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Business Process Modelling for Management Efficiency
For an organization to cater to diverse business processes may be quite a challenge. Business process management is vital for your business regardless of its size. This article will walk you through all the information you need to know about managing your business processes using automation.
What Is Business Process Management?
Business Process Management is the way a company assesses, creates, or edits foreseeable processes that seek to establish the core of its business.
Every department may cater to several or more core processes. The departments are responsible for transforming data or raw material into useful information.
It is an organizational discipline allowing a company to perceive all of the processes individually and overall. The process realizes the current state of the business, thereby identifying areas that can be improved, creating an effective organization that operates efficiently.
Importance of Business Process Management
Living in an era where technology continues to evolve, business owners are constantly challenged to resist market pressure and remain competitive while cutting costs and raising productivity levels by improving business processes.
To overcome these challenges, a lot of companies are in search of business process management software tools that can provide benefits, such as improved customer experience, better service, and product innovation, and more.
It is important as it gives project managers a competitive edge over other companies by helping leaders enhance the performance of the organization through different controls of the business processes. Business Processes are also convenient for CEOs and managers, as it allows them to control, respond, and apply appropriate IT solutions over operational activity.
Implementing a solid business process solution in your company can help you overcome several challenges and capitalize on opportunities accordingly, which ultimately leads to inevitable growth for the business.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
How Does Business Process Management Improve efficiency?
Business Process Management solutions establish proper networking and functioning of tasks, by improving the performance of staff by updating the workforce tasks automatically instead of manually (as it would have been if it were not for BPM).
Implementing BPM for your organization would mean you can easily decrease your costs while your productivity rises. Some of the benefits it may include are the ability of the process to function under favorable conditions, adjusting them to establish high performance, and following controls to analyze the future output of these processes.
The level of productivity enhances after the implementation of automatic manual tasks and getting rid of redundancies to lower the possible risk of errors or rework.
With the increase of pressure that businesses have to go through to enhance their business process management strategy, the importance of the software will seemingly increase simultaneously.
Added transparency of business process management assists in making adjustments that maximize productivity and profitability, helps in monitoring processes while setting a company’s objectives alongside business processes.
What Is the Importance of Creating Business Process Models?
A well-established business process model could consist of one or multiple business processes. These processes illustrate methods of operations that are being carried out to the side with the intended goals of a company.
To model business processes effectively, a company must communicate and document the business processes. Process modeling offers a standard method and unified language to communicate the processes and information about the rules and processes. It is often in the form of a graphical representation of a company’s workflows to identify any room for improvement and is achievable with several techniques.
Benefits of Modeling
Improves Efficiency: Proper implementation of business processes allows companies to see a significant decline in their cost with rising levels of productivity. Constant assessment of the processes can lead to high performance and efficiency.
Enforces Best Practices and Standardizations: Organizations will have to go through a set framework to achieve their goals, which they can revisit and amend according to the challenges and opportunities they come across.
Process Agility: With BPM software business processes can be more agile with a structure that needs constant documentation of the methods and steps in a process. The knowledge organizations receive from this allows them to realize the impact of changes in their business processes.
Transparency: BPM makes use of complicated software programs that evaluate business performance, automate processes, and unveil information on the business process’s operations and well-being in real-time. The increase in visibility allows the management to understand, modify the framework of processes, and track the outcome.
Competitive Advantage
Companies have a competitive edge over one another with an increase in service and product innovation by implementing business processes that may help to reduce costs without compromising on production.
Techniques
Process Flow Charts: Represents a sequence of activities but does not elaborate or break down on each of the business activities.
Data Flow Diagrams: Organizes data in its raw form, illustrating the flow of information in-between places.
Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN): Standard or graphical set objects that are used to illustrate the business process and interpret the links between the objects.
Steps to Business Process Modeling
Communication and inform the company of a business process model in the making
Establish a business process office
Define the company’s value-added chain
Link cooperative strategy to the business processes
Set objectives for the business processes
Draw out the AS-IS processes
Evaluate and identify the processes
Look into the potential of the business with the business process model and it’s set objectives
Implement and remain consistent with the new business process mode
Update the process constantly to achieve the best results
Conclusion
Business Process Model may seem like a lengthy framework for your company, but it might as well be a necessity in the near future. It is best to establish one now and attain the most out of the benefits for your management and company to get used to the processes and the way they are tackled so your organization is met with inevitable prosperity.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Steps for Developing an Internal Communication Strategy
60% of businesses do not have any type of long-term vision for their internal communications plan. For a strategy that has such a huge impact on company culture, this is incredibly haphazard.
Internal comms dictate how employees receive information from management, peers, and high-level executives.
Onboarding new employeees? Starting a painful round of layoffs? Making big brand changes?
Employees deserve to hear it from their leadership first. When coming up with an internal communication strategy, remember that real human beings are the ones powering a corporate machine. How those humans receive information impacts how they feel about the company.
What does that mean? Communications impact what kind of work they do, and how well they do it.
The Benefits of an Internal Communication Strategy
Effective communications help retain revenue. Experts suggest that team members spend up to two hours a day looking for information, gossiping, or worrying.
Every employee possesses strengths and weaknesses, especially when it comes to focusing. But this hinders business goals and personal productivity at an unprecedented level.
All these behaviors indicate that time is being lost because employees don't know where to look for information. Sometimes, they rely on this information to do their job. Sometimes, this information helps alleviate worry. Are they going to be the next person laid off?
When employees feel like communication goals are being met, their productivity is elevated by up to 25 percent. Because they're saving time by not seeking out information that isn't being given to them, and because they can focus on their work, employees actually give more.
Communication best practices include transparency, consistency, and brevity. Your internal communication efforts will land best with employees when you focus on these three traits.
Don't Communicate, Overcommunicate
Employees who feel like they're being kept in the dark are more common these days. This is a result of the fact that they're living in the social media age.
It can feel challenging to connect with millennial or Gen Z employees. Rather than pandering to them with cute gifs or chipper messaging, meet them with honesty.
At every turn, they're confronted with the latest Twitter hashtag or New York Times headline. By providing an atmosphere of transparency, you'll build company loyalty. This will promote employee engagement, too.
Only 15% of employees are currently pleased with how internal communications are handled. Employees who aren't satisfied won't come to management with their problems.
This results in more conflict, productivity loss, and employee loss if they feel like their concerns aren't being heard. The mark of successful internal communications is the existence of a two-way street.
When do employees hear from the CEO? Is it only a canned message when rounds of layoffs are happening? Do they even know what she looks like?
If employees consistently receive information from higher-ups and return employee communication is welcomed, they'll feel comfortable bringing problems and ideas to the table.
Brainstorming an Internal Communication Strategy
It's time to embrace honesty when it comes to effective internal communications. strategy. What employee feedback have you received? Those exact terms may not have been used.
Think about all the ways people express communication dissatisfaction.
"I do not remember seeing that in an email."
"I cannot find that anywhere."
"What is the rule on XYZ?"
"I have no idea what is going on."
"I am not sure, ask XYZ."
Of course, these could be excuses or indicators of other issues. But at the core, the deficiency is communication with employees.
When you've got a list of complaints ... or even better if you have access to a complaint box, start identifying the problems these complaints stem from.
These complaints point to how this strategy is currently impacting customer culture. There is no such thing as a no-impact approach to communication.
If a strategy exists, it has an impact. If no strategy exists, that has an impact! It's also worthwhile to collaborate with internal communications teams.
What trends are they seeing? What concerns do they have? With their finger constantly on the company pulse, they'll offer some great insights.
Creating a New Strategy
Consider your target audiences. That's a marketing mantra that everyone knows. If you're trying to reach wealthy, elderly men in the market for diamonds, a witty TikTok probably isn't the best way to do it.
The same thing goes for your work 'audiences'. Are you trying to talk to mid-level managers, and what does that demographic look like? Or are you trying to amp up your onboarding communications? What about conversing with key stakeholders?
Let's say your goals are broad. You want to spend 2021 revamping the way your company talks to each employee.
You need to start with a method for top-down communication. If the CEO is sitting on a distant throne, there's no personal connection. If your company is a sprawling corporate entity, new employees might not even know the CEO's name.
Top-down communication is usually reserved for new strategies, changes, or initiatives that affect the entire company equally. Change announcements and onboarding communications can also be categorized as top-down.
Choosing a Communication Channel
What communication channels should be used to do this? It depends on the tone you're going for.
Face-to-face communication
Printed handouts
Videos
Emails
Instant messaging
Regular standups and meetings
Many businesses learned a lot about communication, internally and externally, in 2020. Now's the time to apply all that knowledge to a new year.
If it's safe for employees to come back to the office, face-to-face interactions can't be replaced. Use this method when tone means everything, when you may have a difficult conversation, or when you're trying to initiate big changes.
Of course, all face-to-face conversation doesn't have to be particularly scary. It's also more efficient. And if you're not capable of bringing employees back to the office, Zoom meetings can help duplicate the experience.
If there are details that must be memorized, such as event dates, times, and places, handouts are great. They can be easily referenced or pinned above someone's desk.
Videos are fast becoming a popular top-down communication tool. It's like receiving a casual FaceTime from a friend and can cultivate familiarity.
If you're trying to tell a story or build a personal connection with a high-level executive communicating to the entire company, video is the appropriate tool.
Email isn't obsolete yet, which means this tool should be used to cover minute strategy details. Avoid the temptation to Reply All, and you'll likely succeed.
