marketing department in charge of this task. Marketing professionals are generally the most skilled at creating content.
For this reason, members of the marketing department are typically the most qualified for the role. They’re also well-qualified to convey the desired company voice, brand, and image.
More than likely, your marketing team is also well-versed in navigating your existing content library. For this reason, it’s easy for them to locate relevant content.
Marketing professionals are also skilled at pointing staff members to industry-specific resources. What’s more, they can ensure that the information is timely and relevant. For marketers, this kind of ability comes naturally.
To learn more about Workmates features, download our ebook now.
Download now
Promote Success With Improved Internal Communication
Now you know more about the best practices for your internal communication strategy. An effective communication strategy will ensure that employees feel as though their opinions have a voice. In turn, your staff members will feel more engaged.
Effective internal communications will make employees feel educated, informed, and inspired. More importantly, however, it promotes optimal performance.
LIKE.TG’s Workmates platform is a powerful internal communication tool that can promote employee engagement. Contact LIKE.TG today to schedule a free consultation or request a demo.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Build Success in the Workplace Using the Employee Engagement Lifecycle
Employees are the pulse of any organization. The more engaged the employees, the more productive they are. In turn, engaged employees drive a strong customer experience.
But, it is also an inevitable facet of organizations that employees will come and go over time. Growth may lead to new hires, or employees may make decisions to change jobs. Companies need to be assessing employees in all stages of their tenure and determining the level of engagement.
By strategizing, you can make the most out of each stage of the employee engagement lifecycle, from those not yet hired to those departing. The commitment of the employees to the company and its goals impact the company's overall success.
What Is the Employee Engagement Lifecycle?
Every employee will have a beginning and an end with your company. The employee engagement lifecycle looks at employment as a cyclical process. Even exiting employees can have an impact on potential future employees.
The employee engagement lifecycle journey covers six stages: attraction, recruitment, onboarding, development, retention, and separation. At no point in the lifecycle can you sit back and stop engaging with your employees. All stages are critical to the overall employee - and thereby, the company - experience.
An excellent recruitment strategy with high turnover, for example, shows weaknesses in retention. The company should focus on bolstering the retention stage.
The employee experience is an overall mindset. It is not a start-and-stop program when issues arise. Many organizations do not have a good pulse on their employee engagement levels and thus are missing out on providing the employees with reasons to stay.
To learn even more about improving the employee experience and increasing your competitive advantage while providing a fast return on investment, download our ebook now.
Download now
Why Does the Employee Engagement Lifecycle Matter?
Engaged employees are critical to remaining competitive in today's market. Not only do you need to attract top talent, but the best employees will drive your company. You will have better products, services, customer interactions, growth, and profitability.
Some employees choose to stay with a company for things like work-life balance, challenging work, company goals, or wellness benefits. But there are other reasons an employee will stay with a company, even when presented with a better offer. The employee must feel:
Engaged and connected with the company
Empowered to succeed
That the company is invested in their well-being
Respected for their contributions
That they receive personal treatment
The advantages of employee engagement are significant. You should have a strategic, comprehensive approach for engagement in each stage in the lifecycle. Think about your overall company culture and what that engagement looks like within your organization.
Christopher BaggottChief Executive Officer of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
Build Success into Each Stage
Your goals should be to turn your employees into advocates. Not only will employee advocacy promote your brand, but this will help attract new employees or lead to employee referrals. Even departing employees can be advocates if they leave on good terms.
Understanding and developing strategies for each stage will strengthen your employee engagement. Over time, you can measure your efforts and adjust accordingly.
You can use your metrics and engagement data as insights into the success of your strategies. This becomes meaningful intelligence at the department and individual manager level. It will help you to recognize the contributions of employees to the business.
Attraction Stage
Often, potential employees begin to review your company before you even know they exist. They may start on sites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor, trying to get a feel for your company. At this point, potential employees are evaluating your reputation and values, trying to determine if they would be a good fit before applying.
Employee referrals are an invaluable source for quality candidates. You will often have reduced hiring time and a better conversion rate. It shows the engagement of your current employees that they want to participate in the company's growth.
Companies that don't attract great people will fail to compete in the marketplace. Attracting the right talent is crucial to growth. You want the first impression to be favorable and honest.
Strategies: Focus on employer branding or addressing the desires of potential candidates. Think about what you are projecting across all platforms. This includes the careers page on your website and social media attraction.
