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5 Must-Know Remote Drivers of Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is never easy. Throw in the pandemic fuelled stress to the mix, and the whole process becomes even more complex. That is why any good HR professional or leader should be able to do the one thing that will make the process of engaging their remote workforce seem doable- understand the remote drivers of employee engagement.
In layman’s terms, employee engagement is defined as a sense of loyalty, dedication, and an emotional connection to one's place of work. The more engaged an employee is, the more likely it is that they will enhance their performance and go above and beyond to do good work.
Engagement itself can be divided into four levels:
Highly Engaged: These employees are strong supporters of the company and believe they have a stake in its success.
Moderate Engaged: These employees enjoy their work, but something prevents them from going above and beyond.
Somewhat Disengaged: These employees are dissatisfied, but they will continue working. However, they show no sense of belonging or loyalty.
Disengaged: These employees are dissatisfied, will act out, complain, and provide negative feedback about the company.
Despite its qualitative nature, employee engagement is now universally recognized as an essential component of retaining top talent and achieving higher performance. However, there are a variety of factors that influence an employee's sense of engagement. These factors are not constant and can shift over time. We refer to these factors as the "drivers of employee engagement."
The previous year has forever changed the way we connect and work, but one thing remains constant: leaders want to win the talent war and keep their remote workforce happy and satisfied.In this article, I’ll be attempting to explore the various top remote drivers of employee engagement that can elevate the employee experience while ensuring that the performance and productivity levels are optimized too.
5 Crucial Drivers Of Employee Engagement In 2021 And Beyond
1. Digital Transformation
In a study conducted by the Harvard Business Review, more than 66 percent of CEOs said they expect their companies to change their business model in the next three years, with 62 percent stating they have management initiatives or transformation programs underway to make their business more digital.
And when we talk about most business processes going digital, your employee engagement strategy should not be left behind.
But here’s the thing. The new digital-savvy workers are looking for more than just a paycheck. For these new workers, the need to get appreciated for their work is pretty high on their checklist, with 79 percent of Gen Z and Millennial employees equating an increase in rewards and recognition to being more loyal to their employers.
An excellent employee engagement software or platform will provide low-cost pricing, a streamlined user experience, and easy accessibility, making it exceedingly simple to engage remote team members. This not only guarantees that you don't skip out on making your remote employees feel happy and valued, but it also serves as a great employee retention strategy.
2. Company Culture
Culture doesn’t only eat strategy for breakfast. It does much more than that.
The culture of a company is the first to experience the effects of any big change. Particularly now that most of us work from home, company culture lines have blurred, compromising the very foundation of the company's values and mission. This was evident in 2020, with worldwide rallies for greater DEI focus and high-profile culture crises such as those at Uber.
It’s not surprising to know why culture is one of the top drivers of employee engagement. In a BCG study of 40 digital transformations, companies focused on culture were 5x more likely to achieve breakthrough performance than companies that neglected culture.
The culture and work environment determine a workforce’s ability to create genuine positive relationships, do meaningful work, bring about change, and feel mentally and physically safe. And that includes the remote work environment too.
Just because you have to give up your daily workplace rituals and face-to-face interactions don’t mean the company culture is doomed. It simply implies that companies must focus on redefining values and processes and understanding how external factors (such as the lockdown) influence employees' day-to-day work lives.
3. Workers Prefer Flexible Work
It comes as no surprise that people love remote work. After ages of demanding a better work-life balance, the unexpected shift in 2020 has made people realize that working from home can be as effective as working from the office.
According to a survey conducted:
About 83 percent of workers, who either work remotely or on-site, agree that an opportunity to work remotely makes them happier, resulting in a higher job satisfaction quotient. 74 percent of employees agree that they are less likely to leave their companies if they are given an option to work remotely.
And, honestly, it comes as no surprise that people actually like the more flexible work options. Before 2020,
Thus, engaging employees in 2021 and beyond can be as easy as offering remote work options for the near future. A lot of corporate giants, such as LinkedIn and Twitter, have already divulged into this route by offering permanent work-from-home options to their entire workforce.
4. Great Managers And Leaders
The manager's impact on employee engagement can be substantial. The question is whether the influence will be beneficial or negative.
Most times, it is not the company they work at but the boss they work under, which impacts engagement level. There have also been multiple online discussions in which employees have stated that they would rather work for a terrible company with a fantastic manager than a good company with a bad manager.
According to an extensive Gallup survey, 75 percent of workers who voluntarily left their jobs did so because of their bosses and not the position itself.
But what’s more concerning is that this situation has further escalated since the whole world went into lockdown. Micromanagers and lousy bosses can be the final nail in the coffin for a workforce already grappling with the work shift, balancing work and home, potential layoffs, and pandemic-induced worry.
People want their leaders and employers to be empathic and to work towards developing healthy and positive relationships with them. In fact, A Deloitte study found out that 44 percent of respondents stated that they would want to have regular and purposeful check-ins with leaders who sincerely care to know how their employees are doing.
As a result, it's critical to train management staff on how to deal with remote employees in a better way. The training should focus on how to choose the right type of leadership style that bridges the gap between management and employees.
5. Wellbeing
Currently, health, wellness, and safety are essential aspects in designing the ideal employee experience. No matter what industry you're in, you can't afford to ignore the role of employee wellness in driving engagement.
According to Gallup’s research, engagement and wellbeing are reciprocal, i.e., each influences the future state of the other. Furthermore, according to a Deloitte report, individual employees regard well-being as a high-level priority of workplace transformation. But strangely enough, employee wellness is near the bottom of the priority list for executives. So, despite the fact that well-being is a top driver of remote employee engagement, leaders aren't putting as much effort into improving it as they could.
Simply put, remote employee engagement will only be possible in 2021 if leaders start introducing new policies that prioritize employee health. It can be through a robust corporate wellness plan, new healthcare insurance, or even much-neededbenefits of employee wellness programs such as a mental health day off (just like LinkedIn did!), period leaves, Covid-19 support, and more.
People feel satisfied and do meaningful work when they are psychologically secure, happy, and physically well. As a result, leaders should start to see employee health and well-being as a fundamental organizational core value that needs to be prioritized.
Takeaway
A Deloitte report addressed that while 90 percent of executives understand the value of employee engagement, fewer than 50 percent understand how to address this issue.
Furthermore, leaders have never experienced a transformation like this before. This decade is witnessing a global multi-generational shift, which is being accompanied by digitalization. Any outdated employee engagement approach will fail unless leaders recognize the new workforce's demands and drivers of employee engagement.
As a result, it is high time for modern executives and HR experts to look for more advanced and digitalized solutions to solve their employee engagement challenges.
About Author:
Anjan Pathak is the Co-Founder CTO of Vantage Circle, a cloud-based employee engagement platform, and Vantage Fit, an all-in-one corporate wellness platform. He is an HR technology enthusiast, very passionate about employee wellness, and actively participates in corporate culture growth. He is an avid reader and likes to be updated on the latest know-how of Human Resources.
4 Ways Your Business Can Help Employees Requesting A Hybrid Work Schedule
Even as things start getting back to normal post-COVID, many employees don’t want to return to the office full time. Working from home offers a number of benefits, including more flexibility, less time and money spent on commuting, and a better work-life balance. And while there are some occasions where face-to-face interactions are beneficial, most businesses can work just as well if their team is working remotely at least some of the time.
If your employees are asking for a hybrid way of working, with time split between working at home and in the office, these are some of the ways you can support them.
Why offer hybrid working?
Although millions of people were forced to abruptly switch to remote working during the pandemic, most have adapted well to the change. In most businesses, remote teams have been just as productive if not more so when they’ve been away from the office. And working from home offers a number of benefits that are really important to employees — it offers more flexibility, less time and money spent on commuting, and a better work-life balance.
However, there are occasions such as some meetings and training sessions where face-to-face interactions will work better. And some employees want to work in the office at least some of the time to connect with the rest of the team and benefit from ad hoc conversations and ideas that might get bounced around in the workplace.
Hybrid work models offer the best of both worlds — employees that feel more productive at home or need more flexibility can work remotely most of the time. But you can also offer office spaces for team meetings and any employees that enjoy working in the office. It also means that your business can save money on a large office space that accommodates all of your team members every day, and you can increase employee satisfaction.
How to help employees requesting hybrid working
Making the switch to a hybrid working schedule will take some adjustment for businesses and employees, but these are a few ways that you can make the transition easier.
Clear expectations
It’s important to be completely clear about expectations when your employees are requesting a hybrid work arrangement. If it’s something that you can accommodate, you need to create a remote working policy that clarifies everything about when, where, and how your team should be working. This should include:
Any core working hours and number of hours per day/week
Expectations about when staff need to come into the office
How you’re scheduling in remote workers and in-office workers
How and when do staff need to book office space if you’re hot-desking
Security precautions for employees working remotely and traveling with equipment
Sickness and time-off procedures
Make sure your hybrid working policy is somewhere that everyone can access when they need to and covers everything that your employees expect it to.
Create a productive workspace
As a business, you need to ensure that your employees have a productive work environment both in the office and when they’re at home.
You may have to adapt your office space to meet the needs of your hybrid staff. For example, if they primarily come in for meetings and workshops then you need suitable spaces that won’t disturb the rest of your team. Depending on your teams, you may need quieter areas with individual desks where people can focus on work and some more collaborative space for people to work on projects together.
Home office spaces require as much investment and planning as the company office. So if your staff is requesting hybrid working then help them to set up a suitable space.
Provide all the equipment that they’ll need to do their work, and offer them support with bigger items like a suitable chair and a desk. Furniturebox, for instance, has plenty of affordable office furniture options, and you can also help them with finishing touches like some prints for the wall from somewhere like Desenio or a houseplant to make their office space feel more productive.
Focus on communication and collaboration
Hybrid work environments are only effective if you have the right tools and procedures in place to ensure clear communication and easy collaboration between remote and in-office workers. It needs to be easy for your team to be working at home one day and heading into the office the next and able to pick up where they left off.
There are plenty of tools and software that can help with hybrid working:
Cloud storage like Google Drive so that documents and files are accessible from anywhere
Instant messaging tools like Slack and video conferencing so that you team can keep in touch
Project management software to keep track of everyone’s workload and progress
Time tracking software to monitor how long different things take, particularly when your teamwork from home.
Set out procedures for using each system so that everyone is on the same page and they improve the way you work.
Look after employee wellbeing
If your team is distributed between home and the office, then it can be hard to tell when employees are struggling or disengaged and it can also impact company culture. So it’s important that employee wellbeing is a priority in your business.
Arrange regular check-ins with all of your employees such as a monthly one-to-one meeting. This shouldn’t be purely work-focused, but also a chance for you to catch up with them and understand how they are doing.
Put together some resources and support for hybrid working. For example, best practices for staying healthy while remote working, guidance on ensuring work-life balance, and who to reach out to if your employees need help.
You should also rethink your benefits to ensure that they’re appropriate for hybrid working — offer a flexible gym membership wherever your team is based and other benefits that are going to be valuable to employees who aren’t in the office full time. If you’re having fewer company-wide social events then arrange smaller ones in local areas.
Hybrid work options can be hugely beneficial to your business and your employees. But you need to have the right procedures and guidelines in place to ensure that you’re supporting your employees through the transition to hybrid working and going forward.
About Author: This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
How to Be the Top and Effective Employee Manager in Remote Job
Other than the COVID-19 pandemic which pushed most businesses to begin work from home programs, remote jobs are becoming more popular for several reasons. For example, they can provide you with a better work-life balance by allowing you to limit social interactions.
This means that you will have more time for work arrangements and other important things like family or hobbies. In this blog post, we'll discuss how to take advantage of all these benefits and become the top remote job manager.
What is the Lure of working remotely and the Drawbacks that may come with it?
Irrespective of the time zones, remote jobs present a variety of benefits in comparison to their traditional counterparts. This partly explains why remote work or telecommuting has become so popular.
The main benefit that many people enjoy with this type of job, especially working moms, is the better work-life balance they get by not having to go into an office every day and face lots of distractions like coworkers stopping by your desk for quick chatty conversations.
You can also leverage powerful collaborative tools like WorKmates in managing remote employees to maintain relationships with other employees working from home more easily. Managing remote workers also allows you the opportunity to spend time on things other than just work can lead to a better work-life balance (for example, you can exercise or have time for family).
The Drawbacks: Since remote jobs are becoming more popular and people are able to find them easier than ever before, it's harder to stand out. You need an edge to be seen as the best candidate if you shift to remote work.
This may mean having a specialized skill set for managing remote teams, that is difficult for other candidates or working on very specific projects with high visibility. There could also be concerns about not feeling like part of an office culture because you're not there every day.
How can you Balance your Work-Life with other Aspects of your Life?
This is a very difficult question. There are different types of work-life balance, such as personal vs. professional and individual vs. family.
These two examples show that there's no perfect solution. You have to find what works best for you in terms of balancing time with other aspects of your life.
For one example, if your goal is more about finding the right balance between time spent at home versus time spent on work tasks or on any of your team meetings; then it may be helpful to create an "at home" schedule or chart where you designate certain hours for working from home so that you're able to stay connected with your partner while still getting things done. This way, when they come over during lunchtime, like always, they won't feel neglected because they know you're there.
If you also have other commitments like assignments that make it slightly difficult on the tasks at hand, you may want to hire a professional paper writer to help with some of those tasks. For another example, if your goal is to find the right balance between professional time and family time; then it may be helpful to schedule monthly blocks of workdays that are solely for working while also scheduling weekly blocks where you have planned vacation days or a long weekend trip with your partner. This way, when you come home from being away for so much work-time, like always, they won't feel neglected because they'll see how happy all the rest of the time was every day.
Tip: It's important to remember that these solutions for managing a remote workforce will vary depending on what type of person you are. Figure out which one works best for YOU in terms of balancing personal vs. professional needs and individual vs. family needs.
If you can't think of anything, go back to your career goals and ask yourself what type of work-life balance do you need? Take time each day for things like exercise or hobbies so that when you are working at home, it's not just all work. It'll help with the overall satisfaction level.
Tips for Managers on how to be an Effective Employee Manager in Remote Jobs
To effectively manage remote teams, the most effective managers are ones that know how to motivate the individuals on their team. This can be done in various ways, such as understanding different personality types.
This way, they know when it's best to reward the juniors based on their unique needs or learn what motivates people differently and provide them with tasks that will suit those needs. Many find this easy because instead of having one bad day for every six good days, you'll have five good days for every one bad day.
To be an effective remote employee manager, it would also help if you have a plan for when things do go wrong. It's just like on the road.
If there are no emergency lanes, then what happens when you break down? That means that it's important to create an exit strategy and know-how long various tasks will take so you don't end up working around the clock in your office building or home.
If this does happen, though, try not to work too late as well because being productive during longer hours can be difficult. It'll help with the overall satisfaction level.
It is also important that you trust your team just as you’d trust your dissertation writers U.K for exemplary work. This is important because you will rarely know everything that there is to know about the given task. Therefore you must trust your team members with the tasks at hand and give them the freedom to do what they believe best.
Finally, be sure to define the rules of engagement. This is essential because your team members will respect you if you are able to set the expectations and clear rules of engagement.
You need to define how your employees will know what they are supposed to achieve, when a work is done well or not without the normal face-to-face interaction. You can do this through video conferencing or making phone calls to the relevant parties. And by ensuring that all parties are happy with it, you will earn the respect and trust of your team members.
Final Word
People are different, so it's important to know what you need to be the best manager of your remote team. From video calls to using the relevant collaborative tools, the key is to figure out which one works for you.
About Author: Aziz Nicleson is a journalist with 4 years experience working in London magazine "Shopbuy." He has also worked at reputable essay writing agencies like EssayMama, NinjaEssay, and rushessay.com where his roles involved managing editing essays. Aziz have also been playing professional mini-tennis for several years. His novel, titled “His heart” competes on the same level as some of the world's best literature.
Job Applicants Want Remote Work Than Ever Before
Survey Shows Job Applicants Desperately Want Remote Work
A survey by GoodHire raises questions about the future of recruitment and human resources. The COVID-19 pandemic understandably plays a part in the findings. The pandemic has given workers a taste of remote work and the perks that come with it. The survey reveals interesting insights that recruiters and directors can use in future planning and potential restructuring. GoodHire surveyed 3,500 American workers, so these findings are significant.
The Changing Views of Workers
The survey found that the views of workers regarding office work are changing. Just under 70% of respondents stated that they'd choose a remote working position over an in-office one. The respondents also believed that most people in the US now prefer remote working. This is understandable when you consider that 60% of those surveyed said they'd move to a different city to take up a remote working position.
Employee Views on COVID-19 Workplace Safety
COVID-19 will be with us for some time. It will not go away soon, and we must adjust to living alongside it for the foreseeable future. Although vaccinations are becoming increasingly available and overall deaths from the virus are reducing, safety is still a priority. Remote working is evidently safer than working in an office environment. Therefore, it's easy to see why workers may be reluctant to return to a more "traditional" working environment.
More than half of the survey respondents said they had safety concerns over returning to the workplace. Eighty-four percent said they wanted efforts regarding COVID-19 safety to increase. This includes wanting workers to wear masks in the office, all employees to have proof of vaccination before returning, and reducing the number of people in the office at one time. Even with these precautions in place, working remotely is still significantly safer.
Life After COVID-19
Although COVID-19 isn't going anywhere soon, there will come a time where we consider the virus to be much less of a threat. However, it's important to remember that the safety benefits of remote work regarding COVID-19 aren't the only reason people prefer working away from the office. We have given workers freedom that many haven't experienced before. They have had autonomy and the perks that come with working from home.
Many people want to continue remote work when the pandemic is "over." The GoodHire survey found that 85% of job seekers prefer vacancies with flexible and remote working options. It's clear that the pandemic has shifted views and working habits, and it is likely that many job seekers will look only for remote options in the future.