2020 taught us the value of remote messaging tools. Slack, Skype, Discord - shooting off a quick message clarifies details fast. It's less time-consuming than an email, and also helps build camaraderie.
When surveyed, employees stated that they preferred regular small meetings with their manager. No one feels seen in huge company-wide meetings, and it's hard to cover all the questions that might crop up.
Moving Forward
Here are the primary steps thus far.
1. Conduct an audit of your current internal communications systems
2. Identify problems by listening to complaints
3. Identify the best comms channels to tackle gaps with
Once you've done all that, what next? You need to establish clear expectations. 65% of employees say that internal information provided by the company isn't comprehensive enough.
That sort of problem can hobble your new strategy before it actually launches.
Whether you're trying to set individual New Year's resolutions or help transform your company, the principle of SMART goals is still the same.
S stands for specific—there should be an overabundance of clarity on what you're trying to achieve
M means measurable, so embrace numbers
A equals attainable, so don't veer outside the company's budget or personnel resources
R stands for relevant, which means that just because a tool is glossy, doesn't mean it relates to your company's mission
T stands for time, which you need to be conscious of if you want to make 2021 your best year yet
Who's in Charge?
Once you set SMART employee communication strategy goals, it's time to assign responsibility. You can have a world-class strategy in the works, but it will likely fail if it isn't placed in motion.
This will also help you navigate the communication process. There's nothing more demoralizing than doing work and seeing it have no impact.
Build respect and get approval
Democratize the strategy
Improvise, adapt, overcome
The most senior members of your company should review the plan. Then, they can promote it to the team. This is a great chance to initiate that top-down communication!
Once it's been introduced to the company at large, all eyes are on your new strategy. Will the company pull through and make big changes? Or is this just another case of big talk and no action?
After the initial announcement has been made, mid-level managers come in. Think of them as customer service representatives! They'll be your boots on the ground, implementing new ways of communicating directly with their teams.
Be wary at this step, though. After the initial thrill of execution, this is the ground where great strategies go to die. You'll need to keep a finger on the patient's pulse.
To learn even more about improving the employee experience and increasing your competitive advantage while providing a fast return on investment, download our ebook now.
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Reviewing Performance Metrics
How will you know if your new strategy is working? Metrics. There are a few great options to measure how employees are engaging with these tactics.
Companies have reported $37 billion in losses due to employees suffering from poor communication or misunderstandings. The stakes are high, so here's how to ensure that you're nailing it.
Compare productivity and profits
Check employee referral numbers
Employee engagement
Turnover rate
Safety incidents
Measure engagement and interest
In some ways, gauging internal interest is no different than a marketing campaign. You'll need to treat it just like that and live by the numbers.
When miscommunication errors drop, positive numbers should go up. Productivity and profits should increase because hours are no longer wasted looking for information that isn't there.
And when employees are working in a transparent, high-energy environment, they're excited to be there. That means they're reaching out to their networks and encouraging them to come work there.
If you're actively hiring, referral rates should rise when compared to what they were in previous numbers. On this note, turnover and safety incidents should also drop.
One of the best ways to track employee engagement, though, is to look at the numbers. Especially if you have your own employees-only social networks, you can see what's happening.
What emails and posts are being opened? Are posts being liked, commented on, or clicked on?
If an employees-only network is new, you won't have old numbers to compare to. That's okay! Compare it to the total number of employees in each team, or at the entire company. With the right tools, it isn't hard.
When in Doubt, Ask
Isn't that what you tell new employees during the first days of onboarding? That's savvy advice no matter how long you've been with the company.
Honesty is the cornerstone of communication, and it should always be a two-way street. So what does that mean? Ask employees about new initiatives.
When you first asked for complaints, what changes did they hope to see? Is the company's new approach what they wanted, or is it just more frustration heaped on them?
The act of listening will help you course-correct better than any numbers will.
This guide was designed to help you navigate through those difficult tasks and help determine the right software for your organization, download our ebook now.
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Crafting a World-Class Strategy
Whether you're an engineer, a graphic designer, or a content marketer, communication is everything. It's how we make sense of the world, translate it to our work product, and share it with our colleagues and a broader audience.
Everyone has to communicate. So taking on the act of creating an internal communication strategy, something that shapes every facet of someone's career, can be incredibly daunting.
Don't be intimidated. Instead, reach out and request a demo today to learn how we can identify problems in your organization and fix them.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
12 Employee Feedback Tools to Enhance Employee Experience
Employees are the pulse of the organization. They can make or break the working landscape. Hence, continuous employee feedback is the best way to track employee progress and improve them on time. Such feedback will help the team and the entire organization performs better. One employee feedback is a survival guide for another.
Every employer wants their employees to be satisfied and content. But due to the rapidly changing dynamics, it becomes difficult to maintain consistency in the feedback process. It's an obligation on the management team to conduct timely employee health-check and understand what their employees feel about their organization. So how do HR managers identify what their employees feel? With the right survey questions and the right employee feedback tool.
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To keep up with the many challenges an organization faces daily, companies are now resorting to frequent employee experience surveys. It'll help re-examine the existing processes and focus on enhancing their company culture. In today's time, hiring top talent is difficult when they have plenty of options before you. Most of them prefer being a part of a company where employees are given equal opportunity and treated fairly and justly.
Why conduct an employee experience survey?
An employee experience survey reveals how comfortable employees feel being a part of your organization. It speaks about the overall employee association and the various interactions during their tenure with the company. By conducting an employee experience survey, organizations can determine the factors contributing to satisfying employee experience and what factors they miss. Employee experience survey has great importance in measuring organizational imbalances. They show you the loopholes and point at people responsible for such lag in the process.
Why invest in company culture?
It's not easy to hire or retain top talents. Many candidates prepare to join or stay with an organization with higher cultural values. While money or top clients is the deciding factor, many candidates lookout for the kind of people they share space with and the cultural difference. To create a decent company culture, the company should invest in employee happiness and engagement. Management should focus on engaging employees at all levels and ensure every employee is satisfied working for their company. You've to create a home-away-from-home feeling.
How to track employee feedback
To ease employee experience, companies should understand their employees first. Identify how satisfied, content, challenged and committed your employees are. Then work on a system for soliciting feedback and track issues and improvement over time. With this information's help, the leadership team can identify concerns, make amendments, and improve the employee experience.
How employee feedback can help your company
Timely feedback from employees will help you understand their concerns and resolve issues instantly.
It will keep employees and management on the same page as to what is happening in the company, organizational updates, etc.
Employees can share feedback on any matter through public or private chat, photo sharing etc.
Employees feel valued and respectful that their feedback is being heard and acted upon.
You can work on real data derived from the feedback rather than assuming or depending on gut feeling.
The collected response can be formulated into reports and shared with the management as actionable insights.
To ace up your employee experience program, and to start collecting feedback from your employees instantly, we've collected a list of employee experience tools.
LIKE.TG
Workmates is an online engagement platform that helps managers keep track of their teams' performance and improve their efficiency. You can ask your employees to share how they feel, respond to surveys and scrutinize survey results. The platform helps in employee engagement, streamlining onboarding processes, conducting employee recognition programs, etc.
Pros
Great reporting dashboards metrics
Quick and easy to survey employees
You can expand the areas in which you need feedback.
SoGoEX
SoGoEX is a powerful online employee experience survey tool that instantly helps you gather and analyze employee data to improve workplace culture. It provides end-to-end employee experience management from day one and gathers quality data at every touchpoint in the employee journey. With SoGoEX, you can identify the gaps, provide regular feedback, increase engagement levels, and enhance productivity. If you are uncertain of what to ask your employees, you can pick a template from the library of resources.
Pros:
Easy, intuitive, and flexible user interface
Smart, secure, and anonymous survey
Real-time reports on different trends in employee behavior
15Five
15Five is a continuous employee improvement management tool that prioritizes the organization's most important aspect – people. The idea behind 15Five is employees giving feedback in 15 minutes, and the employer responding in five minutes. With 15Five, you can uncover your employee's challenges and make better decisions to drive productivity and growth. You can share employee's feedback with others in the organization such as senior-level management who would like to see and act.
Pros
The interface is easy to use and set up.
You can tag people and give shout-outs.
User-friendly performance review
TinyPulse
TinyPulse is for managers who care for their employees. It's an online engagement tool that gets you real-time feedback from employees. You can schedule one survey per week to a team of 10 to 100,000 employees and include NPS, open-ended, or yes or no question types. With TinyPulse, you can find the root cause of the issue, take on critical feedback anytime, and keep conversations anonymous. Also, managers can identify top performers through data and insights, send cheers and gift cards.
Pros
Helps identify current issues through anonymous surveys
Increase team rapport by showing support to team members
Easy to send a survey to a large batch of employees
Kazoo
Kazoo online employee engagement platform will keep employees engaged and improve employee experience with features like performance management, recognition, and rewards, all in one platform. It brings employees and people team to come together and strengthen the culture. With Kazoo, you can embrace workforce development, give your employees a voice, and create an employee-centric culture. Its simple and straightforward dashboard lets you track employee activities in a go, like who is doing well and who needs support.
Pros
Quick customization of colors and fonts
Easy to recognize employees, reward them, earn rewards, and assign points to them
Performance management, rewards, and recognition are all in one system.