Measuring Success: How many employee referrals do you receive? What are the impressions or other metrics on job postings? How many applicants do you receive, and are they high-quality candidates?
Recruitment Stage
The next step of the candidate experience for that potential employee is to apply. At this point, the candidate wants to connect with you and feel that the connection is authentic.
Successful recruitment is vital to a company's success. You are determining the future needs of the company and finding the right candidate for that role. A quality pool of applicants is critical to finding the right person for the job.
The time spent during the recruitment and interview process should focus on getting to know the candidate. Also, you want to allow the candidate to learn more about the company. Keep the dialogue open during the recruitment process.
Part of recruitment also involves knowing when to walk away. A candidate that started out well may later raise some red flags. You may also determine that the employee will not be a good fit for the company culture or has demands that you cannot meet.
Ultimately, a candidate's decision to accept an offer will be based on the value proposition you provide. This may be different from candidate to candidate, so you will want to learn as much as possible during the interviews. One candidate may be looking for money, while another may focus on company culture.
Strategies: Personalize the process as much as possible. Keep the communication open and communicate with candidates throughout the process. Ensure that hiring staff is trained in identifying what the candidate desires from an entire so that the value proposition is clear.
Measuring Success: What are the results of a new hire survey? How many job offers has the company made versus the number accepted? What is the average length of time to fill roles?
Onboarding Stage
Onboarding is more than checking boxes on new hire checklists and filling out paperwork. You need to connect your new hire to other employees. It is important to begin immersing the employee in company culture.
Onboarding is about creating an engaging first employee experience with the company. This begins with pre-boarding or the tasks that take place before the employee's first day. You also want to create a positive first impression with new hire orientation.
Those first few days do not have to be dry and dull. You can jump right into the new employee's role and meaningful work by having a smooth onboarding process. 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding.
To be effective in onboarding, you want the new hire to feel valued as soon as possible. Time should be spent understanding the role, which will result in increased engagement going forward.
Give your new employees plenty of opportunities to connect with their teams. Whether through group gatherings or chat tools, you want to make the new employee feel welcome.
Strategies: Give hires self-service tools, such as documentation, tasks, and workflows. This saves time and increases productivity. Have a plan in place for the first 30, 60, and 90 days with a visual timeline.
Measuring Success: What are the results of onboarding surveys? Are new employees successfully completing onboarding goals? What is the feedback of the employee's manager in the first year?
Development Stage
Engaged employees are 44% more productive than workers who merely feel satisfied. Part of that productivity is driven by employees that learn and grow in their roles. Employees want to feel that they are benefitting both personally and professionally, beyond just a salary.
People learn in different ways. You will want to provide various opportunities for learning, including:
Fostering connection to let employees learn from each other
Allowing people to "learn by doing," if they are comfortable with that
Using experienced staff as formal mentors to teach less experienced staff
Offering independent learning and upskilling opportunities
Letting employees learn at their own pace
Learning drives innovation, and you may be surprised at what employees can come up with on their own. You can also encourage employees to create their own career paths.
Managers should get to know employees on a personal level. They should encourage and coach them according to their goals. Conversations should focus on development, performance, and growth.
Strategies: Use gamification, or learning through play, to increase interest in learning. Get feedback from employees on their career goals. Provide regular interactions with managers to encourage ongoing conversations about professional development.
Measuring Success: What is the frequency and quality of one-on-one meetings? What development opportunities are completed by employees? What are the stats of any gamification provided?
Retention Stage
Beyond the initial stages of an employee's career, retention happens when the employee is committed. Employees do not want to be taken for granted. They want to know that their work is seen and valued.
Through meetings, kudos, or other recognition, the message should be clear and consistent. Thank the employees for their work. Let them know that you appreciate them.
You can increase the visibility of employee contributions. This promotes collaboration and encourages positive feedback. Employees can then steer themselves towards success.
Retention also happens when the employees feel that they have a role in the company's achievements and goals. Provide regular company updates through a newsfeed. An intranet can build that sense of accomplishment.
Employees will also stay with a company when they feel connected to their colleagues. Provide and encourage interaction in productive, fun, and meaningful ways. Chat and collaboration tools can help with this.
Strategies: Use surveys and polls to get a pulse on employees. Have a system of rewards and recognition for a job well done.