Understanding the Desire to Work Remotely
It's important to understand the desire many people have to work remotely and the lack of desire to spend more time in the office. This working style for remote employees is very new to many people and gives them a greater sense of control and freedom over their work. Commuting costs workers a considerable amount of time and money; with remote work, they eradicate this.
Some workers may feel more comfortable working remotely, especially if they suffer from mental health problems. Childcare can be a huge issue for many parents; working remotely can help with this. Similarly, some people may have felt they could not have a pet in the past because of the time they spent outside of the house.
Recruiters will need to consider why workers have a desire to work from home. They may also need to make changes to accommodate this. The findings from the GoodHire survey illustrate a strong desire to work remotely from the majority of respondents.
The Payoff for Remote Work
The desire to work remotely is so strong that employees will sacrifice to get it. Over 60% of workers in the survey said they'd take a pay cut to have the option to work remotely. Some workers even said they'd happily cut their pay in half if it meant they didn't have to return to the office again. However, most respondents stated that a 10% pay cut would be worth it if it meant they could work remotely.
Money isn't the only thing that workers will sacrifice for remote work either. Employee benefits were another thing that workers would happily say goodbye to if it meant they could work from home. Seventy percent of people said they'd give up their employee benefits to work remotely. This included paid time off, leisure memberships, 401K plans, and health insurance.
The pandemic has given many employees working remotely a taste of freedom that they'd literally pay for. This is something that needs to be considered by employers as they strive to provide better job satisfaction.
Potential Impact on Employers
The findings provide crucial information for employers. Attitudes are changing fast, and if recruiters don't make changes quickly enough, there could be consequences. In fact, the survey found that nearly 75% of workers would quit their jobs if their employer forced them to return to the office full-time. This statistic, combined with others found in the survey, shows how much remote working means to employees.
If employers cannot respect the voice of their workers, they may lose them. Recruiters planning to phase out working remotely are at risk of losing top talent. Workers now expect flexible options and will happily move to companies that provide these.
Consider the information about how much employees would sacrifice to have a remote role. The survey highlights the need to take seriously the opinions of workers regarding flexible working arrangements.
Employer Changes Benefits for Employers
Changing working arrangements can seem like an intimidating prospect, but it can come with many benefits for employers. Switching to a group of remote workers can save considerable expense. As the survey showed, employees are happy to sacrifice a percentage of their pay or employee perks just to be given the option to work remotely. This alone means less expense, as does having fewer workers in the office. Some companies may even be able to downsize their offices and cut expenses by doing so. You may even slash operating costs and overhead, including utility bills.
It's crucial to remember that a happier full-time workforce means a more productive workforce. It also may mean a lower employee turnover and a better reputation for your company. Competitors will likely offer flexible working options in the future, and more technology like video calling, so taking the opportunity as soon as possible can avoid them getting ahead.
Looking Ahead
The findings from the GoodHire survey are significant and show hybrid work is hugely important. Simply ignoring these may mean that recruiters find themselves in situations where they are losing top talent or struggling to find applicants for positions. The pandemic has shifted how we think about work and the new-found hybrid work, and while most employers prefer an office-based work environment, most employees do not. Listening to employees is key to growth and continued success. It is time for recruiters to reassess the remote working options available in their workplace and make changes to improve job satisfaction among employees.
About Author: This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
10 Simple Recruitment Tips to Hire Talented Professionals
Whether you are hiring a technical developer or a floor manager possessing great communication skills for your organization, it's always a huge challenge to recruit the right fit for the job.
On top of it, when you have a large talent pool ahead of you, weeding a competent person is nothing less than searching for a needle in the haystack. Therefore, in a survey, 2,300 HR professionals admitted that recruitment is their number one challenge.
However, finding the right worker in between remote work culture and skill gap issues is hard, but not impossible. You see, recruiters, if you follow the systematic recruitment process today, you can effortlessly hire the best-talented professionals for your team.
In this post, you'll get to know the top 10 tips to simplify your recruitment process in a breeze. So, let's get started.
Tip #1. Focus on referrals
Not many recruiters know that their employees are the best sources to acquire job applicants. In fact, 82% of employers ranked employee referrals as the perfect way to generate leads on new candidates.
To get employee referrals, you have to encourage your employees to refer their trusted candidates for a new job opening. For that, recruiters and employees have to build a proper employee referral program based on:
Company's long-term and short-term recruitment goals
Create an outline to participate in the referral program like rewards, duration, ideal candidates persona, and other relevant details
Regularly communicate with employees who have participated in the referral program
Monitor progress of the referral program, etc.
Tip #2. Personalize your recruitment process
Today, 35% of the American workforce are millennials—a generation driven by personal experience. So, if you wish to onboard creative and enthusiastic millennials to your team, you have to personalize your recruitment process.
Creating a personalized recruitment process isn't that tough; you just have to practice the following things:
Share a detailed job description, including information about the company, its culture, job role, etc.
Hiring managers should send personalized emails to potential candidates
Interact with candidates throughout the recruitment process and keep them informed about every new development
Tip #3. The competitive and transparent remuneration structure
Foremost, offer the competitive industry package to the candidates. Secondly, share remuneration details in-depth, in fact, include salary and other perks information within the job description.
If you are clear about the remuneration structure, in the beginning, people who aren't alright with your pay structure won't apply for the job. This, in return, will reduce your applicants' list, and you can quickly find a suitable employee.
Tip #4. Write an exciting job description
Your job description is an outreach message that tells potential candidates about a new job opening in your company. Since 54% of job seekers look for jobs online today, you have to post a job description online in a way that can excite people to take action. Those monotonous newspaper job ads won't work today.
If a job description is written correctly, a boring job can be turned into something adventurous. Using these steps, you can convert a plain plumbing job into an exciting CIA level job
Make a profile of your ideal job applicants
Optimize the job title with catchy and SEO keywords
Talk about your company and its achievements
Share some of the job benefits
Write job requirements in a clear and concise manner
Use power verbs to describe the job responsibilities
Tip #5. Build a good offboarding experience
This might be a completely opposite approach, but it will offer you some long-term benefits. When you part with your employees on a good note, there's a high chance they might come back in the future to work for you. Plus, your ex-employees can leave a good review of your employer brand that will help attract the new talent your way.
So, try to simplify the offboarding process for your employees, especially today, when employees are already struggling due to the pandemic.
Tip #6. Adopt adequate technical resources
Remote work environments have brought many new changes in the workplaces. However, virtual hiring is the new system with which many companies and candidates are already struggling.
Therefore, you should first adopt all the essential tools that can smoothen the recruitment and onboarding process for potential candidates before inviting them to apply for a job role. For seamless virtual interviews, screening, and testing, you can opt for different tools like GapJumpers, Textio, ZipRecruiter, Wayup, and many more.
Tip #7. Build a talent pool
Every time you post a job opening online, you must receive plenty of great applications through job referrals and other mediums. But, unfortunately, you can only hire a limited number of candidates at a time.
However, you should keep details of all the other potential applicants in your database. This way, whenever you are on a talent search in the future, you don't have to go through the entire process of posting, interviewing, and testing candidates. Instead, you can simply go to your talent database and recruit the right person.
To practice this method, you should stay engaged with the potential candidates via random emails, calls, or social media. This will show applicants that you are interested in them and will surely consider them in the future.
Tip #8. Solid social media presence
You won't believe it, but around 79% of job seekers use social media in their job hunting. Today, almost every applicant goes on social media to check the company's profile and online reputation before applying for the job.
Here if your company doesn't have a solid social media presence, it will not motivate candidates to apply for the job in your organization. Additionally, if you have vast online community support, you can easily find the relevant job applicants on your social media pages rather than searching on various platforms.
Tip #9. Involve with a campus recruitment program
If you are unable to find the right person for the job, you can nourish youth to meet your recruitment requirements. In addition, you can join hands with the top colleges and universities to help you produce the talent that you need.
In 2020, only in the US, the college recruitment market size was $119.4 billion, which is amazing. Campus recruitment is also popular among the Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, and others.
For a good campus recruitment system, you have to first partner with the right educational institutions and then stay involved in the selected candidates' entire academic journey. This way, you can motivate students to learn the skills suiting your job requirements.
Tip #10. Hire professional recruiters
Not every company hires professional recruiters to boost their recruitment process, which is a wrong practice. For an employer, it is impossible to stay involved in the whole recruitment program while managing another hundred business operations. On top of all, the virtual recruitment structure is different than the traditional recruitment approach.
Therefore, based on your organization's size and recruitment needs, you should appoint a professional recruiter to undertake all hiring strategies. A dedicated recruiter can help you to build your online employer brand, streamline employee referral programs and all other recruitment-related operations in no time.
Parting Thoughts
If you have a great task force, you can provide a better experience to your customers and improve your business growth simultaneously. In short, a good hire can boost your business profit, and a bad one can derail it.
So, you should follow all the simple and easy tips to hire the right employees who can grow your company beyond limits. Then, once you restructure your recruitment process using the 10 awesome tips, don't forget to share your experience with us.
About Author: Sonakshi Paliwal is an associate at GreenThumbs - an HR firm. She has a background in Business and Psychology. In her free time, you can find her reading a book or watching a documentary.
15 Employee Engagement Ideas to Get Your Team Invested
When done right, employee engagement results in each member of a company giving their best. They’re better at collaborating with the rest of their team—both on a personal level and when completing their job-related tasks—and are committed to company-wide success.
If engagement at your company is lacking, there are a lot of ways an uninspired workforce can be felt across a company and create a dramatic ripple effect. The key to turning this around is a commitment to improving your company culture from the inside out.
So let’s get familiar with what employee engagement is and why you shouldn’t overlook it. Plus, we’ll offer our employee engagement ideas, which have been tested at organizations of all sizes and in a variety of industries.
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What Is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement refers to the level of enthusiasm and commitment an employee feels towards their job and the organization. It encompasses how invested employees are in their roles and their willingness to go above and beyond to contribute to the company's success.
Engagement is, at its core, about company culture. The workplace should be a place where employees are generally happy, as they spend a lot of their time there.
The Best Employee Engagement Ideas
1. Compensate Competitively
People like to feel acknowledged for their hard work. And although salary is important, it’s not all they want. Be sure you’re staying on top in areas such as healthcare offerings, retirement plans, and generous PTO.
2. Establish a Rewards System
Whether it’s marketing, productivity, or engagement, there are a few things that wouldn’t benefit from the implementation of a gamified system.
Start by setting clear, measurable goals that align with company objectives, and then create engaging challenges or milestones around these goals. This system could involve earning points for hitting targets, completing tasks, or demonstrating company values, which can then be exchanged for various rewards such as extra vacation days, gift cards, or public recognition.
For example, employees might earn "innovation points" for contributing unique ideas, which are displayed on a digital leaderboard and lead to quarterly prizes for top performers, fostering a fun and competitive atmosphere that motivates everyone to engage more deeply with their work.
You can make this process even easier by implementing employee recognition software.
3. Offer Training and Career Advancement
Employees don’t want to stay in one position forever; they want to grow. That doesn’t mean that you need to prepare them to leave the company for greener pastures—instead, aim to make your company the greenest pasture out there.
Make sure every employee knows that promotions are not only possible but expected, given good work. Thus, you will find that training will be much appreciated. You can send them to conferences and workshops, assign them recommended readings, or provide them with company-branded how-to demo videos if they are working remotely.
4. Encourage Autonomy, Not Micromanagement
No one likes to feel that they are being micromanaged. Yes, employees should be held accountable, but they want to know that you hired them because you trust in their abilities to do their job. Give them direction, set deadlines, and then set them free to get the job done effectively.
You can of course, as a leader, guide them along the way if you notice that something they’re doing could be done more efficiently, but make sure you are not checking up on them at all hours of the day. Use your check-ins sparingly and they’ll be more likely to see them as help than feel a hint of dread.
5. Offer Remote Work Options
It may seem counterintuitive to let employees work from outside the office to boost their engagement, but negative office environments can cause work anxiety and thus hinder employee engagement.
In addition to relieving the stress of your employees, offering remote working arrangements will also help you stay competitive. This could look like allowing employees to work from home certain days of the week, setting up satellite offices, or even offering fully remote positions where team members can work from anywhere with internet access.
6. Encourage Personal Projects
One of the top things employees look for in a workplace is one that fosters a healthy work-life balance. Encourage them to have a life outside of work.
Do they want to hone a skill that is not directly related to their day job? Great, feel free to help them out if you know of resources you can suggest. Cheer them on. Show up for them however you can.
Managers and their subordinates should be able to talk about personal endeavors. If coworkers can share more and help each other out when it comes to their hobbies, they will be happier all around and learn to build each other up.
7. Facilitate Communication and Encouragement
Teams that like and appreciate each other work together best. Push for your employees to get to know each other and treat one another as respected individuals.
Plus, with the help of good engagement software, they can have a platform to give shout-outs and praise to their fellow staff. It shows each member of the workforce that the other members of the team truly believe in them and are taking note of their accomplishments.
8. Make Onboarding a Breeze for All
No one likes coming into a new job and filling out a ton of paperwork. Nor do you need it to be the first thing a new employee thinks about upon walking through the door on their first day—you want them to be excited about the orientation process and focused on the job they were hired to do.
The right software will enable smooth transitions for new hires rather than present a bit of a turnoff, as it may have been in the past. Getting the correct forms filled out and catching them up to speed does not have to be a dreaded task when everything is available virtually in one easily accessible place.
Today, it is more than possible to find an onboarding system that is a great experience for already busy HR staff and anxious new employees alike. With the latest technology, you can be sure they’ll feel welcomed rather than overwhelmed.
9. Welcome Employee Feedback
You want your organization to have integrity and transparency. This is not to say that you should toss out your corporate hierarchy framework. While most decisions should continue to come from the top, your employees need to feel that their voice is valued.
Invite feedback from all team members—yes, even from interns. Everyone should understand they deserve to have their opinions heard. They are more likely to be engaged and enthusiastically interact with their team if they feel they have a voice—and that you’re listening.
You do not have to accept every suggestion, but if an employee brings a concern to your attention or an idea of how to improve any area of your business, hear them out. Thank them for their contribution and see to it that it is at least considered.
10. Hold Contests and Have Themed Office Days
Who said work can’t be fun? Keep things interesting by, when appropriate, holding little games or themed days at the office.
Try a game night (or lunch). Whether it’s trivia, Pictionary, or even sports, having employees engage in friendly contests is always a good way to get the creative juices flowing and build relationships within the company.
Relay race obstacle courses, escape rooms, board games, card games, VR, you name it. As long as it’s something fun, cooperative, and takes away the stress of work then it’s a suitable candidate for game night.
Themed days can be aligned with major holidays such as a cook-off for Thanksgiving, costumes for Halloween, or a Secret Santa gift exchange for Christmas. And don’t forget about birthdays, as they’re easy to celebrate but just as easy to miss if you’re not keeping track.
11. Take Employees Out to Lunch
Going out to lunch with all the employees in your office provides a great opportunity to get to know everyone better. Plus, it gives them the opportunity to open up to you about any problems they may be facing.
Most veteran HR managers would agree that they’ve had better luck catching problems early when they already have a rapport with the employees at their company. It also helps you gather invaluable feedback about how the employees would want the company to run, what changes would make their jobs easier, and even any operational inefficiencies.
In addition to these small outings, you could also organize company-wide lunches every quarter so that everyone has the chance to build a stronger relationship both with their coworkers and the company as a whole. This reminds them that they’re part of something big and worthwhile.
12. Volunteer as a Company
Many enterprises make giving back to the community a priority. Don’t just give money, though, as things can easily be made more personal than that. One poll found that a staggering 68% of employees would take a job with a company that values volunteer work over one that does not make time for it.
We’re also seeing that corporate social responsibility (CSR) ranks highest among millennials. Cone Communications reports that up to two-thirds of young professionals said they wouldn’t even consider working for a company that does not prioritize this. Not to mention, it’s great for team building.
Encourage your staff to volunteer together instead of simply giving them time off to do their own individual community service. And don’t be afraid to change it up—if you don’t have a set organization to which you prefer to donate, you can even have employees vote on which charity or nonprofit they’d like to help each year.
13. Have Snacks in the Office
Employees are more likely to engage with their work if they have access to extra benefits, particularly yummy snacks. You don’t have to spend a fortune on professional catering or bog your employees down with junk food.
There are quite a few nutritious snacks that you can offer such as avocados, dark chocolate, or red grapes. These will keep your employees both happy and healthy. It even serves as an extra incentive to join when headhunting talent. And there are plenty of food ordering solutions available worldwide to make things even easier.
14. Review Regularly to Gauge Happiness
Employees who regularly get to use their strengths, skills, and abilities were found to be as much as six times more likely to be engaged at work—and 8% more productive, according to research from Gallup.
Hold regular reviews with the aim of not only gauging their performance but also checking in on their overall well-being. If they’re not showing the growth their managers were expecting, there could be an underlying reason for that.
Make sure these assessments are a two-way street—don’t just talk at them, rather, give them a chance to explain their side. Ask them what their goals are, what you or their supervisors could be doing better as leaders, and what would improve their outlook on the job.
Get them to understand that you take change seriously and that if something can be identified that will help them do better, you will do your best to make that a reality for them. In the end, this should end up proving to be a solution, both for them and for the company as a whole.
15. Meet In and Outside of the Office
With all the tools we have in this digital era, it doesn’t matter if your team is distributed across the globe or sitting across a section of cubicles from one another, there is a way for them not only to get along but genuinely like each other.
Make sure to hold meetings regularly so that everyone is on the same page. Employees should see this as an opportunity to collaborate and ask for help. When people come together to share ideas, fewer potentially great ideas will escape the organization. Some of the greatest innovations started from joint efforts.
If people are remote, have them call or video into a conference. Even if the team is all situated at a physical office location, don’t skip this step. Emails cannot always replace the nuances and camaraderie of face-to-face interaction.
And it’s not just about work meetings. Organize ways for your people to meet up outside of work as well. Hold private company holiday parties at rented venues, invite staff to join together at a bar if everyone is local—or, if you have the funds and some of the team is remote, try gathering everyone together for annual, or biannual, retreats.