Energage
Energage helps companies collect, analyze, and intensity the voice of their employees. The four-pronged integrated solutions help companies recruit and retain the best talents. The tool can be used to collect feedback, communicate with employees, maintain employer branding, and give regular coaching to your employees. After initiating conversations, you can follow up with your employees based on communication and align employees' needs to the company.
Pros
Straightforward to set-up by location and department
A robust dashboard that can be drill down to minute details
Easy to access and integrate with external analysis tools
Reflektive
Reflektive software helps you build a high-yielding employee culture with performance data, employee engagement, and accurate analysis. It means it allows people teams to share goals and OKRS, track progress, and detect early issues. Managers can create team and individual goals and align the organizational matrix to each goal. Using feedback, check-ins, and 1:1s to track performance, you can discuss employees' improvement areas, leading to organizational growth and improvements.
Pros
The interface is clean, modern and intuitive.
Helps provide feedback to other team members
Easy to send quick reminders to employees who haven't completed their reviews
7Geese
7Geese is an employee-first tool that helps HR teams with OKR goal management, performance reviews, and set career goals for employees. Align easy goals with strategic objectives from the bottom to top approach. Managers can get real-time updates on employees' performance and work together to overcome roadblocks. Its flexible and customizable tracking mechanism gives you transparency in data and compliments your company processes.
Pros
Easy to maintain and balance OKR's
OKR process is easy, dynamic and functional
Easy to navigate and implement features without any training
Emplify
Emplify is an employment improvement platform that allows managers to set assessments for employees, offer timely coaching to them, and guide top-level executives and senior-level teams with a further course of action. Employees can share feedback without hesitation and worry. People Insights Expert will help dissect the data and align individual goals to organizational goals keeping senior executives in the loop. It also coaches and trains frontline managers to assist and guide people in their team.
Pros
Easy breakdown of categories for employee engagement
Data can be drilled down into many forms to focus on issues.
User-friendly People Insight Consultants for any help needed
Motivosity
Motivosity is a modern-day platform that combines four integrated products to address various aspects of job satisfaction into one platform. It approaches employees in four parts: connect, recognize, lead, and listen. With Motivosity, you can help team members connect, appreciate employees in public, train managers to grow into leaders, and listen to employee sentiments leading to a motivated and engaged workforce.
Pros
Send appreciation to employees across the organization.
Multiple ways to recognize and incentivize people
Motto bucks can be encashed at your convenience.
Peakon
Peakon is an employee data platform that provides actionable insights to transform your business. These data help managers segment employee data into various demographics and show appealing real-time trends. The team across geographies can connect through Peakon. It also helps in improving productivity, manage business performance, and employee retention from onboarding to exit. You can give feedback to upcoming managers and train them to become future leaders.
Pros
Ability to handle feedback anonymously
Excellent support team
Easy to implement within the organization
Culture Amp
Culture Amp provides employees with feedback under one roof. Its three-layer interconnected approach – engagement, performance, and retention takes employee experience to the next level. Through machine learning algorithms, you can combine the employee's past and present data and retain the best talent. You can also create training modules based on the top-performing employee lifecycle and set the right examples across the team. What more, you can segment data to evaluate employee's performance and document all the feedback and conversation for easy future references.
Pros
User-friendly and easy to navigate interface
Easy to segregate data based on department, location, tenure, etc.
Easy upload of CSV. Files to upload emails of users to send surveys
Conclusion:
Employee feedback plays an important role in employee experience. It helps in reducing employee attrition and improves employee satisfaction. Employee experience is related to many factors like work environment, motivation, satisfaction, and productivity. When employees feel happy, safe, and motivated at the workplace, employee experience rises suddenly. It's a continuous effort and not a one-time activity. Hence, you need to continuously nurture your employees to get full marks on employee experience.
Using employee experience tools, you can listen to your employees and work on feedback more sophisticatedly than before. Although these tools will make your work easier, all your hard work will turn futile if you do not have a human connection with your people. Remember, it's always people that connect and relate to people. So, pick the best one from the options outlined above.
About the author: Rose Moore. Strategic HR generalist professional with expertise in HR Operations, Compensation Benefits, Business Partnering, Labor Laws, Talent Acquisition, and Development Activities. A voracious reader, you will almost always find me reading or digging information on the latest trends, collating articles on trending software and solutions, reading the why’s and how’s of a phenomenon.
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rose-moore/ Twitter:https://twitter.com/Moi_rose_moore
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12 Tips on Creating Your Own Intranet Communications Plan
Internal communication is a crucial aspect of teamwork. That’s why every business manager should have a well-defined internal communication strategy that can propel the company towards success and enhance teamwork in various work conditions.
What does an intranet communication plan mean?
To deliver cutting-edge customer service, your company’s internal communication structure must incorporate every employee. Furthermore, the communication must be smooth, effective, and passed on promptly.
The best way to achieve this is to have a comprehensive internal communication guide that keeps workers updated on the company goals and initiatives. The guide must direct on the mission, timelines, implementers, and measures the progress as discussed in the 12 tips on creating your own intranet communications plan below.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
Know your current internal communication status
Before you start working out on the 12 tips on creating your intranet communications channels, search out, and establish if your company has any communication strategiesengaging remote teamsthat are working. Build on what you have or start from scratch.
It is important to engage your key stakeholders in a brainstorming session to know where to start. Establish who will be responsible, what kind of effective communication they need, and how the information will be disseminated. You can engage your employees in focus group discussions and you will likely get important outcomes.
Understand what communication tools are at your disposal
Knowing the tools you have will help you when setting up your business goals because you will know who shall use them, how they shall be used, and when they shall be used. HRassignment helpexperts say that you will know if you need to buy one if the one you already have does not have every required feature or functionality.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
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You may ask yourself questions like:
Is every worker able to use the tool?
Can the workers express themselves freely using the tool?
Can it handle the quantity of information that needs to be disseminated?
Is the tool friendly to running surveys or polling?
Write down your goals
Before you look into the team member’s needs, first look into what the business needs and, more specifically, why the business needs it. When the business becomes sustainable, the workers shall be sustainable.
Next, look into what the workers need to communicate effectively. Ensure your goals are measurable, effective, and relatable to each worker. To get better results, have a definition of who your workers are and who are the influencers within your workforce.
Tackle the business challenge first
Your business goals must be addressed first before building your internal communications strategy. It is important to look into yourbusiness process modelingstrategies to determine if they are working or not. Engage your team members in a high-level business goals building plan and have a solid and workable plan.
During your high-level key holders meeting, ensure the 12 tips on creating your own intranet communications plan is your central guide. Address business issues like how good your customer service is, how effective is the HR as well as the marketing departments.
Breakdown your teams into audiences
Next, separate your team members into separate groups depending on how they consume information. Employee engagement audiences are different from key stakeholders. Team audiences are the consumers of information, while key stakeholders are those that influence the expected results.
To achieve successful internal communications, look into the mindset of each audience in terms of their work. For example, the sales team has a selling mindset, while the accounting team has a balance sheet mindset.You need to keep the work profiles in mind before laying out the pointers.
Build your communication points
Next, build your internal communication strategy points that you want to disseminate to your audience list. It is relevant to stick to fewer points that can be easily consumed by the intended audiences. For each point, build several sub-points to support your main points.
You can build your points by asking yourself questions like what, why, where, when, how, and who. Additionally, remember to have your points as simple as possible for a successful internal communication strategy. Sometimes it works better when you send your communication when least expected.
Be relevant
Your hard work in building strong communication points could go to waste if you are not relevant in your communication. Having communication points is different from having the right information.
To build relevant internal communications, look into the need of every audience, and let the communication inspiring. Remember to use a professional tone and do not let the workers feel like you are commanding them or pushing them too hard. The information must be informative as well as clear and engaging.
Strategize for creating intranet communications plan
At this level, draw the strategy you will use in communicating your business goals as well as the most effective communications channels. If you pass on the message wrongly, your team members will not connect well with your messages and you might find it difficult to build trust both internally and externally.
Your communication channel of choice must be able to deliver your intended message perfectly. Different channels can be used for different audiences like social media, video, chats, paper, emails, virtual meetings, and physical meetings.
Have measurable progress
For best outcomes, design ways to help you understand how your employees feel about your effective communication strategy of choice. The bottom line is; you must be ready to adapt to a new strategy if the one in place is not working.
You can know through active employee engagement in submitting feedback. Once in a while, send five-minute surveys online and let the employees send their feedback. You can also allow employees to write and submit which points they feel should be improved on or removed. Your internal communication strategies must be embraceable by the whole team at the individual and corporate level.
Set timelines for each level of communication
After settling on the most effective communications strategy for your business goals, set timelines on how the 12 tips on creating your intranet communications plan shall be communicated step by step progressively.
You may have twelve months dived into three-month sections and which set of points shall be communicated in each. To kill monotony, you can adjust your communication channels keeping in mind the best channel applicable to each group.
Be consistent
Consistency brings perfection. Without overdoing, have a consistent flow of information until your business goals stick into the mind of every worker. Apart from emails and social media communication, create internal monthly magazines or three-month periodicals and let the employees contribute to the columns.
The good thing with magazines is that the employees can keep perusing through whenever they have free time. It can even be more captivating if the internal magazines contain pictorials of the workers while on duty.
Create a follow-up strategy
Your workers must not be consumers of your internal communication strategies only. After they receive information, there should be channels of feedback. The follow-up strategy should be open and periodical to give ample time for the workers to digest the information they receive first.