Measuring Success: What is the frequency and quality of one-on-one meetings? What are the results of performance reviews and team goals? What is the average employee tenure?
Separation Stage
The separation process is one last opportunity to engage with employees. It doesn't have to be painful. Instead, it can be a streamlined and professional experience.
Happy employees, even happy former employees, are an excellent source for new hire referrals. Maintaining engagement with employees after they leave keeps your company on their minds. This could be as simple as continuing to provide a company newsletter or a quick touch-base on LinkedIn.
An often overlooked step is an exit interview. This is a valuable opportunity to learn more about why the employee chose to make a career change.
Use an exit interview to get appropriate feedback. Give the employee an opportunity to be frank and honest. You can use the insights to improve overall employee retention going forward.
Strategies: Find ways to stay connected with former employees. Give employees a professional farewell experience. Prepare exit interview questions guided by what you hope to learn.
Measuring Success: What are the primary reasons for leaving? What is the employee turnover rate?
Having the Tools to Support Employee Engagement
Interaction with your employees must remain consistent throughout all stages of the employee engagement lifecycle. Less engagement at any stage can have a cascading effect.
Each stage presents its own opportunities for the company and managers to engage with employees. But how can the company be equipped to handle the relationships when these moments arise?
From recognition to communication to the onboarding experience, you want to have the tools in place to keep your employees engaged and connected.
LIKE.TG has products for every aspect of the employee engagement lifecycle. Learn more about our end-to-end solutions by scheduling a demo today.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
The HR Guide to Employee Data Protection
It's no secret that HR professionals have a wide range of important responsibilities. They're tasked with managing disciplinary and grievance procedures, handling payroll, as well as actively managing and overseeing the company's recruitment and resourcing strategies.
However, one of their most important tasks is to protect both company and employee data from a multitude of potential threats, from company negligence to cybersecurity breaches. If they fail to do so, an identity theft lawyer could have a big clean up job on their hands.
This article brings you the HR guide to employee data protection and what an HR professional needs to do to comply with data protection laws and compliance regulations. Let's get into it.
GDPR: An overview of HR
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a relatively new EU data privacy regulation that came into effect on May 25, 2018. The reason for its inception is due to the fact that companies are now gathering data at an exponential rate, from both consumer and employee aspects.
The more data a company holds, the more likely it is to become the target of hackers and cyber thieves trying to obtain information for nefarious activities such as computer crimes and fraud.
When you think about it, HR departments have access to a lot of sensitive employee information, such as their name, social security number, address, date of birth, previous addresses, and so on. It's a virtual gold mine for hackers and cybercriminals.
However, the risk doesn't just fall on the shoulders of the employee. Here are some of the ways businesses can suffer from data leaks:
A significant loss of reputation
Damage to employee trust
Damage to customer trust
Litigation costs
Costs from malware attacks
Fines and penalties
GDPR aims to protect the employee's personal data by setting out guidelines and regulations that companies must adhere to if they are to remain compliant. Otherwise, they could be liable to face punishment in the form of fines and penalties.
What HR needs to do to comply with employee Data Protection
There are numerous amounts of information and regulations that HR professionals must keep up with in order to keep up with the new GDPR and employee data protection rules. Here are some of the main tasks HR needs to address:
Recognize and prevent cybersecurity attacks. This means choosing the right cloud services that have data protection as a priority.
Update and review privacy policies for all staff
Always document the reason for the need to process personal information.
Making sure employees understand their rights, particularly their right to access, rectify, and erase their own data if they wish
Make sure that the only people that have access to personal information are the ones who require it.
Adhere to timely document deletion. A company can only hold onto its data for a predetermined amount of time, especially if it is not necessary for business practices.
Consider whether the company's employee monitoring is acceptable/necessary (such as email monitoring and CCTV)
Common misconceptions of Data Protection
The digital landscape is constantly changing, and as we continue to propel forward into an age designed around data and information, it becomes increasingly challenging to keep up with regulations.
With that being said, there are still plenty of misconceptions when it comes to employee data protection and GDPR laws. Let's take a look at some of the most common misunderstandings:
The company does not have to notify employees when processing their personal data
This is somewhat of a gray area and is a difficult one to navigate for HR employees. There are instances where employers do not have to notify employees when processing their data. This is usually when there are valid legal grounds for doing so. However, there are times when it's necessary to notify employees when their personal data is processed, such as when they are added to an employee directory app. The long and short of it is, it depends.