You want your team to feel like a cohesive group. And those who have fun together often stay together, creating memories that can then be taken back to work with them and shared among work friends.
Why Is Employee Engagement Important?
Hiring Top Talent
When a candidate is first researching to see whether they might want to apply, they’ll often look at websites that show current and former employees’ ratings of employers. When the majority of employees are pleased with their experience at the office, positive reviews show prospective hires what a great place your company is.
Boosting Productivity
Employees tend to be more productive when their overall experience is positive. And more productive team members are, of course, great for your bottom line.
The stock prices of businesses that have made it to Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work for" have risen 14%, per a study from the Jackson Organization as reported by Forbes, while those not on the list are reporting a mere 6% increase.
When it comes to salespeople, for instance, happier professionals are reported to be able to raise sales by an astounding 37%, on average, according to the Harvard Business Review.
Improving Client and Customer Relations
Happier employees generally provide a better experience to clients and customers. They genuinely believe in what they are selling and want to go the extra mile for customers’ success.
Lowering Turnover
Don't lose your best employees because they aren’t happy enough while at work. Keeping employee engagement high boosts talent retention.
Voluntary employee turnover has many costs. Plus, filling an empty role has a negative effect on employee morale and takes time and money. When employees see others exiting the company, they might think something is wrong and consider other opportunities.
Employee Engagement Tools
If any of these employee engagement ideas got the gears turning and sparked excitement for you while picturing all the new, interesting things you can have your team do together, get in touch!
We can walk you through LIKE.TG’s engagement software, such as the ever-popular Workmates, to show you how tools that are easy, fun, cost-cutting, and time-saving can get you where you want to be.
A tight-knit, more communicative, and all-around more productive work environment is possible with our expert advice and acclaimed technology. To see happiness levels at your company rise quicker than you ever thought possible, reach out and we’ll help you reap the benefits of a more engaged workforce.
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How to Onboard New Hires - A Complete Guide
Onboarding can be defined as the period between your new hire’s first day on the job and the end of their induction period into the company. The importance of this well-prepared and smooth induction period might be even more crucial as the world continues to accelerate, and employee preferences change rapidly. Increasing job-hopping, freelancing, taking shorter-term contracts and even mini-careers are signs of the times.
It should come as no surprise that Gallup found that only 12% of employees think their company did a good job onboarding. 76% of human resources executives claimed that their organizations underutilize employee onboarding practices. At the same time, 68% of employees consider training and development to be the most important workplace policy. That is why the enhancement of new hire onboarding and putting it online to be a good fit in this digital era is a wise investment for employers. Paying attention to this can increase employee retention and loyalty to the company.
Luckily, companies are becoming increasingly aware of this trend: 84% of global executives assessed employee training as being ‘important’ or ‘very important.’ Add to this the recent studies showing that every dollar invested in eLearning results in $30 in terms of productivity gains. Let’s take a deep dive into the advantages of online onboarding.
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.
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Benefits of new employee online onboarding
First, online onboarding saves your time and money. And your staff’s precious time too. You don’t need to create a new learning program from scratch or have existing employees provide training for each new hire. Second, even in a large enterprise with many branches and departments, online onboarding ensures informational consistency throughout the company. You can be certain everyone gets the same training.
Third, your new employees can access material 24/7 and even study the content and take quizzes on their mobile devices. They can feel comfortable while learning at their own pace. Isn’t that a plus for the onboarding of remote workers as well?
Most importantly, all these benefits are measurable. Now, let's look at actual cases of what companies working in different industries managed to achieve after running online onboarding.
Central One Federal Credit Union is a not-for-profit credit union in Central Massachusetts. Time is money, and Central One can really relate to that. After they moved their new hire onboarding training online, they reduced onboarding time from 6-8 weeks to 4 weeks.
Learn more about the case of Central One here.
PSI is a company that operates in the Healthcare realm as a clinical research organization and provides clinical trial services. They have developed a new induction program with different courses for different levels of newcomers. And it really works – thanks to online onboarding, PSI has reduced travel costs for employee training to a fifth of their previous level.
Learn more about the case of PSI here.
Forever Direct is the regional distribution center of aloe vera-based health, wellness, and beauty products in the US. Thanks to well-thought-out online instruction in compliance training that each new employee needs to take, Forever Direct has reduced accidents in their warehouses by 50%.
Learn more about the case of Forever Direct here.
Here is a table that illustrates these positive impacts of new hire online onboarding in three major realms: time, money, and efficacy.
Time
Central One – onboarding time reduced by 50%
Money
PSI – travel costs cut 5 times
Efficacy
Forever Direct – accidents reduced by 50%
How to onboard new employees online
To start working on your onboarding program, you should know in advance how to plan it. Here are the criteria, points to consider, and possible content ideas to help you begin.
Onboarding program
What are the key factors that determine a successful onboarding program? The Four C’s by Dr. Talya Bauer, of SHRM, are the criteria that you can probably follow when aligning your new employee onboarding. The Four C’s stand for:
1. Compliance implies teaching new hires the basic company policies.
2. Clarification refers to ensuring that employees are aware of their responsibilities and their role in the process.
3. Culture involves providing employees with the formal and informal norms of the organization.
4. Connection means relationships with colleagues and feeling like a part of the team.
Taking the Four C’s into account, you might want to divide an onboarding program into three functional parts: welcome, compliance, and job-specific training.
In the Welcome part, you can include modules about your company and its culture, its mission, vision and values, corporate policies, organizational structure and leadership team, products/services and their main benefits, and key clients and partners.
In the Compliance portion, you can include a formal program with safe workplace regulations, as well as policies, procedures, and actions to prevent violations of the law.
In the Job-specific part designed for a specific role training, you can place the basics of core processes and systems for a specific position – fundamentals of customer relationship management for client service, for instance.
After each training module and at the end of the course, tests can be used to check how well your new hires retained the information.
Learning materials
There are several types of content that an online onboarding course can include, but we’ll cover only three main popular ones that you might consider especially helpful.
Video
You can record a video as a virtual introduction to the workplace to make new employees comfortable and familiar with their new working environment. You can also create a video with a welcome message from the CEO including their greeting and encouraging words.
Slide-based course
We’re sure you’re familiar with PowerPoint presentations that consist of slides. Slide-based courses are similar to PPT, but you can deliver and watch them online. Slides are the eLearning standard for a reason – they’re quick and easy to create and familiar to the learner.
You can make slide-based courses with the help of authoring tools (we’ll elaborate on these later on).
Quizzes
When onboarding new employees, it’s especially important to check that the information you’re providing is sticking. The best way to track your employees’ knowledge and be certain of its retention is via online quizzes and knowledge checks. This is especially important for compliance types of information that may be subject to federal or state laws. You can also create quizzes in authoring tools.
Effective employee onboarding software
When planning an onboarding program, there are two points to consider. First, what will be the format of your learning materials? Second, how do you plan to deliver them? In online learning, authoring tools and learning management systems address these tasks.
Authoring tools
Authoring tools are the software used to build online courses, quizzes, video tutorials, and other training content in-house. Many of them have premade templates, visual assets, and characters so you can build full-fledged courses in hours.
Examples: iSpring Suite, Articulate 360, Adobe Captivate, DomiKnow, Easygenerator, Lectora Online.
Why use them in onboarding? With authoring tools, you can make your training interactive and boost employee engagement. For example, the compliance part of your onboarding course may include role-plays. In such a course, a character, such as a firefighter, can guide learners through simulated situations and ask them questions, helping them retain knowledge longer.
With a well-thought-out onboarding course, new hires will feel welcome and ready to make a good start at your company. This can be a springboard to their continued professional development.
Another point is that online courses can be replicable and reusable. Some authoring tools let you turn existing Word files, PDFs, manuals, and presentationslides into interactive courses in a couple of clicks. You just build a course once, and then all new hires will receive the same training.
Learning management systems
After you create a course, you need to deliver it to your employees. The most convenient way to do this is via a learning management system (LMS).
An LMS is a platform that lets you store courses, assessments, and videos so learners can access them in one place. It enables you to manage the entire training process, and your employees can study at their own pace, wherever and whenever they choose. Also, an LMS can automate many tedious tasks like enrollment, result tracking, and reporting on learner performance.
Examples: iSpring Learn, Docebo, LearnUpon, BlackBoard, Moodle.
Why use them in onboarding? Using LMSs, you can define rules for a lot of procedures that go along with new hire onboarding. For example, you can place learners into groups and set special policies to automate their training. That way, if you place learners into an “interns” group, they will get assigned to an onboarding course automatically, and you can track training results in this particular group separately.
Some LMSs have integrations with HR systems, so learners and necessary data can be transferred from one type of software to the other one smoothly. For example, once you add a new hire to your HR system, they will also be added to your LMS and enrolled in the training you set for them. This is extremely convenient and saves a great deal of time.
Tips for better onboarding
Let’s take a more detailed look at how to ease the onboarding process for you and your new employees.
Create an onboarding checklist for yourself
Of course, the onboarding process is not only about training per se. It also includes a range of tasks and procedures surrounding it, like setting up a workplace and signing documents. Before you begin to create your program, it is a good idea to create an onboarding checklist to see what tasks you need to complete to get your program up and running.
This is what you may want to include in your onboarding checklist:
Provide all the forms needed to collect employee data
Request all needed access accounts for new hires
Present work policies and procedures
Assign a welcome course to a new recruit
Set up a new hire’s desk and equipment
Send a welcome email to your new employee
Include new hire onboarding/ welcome kits
Announce the arrival of a new team member via email.
Arrange meetings
Plan ‘meet and greets’ with important contacts. Communication with people who will be key to the new employee’s work opens a gateway for future successful collaboration between them. This can include managers, team members, and colleagues from other departments.
Provide an FAQ
Putting together a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) is a really good idea. Provide answers for them to new hires before their start date. This will show them that you care about their well-being and will help reduce their anxiety. You can build it in a PDF or with the help of an authoring tool.
Here are some examples of these questions:
Is there a dress code?
What is your internal communication style?
How do you regulate vacations?
Are there training courses for sales assistants?
What corporate events do you celebrate?
Are there any bonuses?
Assign a contact person or a mentor
Buddy up your new hire with someone in the company or nominate a senior member of the team to mentor them in their daily tasks. Introduce them to a person they can reach out to, and make sure a communication channel like a chat function is available for the new hire.
Send a company-wide introduction
To announce the arrival of a new team member, send an introductory email to your staff. In the message, you can briefly mention the new hire’s work history and share their social profile so the team can connect with them.
For example, a new hire introduction may go something like this:
Follow up at the end of the first week
After giving the new hire time to get used to the office, workspace, and their mentor, follow up with them. It’s important to make sure they’re comfortable and are picking up on things at an appropriate pace.
Encourage independence
You’ve created a great onboarding program, filled it with some great training courses and an evaluation. Now it’s time to encourage the new hire to take that preparation and run with it. They should be given a clear outline of what is required of them and how they should go about achieving those objectives.
Gain feedback
Ask the new hire and the teammates who work closely with them how the process is going. Adjust the onboarding program if needed.
To sum up
Effective employee onboarding has been growing in its value for companies. Employers and employees acknowledge its importance both for further productive work and loyalty to the company. Figures confirm that it really provides a significant return. To save time and money, a carefully prepared onboarding program is good, and online onboarding is even better. This was an in-depth look at online onboarding training. We were happy to provide you with helpful tools and information on it and hope you gleaned some actionable ideas to use in your own programs.
About Author: This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
9 Remote Working Mistakes Costing Your Business
Did you know working remotely existed even before the internet was created? Working from home was the norm back in the day when blacksmiths and carpenters set up shop at their homes. Later on, designated office spaces caught on and became the standard.
However, the global pandemic completely changed how companies viewed working from home. It was something that was majorly reserved for freelancers or creatives but not associated with other industries. If there was one good thing to come out of these unprecedented times, it has to be businesses realizing the potential of telecommuting.
No doubt working remotely promises a plethora of benefits for employers as well as employees. But managing remote teams is tricky, especially if your organization is new to it. Inefficient processes can lead to frustrated and dissatisfied remote workers.
If leaders are not careful and intentional with their remote management style, they will likely end up with the shorter end of the stick. In this post, we’re reviewing some remote working mistakes that should be immediately rectified. Let’s dive in.
1. No Flexibility
The main purpose of employees working remotely is defeated if you do not offer flexibility to them. A rigid work schedule of 9 to 5 is not the best idea when it comes to working from home. The reason is that different workers feel productive at different times of the day. Some might be most productive in the early morning, while others may be more focused in the afternoon. Additionally, employees may be living in different time zones.
Moreover, you also need to take into account that employees may be stuck with other tasks. For example, employees with kids may have to help them with an online school, which is usually conducted in the first half of the day.
2. Unclear Communication
Unclear communication can be an issue whether you’re working from home or office. It can lead to misunderstandings and mistakes. One pitfall of working remotely is the absence of non-verbal communication. It is difficult to convey gestures or to read facial expressions over video or phone calls.
This implies managers need to make extra effort to ensure they are communicating clearly. Rather than assuming that your team will figure out the communication collaboration requirements, explain goals and expectations with clarity. Also, encourage the team members to ask any questions and doubts they might have.
3. Not Providing Constructive Feedback
Giving employees real-time constructive feedback is key to improving their performance and overall development. Lack of feedback is not good for your employees and subsequently damages the organization.
Understandably, giving feedback over a video call or email is not easy. But that doesn’t mean you can neglect it.
Listening to criticism, while constructive, never feels good. To make the feedback more palatable for your employees, try the ‘sandwich approach.’ This involves sandwiching a negative piece of feedback between two positive ones.
4. Unsuitable Communication Tools
Seamless technology plays a crucial role in remote working. Without the right tools, you will end up with a confused workforce and missed deadlines, along with other repercussions.
While emails and virtual meetings are dependable methods to spread the message, they are not always the most effective options. Too many emails or virtual meetings can be overwhelming as well as a waste of time.
It’s time to pick a direct messaging channel such as Slack or Google Hangouts for day-to-day communication. Moreover, it is important to find a suitable project management platform for your company. Your team can further save time with LinkedIn automation tools.
5. Using Outdated Technology
At home, employees don’t have access to an IT department to take care of any technical difficulties. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to ensure that your team has access to the latest computers, WiFi plans, phones, and other essential devices.
6. Expecting Too Much
Just because employees are working from home doesn’t mean their work takes less time or effort. There’s no doubt that employees are saving time that’s usually spent on daily commutes. But this doesn’t mean managers can subconsciously penalize them by expecting more work.
According to research, 70% of employees that transitioned to working remotely during the pandemic are working on weekends as well. Moreover, 45% say they are working more hours during the week than they used to.
Putting pressure on employees with increased workloads is a recipe for disaster. Blurring the line between professional and personal life will eventually lead to burnout and diminished employee productivity. Managers should make an active effort to maintain and respect boundaries. Don’t expect employees to be on call after working hours and encourage them to take frequent breaks.
7. Neglecting One-on-One Time
This past year and a half have been a struggle, to say the least. Though vaccines are being speedily administered, WHO issued a warning about the imminent third wave, which is already showing up in different parts of the world. These uncertain times can take a toll on your employees' mental health and productivity.
Now more than ever, it’s imperative to show empathy to your team. As a manager, you should regularly schedule one-on-one talks with every employee, even though face-to-face talks are not possible. This will give them an opportunity to share any struggles they are facing. Is someone finding it difficult to stay productive at home? You can encourage them to make healthy lifestyle choices and share tips to manage their time better.
8. Scheduling Too Many Meetings
Since employees are working from home, scheduling more meetings may seem like the only option to discuss projects and collaborate. However, too many meetings are disruptive in a normal office, so you can imagine the impact when employees are working from home. Excessive meetings are a waste of time and lead to loss of productivity.
According to a survey, employees are three times more likely to deliver tasks agreed in writing in comparison to virtual meetings. This is because it is a lot more difficult to retain information shared in video conferences. And not to mention, technological snags can further impact the effectiveness of virtual meetings.
Managers should exclusively host virtual meetings only when it’s necessary. Instead, adopt time-efficient alternatives. If you need to share something that won’t likely invite many questions, you should send it via email or direct message. On the other hand, if you’re expecting questions, create an FAQ document where you can answer questions. For brainstorming sessions, make the most of an online whiteboard to get the creative juices flowing.
9. Lack of Socializing
From eliminating long commutes to working in a comfortable setting, working remotely promises several benefits to employees. However, one significant pitfall of working from home, especially with a pandemic, is the feeling of isolation. Prolonged loneliness increases stress levels, impacts sleep, and can lead to anxiety and depression.
In a physical office space, employees participate in water cooler talks. These casual interactions not only give employees a social outlet but also enforces a sense of camaraderie.
While recreating this on a virtual level may be challenging, but it’s absolutely doable. You can host happy hour every other Friday after work. During this time, encourage employees to talk about anything other than work. Virtual game tournaments and online trivia evenings are also fun ways to help your team bond.
Additional resources:
Know where your communication can be improved with expert advice fromNeon Ambition
4 ways your business canhelp employees asking for a hybrid work schedule
Flexible working:the way of the future
Final Words
Remote working policies can be beneficial to your work environment in several ways. From lower operational costs to increased flexibility, working from home is a working model worth exploring. The lack of physical proximity to your employees can be challenging for leaders but can be overcome with the right systems in place.
About Author: Stefan Smulders is a SaaS Entrepreneur | Bootstrapped to €3M ARR in just 1year | Founder of Worlds safest software for LinkedIn Automation Expandi.io | Vegan | Father
Top 5 Tips For Increasing Employee Retention
Losing a good employee is bad news, regardless of the size or stage of your business. It has a knock-on effect on the rest of your team and costs the business money. If you are losing top performers, it’s time to do something about it.
According to the Wall Street Journal, experts have stated that finding, recruiting and training a new employee costs 2.5 times the salary of an existing employee.