If you allow instant feedback, you will likely receive negative feedback all the time because there was no time to digest the information. During follow-ups, alert your workers about a week earlier so that they prepare psychologically and be ready to give their best and sincere feedback.
Conclusion
Evaluating a communication plan is an evolving process that will continuously grow as the organization progresses. Each strategic objective affects the methodologies which you adopt and will determine the performance of your company. Note, the purpose of internal communication is not merely to exchange content. Internal communication must also captivate, encourage, and energize as much as possible.
Author Bio: Ashley Simmons is a professional journalist, editor andcollege paper writer. She has been working in a newspaper in Salt Lake City for four years and has assignments from leading onlineessay paperwebsites. She has expertise in writingcustom essay papersand covers various subjects with great ease and delivers high-quality work, which has made her popular in the writing circle.
5 Best Practices for Your Internal Communications Strategy
You can promote optimal daily operations with an effective internal communication strategy.
Most companies have best practices for communicating with customers and partners. Companies even create policies for communicating with new employees.
However, it’s important to maintain the same level of planning when communicating with existing staff members. It’s also essential to provide tools that help employees communicating with each other.
Effective internal communication is not nice to do—it’s a must. It improves employee engagement. Effective communication also helps to align employee ideals with company goals.
Revamping internal communications is a considerable undertaking. However, it’s more than worth the effort for the positive results.
For five best practices for your internal communication strategy, keep reading.
1. Understand the Current Internal Communication Strategy
Some organizations already have established internal communications policies. In this case, your existing systems are a good place to start with revamping your practices.
You’ll need to begin by rethinking your internal communication processes. For this best-practice, you’ll need to conduct a detailed introspection.
However, some organizations do not have an official internal corporate communications policy. In this instance, you can move on to identifying unique metrics. These metrics will quantify internal communication success for your organization—more on that in a moment.
If you have existing policies in place, you’ll need to examine your current strategies. For example, you’d need to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your internal communications policy.
You’d also need to figure out who’s involved with the planning of internal communications. More importantly, you’ll need to figure out how to improve your existing processes.
2. Identify Key Metrics
Most likely, your organization uses key performance indicators (KPIs) for processes such as sales. You might also use them to measure customer service. However, you can also use KPIs to analyze your internal communication strategy.
To begin, you’ll need to choose core metrics. These metrics will show you what parts of your strategies work—and what doesn’t.
For example, your company might measure success based on how many employees use your intranet. This metric will also provide insight into how employees use company tools. It will also help you to determine if you’re reaching employees.
You may also measure employee social media shares. Alternatively, you might keep track of how many employees read internal content.
Metrics allow you to dissect your corporate communications strategies. They help you to learn what areas need more attention.
3. Choose Tangible Goals
It’s important to establish realistic goals for your organization. Reasonable goals can help you to assess obstacles.
They can help you figure out the challenges of deploying a new strategy. Realistic goals can also help you to work more efficiently toward updating your policies.
Your internal communications metrics can help in this regard. These benchmarks can help you to figure out where you can make immediate improvements.
As for your goals, you may want to know what improved internal communication can do for your firm. You may also want to know how quickly you can achieve new goals.
4. Identify the Stakeholders
When publishing internal communications, it’s vital to know your audience. Marketers, for example, learn intimate details about their ideal consumer.
In the same way, it’s important to understand your employees. By doing so, you can figure out what messages you need to communicate to select staff members.
Many organizations mistakenly think that all employees need to receive all messages. They believe that this policy promotes transparency.
Employees need to have current information about your firm. However, it’s better to segment your internal corporate communications.
By segmenting internal messages, you can ensure that important messages don’t get lost in a sea of information. You can also prevent employees from suffering from information overload.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
5. Pinpoint Internal Communication Tools
It’s essential to identify the channels that you use to publish content. It’s also important to consider the internal tools that you use to share company information.
Some messages are better suited for certain channels. For example, you might publish a positive company announcement on an open platform such as Twitter. You might post job openings on LinkedIn. Meanwhile, you might limit propriety information to the company newsletter.
It’s also helpful to consider your communications tools. For instance, team tools such as LIKE.TG Workmates help you share important information with staff members. It also allows enterprises to stay focused on employee engagement and company culture.
Finalize Your Internal Communication Plan
It’s also important to formalize the approval process for communication in the workplace. By doing so, you can avoid needless errors.
For example, you can ensure that you don’t accidentally promote closed comments from internal forums. Alternatively, you can make sure that you don’t send the wrong information to the wrong staff member segment.
To develop an approval process, you need to figure out who’s in charge of your internal communication strategy. Typically, this is the person or group that writes messages to the team. However, you’ll also want to consider the best stakeholders who can contribute to the approval process.
You might also consider hiring an employee engagement manager. However, most companies usually put their marketing department in charge of this task. Marketing professionals are generally the most skilled at creating content.
For this reason, members of the marketing department are typically the most qualified for the role. They’re also well-qualified to convey the desired company voice, brand, and image.
More than likely, your marketing team is also well-versed in navigating your existing content library. For this reason, it’s easy for them to locate relevant content.
Marketing professionals are also skilled at pointing staff members to industry-specific resources. What’s more, they can ensure that the information is timely and relevant. For marketers, this kind of ability comes naturally.
To learn more about Workmates features, download our ebook now.
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Promote Success With Improved Internal Communication
Now you know more about the best practices for your internal communication strategy. An effective communication strategy will ensure that employees feel as though their opinions have a voice. In turn, your staff members will feel more engaged.
Effective internal communications will make employees feel educated, informed, and inspired. More importantly, however, it promotes optimal performance.
LIKE.TG’s Workmates platform is a powerful internal communication tool that can promote employee engagement. Contact LIKE.TG today to schedule a free consultation or request a demo.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Build Success in the Workplace Using the Employee Engagement Lifecycle
Employees are the pulse of any organization. The more engaged the employees, the more productive they are. In turn, engaged employees drive a strong customer experience.
But, it is also an inevitable facet of organizations that employees will come and go over time. Growth may lead to new hires, or employees may make decisions to change jobs. Companies need to be assessing employees in all stages of their tenure and determining the level of engagement.
By strategizing, you can make the most out of each stage of the employee engagement lifecycle, from those not yet hired to those departing. The commitment of the employees to the company and its goals impact the company's overall success.
What Is the Employee Engagement Lifecycle?
Every employee will have a beginning and an end with your company. The employee engagement lifecycle looks at employment as a cyclical process. Even exiting employees can have an impact on potential future employees.
The employee engagement lifecycle journey covers six stages: attraction, recruitment, onboarding, development, retention, and separation. At no point in the lifecycle can you sit back and stop engaging with your employees. All stages are critical to the overall employee - and thereby, the company - experience.
An excellent recruitment strategy with high turnover, for example, shows weaknesses in retention. The company should focus on bolstering the retention stage.
The employee experience is an overall mindset. It is not a start-and-stop program when issues arise. Many organizations do not have a good pulse on their employee engagement levels and thus are missing out on providing the employees with reasons to stay.
To learn even more about improving the employee experience and increasing your competitive advantage while providing a fast return on investment, download our ebook now.
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Why Does the Employee Engagement Lifecycle Matter?
Engaged employees are critical to remaining competitive in today's market. Not only do you need to attract top talent, but the best employees will drive your company. You will have better products, services, customer interactions, growth, and profitability.
Some employees choose to stay with a company for things like work-life balance, challenging work, company goals, or wellness benefits. But there are other reasons an employee will stay with a company, even when presented with a better offer. The employee must feel:
Engaged and connected with the company
Empowered to succeed
That the company is invested in their well-being
Respected for their contributions
That they receive personal treatment
The advantages of employee engagement are significant. You should have a strategic, comprehensive approach for engagement in each stage in the lifecycle. Think about your overall company culture and what that engagement looks like within your organization.
Christopher BaggottChief Executive Officer of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
Build Success into Each Stage
Your goals should be to turn your employees into advocates. Not only will employee advocacy promote your brand, but this will help attract new employees or lead to employee referrals. Even departing employees can be advocates if they leave on good terms.
Understanding and developing strategies for each stage will strengthen your employee engagement. Over time, you can measure your efforts and adjust accordingly.
You can use your metrics and engagement data as insights into the success of your strategies. This becomes meaningful intelligence at the department and individual manager level. It will help you to recognize the contributions of employees to the business.
Attraction Stage
Often, potential employees begin to review your company before you even know they exist. They may start on sites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor, trying to get a feel for your company. At this point, potential employees are evaluating your reputation and values, trying to determine if they would be a good fit before applying.
Employee referrals are an invaluable source for quality candidates. You will often have reduced hiring time and a better conversion rate. It shows the engagement of your current employees that they want to participate in the company's growth.
Companies that don't attract great people will fail to compete in the marketplace. Attracting the right talent is crucial to growth. You want the first impression to be favorable and honest.
Strategies: Focus on employer branding or addressing the desires of potential candidates. Think about what you are projecting across all platforms. This includes the careers page on your website and social media attraction.
Measuring Success: How many employee referrals do you receive? What are the impressions or other metrics on job postings? How many applicants do you receive, and are they high-quality candidates?
Recruitment Stage
The next step of the candidate experience for that potential employee is to apply. At this point, the candidate wants to connect with you and feel that the connection is authentic.
Successful recruitment is vital to a company's success. You are determining the future needs of the company and finding the right candidate for that role. A quality pool of applicants is critical to finding the right person for the job.