The employer can freely monitor employees work
Employers are not free to monitor all of their employees' work if it breaches GDPR rules. Things such as email monitoring, CCTV, and other surveillance are considered personal data, and the standard rules apply.
GDPR is an EU law and therefore does not apply to the USA
GDPR applies to the USA and all other nations. Article 3 clearly states that GDPR applies to companies in the EU/EEA and companies outside of this that track EU/EEA residents' data. Simply put, if you have any employees who reside in these areas, even if they are freelancers, then GDPR applies.
Breaches of regulations will automatically result in penalties
Breaches of regulations are considered on a case-by-case basis. The penalty for such instances will be decided based upon based on the severity of the breach, the implications on the victims, and the reasons for the breach in the first place. If data was leaked due to the company's negligence, they will likely face fines and penalties as a result.
Conclusion
Overall, as the employee and consumer information gathering is rapidly increasing in the company’s practices, there should also be definite procedures protecting the sensitive data. The list of HR Professionals’ responsibilities is also growing and nowadays they have to undertake certain actions in order to keep everything in a safe place. We hope that this guide assists you in your security practices.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
What is a Workflow and Why Do You Need It?
Are you still using a paper-based to-do list or project management system? Do you have a hard time staying up-to-date on your employee's work in real-time? Did you know that 85% of employees aren't engaged at work, costing billions of dollars in lost productivity?
The experts agree this is due in large part to mismanagement.
So, how can you improve your management skills and increase employee engagement? The answer is simple: you need automated workflows. But, what is a workflow?
Don't worry if you don't know, as we're here to help you. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about workflows and how to create them so you can stay competitive in your industry.
Who Needs a Workflow Tool?
If you have a team working together on any project, you need a workflow process. This allows everyone on your team to know what's expected of them and when. By using an automated workflow management software, you take yourself out of the equation when it comes to micromanaging your team.
This gives everyone the autonomy to plan their schedules and ensure their work is done on time for the next person in the workflow process.
Project management can be overwhelming and complicated, but when you create streamlined business processes that are followed every time, you create a simplified plan. This allows everyone on your team to see the plan and know when they need to complete their part.
So, if you have a team that has problems with task management, then you need to create a workflow. However, you might be asking, what is a workflow? We answer that next.
To learn more about Workmates features, download our ebook now.
Download now
What Is a Workflow?
A workflow is a system or series of steps you need to take if you create a product, provide a service, or complete a repeatable task or project. Each time you or your team needs to work on this project or create this product, they need to know exactly what steps to complete and in what order.
Your workflow management systems give this to them. It also allows you to duplicate yourself because you will no longer have to guide your team through the creation process. Everyone can see the series of steps required and where you are in the process.
Workflow automation is a system you create to outline the process your team needs to follow every time they complete a certain project. For your web developers, this could be a workflow outlining client onboarding for each new project. For your accounting department, this encompasses business or accounting workflow management for both accounts receivable and payable.
For your HR team, this can include employee onboarding or employee vacation requests, for example. Every time your company hires a new employee, there are certain forms that need to be filled out and education that needs to be completed. Does everyone on your team know what these are and what they need to do?
If not, then you need to create this system for them, so you can stop micromanaging and get back to working on your business instead. So, a workflow is a system or process consisting of the exact steps for each time you work on a project or create a product.
Why You Need to Create Automated Processes for Your Business
You have a business to run, and you have many items on your to-do list already. And yet, here we are telling you that you need to take the time to make a checklist; it might sound redundant.
But it's vital to running an efficient and streamlined company. Don't rely on a list in your head. This does two things:
It creates an environment in which you're required to be present and involved in every project
It leaves too much room for human error if you forget a step or can't remember if you've done it already and have to go back and check
You don't want to risk either one of these scenarios for your business. You want to improve productivity. You want to create a business that allows you to be elsewhere working on your business. This empowers your team to do the work themselves.
Let's say you run a managed IT services company. Every month you run certain processes and create reports for each of your clients. You must have a workflow created so everyone knows what needs to be done and where they can help.
And for example, let's say your IT firm also offers a service to create new websites or apps for businesses. Creating a website or app is a long process with many steps. So, again, you need a checklist to ensure that nothing is forgotten.
This is the basis for what a workflow is, so now let's show why they're important.