Plus, the impact of being one employee down impacts the workload of your team members, adding work-related stress and reducing productivity. It can also impact workplace morale. For some employees, losing a colleague can be the push they need to start looking for a new job of their own.
Why Do Employees Leave?
Some employees are open and honest in their exit interviews, providing an insight into the reasons that led them to leave. Others may not feel comfortable discussing their reasons for leaving.
For the most part, the annual salary is typically not the reason employees leave. After all, there are so many salary comparison tools available nowadays, making it easy to rule out any discrepancies with the annual salary. Instead, studies have found that the most common reasons for leaving include:
Lack of career growth
Feeling burnt out / struggling with stress
Lack of flexible working options i.e. remote working, flexible hours
The behavior of management/supervisors/colleagues
Relocation
Feeling unchallenged by the work
Feeling unappreciated
Regardless of the reasons, you shouldn’t be waiting until an exit interview to think about reducing employee turnover. Here are our top 5 tips to help you improve employee retention.
1. Improve Your Recruitment Process
It is no surprise that there is a connection between a great recruitment process and high retention rates. To attract talent is one thing, but to attract and retain talent is something else altogether. And it starts with choosing the right candidate.
But this doesn’t just mean they have the skills and experience required for the job. A job candidate should also fit well with their team members and be able to thrive within your company culture.
Also, when reading CVs, look out for candidates that have longevity in their previous jobs. Did they stay with a company through ups and downs? Did they go the extra mile, volunteering or joining team activities? Do they speak about their previous jobs/companies in a professional manner? If the answer is yes, this demonstrates loyalty, reliability, and perseverance.
During interviews, spend some time getting to know the individual's personality, as well as their skillset and experience. If you get to know a person well enough in the interview, you can gauge whether or not they’re a good fit for the company culture.
Having a mentorship program can also help provide the best possible start for your new employees.
2. Communicate One-To-One
How often do you have one-to-one meetings with your employees? My guess is not often enough. But so much good can come from having a chat with an employee.
There are several important areas to discuss with your team that can improve employee retention. For example, during a one-to-one meeting, you can:
provide positive feedback and ensure your employee feels appreciated for the hard work they are putting in
ask for feedback, discuss job satisfaction and gain an understanding of positive changes that may improve the lives of your employees and ensure a healthy work-life balance. This could include flexible working hours or remote working
discuss career advancement goals and provide guidance on how your employee can grow within the company.
3. Allow Opportunities For Career Growth
Career growth is very important to employees. If employees feel as if they cannot grow within your company, they will likely find a job elsewhere. So, it’s crucial to ensure that there is always room for promotions and career development.
For some employees, it may simply be a slight change to their role or an added responsibility that keeps them motivated. For others, it may be an advancement to the next stage in their career.
You should be offering training and providing your team with the tools they need to improve their skills and broaden their experience.
4. Focus On Employee Wellness
Time and time again, studies have found that healthier employees are happier. Wellness perks are a great way to improve the health and wellbeing of your team, effectively reducing stress and improving workplace productivity and employee engagement.
Plus, prioritizing employee wellness demonstrates that you care about the health and wellbeing of your team. There are several ways to implement employee wellness perks.
You could provide gym memberships or discounts to local exercise classes – but tons of companies do that. To stand out from the crowd and retain top talent, you need to go the extra mile. And this includes focusing on mental wellbeing.
An employee wellbeing app is a great way to help employees priorities their mental health and wellbeing. It allows your team members to track their sleep, exercise and mood and provides valuable resources and advice on how they can improve their overall wellness.
Better yet, you (the employer) can access the app data through an online portal. This will give you an insight into which employees may need additional support to improve their physical and mental health.
5. Create A Positive Company Culture
Imagine walking into the workplace and feeling a weight of unease settle on your shoulders. For many employees, that’s the norm they face every day when working within an uncomfortable and negative company culture.
There are several reasons why a business may have a poor company culture. These include poor communication, micro-management, unmanageable workload, workplace bullying, ineffective leaders, and general cynicism about work.
If any of these problems sound familiar, it’s time to fix them. And this usually means starting from the top. Talk openly to your employees and gain a better understanding of the key problems within your business. Then set about improving them.
Happy employees are 61% more likely to understand how their contribution will be assessed than employees who are looking for a new job
It may be that your managers need additional leadership training. Or perhaps your employees need the time to connect and build positive workplace relationships.
Whatever the solution, finding it sooner rather than later is crucial if you want to improve employee retention.
About Author: This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
How HR Can Use Office Relocation to Boost Company Morale
You want your office relocation to be successful. To achieve your goal, your HR department needs employee buy-in across your business — something that is often easier said than done. Getting employees of different backgrounds across a myriad of departments to work together is rarely simple. Fortunately, human resources can partner with senior management and your employees to make your office relocation a positive experience for everyone.
Ultimately, HR plays a key role in the success of an office relocation. With the right approach to an office move, HR can ensure that all employees can get the most value out of it. Plus, HR can use the relocation to boost company morale and improve company culture.
How to Use Office Relocation to Boost Company Morale
There are many things HR professionals can do to make an office relocation a positive experience for employees across all levels. Now, let's look at five tips to help you boost office morale during your office relocation.
1. Plan for Your Move
Don't leave your office relocation to chance. Instead, develop a comprehensive moving plan for your business. This allows you to account for all aspects of your move and how it will affect your workforce. And, you can use your plan to minimize the risk of problems during your relocation.
You can take a step-by-step approach to map out your move. First, conduct research and figure out the best location for your office. Next, prepare your business data and assets for your move — and help your employees do the same.
Finally, stay available to employees in the days leading up to your relocation and as your move gets underway. The more you can support your employees throughout your relocation, the better they'll feel about it — keeping employee engagement as stable as possible. Furthermore, your employees feel good about the fact that your company is doing everything in its power to make the relocation as seamless as possible.
2. Engage with Your New Community
Introduce your company to your new community. This ensures you can stir up interest in your brand during your office relocation. In addition, you can use this opportunity to show your employees all that your new community has to offer.
Hosting charity events can provide a great starting point for fostering community engagement. For instance, you can offer incentives to team members who volunteer for a charity event at your new office and encourage them to raise money for a cause they support. From here, your workers can plan and execute the event — and use it to earn as much money as possible for a worthy cause. Make sure to have an employee recognition ceremony afterward to spotlight your workers’ charitable efforts!
Along with charity events, you can host an open house after your office relocation. The open house allows your employees to connect with community members and learn about the area. You can offer small gifts to any members of the community who stop by your open house to help foster goodwill. It also helps you lay the groundwork for long-lasting community partnerships.
3. Provide Additional Support to Your Employees
Give your employees extra help throughout your office relocation. Remember, the moving process can cause employees' stress and anxiety levels to rise. But, you can provide your workers with resources and tools they can use to keep their stress and anxiety in check during the moving process.
Keep the lines of communication open throughout your office move. Employees should have no trouble engaging with HR professionals via email, phone calls, or in-person or video chats. They should also be able to share their relocation concerns and questions and get immediate responses to them.
Don't forget to promote a healthy work-life balance across your workforce, too. For instance, it can be beneficial to provide workers with extra paid time off during the moving process. This gives employees the additional time they can use to prepare for your office relocation. Boost employee morale by hosting group meetings that encourage workers to engage with one another and share their thoughts and feedback about the move and the current working environment.
4. Encourage Employees to Use Their Benefits
Provide your workers with opportunities to capitalize on your company's mental health, wellness, and other medical benefits. In doing so, you can help your workers feel their best throughout your office relocation and improve the employee experience.
Educating workers about your company's benefits program is paramount. As such, you can offer educational materials to teach workers about your program and what's included in it. You can even set up workshops and webinars, so workers can discover how they can reap the benefits of your program.
5. Work with Moving Professionals
Hire moving professionals who can take the guesswork out of your office relocation. These professionals can meet with you and learn what needs to get done during your move. Then, they can help you prepare for your moving day.
When you have moving professionals at your side, you can focus on what's most important: getting the best results from your employees. While moving professionals handle the most challenging aspects of your office relocation, you can ensure your workers get the support they need. As a result, moving professionals can make it simple for your company to successfully move your office from point A to point B.
The Bottom Line
An office relocation provides a golden opportunity for your company's HR department. The move gives your business a fresh start at a new address. If you include your employees in all stages of the moving process, you can foster camaraderie among your workforce. The result: your employees can feel confident in your company's ability to make the relocation a success.
Do your part to engage your workforce as your office relocation commences. Keep your employees in the loop throughout your move, encourage them to come forward with any concerns and questions, and provide them with ongoing support. That way, you can simultaneously relocate your office and boost company morale.
About Author: This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
10 Tips to Welcome and Onboard New Employees
What is An Employee Onboarding Process?
An employee onboarding process is a way of introducing new hires to the organization’s culture and environment. The time taken to complete the employee onboarding process varies from organization to organization but typically extends for a period of 90 days. Post this time duration, the employee is considered to be up to speed with the company culture and values. For nearly all organizations, the employee onboarding procedure starts as soon as the offer letter is sent out.
Employee onboarding is crucial as it is the first impression an employee gets of the organization post the lengthy interview process. A successful employee onboarding process leaves a positive impression on the employee and serves as a motivation to join the company. It is also necessary to help new hires settle down in their jobs, get to know about the company, and socially connect with the team members.
Tips for Successful Employee Onboarding
Employee onboarding covers a number of activities to make new hires feel that they are an integral part of the company. The activity list is provided to the new hire in the form of an onboarding checklist. Here is a list of top 10 tips for successfully onboarding new employees,
1. Don’t wait till their first day
The first day of work is always nerve-wracking. Employers must include new hires in the team's communication from the time the offer has been made instead of waiting for the first day. The process is commonly known as employee pre-boarding. During pre-boarding, employers send materials to clients to get them up to date with the team dynamics and job duties. You can take help from one of the best onboarding tools to stay organized.
Employees considering joining the organization usually have a lot of questions and answering them in advance would improve the chances of them actually joining. Pre-boarding communication ensures employees get to know their coworkers.
2. Prepare managers to welcome the new hires
As part of new hire orientation, it is important to prepare managers in advance in order to speed up the onboarding process. It helps to get employees fully productive 25% faster than usual. Onboarding checklists for managers should include welcome messages for new employees, assigning a mentor/buddy for the new hire, discussing roles and responsibilities, setting up on-boarding check-ins, helping them build a social network, etc.
Ultimately it is beneficial for managers if the new hire starts contributing as soon as possible. New hires should not be considered as an individual entity but an integral part of the team.
3. Teach team dynamics to new hires
New hires must get familiar with the inner workings of the company as well as their respective teams. The employee onboarding process includes helping new hires understand the team dynamics especially because acclimatization to this may take more time as compared to getting started with duties of the job. Ensure that the new hires get started on the right foot by educating them in the healthiest way possible.
The person mentoring the employee might pass on their own biases which is not an ideal situation. During employee, onboarding keeps things transparent and let employees build their own opinion.
4. Define robust expectations
Avoid ambiguity while setting expectations at the beginning of the new job. Do not completely rely on employee handbooks and job descriptions to convey your expectations to the employee. Employee onboarding must consist of managers preparing a robust set of guidelines including topics such as deadlines and how deliverables will contribute towards company growth.
This should be a living document that can be revised multiple times throughout the new hire orientation process. The document must cover company culture along with team-specific issues. This process helps in bringing the employee to full productive power in no time.
5. Schedule regular check-ins
Employee onboarding is an ongoing process. As discussed earlier, the employee onboarding process should start at the moment an offer letter is handed over to the employee, similarly, the employee onboarding process must go beyond the point when the employee is considered to be up to speed with everything.
The best way to implement this is to schedule regular check-ins between the new hire and their manager. This is the time when manager and employee can both sit together and revisit the expectations to set new ones. Onboarding best practices like this help new hires to stay on track.
6. Do not forget to assign a buddy/mentor
Mentors can be greatly helpful for the new hire orientation process. Several companies have adopted a mentor program or a buddy program where a high-performing employee assists the new hire in the initial days and greatly contributes to increasing their chances of success at the organization. During employee onboarding, the person assigned as mentor shall answer all the questions a new hire might have and take a more personal interest as the manager is not always available. Mentor/ Mentee relationship will help new hires form social connections and have a positive role model in the office.
7. Ensure that they get to know the team
Onboarding best practices include ensuring that the new hire gets to know their team and form connections. It may be an opportunity to form relationships with coworkers that will last for years to come, even beyond their employment at the current organization.
As soon as the new hire gets comfortable in their working environment, they will start being productive. It should be a priority to make them feel part of the team.
8. Encourage new hires to ask questions
During employee onboarding, New hires are full of questions regarding their work, their team, transport, cafeteria, compensation, benefits, health, insurance, etc. The new culture, new tasks, new coworkers, new jargon, might confuse them and they will seek guidance at some point. To proactively deal with this problem, create an FAQ addressing some common questions that may confuse the employees.
Create an environment of openness and comfort to encourage new hires to ask questions without worrying. Assigning a mentor is another great initiative to make sure all the questions of the employee are being answered promptly.
9. Announce the new hires arrival
Sending a welcome message for new employees can be part of the announcement that is aimed at letting the team members know about the new joiner. Schedule meet and greet events with collaborators and teams so that the new employee gets acquainted with the team. Scheduling meets and greet with the company leaders can help new hires learn from their experiences by hearing their stories. Meet and greet events can be organized in both remote and physical settings.
Ensure that the new hire feels comfortable with the team and doesn’t hesitate to ask for help from anyone.
10. Employee engagement and team building must be an ongoing process
Once the onboarding is successfully completed, there is still a lot that can be done in terms of employee engagement and team building. Provide new hires with ample opportunities to build key relationships by organizing team-building events. Pair the new hire randomly with different team members for virtual coffee meetings.
Recognizing the efforts and providing recognition can be useful in motivating the new hire to keep contributing positively. Ask new employees to fill up a candidate survey to know how your employee onboarding program is performing in reality.
About Author: This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
Everything You Need to Learn About Employee Management Tips and Develop the Skills to Become a More Effective Leader
One of the crucial ingredients of running a successful business in 2021 is managing your employees effectively. By developing and improving your leadership skills, you can create an efficient and functional environment in the workplace. Your employees are the source of power in your organization. They accelerate its growth on a daily basis. Hardworking and productive employees will increase the chances of business success while lazy and unhappy employees will bring harm to your business.
A business cannot go anywhere without a good leader and a great team. While managing employees isn’t the easiest thing to do in the world, being a harsh control freak can lead to demotivation and resentment. Also, being too soft can lead to laziness and the formation of bad habits. As leaders, we understand the struggles that you go through every day. In this article, we are going to share with you the best tips to manage your employees effectively.
Defining employee management
Before we start, you need to understand the basics. Employee management is comprised of several important ingredients namely:
Recruitment – hiring the ideal person for a specific job to develop the skills required
Measurement – measuring how employees are performing every day to achieve their goals in the shortest time possible
Monitoring – Overseeing the performance of employees regularly
Interaction – Looking at how your employees interact and collaborate every day
Reward – Rewarding employees for performing well or achieving the set goals
Discipline – Training your employees to act accordingly and obey the rules in the workplace.
Effective employee management pays off
Employee management is the foundation of every enterprise. Its important for students and employees to work with essay writers for hire. Employees who are trained and managed well will be ready to serve customers and do their jobs successfully. And this will lead to happier customers, higher profits, and an increase in customer loyalty.
When employees are unmotivated and unproductive, the turnover rate will be high and extra costs will be spent on hiring. It’s quite unfortunate to spend tons of money and time hiring and training employees only for them to leave and force you to start the process again. Managing your employees effectively and practicing active listening will help them achieve their goals in the long run.
Tips to manage employees effectively
1. Hire the best
You need to exercise caution when finding the ideal employee. Apart from finding the person who fits the job description and has all the qualifications, here are a few qualities that you should look for:
Enthusiastic – desire to leave the comfort zone, learn and excel
Reliable – someone who’ll get the job done without excuses
Humble – Someone who knows their strengths and weaknesses and doesn’t think too lowly or highly of themselves
Emotional intelligence – manages their thoughts and emotions and empathize with the people around them
Receptive – Someone who takes praises and criticisms well
Micromanagement: Telling employees how they should do their work all the time. And focusing too much on the minor details. This will not only add tension and stress to their life but also harm the business. If you made the right hiring decision, you need to let them do their work. Developing your management skills is essential to improving the productivity and performance of your team.
Constant negative or positive feedback: As the popular saying goes, too much of anything is poison. Encouraging employees and teams by giving them positive feedback constantly can lead to overconfidence and low performance. On the other hand, being too critical will lead to demotivation. Maintaining a good balance as you review their performance will pay off in spades.
Lack of confidentiality: Are you always monitoring what your employees are doing? Employees who are supervised continuously will fear and even resent their leader. Your employees need to know that you can trust them to perform.
As you measure employee performance, you need to practice effective people management and exercise your leadership role by setting clear and achievable goals that they should meet in the next quarter or year. Communicate with them regularly to ensure that they know their targets and what they need to do to get there. Monitor their progress once in a while and readjust the goals that they are struggling with.
2. Communicating openly is key
You don’t have to make your employees shiver when they think of seeing you every day. Effective managers communicate with their employees openly to gain their trust and respect. Have a platform where your employees can share their ideas and complaints without being judged. Getting to know your staff at a personal level will help you understand them and boost their self-confidence. You need to understand their problems and see things from their viewpoint. You need to resolve conflicts by criticizing them in private and praising them publicly. Open communication will help employees feel comfortable in the workplace.
3. Encourage employees to share their opinions
You must create a conducive working environment where employees can voice out their opinions and participate in discussions. As reported, students who learn in a conducive environment will be motivated to improve their performance. The same applies to employees in the workplace. No one should be shut down from voicing their opinions even when you don’t agree with them. You should encourage everyone with your leadership position. Every thought and opinion is important. Your employees need to feel like they’ve been heard.