The time spent during the recruitment and interview process should focus on getting to know the candidate. Also, you want to allow the candidate to learn more about the company. Keep the dialogue open during the recruitment process.
Part of recruitment also involves knowing when to walk away. A candidate that started out well may later raise some red flags. You may also determine that the employee will not be a good fit for the company culture or has demands that you cannot meet.
Ultimately, a candidate's decision to accept an offer will be based on the value proposition you provide. This may be different from candidate to candidate, so you will want to learn as much as possible during the interviews. One candidate may be looking for money, while another may focus on company culture.
Strategies: Personalize the process as much as possible. Keep the communication open and communicate with candidates throughout the process. Ensure that hiring staff is trained in identifying what the candidate desires from an entire so that the value proposition is clear.
Measuring Success: What are the results of a new hire survey? How many job offers has the company made versus the number accepted? What is the average length of time to fill roles?
Onboarding Stage
Onboarding is more than checking boxes on new hire checklists and filling out paperwork. You need to connect your new hire to other employees. It is important to begin immersing the employee in company culture.
Onboarding is about creating an engaging first employee experience with the company. This begins with pre-boarding or the tasks that take place before the employee's first day. You also want to create a positive first impression with new hire orientation.
Those first few days do not have to be dry and dull. You can jump right into the new employee's role and meaningful work by having a smooth onboarding process. 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding.
To be effective in onboarding, you want the new hire to feel valued as soon as possible. Time should be spent understanding the role, which will result in increased engagement going forward.
Give your new employees plenty of opportunities to connect with their teams. Whether through group gatherings or chat tools, you want to make the new employee feel welcome.
Strategies: Give hires self-service tools, such as documentation, tasks, and workflows. This saves time and increases productivity. Have a plan in place for the first 30, 60, and 90 days with a visual timeline.
Measuring Success: What are the results of onboarding surveys? Are new employees successfully completing onboarding goals? What is the feedback of the employee's manager in the first year?
Development Stage
Engaged employees are 44% more productive than workers who merely feel satisfied. Part of that productivity is driven by employees that learn and grow in their roles. Employees want to feel that they are benefitting both personally and professionally, beyond just a salary.
People learn in different ways. You will want to provide various opportunities for learning, including:
Fostering connection to let employees learn from each other
Allowing people to "learn by doing," if they are comfortable with that
Using experienced staff as formal mentors to teach less experienced staff
Offering independent learning and upskilling opportunities
Letting employees learn at their own pace
Learning drives innovation, and you may be surprised at what employees can come up with on their own. You can also encourage employees to create their own career paths.
Managers should get to know employees on a personal level. They should encourage and coach them according to their goals. Conversations should focus on development, performance, and growth.
Strategies: Use gamification, or learning through play, to increase interest in learning. Get feedback from employees on their career goals. Provide regular interactions with managers to encourage ongoing conversations about professional development.
Measuring Success: What is the frequency and quality of one-on-one meetings? What development opportunities are completed by employees? What are the stats of any gamification provided?
Retention Stage
Beyond the initial stages of an employee's career, retention happens when the employee is committed. Employees do not want to be taken for granted. They want to know that their work is seen and valued.
Through meetings, kudos, or other recognition, the message should be clear and consistent. Thank the employees for their work. Let them know that you appreciate them.
You can increase the visibility of employee contributions. This promotes collaboration and encourages positive feedback. Employees can then steer themselves towards success.
Retention also happens when the employees feel that they have a role in the company's achievements and goals. Provide regular company updates through a newsfeed. An intranet can build that sense of accomplishment.
Employees will also stay with a company when they feel connected to their colleagues. Provide and encourage interaction in productive, fun, and meaningful ways. Chat and collaboration tools can help with this.
Strategies: Use surveys and polls to get a pulse on employees. Have a system of rewards and recognition for a job well done.
Measuring Success: What is the frequency and quality of one-on-one meetings? What are the results of performance reviews and team goals? What is the average employee tenure?
Separation Stage
The separation process is one last opportunity to engage with employees. It doesn't have to be painful. Instead, it can be a streamlined and professional experience.
Happy employees, even happy former employees, are an excellent source for new hire referrals. Maintaining engagement with employees after they leave keeps your company on their minds. This could be as simple as continuing to provide a company newsletter or a quick touch-base on LinkedIn.
An often overlooked step is an exit interview. This is a valuable opportunity to learn more about why the employee chose to make a career change.
Use an exit interview to get appropriate feedback. Give the employee an opportunity to be frank and honest. You can use the insights to improve overall employee retention going forward.
Strategies: Find ways to stay connected with former employees. Give employees a professional farewell experience. Prepare exit interview questions guided by what you hope to learn.
Measuring Success: What are the primary reasons for leaving? What is the employee turnover rate?
Having the Tools to Support Employee Engagement
Interaction with your employees must remain consistent throughout all stages of the employee engagement lifecycle. Less engagement at any stage can have a cascading effect.
Each stage presents its own opportunities for the company and managers to engage with employees. But how can the company be equipped to handle the relationships when these moments arise?
From recognition to communication to the onboarding experience, you want to have the tools in place to keep your employees engaged and connected.
LIKE.TG has products for every aspect of the employee engagement lifecycle. Learn more about our end-to-end solutions by scheduling a demo today.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
The HR Guide to Employee Data Protection
It's no secret that HR professionals have a wide range of important responsibilities. They're tasked with managing disciplinary and grievance procedures, handling payroll, as well as actively managing and overseeing the company's recruitment and resourcing strategies.
However, one of their most important tasks is to protect both company and employee data from a multitude of potential threats, from company negligence to cybersecurity breaches. If they fail to do so, an identity theft lawyer could have a big clean up job on their hands.
This article brings you the HR guide to employee data protection and what an HR professional needs to do to comply with data protection laws and compliance regulations. Let's get into it.
GDPR: An overview of HR
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a relatively new EU data privacy regulation that came into effect on May 25, 2018. The reason for its inception is due to the fact that companies are now gathering data at an exponential rate, from both consumer and employee aspects.
The more data a company holds, the more likely it is to become the target of hackers and cyber thieves trying to obtain information for nefarious activities such as computer crimes and fraud.
When you think about it, HR departments have access to a lot of sensitive employee information, such as their name, social security number, address, date of birth, previous addresses, and so on. It's a virtual gold mine for hackers and cybercriminals.
However, the risk doesn't just fall on the shoulders of the employee. Here are some of the ways businesses can suffer from data leaks:
A significant loss of reputation
Damage to employee trust
Damage to customer trust
Litigation costs
Costs from malware attacks
Fines and penalties
GDPR aims to protect the employee's personal data by setting out guidelines and regulations that companies must adhere to if they are to remain compliant. Otherwise, they could be liable to face punishment in the form of fines and penalties.
What HR needs to do to comply with employee Data Protection
There are numerous amounts of information and regulations that HR professionals must keep up with in order to keep up with the new GDPR and employee data protection rules. Here are some of the main tasks HR needs to address:
Recognize and prevent cybersecurity attacks. This means choosing the right cloud services that have data protection as a priority.
Update and review privacy policies for all staff
Always document the reason for the need to process personal information.
Making sure employees understand their rights, particularly their right to access, rectify, and erase their own data if they wish
Make sure that the only people that have access to personal information are the ones who require it.
Adhere to timely document deletion. A company can only hold onto its data for a predetermined amount of time, especially if it is not necessary for business practices.
Consider whether the company's employee monitoring is acceptable/necessary (such as email monitoring and CCTV)
Common misconceptions of Data Protection
The digital landscape is constantly changing, and as we continue to propel forward into an age designed around data and information, it becomes increasingly challenging to keep up with regulations.
With that being said, there are still plenty of misconceptions when it comes to employee data protection and GDPR laws. Let's take a look at some of the most common misunderstandings:
The company does not have to notify employees when processing their personal data
This is somewhat of a gray area and is a difficult one to navigate for HR employees. There are instances where employers do not have to notify employees when processing their data. This is usually when there are valid legal grounds for doing so. However, there are times when it's necessary to notify employees when their personal data is processed, such as when they are added to an employee directory app. The long and short of it is, it depends.
The employer can freely monitor employees work
Employers are not free to monitor all of their employees' work if it breaches GDPR rules. Things such as email monitoring, CCTV, and other surveillance are considered personal data, and the standard rules apply.
GDPR is an EU law and therefore does not apply to the USA
GDPR applies to the USA and all other nations. Article 3 clearly states that GDPR applies to companies in the EU/EEA and companies outside of this that track EU/EEA residents' data. Simply put, if you have any employees who reside in these areas, even if they are freelancers, then GDPR applies.
Breaches of regulations will automatically result in penalties
Breaches of regulations are considered on a case-by-case basis. The penalty for such instances will be decided based upon based on the severity of the breach, the implications on the victims, and the reasons for the breach in the first place. If data was leaked due to the company's negligence, they will likely face fines and penalties as a result.
Conclusion
Overall, as the employee and consumer information gathering is rapidly increasing in the company’s practices, there should also be definite procedures protecting the sensitive data. The list of HR Professionals’ responsibilities is also growing and nowadays they have to undertake certain actions in order to keep everything in a safe place. We hope that this guide assists you in your security practices.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
What is a Workflow and Why Do You Need It?
Are you still using a paper-based to-do list or project management system? Do you have a hard time staying up-to-date on your employee's work in real-time? Did you know that 85% of employees aren't engaged at work, costing billions of dollars in lost productivity?