By having a checklist they follow every time, they never need to wonder if they're doing the right thing or in the right order. Additionally, as other team members come into the project mid-way, everyone can instantly see what's already been completed and where they can help with the next step.
How to Create a Workflow
A good workflow not only tells your team what to do and when, but it also shows them the exact steps, or best practices, as outlined by senior management. It also helps management to see where the backlog can become a problem or where deficiencies in productivity may lie.
That's all well and good; you know that you need to create workflows, but how? We've created a process workflow to help you create them for your own business.
1. Start With the End in Mind
The best place to start is to know what your end goal is. This will ensure that at the end of the workflow, you've created the product or delivered the service as desired by the client or customer. So before you start outlining the steps, take the time to clearly define the finished product.
2. Brainstorm the Steps
Next, you'll start to brainstorm the necessary steps to get from the beginning of your project to the final deliverable. Then map out each step in order; you can do this using an ideal model knowing that, in reality, it won't always be so neat and tidy.
3. Identify Resources Needed
This is where you'll start to look at the details for each step in your brainstorming process. What will you and your team need to complete each step in your workflow? Who will complete each step in your workflow?
Resources needed can include more employees if there is a bottleneck, more money if there is a budget, and more time if there is a tight deadline.
4. Determine Ownership and Provide Training
Once you know the basic structure of your workflow and the resources necessary, you need to determine who will be responsible for each step. By clearly defining who the stakeholders are in the process, you don't have to worry about delegating or waiting for someone to pick up a project.
Everyone knows what is expected of them and when. Clarity is key in this step. Everyone must be on the same page in order for automated workflows to flow seamlessly.
5. Test and Tweak Each Process
Continually work through your business process management and work to improve productivity. Talk with everyone on your team and find out where their concerns or problems are. This allows you to define a problem and then start working to solve any issues that could be causing inefficiencies in your approval workflow.
A Common Workflow Example
Each time you hire someone new, are you sure they have all the information they need to succeed? Does each manager in your company follow the same process, or do they have their own way of doing things?
With a uniform workflow, you don't have to worry about these scenarios. Instead, you know that every employee has what they need to succeed and that it's consistent across your company.
Here is an example of an onboarding workflow your HR team could follow each time:
Send an immediate automatic email to every new hire with the history and culture of your company
Send an automatic email the day before every new hire's first day with pertinent information about their first day and where they need to go
IT sets up their workspace before their first day with all the equipment they need to do their job
First-day tour of the building or campus to ensure they feel comfortable and know where to go
Share company goals and position benefits on the first day
Have the first week, the first month, and first 90 days checklist available so everyone knows what is expected of them
With this in place, you know the process you need to follow every time you hire someone new. And if you outsource any or all of these steps to your team, they know the process they need to follow. This is what a streamlined and efficient workflow looks like for your team.
Now, you don't need to wonder if you're creating a workflow that will help or hinder your team. You know that you've followed the steps to create a system anyone can use at any time without you holding their hand or following up on whether or not it was done.
This guide was designed to help you navigate through those difficult tasks and help determine the right software for your organization, download our ebook now.
Download now
Stop Wondering and Start Building Your Workflows Today
This article has covered a monster topic and will change the way you run your business. If you follow each of the steps listed, you will see not only an increase in productivity but an increase in engagement as well.
At the outset, we shared a shocking statistic, that the majority of workers by far aren't engaged in their jobs. But, when you empower your employees with clearly defined workflows and systematized processes, then you can put them back in the driver seats of their own careers.
Now you don't have to wonder what is a workflow, instead you know how to create them and the power they will give to your business and team members. To learn more, watch our video or request a free demo, so you can see how creating automated forms and workflows can transform your business.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Improving the Employee Onboarding Process from Start to Finish
Why is Onboarding Important?
In today’s competitive job market, companies need to do all they can to find, attract, and hire the right employees. Fair enough, yet surprisingly, even this isn’t enough to guarantee success.
To make sure employees are really able to make a difference and help the company become more competitive, new hires must be able to hit the ground running on day one.
This is why employee onboarding is so important. A good onboarding program gets the employer-employee relationship started on the right foot and contributes to increased morale, productivity, and engagement.
Yet a bad onboarding experience falls short of these benefits and inevitably leads to wasted time, money, and effort. Without an engaging new hire experience, your organization will find it increasingly difficult to attract and retain the best talent.