4. Set clear goals
What do you want for the enterprise? Set clear goals and figure out the output needed to help you reach your goals. Let your employees know what you want and the things they need to do to get there. Also, remember to set a deadline. Being specific when setting goals and communicating will help in developing your employees’ skills. When you fail to give your employees a clear direction, they’ll be demotivated because they won’t know what they are working towards. Employees cannot meet the expectations that they aren’t aware of.
5. Reward hard work
Everyone enjoys being rewarded by an effective leader especially when they’ve performed exceptionally well. If an employee is putting in extra hours or excelling at what they do, reward them with a small prize, bonus, or praise them publicly. Praising them in front of other employees will not only make them feel great but also show others that you recognize and reward hard work. Effective leadership is consistent and fair when rewarding employees to avoid accusations of favoritism.
6. Ensure that employees enjoy working
Successful students spend a huge portion of their day reading and learning from the best. Employees also spend countless hours in the workplace. Therefore, you need to ensure that the workplace is a fun and enjoyable place to be for everyone. When you create an environment where employees feel comfortable working, they will be motivated to do their best.
This doesn’t mean that you have to spend thousands of dollars on installing luxurious items in the workplace. You can create a conducive environment in the workplace by allowing birthday celebrations, coffee breaks and encouraging your employees to have casual and friendly conversations instead of talking about work projects all the time.
Conclusion
A successful manager is a key ingredient in every organization that wants to grow and succeed. They help in building strong teams and ensuring that initiatives, projects, and other functions perform well. Good leaders have strong communication and interpersonal skills. And anyone can develop these skills. Good leaders build trust, are decisive, problem solvers, dependable, and provide learning opportunities. Managing employees effectively will boost their productivity and performance. And make it easier for the organization to achieve its key objectives. Taking the time to learn from others and your mistakes will pay off in spades in the long run.
About Author: Emily Harrinson is one of the most influential editors in London. She has been working in this best paper writing services company since 2006. Her hobby is reading books. But besides that, Emily is fond of sports and music. She is a very positive person.
How To Attract Millennials and Gen Z’ers Into the Construction Industry
The construction industry is facing challenging times. The average age of workers in the construction industry is 42.5 years. This means that the construction workforce needs new blood within the next 20 years.
A study estimates that by 2025, the global workforce will be made up of 75 percent of millennials. And the problem is that for the millennials and Gen Z’ers jobs in construction companies are not appealing.
This is why attracting and retaining young construction labor talents is very challenging. If you are looking to attract and retain millennials and Gen Z candidates to your organizations, here are four statistics you should know and ten actionable tips to implement right away in your construction company.
4 Key Stats About The Millennial And Gen Z Workforce
They are already planning ahead. Up to 36 percent of millennials and 53 percent of Gen Z employees are keen on leaving their current position within the next two years.
Flexibility is important to them. 22 percent of millennials and 19 percent of Gen Z employees reported they are likely to quit organizations that don’t encourage flexible working practices.
They are tech-curious. A whopping 91 percent of Gen Z employees report that they would be more attracted to organizations using sophisticated technology.
Up-to-date technology infrastructure is important. Organizations using substandard technology are likely to repel 42 percent of millennials.
How to attract millennial and Gen Z candidates into the construction industry: 10 actionable tips
1. Give millennials and Gen Z’ers something to be proud of
More than ever, millennials are looking for careers that give them a feeling of purpose. A study by Bentley University reports that 84 percent of millennials feel that making a positive impact on the world is more important than being recognized as a professional.
This highlights that the next generation of young professionals want to achieve something they can be proud of.
To attract millennial and Gen Z candidates, consider putting forward the positive impacts your organization has on the world. If you cannot find any, consider participating in or contributing towards projects that make a difference.
These can include supporting community and social development or even protecting the environment.
2. Encourage positive social interactions in your construction labor business
When deciding whether or not to work for a company, 52 percent of millennials consider a healthy workplace culture to be important.
This highlights that the next generation of talents places a higher value on the company's culture than on its brand. Since most workers in the construction industry cannot afford to work remotely, they very likely spend more time at work than at home.
It is critical you encourage positive social interactions within your workforce. Company events, informal gatherings, and other activities that bring your team together can make your company more appealing. Also, consider sharing all these moments on your organization’s social media profiles to get the attention of millennials and Gen Z candidates.
3. Flexibility work-life balance is important
Flexibility has gradually become one of the key perks young professionals look for when choosing a job. According to a poll by American Express, 75 percent of millennials agree that a successful organization should have flexible working options.
Moreover, respondents of this survey concur that organizations should not impose a rigid structure on their workforce.
Millennials and Gen Z professionals value flexibility as it allows them to better manage their work-life balance. If your organization has flexible working options, be sure to highlight these perks in your job vacancies.
As mentioned in the section above, use the power of social media to communicate about benefits you offer with your current, and potential future employees.
If you currently do not offer flexible working arrangements, consider implementing at least one of the following: flextime, reduced hours, compressed workweeks, or even remote work.
4. Learning and mentorship opportunities for your construction labor force
Millennials and Gen Zers seem very interested in active and ongoing learning opportunities. They recognize the need to stay up to date with the latest trends and discoveries. A survey reveals that more than 50 percent of millennials and Gen Z adults believe that regularly updating their skills and knowledge will benefit their careers.
To attract young professionals to your construction company, you have to provide them with learning opportunities. This can be in the form of upskilling workshops, coaching from experienced professionals, or even through mentorship programs. Offer these learning sessions at regular intervals to show you care about their personal development.
5. Career development prospects
Just like millennials and Gen Zers look for learning opportunities, they also pay extra attention to their career development prospects. A study by Glassdoor reveals that 87 percent of millennials value career progression possibilities. While some may characterize millennials as impatient, it is clear that they are highly motivated and expect to see results as soon as possible.
To get the attention of millennials and Gen Z candidates, you must be able to show them what to expect in terms of career growth. Since millennials like to be challenged, show them what they should do to climb a step further. Keep in mind that they may look elsewhere if they realize they do not have any room for career growth.
6. Understand and use their full skill spectrum
Different employees, regardless of the generation they belong to, possess different levels of skills. Nothing is more discouraging to an employee than seeing that their skills are underutilized. Studies reveal that only 28 percent of millennials feel their current employer uses their skill set to its full potential.
Potential young talents should feel you are interested in understanding their skill spectrum. Right from the interview stage, gauge their complete skill set. From there on, encourage them to fully use their skills in their daily job. Review at regular intervals, and provide adequate feedback so that your new recruit knows how to improve.
7. Decent compensation package
The compensation package you offer to your candidates is crucial to their final choice. Your proposition directly reflects their value to your organization. According to a report by MRINetwork, 28 percent of millennials selected “compensation and benefits” to be the top priority when considering a new job.
There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to compensation and benefits. Do your homework and see what is being offered elsewhere in the construction industry. Additionally, before putting your offer on the table, plan ahead of time and calculate potential increases in package benefits as your recruit career advances.
8. Supportive company culture
Millennials want to be reassured that their job is important and that their employers value them. Feedback, mentoring and coaching young professionals shows your support and belief in their abilities. Moreover, they want to contribute to the success of their organization.
Allow your younger recruits to come up with unique solutions and recognize their accomplishments. Linking millennials and Gen Zers with more experienced workers can do the trick. This shows you care about what they are learning and support their development.
9. Clear communication, vision, and targets
A clear company vision is especially vital for millennials just starting out in their professions. Business owners may link their vision to their staff by painting the larger picture. This provides employees with a clear feeling of purpose as well as an awareness of how their efforts fit into the overall goal.
Clear and concise communication is an absolute must. Prospective candidates should already know where they will fit in right from the interview process. This keeps them engaged, challenged, and encourages them to join your construction organization. If they feel connected to the end goal, this can even inspire them to stick to your company.
10. Encourage innovation and use of technology in your construction business
Most millennials and Gen Z’ers have received general education that somehow incorporates the use of technology. Moreover, the last couple of decades have strongly encouraged innovation in almost all industries. These have now become key components of their business thought process.
By highlighting your organization’s interest in innovation and making use of the latest technology, you will very likely grab the attention of millennials and Gen Z candidates. Is your next construction project using eco-friendly materials? Are you using apps to track and manage your construction assets? Make it known to the public. The key here is to demonstrate innovative efforts.
Off you go
With each passing day, the current construction workforce is getting older. The industry needs new blood more than ever, and the competition for talent is getting stiffer. As things stand, it seems there will be no workaround possible.
Many construction companies will need to rethink their position and adapt to the aging workforce. Attracting millennials and Gen Z’ers may just be the move to take their business to the next level.
About Author: Bryan Christiansen is the founder and CEO of Limble CMMS. Limble is a modern, easy-to-use mobile CMMS software that takes the stress and chaos out of maintenance by helping managers organize, automate, and streamline their maintenance operations.
How to Manage a Team Working From Home
In March 2020 the United Kingdom entered a National Lockdown as a result of the Global Covid- 19 Pandemic, and since that point, the employment industry has not been the same due to the requirement for social distancing. According to Statista, in June 2021 44% of 30-39-year-olds were still working remotely and a lot of companies have taken advantage of this change.
In this blog, we will discuss how best to manage a remote team, as well as how to help your employees adjust to these changes and how to monitor their workloads.
Set Your Expectations from the Offset:
The best place to start in terms of managing remote workers is to ensure that everyone has the same understanding of the company’s policy and what is expected of them when working from home. Whether it involves deadlines, how to adapt to using video calling platforms, or even how to structure their day, your employees need strong management guidelines in place to provide them with confidence to work from home and time to prepare for the significant change to the working environment.
Due to working from home is such a change from the norm, there are bound to be questions from your employees and it is HR’s job to support them with any queries and worries they may have.
Schedule Daily Check-Ins:
Scheduling daily check-ins can be beneficial to both the employee and the employer with regards to working from home, but the usual email, Slack, or Microsoft Teams message will not suffice. Video calling has catapulted into success on the back of the global pandemic because it is as close as you can get to real-life interaction without physically interacting.
Using a video call program to host check-ins with your employees can help maintain trustworthy and honest communication between the team. A 10-minute video call provides you with peace of mind because you can directly ask how your employee is keeping up with deadlines, what their progress is with a particular project, and even how they are coping working remotely.
Resources:
Ensuring your colleagues have the correct resources to adapt to working from home is an important part of managing a team remotely. It can be as simple as making sure they each have working headphones to use on their video call meetings to maintain employee engagement. This is important with regards to maintaining team morale and motivation because small barriers to working, such as not having the correct equipment, can cause unnecessary stress and hinder progress on a project. Ultimately you need to ensure that it is as easy as possible for your employees to do their jobs from home.
Avoid Micromanaging:
The best managers learn to allow their employees to find their best working style. When adapting to working from home, along with following your company policies, your employees do not want to feel like they are being monitored every 5 minutes because that would not be the case if they were in the office.
Allowing flexibility in working style or even how an employer prefers to record their progress can help them to feel less micromanaged and more independent. For example, you could set a guideline in place that you want an email by the end of every week with progress, issues and plans for the following week from each of your employees. But, you could give them the choice whether they want to do that in smaller emails throughout the week, or one big email at the end of the week. As long as you get a record of their progress throughout their working hours, how and when they do that before the deadline does not really affect you, but gives them a little more flexibility.
Common Issues With Remote Working:
Working from home comes with a series of common issues that, if preempted, can be managed successfully:
Technology issues are not being fixed very quickly
Loneliness from lack of interaction with colleagues
Misconstrued communication between the team
Reduced team morale
Work-life balance
Working around children
Wifi connection
Structuring your day
Distractions
All of these common issues if not managed properly can have a significant impact on the productivity of your team members therefore it is important to prepare for these situations to arise to help them.
How Employers Can Help Remote Working Employees
One of the best ways to help your remote working employees is to create a welcoming, honest environment where they feel they can voice their concerns just as though they were working face to face. Being stuck in your home with your problems every day can have a significant effect on mental health and stress levels so if a remote employee feels as though they can talk to somebody in management this can help them offload any problems.
Whether it's technical issues, struggling to meet deadlines, or even a decline in mental health, the first step to a solution is communicating it to the correct people, and without the strong foundations of a good colleague relationship, it will be very hard to solve these problems.
How to Help Employees Adjust to Remote Working
It is highly likely that at least someone in your team will not adapt well to working from home and you need to be prepared for this possibility. A good strategy for managing people in this scenario is to ask the employee to explain what their main issues are and ask them what they think would make it better. Put the ball in their court.
This helps because it shows you are willing to listen to them individually and work with them to find a solution which in itself is already helping the employee because they feel less alone with their worries.
For example, you may have an older employee who is struggling to adapt to the new video meeting technology and they are feeling worried about not being able to keep up with everyone. Without having a trusting relationship, they would not have opened up to you about this issue but now that you know, you could potentially offer them some training on how to use that particular program which consequently will make their experience working from home a little easier.
How to Monitor Employees when Working from Home
There are many ways to monitor your employees when working from home ranging from simple communication to more complex technology solutions. You may find it takes some trial and error to discover what method works for your specific industry and your team but here are some options:
Track email activity:
There is a variation of software available online which allows you to track the activity on your employees’ emails. Everything from how long it takes them to reply, to who they are emailing and even how many emails they send in one day, the email tracking software is available today can provide you a daily report on your employee's email activity.
Implement self-reporting:
If you fully trust your employees you can implement your own strategy as to how they record their progress to you. It can be as simple as an email each day, a video phone call, or even recording it on a group spreadsheet which is shared so that everyone knows what stage each individual is at. This makes it easier to manage time and identify who needs additional support as well as who is struggling with working from home.
Use a Task Management app:
Task management apps come in all different sizes and complexities but ultimately their goal is to manage, assign and monitor the progress of projects. They could be useful for monitoring the progress of employees working from home because you can set deadlines and time guidelines so that your employees can plan their days better.
About Author: At Centric HR, we provide a range of services to businesses including, health and well-being initiatives, personal coaching, employee performance management software, and culture and values development.
If you are struggling to manage your team through remote working and need some guidance get in touch with us today to learn more about our services.
Employee Recognition Explained: What Is Employee Recognition
Your employees are your greatest asset. They play a pivotal role in the success of your company. As with any other valuable asset, you should nurture and protect them.
Bob Nelson, PhD, a motivational speaker and best-selling author once said, "Take time to appreciate employees and they will reciprocate in a thousand ways." This reciprocation includes higher productivity and greater loyalty.
According to a survey from Great Place to Work, 63% of employees who were regularly recognized indicated they would be unlikely to leave their job. Recognition also increased productivity, employee engagement, and performance by 14%.
Wondering where to start? Or what an effective employee recognition program would entail? Read on to find out more.
Overview of Employee Recognition
When employees do great work, they deserve to be appreciated for their efforts. Employee recognition is a way to acknowledge the exceptional work of members of your staff:
Quality of work
Initiative
Attitude
Personal growth
Leadership skills
Problem-solving
Adaptability
One way to do this is through an employee recognition program, a structured company initiative that rewards employees on their:
Individual achievements
Work anniversaries
Milestones
Contributions
Performance achievements
Your recognition program should align with your company's mission, vision, and values. This helps reinforce the company culture you've created. Based on your values, this may be a culture of excellence, success, honesty, and teamwork (see more about company culture software here).
Your employees should have a clear idea of their individual goals and how this affects company goals, ideally starting at the time of onboarding. Periodic positive reinforcement and constructive feedback helps them strive toward attaining them, promoting a culture of success and continuous self-improvement.
Benefits of Employee Recognition
Employee recognition is a win-win situation for both employers and employees. For employees, it fosters pride in their work and gives them a reason to keep on putting forth their best. This increases their level of productivity and sense of loyalty.
An employee who trusts their organization is more inclined to contribute to company goals. They look at it as a team effort. They know they have an employer that cares about their welfare as much as the bottom line.
In fact, about 90% of employees who received recognition trusted their bosses more as a result, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), while only 48% of employees who didn't receive recognition trusted their leaders.
The result? Companies with highly engaged workforces are 21% more profitable. Conversely, an employee that resigns because they're unhappy can cost you a lot. It costs just over $4,000 to hire a new employee and an additional $1,000 to onboard them. That's roughly $5,000 for every new employee you hire, according to the SHRM.
Fortunately, recognition usually has a rippling effect: It encourages other employees to work together to achieve individual and company goals. Plus, rewarding employees is an effective way to increase productivity, especially if you’re working toward sales goals.
Other benefits include:
Increasing employee engagement
Enhancing company culture
Strengthening work relationships
Boosting customer service
Increasing profitability
Increasing employee retention, particularly of top-talent
Improving job satisfaction
Reducing staff sick days
Lowering stress levels at work
Inspiring other companies
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How to Recognize Your Employees
Traditionally, employee recognition is top-down. A manager or supervisor acknowledges the great performance of an employee. It can also involve staff recognition where a team lead recognizes the stellar performance of his/her team or workgroup.
You can also expand this to include peer-to-peer recognition as well. This allows co-workers or teammates to recognize each other. Ideally, recognition should involve all the above.
However, regardless of the type of recognition in the workplace and whether it’s private, public, or anonymous, it should have the following criteria:
Ample resources committed
Straightforward and easily understood by all involved
Aligned with your company's mission, vision, and values
Rewards commensurate with the achievements
Take place soon after the employee attains the achievement
Well-executed
Continuously evaluated for relevance
Clear communication of the program is also important. You should introduce new hires to your recognition program during employee onboarding. Managers can then reinforce the program's elements and clarify any uncertainty.
Most importantly, an employee recognition program should never be static. It should evolve as both internal and external changes take place. Don't be afraid to get input. Employee surveys are a great way to do that. You can alter your program based on their feedback. For example, whether an employee prefers to be recognized privately or publicly.
It’s also important to find out what type of work employees wish to be rewarded for. Do they want to be celebrated for doing a great job on a project or for achieving years of service to the company?