The experts agree this is due in large part to mismanagement.
So, how can you improve your management skills and increase employee engagement? The answer is simple: you need automated workflows. But, what is a workflow?
Don't worry if you don't know, as we're here to help you. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about workflows and how to create them so you can stay competitive in your industry.
Who Needs a Workflow Tool?
If you have a team working together on any project, you need a workflow process. This allows everyone on your team to know what's expected of them and when. By using an automated workflow management software, you take yourself out of the equation when it comes to micromanaging your team.
This gives everyone the autonomy to plan their schedules and ensure their work is done on time for the next person in the workflow process.
Project management can be overwhelming and complicated, but when you create streamlined business processes that are followed every time, you create a simplified plan. This allows everyone on your team to see the plan and know when they need to complete their part.
So, if you have a team that has problems with task management, then you need to create a workflow. However, you might be asking, what is a workflow? We answer that next.
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What Is a Workflow?
A workflow is a system or series of steps you need to take if you create a product, provide a service, or complete a repeatable task or project. Each time you or your team needs to work on this project or create this product, they need to know exactly what steps to complete and in what order.
Your workflow management systems give this to them. It also allows you to duplicate yourself because you will no longer have to guide your team through the creation process. Everyone can see the series of steps required and where you are in the process.
Workflow automation is a system you create to outline the process your team needs to follow every time they complete a certain project. For your web developers, this could be a workflow outlining client onboarding for each new project. For your accounting department, this encompasses business or accounting workflow management for both accounts receivable and payable.
For your HR team, this can include employee onboarding or employee vacation requests, for example. Every time your company hires a new employee, there are certain forms that need to be filled out and education that needs to be completed. Does everyone on your team know what these are and what they need to do?
If not, then you need to create this system for them, so you can stop micromanaging and get back to working on your business instead. So, a workflow is a system or process consisting of the exact steps for each time you work on a project or create a product.
Why You Need to Create Automated Processes for Your Business
You have a business to run, and you have many items on your to-do list already. And yet, here we are telling you that you need to take the time to make a checklist; it might sound redundant.
But it's vital to running an efficient and streamlined company. Don't rely on a list in your head. This does two things:
It creates an environment in which you're required to be present and involved in every project
It leaves too much room for human error if you forget a step or can't remember if you've done it already and have to go back and check
You don't want to risk either one of these scenarios for your business. You want to improve productivity. You want to create a business that allows you to be elsewhere working on your business. This empowers your team to do the work themselves.
Let's say you run a managed IT services company. Every month you run certain processes and create reports for each of your clients. You must have a workflow created so everyone knows what needs to be done and where they can help.
And for example, let's say your IT firm also offers a service to create new websites or apps for businesses. Creating a website or app is a long process with many steps. So, again, you need a checklist to ensure that nothing is forgotten.
This is the basis for what a workflow is, so now let's show why they're important.
By having a checklist they follow every time, they never need to wonder if they're doing the right thing or in the right order. Additionally, as other team members come into the project mid-way, everyone can instantly see what's already been completed and where they can help with the next step.
How to Create a Workflow
A good workflow not only tells your team what to do and when, but it also shows them the exact steps, or best practices, as outlined by senior management. It also helps management to see where the backlog can become a problem or where deficiencies in productivity may lie.
That's all well and good; you know that you need to create workflows, but how? We've created a process workflow to help you create them for your own business.
1. Start With the End in Mind
The best place to start is to know what your end goal is. This will ensure that at the end of the workflow, you've created the product or delivered the service as desired by the client or customer. So before you start outlining the steps, take the time to clearly define the finished product.
2. Brainstorm the Steps
Next, you'll start to brainstorm the necessary steps to get from the beginning of your project to the final deliverable. Then map out each step in order; you can do this using an ideal model knowing that, in reality, it won't always be so neat and tidy.
3. Identify Resources Needed
This is where you'll start to look at the details for each step in your brainstorming process. What will you and your team need to complete each step in your workflow? Who will complete each step in your workflow?
Resources needed can include more employees if there is a bottleneck, more money if there is a budget, and more time if there is a tight deadline.
4. Determine Ownership and Provide Training
Once you know the basic structure of your workflow and the resources necessary, you need to determine who will be responsible for each step. By clearly defining who the stakeholders are in the process, you don't have to worry about delegating or waiting for someone to pick up a project.
Everyone knows what is expected of them and when. Clarity is key in this step. Everyone must be on the same page in order for automated workflows to flow seamlessly.
5. Test and Tweak Each Process
Continually work through your business process management and work to improve productivity. Talk with everyone on your team and find out where their concerns or problems are. This allows you to define a problem and then start working to solve any issues that could be causing inefficiencies in your approval workflow.
A Common Workflow Example
Each time you hire someone new, are you sure they have all the information they need to succeed? Does each manager in your company follow the same process, or do they have their own way of doing things?
With a uniform workflow, you don't have to worry about these scenarios. Instead, you know that every employee has what they need to succeed and that it's consistent across your company.
Here is an example of an onboarding workflow your HR team could follow each time:
Send an immediate automatic email to every new hire with the history and culture of your company
Send an automatic email the day before every new hire's first day with pertinent information about their first day and where they need to go
IT sets up their workspace before their first day with all the equipment they need to do their job
First-day tour of the building or campus to ensure they feel comfortable and know where to go
Share company goals and position benefits on the first day
Have the first week, the first month, and first 90 days checklist available so everyone knows what is expected of them
With this in place, you know the process you need to follow every time you hire someone new. And if you outsource any or all of these steps to your team, they know the process they need to follow. This is what a streamlined and efficient workflow looks like for your team.
Now, you don't need to wonder if you're creating a workflow that will help or hinder your team. You know that you've followed the steps to create a system anyone can use at any time without you holding their hand or following up on whether or not it was done.
This guide was designed to help you navigate through those difficult tasks and help determine the right software for your organization, download our ebook now.
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Stop Wondering and Start Building Your Workflows Today
This article has covered a monster topic and will change the way you run your business. If you follow each of the steps listed, you will see not only an increase in productivity but an increase in engagement as well.
At the outset, we shared a shocking statistic, that the majority of workers by far aren't engaged in their jobs. But, when you empower your employees with clearly defined workflows and systematized processes, then you can put them back in the driver seats of their own careers.
Now you don't have to wonder what is a workflow, instead you know how to create them and the power they will give to your business and team members. To learn more, watch our video or request a free demo, so you can see how creating automated forms and workflows can transform your business.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Improving the Employee Onboarding Process from Start to Finish
Why is Onboarding Important?
In today’s competitive job market, companies need to do all they can to find, attract, and hire the right employees. Fair enough, yet surprisingly, even this isn’t enough to guarantee success.
To make sure employees are really able to make a difference and help the company become more competitive, new hires must be able to hit the ground running on day one.
This is why employee onboarding is so important. A good onboarding program gets the employer-employee relationship started on the right foot and contributes to increased morale, productivity, and engagement.
Yet a bad onboarding experience falls short of these benefits and inevitably leads to wasted time, money, and effort. Without an engaging new hire experience, your organization will find it increasingly difficult to attract and retain the best talent.
Plan for Success, Right from the Start
It all leads to an important question: What can you do to improve your onboarding process and make sure your new hires are happy, productive, and positioned for maximum success?
One of the first ways to accomplish this is to think about the entire process, including the right strategy and tools to support it.
For example, developing a detailed new hire checklist is a great way to consider the entire process, make sure nothing is overlooked, and ensure the entire experience is as smooth as possible. When creating new hire checklists, it’s important to think beyond traditional HR responsibilities. Other departments such as IT, payroll, and facilities usually play an important role in onboarding new employees.
Involve these departments to give new hires everything they need all at once, while also demonstrating that your company has it all figured out!
This guide was designed to help you navigate through those difficult tasks and help determine the right software for your organization, download our ebook now.
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Things to Consider When Developing Your Onboarding Checklist
It’s important to remember that the onboarding checklist is a vital document, and one that should intuitively guide a new hire through all the steps of your onboarding process.
To make sure you give them everything they need—and help them hit the ground running on day one—consider all of these areas when developing your checklist.
Your corporate culture:
Plan to share important information to help new hires gain a better appreciation of your corporate history, values, and overall brand.
Details about their position:
New hires can benefit from understanding where their position fits within the overall organization, and how it contributes to helping the company achieve its overall goals.
Information about their department or the whole organization:
Include additional details such as all the other positions in their group or department, organizational charts, and more.
Training:
Consider highlighting any training they may need, either in the short term to get up to speed or for longer term options.
Goals:
Any checklist should include specific goals and objectives expected of this new employee, including details on how they’ll be measured.
Onboarding tasks:
Outline all of the activities you’ll help new hires complete as part of their introduction to your companies. Examples of this include things like setting up laptops, creating logins and passwords, getting an official badge, learning where to
park, and just about anything else that a new employee would need.
What’s on a Typical Onboarding Checklist?
Once you’ve determined what to include in developing your overall checklist, what should it include?
New hire paperwork, such as I-9 and W-4 forms
A statement of corporate values
A video that introduces the new hire to the company, including a brief overview of important products, services, and your overall brand
A detailed list of activities for the first day
A list of important contacts within various departments, including contact information
A timetable of important activities, and what to do if they have questions
More than just Paperwork
So many people tend to associate onboarding with paperwork. It’s true that paperwork is an important part of the process, but a successful onboarding process goes well beyond enrollment forms and payroll documents.