Plan for Success, Right from the Start
It all leads to an important question: What can you do to improve your onboarding process and make sure your new hires are happy, productive, and positioned for maximum success?
One of the first ways to accomplish this is to think about the entire process, including the right strategy and tools to support it.
For example, developing a detailed new hire checklist is a great way to consider the entire process, make sure nothing is overlooked, and ensure the entire experience is as smooth as possible. When creating new hire checklists, it’s important to think beyond traditional HR responsibilities. Other departments such as IT, payroll, and facilities usually play an important role in onboarding new employees.
Involve these departments to give new hires everything they need all at once, while also demonstrating that your company has it all figured out!
This guide was designed to help you navigate through those difficult tasks and help determine the right software for your organization, download our ebook now.
Download now
Things to Consider When Developing Your Onboarding Checklist
It’s important to remember that the onboarding checklist is a vital document, and one that should intuitively guide a new hire through all the steps of your onboarding process.
To make sure you give them everything they need—and help them hit the ground running on day one—consider all of these areas when developing your checklist.
Your corporate culture:
Plan to share important information to help new hires gain a better appreciation of your corporate history, values, and overall brand.
Details about their position:
New hires can benefit from understanding where their position fits within the overall organization, and how it contributes to helping the company achieve its overall goals.
Information about their department or the whole organization:
Include additional details such as all the other positions in their group or department, organizational charts, and more.
Training:
Consider highlighting any training they may need, either in the short term to get up to speed or for longer term options.
Goals:
Any checklist should include specific goals and objectives expected of this new employee, including details on how they’ll be measured.
Onboarding tasks:
Outline all of the activities you’ll help new hires complete as part of their introduction to your companies. Examples of this include things like setting up laptops, creating logins and passwords, getting an official badge, learning where to
park, and just about anything else that a new employee would need.
What’s on a Typical Onboarding Checklist?
Once you’ve determined what to include in developing your overall checklist, what should it include?
New hire paperwork, such as I-9 and W-4 forms
A statement of corporate values
A video that introduces the new hire to the company, including a brief overview of important products, services, and your overall brand
A detailed list of activities for the first day
A list of important contacts within various departments, including contact information
A timetable of important activities, and what to do if they have questions
More than just Paperwork
So many people tend to associate onboarding with paperwork. It’s true that paperwork is an important part of the process, but a successful onboarding process goes well beyond enrollment forms and payroll documents.
Instead onboarding involves various meetings and important actions that must be carefully coordinated. Many innovative HR departments now assign a dedicated onboarding coordinator to spearhead the entire process. Part leader, part counselor, this coordinator goes over all the steps that must be accomplished, and also plays a role in scheduling all of the vital steps.
Onboarding Goes Well Beyond Day One
A new hire’s onboarding experience goes beyond the first day. The entire experience can take several weeks, if not longer. Along the way, various benchmarks may be established, helping new employees provide feedback about their work experience thus far and how they feel about the organization.
Everything about onboarding is intended to make the new hire feel welcome, valued, and empowered to do the job they were hired to do. This last sentiment is becoming more important as millennial and Generation Z employees begin to make up a larger portion of the workforce. These generations value the ability to contribute to the success of an organization and are not shy in speaking up to express their opinion.
This is a significant shift away from traditional hiring methods, where employees were brought on board, left alone to fill out paperwork and learn about their position, and then simply follow orders from their manager.
LIKE.TG Onboard
LIKE.TG’s Onboard solution now helps automate and improve the entire onboarding experience. Onboard streamlines the entire process and gives new employees the tools they need to make their first great.
For example, our Form Builder capability helps to eliminate what could be mountains of paperwork. You can easily create all the digital documents a new hire needs to complete and make them available in an easy-to-access self-service portal.
With Onboard, new hires have more time to make the right decisions when completing important forms. We also help you provide pre-built I-9, W-4, direct deposit forms, and more—all part of a full library of form templates available in the Onboard solution.
We even offer easy drag-and-drop capabilities to design customized documents to collect additional required information. No matter what you need to improve your onboarding experience, LIKE.TG has you covered.
Making the Future Better
LIKE.TG is committed to providing the resources necessary to make onboarding effective. HR managers understand that orientation is the first step in what is hopefully a long career path. This means that the information gathered will help the employee begin an employment journey with the new company. We provide solutions and allow you to be even more efficient in the employment process.