If you’ve already implemented a rewards system into your company, see how your employees react when they are recognized. If there is a lukewarm reaction, then you’ll need to tailor your employee recognition program to achieve optimal benefits.
Even simple acts of recognition can improve employee morale. This can include expressing heartfelt thanks or apologizing for any miscommunication. Non-work-related gestures also go a long way.
Ask a new mother how she is coping with being away from her newborn. Find out how your new employee is adjusting after moving to a new city. Let them suggest ways that you can help with the transition.
The key to successful employee recognition is to be authentic. Genuine appreciation efforts are more likely to be welcomed by your staff. All these gestures foster a caring work environment. It's one that any employee will enjoy being a part of. It will make them less likely to leave.
“Our staff has praised the increased communication 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.”
Christopher Baggott Chief Executive Officerator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
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Examples of Employee Recognition
Understanding what type of recognition employees want can be a challenge. After all, there’s no one right answer to this question.
In general, there are several ways to show your appreciation. We’ve outlined a few of them below. Remember, the better you know your staff, the better chance you have of rewarding them.
Bonuses: Monetary rewards can be a great incentive. However, you should tie them to specific performance measurements.
Care Package: This can include gift certificates, snacks, games, and a handwritten note from you. It’s even better if the items reflect their personality and interests.
Appreciation Days or Events: More formal programs can highlight an employee for a month or quarter.
Public Acknowledgement: This can be as simple as a company- or department-wide email, or something more involved like a trophy, plaque, or digital photo display. However, be careful: Some members of staff shy away from public recognition, while others bask in it.
Performance Feedback: Giving regular feedback on your employees’ performance helps to boost their confidence. You can deliver individual feedback on a one-to-one level or hold team meetings to offer performance feedback on team projects.
Social Media Shout-Outs: Providing shout-outs on your social media platforms is a great way to recognize employees in a public manner.
Rewards Platform: You could also create a rewards marketplace where top-performing employees can gain gift cards or subscriptions to magazines or media. Workmates has an integrated newsfeed where the kudo badges are shown and employees can exchange the points for rewards.
Coworker Recognition Program: Implement a program that allows peer-to-peer recognition. The recognition doesn't even have to be work-related. It could be something a fellow employee did to get them through a difficult day.
Extra Time Off: This could involve giving an employee the day off on their birthday or giving an extended paid holiday over Christmas and New Year. Alternatively, you could offer staff extra paid hours off for achieving specific milestones.
Professional Development: Provide professional development, including workshops, training programs, free books and their own training courses.
Small Gesture: Gift a bouquet of flowers, offer book tokens, send a thank you note/card, buy a box of chocolates or buy a gift card.
Wellness Programs: Providing free gym time boosts employee wellness, as well as productivity levels. It’s a great way to lower stress and anxiety and promote a healthy work-life balance for your employees.
Lunch or Dinner: Taking your employees out for lunch or dinner can create some memorable moments for your team. For shyer employees, a one-on-one lunch is a perfect way to say thank you. Make it about them by choosing a location they enjoy.
Team Happy Hour: Going for team drinks at the end of the week is a popular way to show your appreciation. Offer to purchase the first round of drinks or plan drinks around a pub event, such as quiz night or karaoke. It’s a great bonding exercise!
Team-Building Activity: Paintballing, kayaking, river rafting, rock climbing or other sports are events that show that you value your employees alongside wanting to build relationships between them. Virtual team-building activities are a good way to include and recognize remote employees.
Outdoor Activity: Rewarding employees with outdoor activity provides a change of scenery from the four walls of the office and allows employees to engage with each other in another environment.
Donating: Find out if an employee would appreciate you donating to a non-profit instead of any monetary reward. This will send the message that you're interested in the things they care about and show that you are willing to help make a difference.
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Author Bio: Auria Heanley is co-founder of Oriel Partners, a boutique PA and administrative recruitment consultancy based in Central London. She is extremely passionate about providing the highest quality of service to both clients and candidates. Oriel Partners’ clients range from global multinationals to small boutique firms, all requiring the same personal service and high-caliber support
How To Write A Thank-You Letter After An Interview
The interview process can be a stressful one, especially if you are applying to a big company known for its strict candidate requirements. Moreover, it could be stressful particularly for you because it’s your dream job or a company you’ve been dying to work for.
In any case, you need to make sure that you leave a good impression even if you don’t get the job. One way to do this is by sending a thank-you letter after the interview. However, if you’ve never written one, there might be some things you will need to keep in mind.
Why Is A Thank-You Letter Important?
As mentioned above, a thank-you letter is primarily used to help you leave a good impression after the interview. However, its importance goes beyond that. A good thank-you letter can significantly increase your chances of getting selected for the position as long as you send the letter on time and word it to reflect your brightest side.
In addition to that, some HRs and recruiters actually expect to receive a thank-you letter after conducting the interview with a candidate. Consequently, if they don’t receive one from you, they could interpret it as rudeness from your side. As such, it’s better to send a thank-you letter even if you don’t consider it to be something of much importance.
What Should A Thank-You Letter Have?
Compared to many other professional emails you are writing on a daily basis, a thank-you letter is a fairly simple one. Ramone Ferrell, an expert from the writing services reviews site Best Writers Online, puts it this way, “You only need to learn how to write a thank-you letter once. Then, you will only have to reiterate what you’ve written before every time you need to write it again.”
The most common elements in a thank-you letter include:
Address Line and Subject Line
Personalized Greeting
“Thank You” or Note of Appreciation
Recap of Your Interview
Note About Taking the Next Step
Conclusion and Contact Info
How to Make an Outline for A Thank You Letter?
Sometime during the application/recruiting process, you probably had to send out many documents and emails for which you wrote outlines. The same thing can be done for a thank-you email to make it easier to organize it and write it. Here are some tips on how to write a good outline for your thank-you letter (and then write the letter itself):
Get all the company and recruiter information beforehand. This is especially important if you are going to multiple interviews. Make notes of all the job positions, company names, recruiter names, and their contact information. This way, you won’t mess up the address line and the greeting at the start of the email.
Use the subject line to say thank you. Specify that you are talking about the interview. Then, in your opening paragraph after the greeting, start with your appreciation and gratitude right away. For example, you can have a subject line that says, “Thank you for your time” and then an opening sentence that says, “Thank you for the opportunity and for taking the time to conduct the interview for [job position] with me today.”
Recap the interview but focus on your qualifications and strengths. You want them to remember your brightest side to increase your chances of getting the job. Keep it concise and to the point. You can also remind them about a unique trait you used to make yourself stand out during the interview (e.g. humor, industry awards, recommendations from high-profile professionals).
Show that you truly care about this position. Make a note about your eagerness to take the next step. Don’t forget to leave your contact information at the end so that they can get in touch with you.
Which Mistakes Should You Avoid?
Because thank-you letters are fairly simple, there is not much you could potentially mess up. However, there are still some mistakes you will want to avoid. Tamika Hughes, an expert from the custom writing reviews site, explains it this way, “You don’t want to sound too eager or even clingy. Remember that you want to show gratitude with this letter. Choose your words wisely and make sure it sounds professional.”
What Happens After You Send the Letter?
Thank-you letters are one-way letters (as in, you shouldn’t expect a reply to them). And while you can just sit and wait for the recruiter to contact you about the results of the interview, it’s a good idea to actually be the one to reach out. In other words, you should send a follow-up letter next.
You can send a follow-up letter several times (up to three times, usually) if you don’t get a reply after the first time. Some recruiters are just too busy to reply to rejected candidates, so if you don’t hear from them, you likely didn’t get the job. But even if you didn’t get it, you still left a good impression with your thank-you letter and the follow-up letters you sent.
Final Thoughts
Author Bio: Frank Hamiltonhas been working asan editor atessay review serviceWriting Judge. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing, and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German, and English.
Why Is It So Important To Focus On Employee Retention?
After many months of frustrating lockdown restrictions and corporate struggles, the world of employment remains in a peculiar state, but there are positive signs. Companies that managed to endure the difficult conditions are looking to reinvest in growth following promising vaccination efforts, and they can pick from a huge pool of strong candidates who were fired or furloughed due to circumstances beyond their control. Doesn’t this mean that employers hold the edge?
Well, it isn’t quite that simple. Companies with money to invest are certainly in strong positions and have many options, but that doesn’t mean they can afford to get blasé about employee experience (which largely stems from how they treat their workers) — especially given that COVID-19 has changed the very nature of employment to a remarkable extent (more on this later). There’s a delicate balance to maintain.
Indeed, one of the most important things for an ambitious company to prioritize in 2021 is employee retention: fighting the churn of sourcing and onboarding new talent by convincing the workers you already have to stick with you. The number of employees sticking with you for years is a crucial metric — and in this post, we’re going to explain why employee retention deserves such a prominent place on your list of priorities. Let’s begin.
Remote working offers global opportunities
Back when almost everyone had to travel to work every day, each professional had limited options for where they could work without needing to move. The same limitations affected employers, of course, but they could always find some eager beginners and train them up if necessary. When someone took a role, then, they were likely to cling to it as best they could, knowing that losing the job might leave them in dire straits.
Today, though, so many companies have moved to remote working that employees have plenty of options to consider. If a business fails to keep its workers happy, they can source alternative work without needing to uproot their families or even leave their home offices. And then there’s the option of freelancing through online marketplaces, or even taking the entrepreneurial route.
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Due to this, it’s a huge mistake to think that team members don’t have options. If they’re good employees, they’ll likely be able to find other companies offering flexible work who see their talents — so pull out all the stops to keep them working for you. And though it’s normal for your top talent to leave eventually, you should learn as much as you can from their exit interviews, and use that information to make subsequent hires more likely to stick around.
People are increasingly prizing work/life balance
It isn’t just a lack of decent pay that inspires an employee to look elsewhere. Perhaps more often at this point, it’s a lack of strong work/life balance. Experiencing the misery of isolation during the pandemic has shifted our priorities in profound ways. If you’re anything like most, you’ve learned how important it is to treat yourself well (taking care of yourself first — along with your loved ones, naturally— and putting employers second) and focus on more than just money.
This means that you need to work harder to keep talented employees around. They won’t accept unreasonable overtime without accompanying pay, for instance, or even being needed to spend time in the office if it isn’t strictly necessary. Sticking to your old standards and hoping that things will go back to normal isn’t a winning tactic.
Focus on achieving flexible conditions, being more considerate of concerns like mental health, and — most significantly — listening to your team (it’s among the simplest yet most potent employee retention strategies). How do your employees feel about your working conditions? Are you offering the kind of professional development they’re looking for? Invest in the perks they want, not those you think are the most valuable. A company that encourages employee contentment will always fare better than those that don’t.
Onboarding at a distance is a substantial challenge
The process of bringing in new hires has never been easy, exactly, but it used to be markedly easier than it is now. Having teams work in offices meant that fresh arrivals would have people around them at all times to give them useful advice and look after their best interests as they became accustomed to the pace of work. Now that so many people are working remotely, the onboarding process has changed into a trickier virtual arrangement.
This isn’t to say that online onboarding is a terrible inconvenience, of course: with the right remote onboarding system in use, it’s perfectly possible to make a new hire feel welcome and get them up to top productivity reasonably quickly. But it’s still far from optimal, especially when you factor in the earlier point: someone dissatisfied with their experience has so many alternatives to consider.
Once you get someone through the onboarding phase and past their probationary period, then, you’ll want to keep them around to minimize the effort you need to put into further onboarding. Additionally, the more long-serving employees you have, the simpler it will be to onboard the new hires you can’t avoid bringing in (as all experienced HR professionals will confirm, 100% employee retention rates are essentially impossible).
Workplace culture takes time and effort to bed in
Lastly, we need to consider something that more and more companies are investing in workplace culture. It’s partially an HR concern and partially a PR concern because it’s great for earning leads and attracting candidates if a company can boast of its wonderful culture. It’s far easier talked about than achieved, though — and it notably takes time to bed in. The longer someone stays with a company, the more integrated they become.
Now envision a company that suffers a great deal of churn, with its most loyal employee only lasting a year before venturing to greener pastures. How good can that company’s culture be? The employees can’t be particularly close: it’s hard to build strong working relationships when you expect your colleagues to leave at any time (and you’re not sure when you’ll leave).
It’s only by retaining your employees that you can build a strong culture: by the time a long-term employee leaves, they’ll have passed their expertise and attitude to their newer colleagues. Furthermore, your employees’ satisfaction levels will be greater if they can see that you’ll make a concerted effort to keep them around.
In conclusion, then, it’s vital to focus on employee retention because today’s hires have more opportunities than ever before, have higher working standards, are harder to onboard, and won’t become culturally invested unless kept around. If you’re not already putting a lot of effort into keeping your employees content, rectify that mistake quickly.
Author Bio: This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
7 Tips on How to Build Team Cohesion
Working as a team is essential in any large or small business. You need your employees and colleagues to build trust, enjoy open and honest communication, and work together to achieve team goals. Without this, your business won’t be able to run properly and will have no chance of growing or improving.
The secret to long-term success is largely about ensuring you're hiring the right people for the right job. However, this is not where building a successful business stops.
You need to consider how that team works together. Sometimes, the perfect person for a position may not be the most experienced, or the one with the best qualifications. Instead, they might be the person who works better in a team.
The Importance Of Team Cohesion
In a nutshell, team cohesion is when a group of individuals works together for the common good. In a business context, this means completing projects or improving processes to boost the bottom line. In a perfect world, each team member will bring their individual skill set to the table, and those skill sets will work in harmony to reach the goal.
Without a cohesive bond and working strategy within a company, the business will never operate as effectively or as efficiently as it could. Not only is this bad for your bottom line, but it’s also bad for your employees’ well-being.
The figure for disengaged employees is usually around 70%, and that is not good for business. There are a lot of reasons for disengagement—stress in the workplace, bad fit for the job, low morale or motivation, poor management—but lack of team spirit is a big one.
How To Build Team Cohesion
Thankfully, there are plenty of things that you can do to improve this statistic in your business. It takes effort from both you as the leader and the team members themselves. However, if team leaders play an active role in building camaraderie and offering the right motivation, you can all improve team efficiency and still feel comfortable.
1. Define Your Company Values
Even a startup or small business should have a mission statement and a set of company values. These are critical for steering your business in the direction you want to grow. And they will help you find the right people to build a successful team. With a fully established set of values, you can give your team a strong sense of what they are working towards. This immediately gives all team members a common thread that unites them.
If you don’t already have a vision and mission statement, you can include your team in creating one or incorporate team collaboration software to improve your internal communication plan.This will help them build trust and give them an even greater sense of group cohesion. They become part of creating common goals and ways of thinking.
2. Establish The Rules
All great teams need a clear set of rules to play by. If everyone knows the rules, then it makes it a lot easier to work together and feel comfortable. These rules should include exactly who is responsible for what element of a project or ongoing work. Clearly defined team goals are important too. This sets up clear expectations for commitments from each member of the team. It also gives everyone an understanding of their role within the group.
It’s important to have accountability for everyone—from the leader of the team to the most junior staff member. Everyone will be able to see what they need to do and how that will impact what everyone else needs to do. Plus, you’re showing your team that you play an active role and are just as responsible if work is not completed on time.
3. Show Your Trust
Trust is a critical part of teamwork and building camaraderie. If colleagues can’t trust each other to get work done on time or do not appreciate the work that each member does, they will not work well together. This all starts from the top.
As the leader, you need to be sure that you are showing your team that you trust them and that they can trust you. Avoid micromanaging your team. Instead, build trust and create a culture of respect by showing that you believe in them and their abilities.
4. Establish Clear Lines Of Open Honest Communication
Open and honest communication is another critical element of working towards team goals. The solution to improving company communication is that each member needs to feel comfortable enough to ask questions, give input, and share any grievances that arise. Plus, they need to feel that their voices will be heard and acknowledged.
When establishing your rules for teamwork, include a section on how the team should communicate. Try to be as transparent as possible so that no one feels like information is being hidden, or that someone is being excluded from any processes. Play an active role in ensuring communication is clear, and that there are no gray areas at any stage. This creates a feeling of group cohesion, as everyone has a strong sense of belonging and inclusion.
5. Ensure You Have Safe Practices
This comes down to accountability and open and honest communication once again. To build a successful team, you need each member to feel safe in their role and in their interactions with each other. When this happens, you have a great team that communicates and takes responsibility.
However, without safe practices for teamwork, people will not allow themselves to build trust in their teammates or you. It might seem obvious, but always try to criticize people in private, and praise efforts in public.
6. Learn About Each Other
Team-building activities may seem like a boring cliché, but it’s important in building camaraderie and getting people to work well together.
You don’t need to go out into the wild and spend a week doing an adventure boot camp. Team-building activities can be as simple as going for lunch together once a weekso that you have some downtime together. This allows people to let their guards down and start talking to each other as friends, not as staff who need to always get a job done.
7. Celebrate Their Success
Keeping your team motivated is a key ingredient to group cohesion.
One of the best ways to do this is to celebrate their success in reaching those all-important team goals. Each time you finish a project, bring in donuts for the team and congratulate them all. At the end of the quarter or the year, celebrate your achievements in a way that suits your company. Whether this involves a shout-out on your company feed,a staff party, a group trip to a spa, or a shared experience everyone will enjoy, the aim is to ensure that every member of your team feels appreciated.
If you celebrate their success together, it will give the team a sense of pride in their efforts, helping them to feel motivated to work harder together.
You can also make a point of celebrating personal victories within your team. If someone has completed their studies, bought a house, or reached any other major milestone, use this as an opportunity to foster a strong sense of team spirit.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
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Taking The First Steps Towards Cohesion
Building an engaged, motivated, and productive team isn't always easy, but it’s essential for any big or small business that wants to thrive in today’s marketplace.
If you want to build a great team, it’s as easy as taking the first step. Play an active role in creating group cohesion and don't assume it will come naturally. It takes time, effort, and open and honest communication.
Follow these seven tips to foster a spirit of togetherness that leads to a collaborative culture that breeds success.