Instead onboarding involves various meetings and important actions that must be carefully coordinated. Many innovative HR departments now assign a dedicated onboarding coordinator to spearhead the entire process. Part leader, part counselor, this coordinator goes over all the steps that must be accomplished, and also plays a role in scheduling all of the vital steps.
Onboarding Goes Well Beyond Day One
A new hire’s onboarding experience goes beyond the first day. The entire experience can take several weeks, if not longer. Along the way, various benchmarks may be established, helping new employees provide feedback about their work experience thus far and how they feel about the organization.
Everything about onboarding is intended to make the new hire feel welcome, valued, and empowered to do the job they were hired to do. This last sentiment is becoming more important as millennial and Generation Z employees begin to make up a larger portion of the workforce. These generations value the ability to contribute to the success of an organization and are not shy in speaking up to express their opinion.
This is a significant shift away from traditional hiring methods, where employees were brought on board, left alone to fill out paperwork and learn about their position, and then simply follow orders from their manager.
LIKE.TG Onboard
LIKE.TG’s Onboard solution now helps automate and improve the entire onboarding experience. Onboard streamlines the entire process and gives new employees the tools they need to make their first great.
For example, our Form Builder capability helps to eliminate what could be mountains of paperwork. You can easily create all the digital documents a new hire needs to complete and make them available in an easy-to-access self-service portal.
With Onboard, new hires have more time to make the right decisions when completing important forms. We also help you provide pre-built I-9, W-4, direct deposit forms, and more—all part of a full library of form templates available in the Onboard solution.
We even offer easy drag-and-drop capabilities to design customized documents to collect additional required information. No matter what you need to improve your onboarding experience, LIKE.TG has you covered.
Making the Future Better
LIKE.TG is committed to providing the resources necessary to make onboarding effective. HR managers understand that orientation is the first step in what is hopefully a long career path. This means that the information gathered will help the employee begin an employment journey with the new company. We provide solutions and allow you to be even more efficient in the employment process.
For more information on how to use LIKE.TG to improve your overall onboarding process—and achieve impressive new results—please contact us today.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Seven Crisis Communications Examples Every HR Professional Should Have
A crisis can affect your company at any time. As of this writing, the COVID-19 pandemic has gripped the world and has changed the way we think about communication, contact, and work as we once knew it. The world has never had to deal with large-scale social distancing and contactless norms as we’re currently dealing with.
Crisis management is essentially an HR function. To react appropriately to a crisis, everyone in your organization has to be on the same page. Crises tend to spring up unexpectedly, and communication during such times is of paramount importance. As tough as these times can be, they present a rare opportunity for you to enhance your company’s standing with your customers.
1. Prepare
The old saying is true: “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” You may not be able to anticipate the exact nature of a crisis but creating response plans and educating employees with regards to what a crisis looks like is essential. Your employees will appreciate having a crisis response template.
There are two plans that you should have in place above all else: Your business continuity plan and crisis recovery plan. Yourbusiness continuity plan and crisis recovery plan.The former ensures your organization will not be crippled during a crisis, and the latter will help dictate your response to the situation.
Adopt tools that allow you to quickly broadcast company-related announcements to your staff. Calling everyone on the floor to an all-hands meeting is impossible these days, and this is why you must define platform login and monitoring protocols. If your employees know what's expected of them before a crisis hits, they'll react in a coordinated manner once the situation becomes critical.
2. Identify crisis communication management teams
Who are the key people you need to deal with a crisis? Identify and train them beforehand to help them do their jobs well during a crisis. With remote workforces, communication between team members is crucial since face to face interaction isn't possible.
Create dedicated communication channels for this team and empower them to create sub-channels to help them achieve their goals. During a crisis, it's impossible to know what your team will need, and this is why using highly customizable software is essential.
3. Notify
Crisis communication is all about ensuring there are no stones left unturned when it comes to delivering your message. This approach applies to your internal communication as well. Aside from broadcasting announcements on your software platform, make sure your employees receive notifications on their phones and email as well. These messages should be delivered via SMS/mobile apps and other functionality within a modern, social intranet.
Restrict sending such notifications solely for critical moments. You don't want your employees to tune out your messages by sending them irrelevant updates and announcements.
4. Encourage responses with employee advocates
The old way of responding to a crisis was to batten down the hatches and restrict employees from talking about it. In the era of social media, not only is this the wrong approach to adopt, but it's also impossible to enforce. People turn to social media for information, and ignoring social conversations involving your company will damage your brand.
Encourage your employees to interact with customers and followers on your accounts and give them to become brand advocates. Designate responsible employees or have someone from your crisis recovery team assume control of your accounts. Make sure your employees are up to speed concerning communication tone and response protocols.
5. Accuracy (not just speed)
Your first instinct when a crisis hits will be to respond quickly to put out fires. However, an inaccurate or false response will only make the situation worse. Instead, focus on communicating honestly, and your employees will follow suit. Encourage your crisis management team to explore the situation and provide constant updates in your internal communications to all of your employees.
Above all else, never go silent. If your organization is gathering the facts surrounding the case, then communicate this internally and externally. Remaining silent conveys dishonesty and will damage your brand's reputation.
6. Test
Regular crisis communication testing is the key to measuring the effectiveness of your response. Craft response templates in advance and share them through your HR platform to gather feedback from your employees.
Share these test responses in different communication channels to gain a well-rounded picture of what your employees think. Sharing it across the entire organization at once and opening the floor to feedback from everybody might result in you getting lost in the weeds.
Make sure you include relevant personnel contact information in these templates. Your employees can then use their HR mobile app to get in touch instantly with these people when the crisis hits.
7. Review
Once a crisis passes, review your workflow with your crisis management team. Gather feedback from employees through your HR platform's channels and incorporate this into your response moving forward.
Find the opportunity in a crisis
A crisis will test your organization thoroughly, but it's also an opportunity for you to bounce back stronger than ever. Communicating decisively and clearly--with the right crisis communications plan—with your employees will help you respond as one to the crisis and will enhance your reputation. It will also bring your employees closer to one another thanks to having dealt with the situation together.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
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With the workplace going remote these days, communication is of paramount importance. To learn many more tips, tricks, and best practices for communicating with remote teams, download our eBook,“A Better Way to Communicate, Engage, and Recognize Reward Remote Workers.”
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
5 Workplace Issues and How You Can Resolve Them
From communication breakdowns and minor misunderstandings to differences in work styles and competing goals, workplace issues are as varied as the solutions to resolve them. But, if handled correctly, each situation offers a unique opportunity to improve your company’s workplace culture.
Understanding these issues and knowing how to navigate them can lead to improved teamwork, increased productivity, and a more positive work environment. By embracing issueresolution as a pivotal skill, leaders and employees alike can transform potential obstacles into stepping stones for organizational success.
Below, we’ll delve into five common types of workplace issues that arise in the workplace and provide actionable strategies for effectively addressing them.
1. Mental health
Mental health issues are increasingly common in the workplace, with at least 1 in 4 people experiencing mental health problems every year.
Employers may find it difficult to address mental illness, but the support you provide for mental health issues should be no less favorable than the resources you make available for physical ailments.
Most importantly, employers are under an obligation to take reasonable steps to support the well-being, health, and safety of their employees. This means that work practices and company culture should support good mental health and also employees with mental health problems. If an employee’s mental health illness is categorized as a disability, then they will also be protected against disability discrimination by the Equality Act 2010.
Employers do have the right to terminate an employee’s employment due to mental health illness. However, you must be able to show that you have taken all reasonable steps to resolve conflict and keep the employee in employment.
Short-term mental health issues
For employees suffering from short-term mental health problems, you would be advised to:
Give them opportunities to explain their absences
Explain to the employee how these absences could become an issue in future both for them as individual employees and for the business
Set a reasonable review period for monitoring their work performance and any absences related to their mental health issue(s)
Long-term mental health issues
Reasonable steps that you could take to support an employee who has a long-term mental health problem include:
Investigating the mental health condition, usually by asking for medical records, GP report, or occupational health report
Consulting the employee about how their condition affects their role
Exploring with them possible ways of overcoming any adverse impacts, such as adjusting their workload or changing their hours or the type of work
Making reasonable adjustments so that the employee can stay in their role
Anticipating your employee’s recovery and keeping the role open for them for as long as reasonably possible
2. Covid-19
The coronavirus has drawn attention to employees’ rights in an unprecedented way, particularly to the right to get paid according to their contract of employment, the right to health and safety at work, and much more.
With businesses being forced to close down and where it is not possible to work remotely, your employees are entitled to their contractual pay. The U.S. government Furlough Scheme (also known as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme) can help employers during this pandemic.
The financial support provided gives employers a percentage of their employees’ salaries, currently at 80% with a monthly cap of $3,000. But employees must agree to be put on the furlough scheme and, if you are not going to bridge the cap to cover 100% of their pay, accept only a percentage of their wage. So, discuss it with them first.
If employees believe there is an imminent danger in attending the workplace, such as contracting the coronavirus, they can also refuse to come to work. It can be unlawful for you to insist that they attend without first resolving the danger. This also applies to employees suspected of having or showing symptoms of the coronavirus (see S2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974).
We strongly advise that you discuss any dangers with your employees and where possible try to let them work from home, especially where they are vulnerable.