For more information on how to use LIKE.TG to improve your overall onboarding process—and achieve impressive new results—please contact us today.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Seven Crisis Communications Examples Every HR Professional Should Have
A crisis can affect your company at any time. As of this writing, the COVID-19 pandemic has gripped the world and has changed the way we think about communication, contact, and work as we once knew it. The world has never had to deal with large-scale social distancing and contactless norms as we’re currently dealing with.
Crisis management is essentially an HR function. To react appropriately to a crisis, everyone in your organization has to be on the same page. Crises tend to spring up unexpectedly, and communication during such times is of paramount importance. As tough as these times can be, they present a rare opportunity for you to enhance your company’s standing with your customers.
1. Prepare
The old saying is true: “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” You may not be able to anticipate the exact nature of a crisis but creating response plans and educating employees with regards to what a crisis looks like is essential. Your employees will appreciate having a crisis response template.
There are two plans that you should have in place above all else: Your business continuity plan and crisis recovery plan. Yourbusiness continuity plan and crisis recovery plan.The former ensures your organization will not be crippled during a crisis, and the latter will help dictate your response to the situation.
Adopt tools that allow you to quickly broadcast company-related announcements to your staff. Calling everyone on the floor to an all-hands meeting is impossible these days, and this is why you must define platform login and monitoring protocols. If your employees know what's expected of them before a crisis hits, they'll react in a coordinated manner once the situation becomes critical.
2. Identify crisis communication management teams
Who are the key people you need to deal with a crisis? Identify and train them beforehand to help them do their jobs well during a crisis. With remote workforces, communication between team members is crucial since face to face interaction isn't possible.
Create dedicated communication channels for this team and empower them to create sub-channels to help them achieve their goals. During a crisis, it's impossible to know what your team will need, and this is why using highly customizable software is essential.
3. Notify
Crisis communication is all about ensuring there are no stones left unturned when it comes to delivering your message. This approach applies to your internal communication as well. Aside from broadcasting announcements on your software platform, make sure your employees receive notifications on their phones and email as well. These messages should be delivered via SMS/mobile apps and other functionality within a modern, social intranet.
Restrict sending such notifications solely for critical moments. You don't want your employees to tune out your messages by sending them irrelevant updates and announcements.
4. Encourage responses with employee advocates
The old way of responding to a crisis was to batten down the hatches and restrict employees from talking about it. In the era of social media, not only is this the wrong approach to adopt, but it's also impossible to enforce. People turn to social media for information, and ignoring social conversations involving your company will damage your brand.
Encourage your employees to interact with customers and followers on your accounts and give them to become brand advocates. Designate responsible employees or have someone from your crisis recovery team assume control of your accounts. Make sure your employees are up to speed concerning communication tone and response protocols.
5. Accuracy (not just speed)
Your first instinct when a crisis hits will be to respond quickly to put out fires. However, an inaccurate or false response will only make the situation worse. Instead, focus on communicating honestly, and your employees will follow suit. Encourage your crisis management team to explore the situation and provide constant updates in your internal communications to all of your employees.
Above all else, never go silent. If your organization is gathering the facts surrounding the case, then communicate this internally and externally. Remaining silent conveys dishonesty and will damage your brand's reputation.
6. Test
Regular crisis communication testing is the key to measuring the effectiveness of your response. Craft response templates in advance and share them through your HR platform to gather feedback from your employees.
Share these test responses in different communication channels to gain a well-rounded picture of what your employees think. Sharing it across the entire organization at once and opening the floor to feedback from everybody might result in you getting lost in the weeds.
Make sure you include relevant personnel contact information in these templates. Your employees can then use their HR mobile app to get in touch instantly with these people when the crisis hits.
7. Review
Once a crisis passes, review your workflow with your crisis management team. Gather feedback from employees through your HR platform's channels and incorporate this into your response moving forward.
Find the opportunity in a crisis
A crisis will test your organization thoroughly, but it's also an opportunity for you to bounce back stronger than ever. Communicating decisively and clearly--with the right crisis communications plan—with your employees will help you respond as one to the crisis and will enhance your reputation. It will also bring your employees closer to one another thanks to having dealt with the situation together.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
With the workplace going remote these days, communication is of paramount importance. To learn many more tips, tricks, and best practices for communicating with remote teams, download our eBook,“A Better Way to Communicate, Engage, and Recognize Reward Remote Workers.”
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