Author Bio:
This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
What is Employee Retention and How to Keep Employees Engaged
Hiring new staff is a labor-intensive and costly business. Once engaged after the onboarding process, new recruits need the investment of time for training and mentoring, plus inevitably a certain amount of making allowances for ‘rookie’ mistakes. Managers and colleagues asked to show them the ropes can find they have less time to complete their own tasks. It can take months before new recruits are fully up to speed in their role, invested in the company culture, and making a full contribution to productivity.
On the flip side, established, time-served employees can be worth their weight in gold. They have invaluable experience and are intimate with key processes, understand the ‘quirks’ of their colleagues, and are often great team players. Should they resign, the loss of a key member of staff can hit a business very hard.
While there is always an instance where someone needs to leave in order to pursue new challenges or opportunities that simply can’t be provided in their current organization, or for personal and domestic reasons, improving employee retention of talent is a key objective for most businesses. Many sectors including IT, construction, sales, and business development, marketing, and perhaps not surprisingly health and social care are all experiencing significant skills shortages so this really is not the time to let valuable team members step away in search of a better deal elsewhere.
What helps employee retention?
Establishing a good Employee Value Proposition (EVP) can help elevate a business to be one that everyone would like to work for. It’s essential that the EVP is communicated effectively – on the website and in recruitment ads for new employees, and through in-house communication channels for existing staff. It must be embedded within the company culture and be authentic, otherwise, people will quickly see through any empty promises and vote with their feet. These are some areas to consider:
Flexibility
Since the pandemic, employees who work remotely have proved that they can be just as productive, and in some cases more so, than staff based in the office. People are looking for more flexibility, not only around where they work but also, the hours they work. Organizations that can offer full flexibility are in demand. This needs to be more than simply allowing people to work from home on a set number of days each week, but allowing them to choose when and where they work for themselves, wherever the role permits. This requires an environment of trust whereby people are empowered to get their work done effectively without feeling micromanaged and a task, rather than a rule-based approach. The office may be the best place for collaboration and team-building, while the home may be better for focus and productivity.
Employee-focused benefits
One of the great lessons of lockdown, when the line between home and work lives was blurred like never before, was the growth in understanding that everyone is different, with often complicated lives. The best HR teams spent a lot of time listening to employees and conducting surveys to identify specific and general needs, in order to create a range of benefits that people actually want. Some, such as extended Maternity Leave, are only of interest to certain people while giving employees Friday afternoons off during the summer tends to be popular with everyone.
Support
Hybrid and remote work can increase productivity for many employees. Those who have a good working environment at home often find they can focus on their work without the myriad distractions of a busy office and can create more time for themselves. But they don’t do this in a vacuum, so regular check-ins, with line managers and teams, are essential to keep them engaged and feeling ‘part of it’, regardless of where they are. Making sure employees have the best technology solutions at hand is crucial. Automated processes, for example, can reduce laborious and repetitive form-filling, allowing employees to focus on more rewarding aspects of their role.
Communication
Avoiding disengaged employees when people are working remotely can be a challenge according toAlex Arundale, Chief People Officer,Advanced.Probably the most important thing that they are doing around employee retention strategies is creating a culture that resonates with their people and makes them want to be part of the business. They have regular Town Halls, lunchtime meeting forums and use internal channels to maintain open two-way communication so that everyone is included and has a voice. Video conferencing has transformed opportunities for meetings, but there is also a need for face-to-face interaction from time to time, fulfilling people’s social needs for human interaction and opportunities for more relaxed, non-work chat.
Promote diversity and inclusion
People like to see others who look like themselves in the workplace, and this is particularly true when looking at roles higher in the organization. It demonstrates that opportunities exist at all levels and that ambitions to rise through the ranks are very attainable. Consider producing a Diversity Pay Gap report, to provide useful data to guide understanding about how to work towards fair representation for all, informing policy-making and initiatives for change. Building a vision for a realistic and attractive future, in a supportive and caring environment, will greatly help you to retain employees.
ESG matters for all
Environmental, sustainable, and governance issues are increasingly important for customers who are often driven to choose one product or service over another because of the company’s ESG credentials. These issues matter to employees too and can be a key part of an organization’s employee value proposition (EVP), setting one employer above its competitors as an attractive place to work. Employees want to feel that they are making a difference to the world and society, as well as achieving personal goals, and they want to feel proud to belong to a socially and environmentally aware organization.
Clear opportunities for employees
A key driver in employee retention is providing a clear career path with the appropriate professional development and mentoring opportunities that enable people to achieve their personal objectives. Within this, it is essential that line managers are focused on motivating, supporting and empowering their teams so that each employee feels inspired to try for more.
When an organization develops a culture of employee-focused decision making, it creates an environment that people want to be part of. Issues such as bullying and discrimination are much less likely to occur in places where diversity and inclusion are promoted as key company values, for example, and being fully heard makes people feel more involved and committed. Organizations that involve employees in what happens during their working day, value their input, and listen when things go wrong, are far more likely to be able to retain good people. These employees are the ones who ultimately help the business to deliver its objectives. People like to be part of a successful, widely-respected business that cares about and encourages employees – it’s a major reason to join an organization and an even greater reason to choose to stay.
Understanding why employees leave
Understanding why people leave is critical if further damage is to be avoided. There are a number of push and pull factors at play, with push factors representing the reasons to leave a job, while pull factors are the things that attract them to another. Here are some tips that will drive better insights into why people leave:
Conduct exit interviews – it’s surprising how many organizations don’t bother with a formal conversation after someone has quit. To be effective, these should be carried out by an HR professional rather than a line manager, and an established environment of sharing openly. Otherwise, there is a danger that the leaver will not tell the truth, particularly if their manager is part of the problem. Make use of the face-to-face medium to ask follow-up questions and get right under the skin of any problems that are raised.
Use exit forms – these have the advantage of being potentially less confrontational and may elicit the truth about a situation that the leaver would be less likely to feel comfortable talking about with another person. Online or paper forms can be anonymized and as such form the basis of user data. However, these types of employee feedback are limited to pre-set questions and cannot dive deeper into specific issues. They may also enable a ‘tick-box approach that doesn’t really provide anything of value for HR.
Collect and use data – The data needs to be collated and analyzed to highlight trends. It may reveal, for example, that the high employee turnover is down to working for a particular manager; or that people with a common gender, racial or background don’t stay long; or there is an emerging trend for new mothers to leave as soon as they have completed their return to work period. This information is invaluable for shining a light on problems within the organization.
Revisit policies and implement changes – Accurate data immediately empowers HR to take steps to halt the resignation trend. They may for example look at training and support for some managers, revisit diversity and inclusion policies and ensure they are implemented day-to-day or consider more flexible work arrangements that suit new parents.
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Author Bio: This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
Ways HR Can Help Employees Avoid Burnout
At some point, every company will see employees feeling the effects of burnout. It could be due to excess stress, a heavy workload, or problems at home. Whatever the source, it’s an issue that needs to be handled by HR professionals quickly and efficiently. Employees work their best when they are happy and motivated, and for your business to succeed long term, your company culture needs to reinforce these attributes by preventing burnout.
The best way to keep the work environment positive and employees excited to return to their jobs each day is by focusing on benefits, mental health, and supportive guidance.
Signs of Burnout
Before you can change your company culture to eliminate burnout, you need to understand what it is and how to identify when it happens. Essentially, burnout is when an employee is overwhelmed or stressed to the point that exhaustion affects their work and their personal life. Burnout must be handled immediatelybecause if left unassisted, your company can suffer. What’s more, it can lead the employee to darker places, including feelings of depression and even suicidal ideation.
To reach struggling employees before it’s too late, HR must educate all managers on the signs of burnout so they can identify the problem immediately and take action. The signs of burnout are numerous, but they may include frequent headaches, a loss of appetite or change in eating habits, physical fatigue, and a lack of motivation. Though you may not be able to see all of these ailments directly, managers should be aware of when these issues affect the work of their employees while on the job. Often, someone who is exhausted and over-stressed will take more sick days or you may see a decline in their daily workflow.
Before giving a warning or bad review, managers need to have a conversation with the team member and determine if burnout is impacting their work. From there, the manager should refer the employee to HR.
It’s important that employees have a direct route to ask for help when they need it without having to jump through numerous hoops. That’s why managers and HR should have an open-door policy where employees can come in at any time and express their concerns. In addition to in-person visits, employees should also have an easy way to email or even contact management anonymously if necessary. The worker should feel confident that their concerns will be heard and HR will take immediate action.
Modify Your Benefits Package
It’s important that you be able to identify specific employees who may be experiencing burnout, but it’s also crucial you adjust your company culture so that all employees feel happy and satisfied while at work. One way you can do this is by modifying the benefits you provide and offering a healthier work-life balance. At a minimum, consider allowing more sick, personal, or mental health days during the year. Studies show that 24% of employees believe this would help their work performance, and it gives them a nice breather so they can return to work refreshed and ready to go.
On top of time off, allowing flexible work hours for employees who are overwhelmed with work and home issues is key. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many employees still have children who are staying home to attend school remotely. For them, it can be very difficult to get their kids ready for school and accomplish their work tasks at the same time. If your workflow allows it, consider creating a flex schedule where the employee could start later in the day or work a split shift where they can work in the morning, leave for a set number of hours, and then return to finish the job. And if you aren’t already offering a remote work option, you really should be!
Burnout doesn’t happen only because employees are physically exhausted. It can also be due to a lack of motivation to complete their work duties because they don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. To keep employees engaged, your company policy should also dictate a clear path to promotion for workers who wish to take their skills to the next level.
An understanding of promotional policies should be introduced during the employee’s initial orientation, where they can clearly see the positions they can aspire to as they learn new skills. If this is done, the only way that an employee will feel burnout is if the path of promotion is not delivered as promised. Human resources must never let that happen.
Mental Health
The human resources team needs to have policies and action plans in place for employees who are dealing with mental health issues that can result in or include burnout. For a worker to perform to your expectations, they must feel like they’re appreciated as people and that their efforts are really helping the good of the company. To accomplish this, managers should reward good performers with an encouraging email or a special award like a gift card or extra day off. When employees feel valued, the sky's the limit to what they can do. You might see that this motivation actually increases productivity.
Employees may also experience burnout if they feel like they’re just cogs in the machine and that their contributions are not meaningful. To assist in this regard, HR should host team activities that get everyone at the company involved to remind them that we are all in this together. Such activities could include a day at a museum or park or it could be a more meaningful activity, like a walk for charity. Even allowing teams to take breaks together could be what you need to encourage that togetherness that employees crave.
Human resources can also offer guidance and help to those who are dealing with more severe mental health issues or heavy stress. That could be offering free trips to wellness retreats in the area. Your benefits package should also include a mental health component, where employees have access to therapists and counselors at a discounted rate.
As you can see, there are many ways that your organization can identify and defeat employee burnout as it develops. By employing the strategies above, you will have a happier workforce whose effectiveness will bring your company to the next level.
Author Bio: This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
Future Of Recruitment: 7 Emerging Trends For A Recruiter
Recruiting trends change over time. The expectations of the companies, HR recruiters, and candidates are changing, meaning one needs to adapt as soon as possible. The game is abofut which recruiter can act fast and get the star candidate for their company.
Now, the traditional recruitment methods are the ones that are getting outdated, and recruiters are trying new hiring trends from chatbots to the use of AI, the possibilities are endless. The recruiters are tired of handling a lot of paperwork (because of the resumes). The future of recruitment looks bright and way seamless. And the trends it has in store will help recruiters to make a decision.
Recruitment trends apt for future
One thing you will notice with the trends is that technology will play a vital role in recruitment. As most of the workforce will work from home and the reliance on virtual technology will be huge. Here are the future trends of recruitment:
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#1. Predictive analysis
Predictive analysis allows the companies to assess, anticipate and know the candidate behaviors on actual data. Most companies have an enormous amount of data on their employees. They can correlate these dimensions to determine the profile of the candidate. It is how predictive analysis can help a company to find its star candidate.
Some more reasons making predictive analysis a trend to look out for future:
Hiring that is more targeted and faster
The use of predictive analytics in the recruitment process allows the recruiter to identify the best-fit candidates. Recruiters can now cut through the clutter quickly, recognize the "high potentials", and connect with the best candidates before the competition can engage them.
Sourcing that is smart and effective
For recruiters, sourcing is a pain point that can take a long time. HR departments can use predictive analytics to improve their hiring strategies by eliminating ineffective or inefficient sources. The same models can also be used to assess job boards, third-party recruiting firms, and in-house recruiters, among other sources.
Improved candidate experience
Because candidate evaluation is objective rather than subjective, it is more transparent. Because it is free of unconscious bias, the algorithm is entirely devoted to diversity and inclusion.
Because candidates are informed early where they stand, the candidate experience is smoother and more enjoyable. Finally, all job candidates want to know that they are moving into a job and culture that is a good fit for them; the data gives them that information, allowing them to make the best career decision possible.
#2. Gamification in recruitment
The following characteristics of gamification in HR are game algorithm, structure, and feasibility to keep employees actively engaged within their company. Gamification isn't just about games; it can also include tests, assignments, puzzle-solving, and a variety of other activities that are carried out creatively through the use of digital media.
The recruiters tend to know more about the candidate at both personal and professional levels. Gamification gets integrated into the conventional hiring processes.
Gamification has its advantages as it appeals to the tech-savvy generation, obtains real insights into candidates, and helps to build awareness.
#3. Chatbots - future of recruitment
The job of a recruiter is tough, they have applicants, filtering them out is a time-consuming process. It is the reason why the cost of hiring a candidate is increasing day by day. The solution is implementing chatbots. It allows us to automate and simplify the HR process. Here are some reasons how it is effective for both the candidates and employers:
Improves the candidate experience.
The interview chatbots help the candidates to fill the form while applying for the interview. There are many instances when the job seeker leaves the job application midway because of the length or complexity. With the presence of chatbots, the candidates can look up if they are stuck at any point.
Chatbots accelerate the hiring process.
The traditional hiring process takes longer than gets reduced to weeks by using chatbots. It saves the precious time of the recruiter.
#4. AI/VR taking recruitment to the next level
Artificial intelligence is reforming the recruitment industry. More and more companies are discovering the power of AI as it can make the recruitment process efficient. The recruitment process will look different in the future when implementing AI/VR trends.
How AI helps in video interviewing?
Video interviewing is quickly becoming a popular form of communication. Pre-recorded screening questions, as well as live one-on-one or panel interviews, are conducted using interviewing platforms.
Cost savings get realized, and time-to-hire gets reduced. It is more than just convenient for everyone involved. Rather than waiting for a department head to return to your time zone, businesses use video to conduct interviews from any location at any time.
AI has the potential to take video interviewing to the next level. Candidate personality traits get assessed in new versions. AI can help recruitment operations assess confidence, skill, and focus by examine facial expressions, gestures, and even voice.
VR for recruiting
Previously thought to be limited to gaming applications, virtual reality has made its way into the business world. Virtual reality is now getting used to training employees on everything from safety and procedures to soft skills. It's a great way to get employees ready for the challenges they'll face. VR could be a tool for attracting talent for recruiters. You can give job seekers a virtual tour of your facility by using virtual reality headsets.
#5. Rise of social recruiting
Recruiting with LinkedIn is now a thing of the past. Recruiters are broadening their scope and working on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms. It helps find high-quality candidates and tries to appeal to and market to them.
While phone and email remain the most effective recruiting tools, younger generations are increasingly turning to social media. Instagram's popularity as a recruiting tool continues to rise, with 37% of recruiters using it today, up from 18% in 2017.
#6. Expansive hiring criteria
It is important more than ever to assess the relevant skills to hire a better candidate. One can do with psychometric tests and with the focus on soft skills that the candidates will bring to the company.
The soft-skills are necessary for a candidate and in the future, they will play an important role and will be non-negotiable. E-commerce outsourcing companiesare smart enough to not only hire candidates based on the industry standards. They are looking for candidates who not only possess knowledge of e-commerce capabilities but are also eager to learn and grow with the company. Here are some of the soft skills that employers are looking for in a candidate:
Communication
Adaptability
Critical observation
Problem-solving
Teamwork
#7. Candidate experience is going to be key
The candidate’s experience of the organization starts from the interview process only. So, the companies focus more on the seamless process of interview process. It means the recruiter needs to provide the necessary feedback even if they got selected or not. It shows the candidate that the E-commerce company is going the extra mile. A negative interaction can have a lasting impression on your company when a candidate spreads the word online. It is likely to grow in trend, especially when geographically present candidates explore positions in your company.
Summary
Businesses are finding ways to adapt as the world gets shaped by ever-changing global events. HR is also changing the way people work. Recruitment is changing at breakneck speed, from hiring someone virtually to broadening your view of your potential labor pool.
Rather than taking center stage, these five trends show technology playing a supporting role behind the scenes. Recruiters' tools are becoming more sophisticated, but the end goal remains the same: to attract the best candidates for the job.
Author Bio: Ginni Agarwal is a Talent Acquisition Expert at Upright Human Capital with extensive experience in Tech and Non-tech hiring. She loves blogging, writing articles about Talent Acquisition, and Human resources. She has been associated with the Talent Industry for a while. She enjoys sharing her experience with others.
5 Productivity Tools Every Remote Worker Needs
Many people have already been working from home long before COVID-19 came along and wreaked havoc on the world. It just so happened that their numbers grew exponentially the moment health authorities declared a global pandemic.
Previously seen as an incentive, remote work has since become a necessity for both employees and employers.
Working from home has its fair share of benefits. For employees, remote work gives them an opportunity to achieve a better work-life balance, among other things. For employers, having staff work from home means reduced costs for their business.
However, remote work comes with its own set of challenges.
For example, those who work from home can’t have face-to-face interactions with colleagues. That could hamper communications and eventually impact the work that they do.
Employers are also concerned about productivity, which is only fair since their staff would be in a workplace full of distractions, especially for those with kids running around the house.
Then again, there are plenty of paid and free tools that remote teams can use to stay productive when working from home. Let’s take a look at some of them.
1. Google Workspace
First introduced as Google Apps, then rebranded as G Suite in 2016, Google Workspace is made up of some of the most useful team collaboration tools available today.
The Google Docs suite alone provides plenty of value, with Google Docs and Google Sheets making it easier for everyone on the team to create, share, and edit documents and worksheets.
Just like the free version of Microsoft Teams, the free version of Google Meet also provides your team with a video conferencing platform that supports up to 100 participants per meeting, with a longer time limit of 60 minutes.
Then there’s Google Calendar, which allows you to schedule meetings and events at the drop of a hat. You can also use Calendar to remind everyone about upcoming deadlines and activities.
While Google Workspace is generally available for free for anyone with a Google Account, businesses have the option to go for a paid subscription, which should give them access to more features like unlimited Google Drive storage.
2. Zoom
Every work-from-home team needs a reliable communication platform to make sure everyone’s on the same page at all times.
While there are myriad apps that offer video chat in real-time, it was Zoom that broke out during the COVID-19 pandemic, with its daily meeting participants growing 30-fold.
Then again, it’s not surprising Zoom became the go-to team communication platform not only for those who work from home but for just about everyone.
Aside from its top-notch messaging and video calling features and screen sharing and integration capabilities, Zoom has an interface that’s quite simple and intuitive. Also, it doesn’t hurt that free users get to enjoy 40-minute conference calls with up to 100 attendees.
However, getting a Zoom Pro license is the best option for remote working teams so they can access features like longer to unlimited team meetings depending on your plan, more participants, social media streaming, and unlimited cloud storage.
3. Hubstaff
While employers do benefit from having entire teams working from home, concerns about their productivity remain. After all, working with no supervisory presence does tempt people to slack off and allow themselves to be distracted by all the goings-on at home.
If you’re an employer or a project manager, and you want everyone to keep their eye on the ball even when they’re working from home, then have them use Hubstaff, a project management tool that tracks the hours of every individual on the team.
On top of timekeeping, Hubstaff also takes screenshots of employees’ screens at random, all to ensure that they’re actually working during their shift and not playing games or spending the day on social media.
Hubstaff also comes in handy when you’re assigning and monitoring tasks, creating checklists, and setting due dates.
4. Excel Templates
From time to time, the members of your team will need to perform tasks like creating budgets, aggregating data, or building tables and charts.
While there is no shortage of apps and software that can help them do all of the above, there’s no simpler way to go about them than making use of free downloadable Excel templates.
Would you want all team members to write down their work goals and all their tactics for achieving them? They can always download an action plan template to help them do that.
There is also a wide variety of budget spreadsheets available online for tracking a project’s expenses.
And when it’s time to send in reports, ready-to-use Excel templates can be quite useful, especially if you need to create charts and graphs to show the results of everyone’s efforts.
There’s an Excel template for just about any purpose, from simple checklists to ones loaded with preset functions and formulas that help you crunch numbers and analyze data.
Or, you can build one yourself if you can’t find one to your liking. Either way, you’ll have a tool that will help make life a bit easier for you, regardless of whether you’re a remote worker or not.
5. TeamViewer
If you’re working on-site, any problem with your computer software and hardware can be readily remedied by the in-house computer technician or IT specialist.
Remote workers don’t have that luxury. However, as long as they have a good remote desktop tool like TeamViewer installed on their home computers, addressing your IT problems should be easy enough.
With TeamViewer, your team’s IT person should have no problem remotely troubleshooting issues such as malfunctioning email software, folder and file sharing difficulties, or possible hacking issues. As long as you have a fast and stable Internet connection, TeamViewer can help your tech specialists troubleshoot your computer, wherever in the world you may be.
Apart from remote access, those who work from home can also make good use of TeamViewer’s other features such as transferring files and sharing presentations. Some even use TeamViewer to conduct online training courses.
The tools listed above are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to productivity apps or software for remote workers, but they’re a good place to start. Your team will likely discover more productivity and project management tools along the way and will make their jobs easier, which is always a great thing for employees and employers alike.
Author Bio: Anthony Stevens is the Content Specialist for Excel Templates, a resource for free Excel templates including calendars and charts. When not writing, he spends time building furniture and running with his dog.
How 10 Companies Offer Employee Recognition
As job openings hit record highs and businesses struggle to find workers, retaining top talent is more important than ever. However, many employers are relying on old, ineffective methods for attracting and keeping staff. It’s going to take more than free lunches and knickknacks to ensure today’s workers are loyal and productive.
Nearly half of U.S. employees are ready to leave their current job due to a lack of recognition and engagement, according to a survey from Achievers. Meanwhile, 69% cite acknowledgment and rewards as top factors that would motivate them to stay at their current company.
A few brands have gone above and beyond when it comes to thanking team members. These businesses set the highest standards for employee appreciation and inspire those looking to follow in their footsteps.
1. Disney
Disney has more than 100 employee awards that include pay raises, plaques, trophies, and public recognition. However, Disney also offers something called Magic Backstage Sweepstakes for employees who work harder.
This program allows managers to nominate workers who go the extra mile and enter them into a drawing to win a night in Cinderella’s castle, a free Disney vacation, or another prize of similar value.
Rewarding hard-working employees with free admission and plaques isn’t expensive for Disney. However, they hold a lot of value for those who put in the time and effort to earn them. Plus, they incentivize other cast members and staff to exemplify company values and provide guests with a magical experience, which will inevitably attract more visitors to the park
2. Zappos
Many employers undervalue peer-to-peer recognition, choosing to focus on the manager-subordinate relationship instead. However, feedback exchange among co-workers is one of the best ways to boost overall recognition and create a more positive, inclusive, and empathetic company culture.
Zappos has already figured this out and now offers a program that allows team members to give each other $50 for a job well done.
Human resource departments can take a hint from Zappos and easily implement similar peer-to-peer recognition programs within their own companies by creating a virtual or physical space in which employees can give and receive feedback or encouragement.
3. GE Healthcare
Poor management and subsequent organizational shifts make employees feel undervalued and insignificant. Some may even fear for their job security if the business changes hands. However, companies that truly value their teams will use this transitional time to embed recognition in company culture.
For instance, when GE HealthCare restructured its manufacturing site, employers prioritized continuous internal communication to streamline the process. As a result, the team created ongoing employee forums where staff can provide feedback and valuable input. In recognizing their ideas, GE gave workers a sense of security and value even after such a major shift.
4. Globalization Partners
Public recognition capitalizes on peoples’ innate tendency to improve their behavior. Because most employees want to be perceived in a positive light, they'll often work harder when they know a public "thank you" is on the line—regardless of whether a trophy or plaque accompanies it.
Globalization Partners, a company specializing in international talent acquisition, often uses its blog to post press releases about employees’ success. For instance, one January article covering an employee promotion is available for both clients and staff to read.
5. Apple
A work-life balance is key for employees and employers. In fact, those who successfully establish a good balance are twice as happy and more likely to be loyal and productive than those who struggle to maintain balance, according to statistics compiled from ReHack.
Companies that value a healthy workplace often have flexible time-off policies. For instance, Apple often surprises its employees with extra time off or paid leave during the holiday season. The tech giant also customizes this reward to recognize international employees who celebrate different holidays than those in the U.S.
6. Netflix
The U.S. is one of the only industrialized, modernized countries that does not mandate paid parental leave. Instead, many new mothers and fathers must take unpaid time off from work unless their employer offers an extended program.
Netflix is different. The tech giant provides a full year of paid family leave to adoptive and birth parents of any gender.
This kind of recognition has the potential to retain more employees and attract swathes of applicants. Thus, adding paid parental leave to an employee benefits package might be an effective way to grow teams fast.
7. Deloitte
A survey conducted by The Harris Poll revealed that a third of those who quit their jobs lacked career growth and development. However, most companies report offering career development tools.
A lack of recognition might be to blame for this obvious disconnect. Maybe these companies provide the means but not the guidance and mentorship employees need to succeed. In this case, creating a more comprehensive learning program is necessary to recognize and meet staff needs.
Among the major companies leading the way is Deloitte. The tax consulting firm provides a wide array of growth opportunities in the form of full leadership programs. Career sponsorship and mentoring are also available as Deloitte recognizes them as critical keys to success.
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8. E.On
Sometimes, a simple thank you is all the recognition employees need to boost productivity and maintain motivation. For instance, German utility company E.On implements a recognition program that encourages managers and employees to send thank you cards to one another. The notes can be physical or digital as long as they’re personal and genuine.
In the months after initiating this program, E.On’s staff motivation score increased 8%, and the number of employees who felt valued shot up 13%, according to Employee Benefits.
Other companies would do well to follow suit: According to Blackhawk Network, 33% of staff prefer recognition in the form of personalized cards or emails, but only 25% actually receive them.
9. General Motors
Companies with a global workforce and a solid recognition program need a cohesive platform to engage employees effectively. This allows staff to log in with personalized credentials, view everyone's achievements, and contribute to each others’ success at the company.
General Motors recently switched to such a platform and had a stunning 97% activation rate, according to Achievers. Now, 70% of employees are active in the program, and most receive about one recognition per month.
10. Meijer
Like General Motors, Meijer, a chain of grocery stores, recently turned to an online recognition platform to engage employees, build a strong company culture, and minimize turnover. As part of this initiative, it created the app Meijer Wire, a mobile-friendly solution that facilitates recognition, features articles about team members, and provides company news.
An app might be too much for small businesses. However, a mobile employee recognition solution may be the best way to connect and express appreciation for large companies with dispersed locations.
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About Author:
This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
How to Keep Candidates Engaged Through the Hiring Process?
Keeping candidates engaged throughout the hiring process is much more challenging than attracting their initial applications.
Job seekers are encouraged to cast a wide net by applying to every job they can, making it vital to keep their attention focused on your company. Keeping candidates engaged means improving your communication with candidates and understanding how they respond to recruiters.
Respond Faster
Candidates are used to not hearing back from companies that are not interested. As a result, they will move on to pursuing other applications quickly if you don’t respond within a few days, assuming they will not get a response from you. If they wait longer than a few days to reply to their messages, many candidates will have started to progress applications at other companies.
Send Updates
Keeping candidates engaged is not just about responding to their messages faster, but also contacting them in a more proactive way. Don’t leave candidates to ask for updates about their application or more information about the role they are applying for.
Particularly during a lengthy recruitment period, many companies not only recruit using SMS, but send out regular messages to candidates to keep them interested in the company and to let them know they are still in the running for the job.
Besides informing candidates about updates to their application or texting interview reminders, these messages can give more insight into your company or their role.
Provide More Information
Giving candidates more information about the company and the application process is critical to maintaining their engagement. Every company follows a different recruitment process and unless you explain yours, candidates won’t know what to expect.
At every stage of the recruitment process, make sure candidates know:
What is happening to their application?
What is going to happen at the next stage?
When should they expect the next update from you?
Ensuring that every message you send answers these three questions reduces the amount that candidates need to follow up with you to get key information, making the recruitment process smoother for you and your job candidates.
This can all be done manually, or you can utilize email software to handle the burden automatically.
It also enables candidates to prepare the documents they will need, or prepare their notes for an upcoming interview. As a result, they can invest their time and energy into learning more about your business instead of searching for other roles to apply to.
Give Clear Job Descriptions
Vague job descriptions packed full of industry buzzwords turn away talented potential employees, and can also lead to less engagement from the candidates they do manage to attract. This is because they give a bad first impression to candidates, suggesting a lack of effort or worse, suggesting that the position is being offered by someone who doesn’t understand or value the role. Providing a clear assessment of what you need from a candidate is especially important when hiring as a start-up, as roles are more likely to cover multiple responsibilities that don’t fit neatly into one skill set.
As a result, top talent will avoid these job postings, instead favoring companies that have a clearer picture of what they need and why. For those that do apply it is hard to get passionate about a potential job, they know little about it, so your company might be a fallback option rather than their first choice.
Build a Relationship
While learning more about your company and their prospective role in it will be a primary focus for many candidates, your work environment and team culture are equally important in keeping candidates engaged.
Besides updates about their application, invite candidates to join a newsletter that gives insights into your workplace culture, for example by introducing company events and fundraisers, highlighting recent employee achievements, or even starting the onboarding process by introducing them to the team. This is a great opportunity to show candidates that your company has created a friendly and supportive environment where they can participate socially as well as progress in their careers.
If you’re hiring remote employees, you can also consider using webinar software to effectively scale your recruiting process and connect with top performers through video meetings, no matter where they are based.
Avoid Red Flags
Most job candidates have seen enough job advertisements to know and avoid the red flags, such as a vague job description. They will continue to be on the lookout for signs that they should avoid an employer throughout the recruitment process, and you might inadvertently be giving out one of these signals. Here are a few examples:
High Turnover Rates
Candidates know that unless you are expanding your team, they are replacing someone. An offhand comment that suggests you are always hiring or frequently replacing staff can make a candidate start to wonder why you might have trouble retaining long-term employees.
Poor Work-Life Balance
Think twice before promoting a ‘work hard, play hard’ attitude or seasonal celebrations in the office. Candidates can interpret this as suggesting that an employer expects work to come before employees' personal lives, or that they can expect to frequently spend holidays at work.
Ghosting Unsuccessful Candidates
When you fill a position, there will probably be plenty of talented candidates that you didn’t take one, but would still make a great fit for your company in another position or if another vacancy opens up. Don’t burn your bridges with them by not bothering to let them know they haven’t got the job. Ghosting candidates is rude and leaves them with a poor impression of your company, and so less likely to apply again in the future or recommend your job to an acquaintance.
Not sure if your recruitment messages are giving off red flags to your candidates? Job-seeking forums, subreddits, and other discussion boards are great places to learn what not to do by reading through people’s experiences.
Conclusion
Job candidates will reciprocate the amount of effort you put into them. Taking a helpful and proactive approach to providing both updates about their application and insights into your company culture not only keeps candidates engaged with the job you are offering, but also acts as a first impression of how you value your staff and potential employees.
Author Bio: This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!
8 Essential Qualities of an HR Specialist
It’s quite difficult for a human resource manager to perform their duties effectively to a business if they don’t have a clear understanding of the qualities that successful human resource managers should have. Human resource managers greatly determine the success or failure of a business with its recruiting strategy. They are responsible for interviewing candidates, hiring and encouraging staff to ensure that they are always performing at their peak. If they make the wrong hiring decisions or fail to motivate employees, the business will ultimately fail. If you are a human resources manager, here are eight essential qualities that you need to have to succeed. Let’s get started!
1. Knowledge and experience in human resource
To become a successful HR manager, you need to have a strong educational foundation and a clear understanding of the functions of a human resource manager. Apart from having the educational qualifications, you have to do your research on dissertation practices to know the latest trends and ethics in your profession. This requires discipline and dedication. With knowledge and experience, you’ll easily handle HR tasks and challenges that arise in your organization.
2. Excellent presentation skills
A person with excellent presentation and management skills can easily grab their audience’s attention, keep them engaged and share their message effectively and positively. Effective presenters are usually engaging and lively. Strong communication skills are essential to a human resource specialist because they need to train new employees and ensure that important information has been passed to all levels of management within the organization.
3. Ability to work on manage tasks
On a normal workday, a human resource manager has to deal with a wide variety of issues ranging from employee complaints, recruitment, and onboarding to work-life balance. Human resource managers have to solve hundreds of problems in a day to ensure that the organization achieves its objectives easily and quickly. Since employee and business needs are always shifting, it’s the work of a human resource specialist to ensure that these needs are being fulfilled so that everything runs smoothly. The ability to manage tasks effectively, improve problem-solving skills, and stay on top of things in the workplace is the mark of a high achiever.
4. Dealing with gray
There are a lot of issues that HR professionals deal with and end up in the gray area. This includes cases of discrimination, or harassment to name a few. You’ll be required to make informed decisions all the time based on the facts that you have. Remember, you are dealing with human beings; not machines. Therefore, you need to know when you should share confidential information or seek help from experts, other human resources professionals, or lawyers for effective conflict management.
5. Ethics
The HR department tends to be the conscious of most organizations. You need to have a strong sense of ethics when following the policies of the organization and keeping confidential information. To do your job effectively, you need to earn the trust of your managers and employers. Honesty and discretion are essential to any human resource manager who wants to be successful.
6. Excellent communication skills
One of the skills that a good HR manager needs to have is the ability to communicate with both employees and employers. Both oral and written communication skills have to be concise, clear, and effective to all employees at different levels. Effective oral communication also includes negotiation. In an organization, conflicts are bound to arise. Between management and coworkers or two employees. Good human resource managers will help in resolving conflicts through effective communication and finding a middle ground.
7. Ability to lead
Human resource specialists and not business partners but leaders in an organization. You need to know what the organization is doing and how the current policies affect employees in the workplace. Being a leader revolves around having a clear direction of where you are going, listening to others actively, ensuring that people who need help get it, and resolving problems effectively. Remember, all employees in the organization look up to you. Therefore, it’s of utmost importance that you develop your leadership skills.
8. Motivator
In most instances, a highly productive and performing workforce is usually a motivated one. You need to know what motivates your employees and what doesn’t. Motivation does not revolve around offering incentives alone. It’s all about creating sustainability to improve the quality of work and strengthen employees’ belief in the cause of the organization. Managers or supervisors need to be motivated first so that they can motivate the workers under them. Motivating your employees is not a one-time thing. You need to do it as much as you can to boost productivity, performance, and self-esteem.
Conclusion
As a human resource manager, you’ll have to deal with problems that arise with management and employees every day. You need to develop all the qualities that we’ve discussed here to ensure that the organization achieves its objectives and mission.
Author Bio: Aziz Nicleson is a journalist and essay writer with 4 years’ experience working in London magazine “Shopbuy”, dissertation help service, and Easy Essay. He is a professional mini-tennis player and he has written a novel “His heart”.