Where an employee is pregnant, you are obliged to conduct a risk assessment and put her on suspension with full pay if necessary. If she is within 6 weeks of her due date, you can allow her to start maternity leave.
If you ask employees to work from home, they are entitled to their full contractual pay. However, if they are not attending the workplace due to coronavirus symptoms or being suspected of having the virus, they’re entitled to Statutory Sick Pay.
Introduction to Conflict in the Workplace(and How it Erodes Productivity Culture)
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3. Bullying
Bullying at work is destructive behavior usually directed repeatedly at one individual or a small group. It can be vindictive, offensive, belittling, threatening, or a combination of behaviors. Some examples of bullying in the workplace are:
Persistent teasing or subjecting someone to frequent practical jokes
Constant criticism when it’s not justified
Verbal threats and verbal abuse designed to belittle, humiliate, or offend
Intentionally misleading someone about such things as deadlines or the nature of a task
Constant and unjustified monitoring of an individual’s performance
Turning down an individual’s requests for time off without good reason
Bullying can be carried out by an individual’s colleagues or by a manager. It has a demoralizing effect on the person or people being bullied and often adversely affects their performance as well as their mental health. It’s important to nip in the bud any reports of bullying and to deal promptly and thoroughly with any related complaints.
Most employers have policy guidelines for dealing with bullying, but in practice, they are not always used. If you do not adequately handle reported instances of bullying and complaints about it, a bullied employee could resign and potentially have a claim for unfair dismissal.
It is also implied in the employee’s contract of employment that you owe them a duty of trust and confidence and a duty to deal with complaints and grievances without undue delay. If you fail in these respects following a report or complaint of bullying, you could also end up facing claims of breach of contract.
Employees suffering from bullying could suffer mental injury and possibly physical injury. Where it can be medically proven that this was caused by the bullying and has led to financial loss due to being on sick leave, for example, they could have a claim for personal injury.
Employees who have been bullied in the workplace have many potential causes of action against employers who fail to address related complaints or to address them adequately. We advise you to have a legally sound policy in place and to ensure that it is implemented.
Each and every complaint needs to be investigated thoroughly and an open relationship maintained with your employees so that they feel comfortable with company culture and addressing issues like this with you.
4. Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment has a broad definition in law, and there is much debate about the use of terminology to describe sexual harassment. However, it essentially refers to any behavior of a sexual nature that makes you feel intimidated, degraded, or humiliated or being obliged to work in an environment that gives rise to such feelings.
In practice, it can mean anything from unwanted jokes and comments of a sexual nature to displays of material of a sexual nature to sexual assault.
If an employee has been sexually assaulted, one of their first steps should be to report the incident to the police. However, in less serious cases, they’ll most likely raise the matter with you.
Your organization’s Equality and Diversity Policy should give guidance on how the complaint should be handled. Generally, you should take any complaint of sexual harassment very seriously, and investigate it promptly. Action should also be taken against the perpetrator in accordance with any disciplinary policy, with any defenses such as “it was just a joke,” being ruled unacceptable.
If you can show that you took all reasonable steps to prevent such harassment from occurring, you will have a better chance of defending a case of sexual harassment in an employment tribunal. Having said that, many employees who have faced sexual harassment at work would prefer not to go through the stress and delays of an employment tribunal case. They would prefer to negotiate a decent exit package in the form of a settlement agreement, leave their employment, and put the experience behind them.
Where you can show that you have adequately dealt with a complaint, the employee will have fewer grounds on which to negotiate compensation. However, if you haven’t handled it well, it will improve your employee’s negotiating position and probably end up costing your organization a great deal more by way of compensation, whether in an employment tribunal case or by way of a negotiated settlement.
HR mistakes impact your entire organization. Learn how to avoid the 12 most common mistakes with our free ebook.
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5. Redundancy
We are seeing an increasing number of redundancies during this pandemic. However, your employees’ rights remain as they were before.
When making between 20 to 99 employees redundant in any 90-day period, you are obliged to consult employees for a minimum of 30 days before any dismissals occur. Making 100 or more redundancies requires you to consult employees for at least 45 days.
There is no statutory consultation period for employers who make less than 20 redundancies. However, there is still a general obligation to consult. This means discussing the situation with employees, particularly those who are being selected for redundancy.
Redundancy is a large and complex legal topic, so the above is just an overview of the basics.
There are many legal pitfalls that an employer can easily fall into when carrying out redundancies but these are beyond the scope of a brief article such as this. We recommend that you have a look at Monaco Solicitor’s page on Redundancy for more.
Next Steps
At Monaco Solicitors, we would advise handling each of the workplace conflicts outlined above with great care.
Organizations with little recent experience in any of these scenarios would be well-advised to carry out further research so as to avoid the prospect of hefty compensation claims being made by employees who have done their homework and/or have legal representation.
Most importantly, remember your employees’ rights and start off by engaging in informal discussions. A formal route is not always the most effective in handling the personal circumstances that employees face in the workplace.
You never know, it may be that your employee merely wants an apology for bullying, wants to offer themselves redundancy to start a new career, or simply needs a supportive environment and company culture to help them cope better with their mental health issues.
About Author:
Monaco Solicitors are a specialist employment law firm. We are based in London but handle cases for clients across the country. Because we only work in employment law, we are well placed to tackle some of the increasingly common workplace conflicts and to suggest how you might consider addressing them.
Six Ways to Achieve Employee Satisfaction
Achieving employee satisfaction is important for every organization for a variety of reasons. And there are as many as six superb ways to achieve employee satisfaction within your organization. In fact, employee satisfaction is useful for all businesses- whether it’s a small business, new startup or a multinational corporation.
So how does one go about to ensure employee satisfaction? To do so, we first need to comprehend what this term “employee satisfaction” actually implies.
Defining Employee Satisfaction
In simple terms, employee satisfaction is a yardstick that companies utilize to know whether their staff at all levels are happy doing the job and with workplace conditions.
What most human resources managers aren’t aware of is that employee satisfaction has more to do with psychology instead of simply providing good pay and excellent working conditions. In fact, employee satisfaction is all about the state of the mind of an employee at workplace that also extends to their personal lives.
Therefore, it’s not easy to measure employee satisfaction levels. There Are several factors that go into determining employee satisfaction.
Overall liking of the job by an employee.
Satisfaction over levels and quality of supervision.
Feeling safe and secure at workplace.
Ability to perform the role well.
Adequate resources necessary for daily working.
Commitment to making a long career with the employer.
Career advancement opportunities.
Prospects for financial growth.
All these factors have a close link with one-another and are some of the common factors that HR managers and employers worldwide use to measure employee satisfaction.
Here it’s also important to remember that an organization’s goals should correspond with its desire to achieve employee satisfaction. Focusing merely on employee satisfaction without concern about the organization’s goals for growth, expansion and greater profitability can prove disastrous.
Reasons to Aim for Employee Satisfaction
At the same time, there’re very strong reasons why any business serious about staying in business and growing needs to take steps for ensuring employee satisfaction.
Rising Cost of Hiring
The cost of hiring an employee ranges between $7,000 and $50,000 depending on the role they’ll play. This includes the various hiring processes such as advertising online or offline for a vacancy, shortlisting the right candidates, tests, interviews and training before the new hire fits into the role and starts performing well. These expenses don’t calculate man-hours an organization spends on such processes and training. Nor does it consider the costs of lower productivity of a new hire. This makes it imperative to retain existing employees, especially top talent within the organization.
Lowering Attrition Rates
Employees tend to leave an employer if they’re unhappy at a workplace for any reason. And this leads to hiring costs, for obvious reasons. However, high employee satisfaction is known to help retain the best talent while developing loyalty to your organization. It’s well known that loyal staff exert extra efforts to ensure the organization achieves goal. And in most cases, they’ll stand with their employer, if the company runs into doldrums for any reason. Loyal employees won’t leave an employer merely for a bit higher salary.
Healthy Reputation for Employers
Employee satisfaction directly translates to a healthy reputation for employers. Because, this satisfaction reflects on their lifestyles. Satisfied employees also spread a good word about the employer through word-of-the-mouth publicity. This makes it easier for organization that’ve a high level of employee satisfaction to attract the best talent and sometimes, wean away people with vital skills from competitors to their own companies. Workplaces with high employee satisfaction rates also find it easier to get fresh recruits quickly whenever they announce a vacancy through job boards, LinkedIn to explore more and newspaper ads or their own websites.
These three benefits of achieving employee satisfaction are something that every organization would definitely desire. And there’re some simple ways to try and achieve employee satisfaction.
Six Ways to Achieve Employee Satisfaction
Before we discuss these six best ways to achieve employee satisfaction, it’s important to consider the “new normal” of work the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic dictates. The “new normal” as it’s known, is rapidly changing the way we work. This means, ways and means to achieve employee satisfaction also need to adapt to the newer ways of working.
In this article, we will look at six ways to achieve employee satisfaction in 2021 and beyond.
Christopher BaggottChief Executive Officerator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
Work from Home Facilities
Work from home is the new normal for countless organizations and their employees. That’s because of the need for social distancing to prevent getting the Covid-19 infection. In fact, most employers are encouraging work from home while employees are utilizing this facility happily.
However, anyone that works from home would testify that it comes with a bunch of inherent flipsides. An office-going employee could relieve the day’s stress at home. Nowadays, with home and office becoming one, there’re few ways to alleviate such work related stress.
Any organization that wishes to achieve employee satisfaction will therefore have to see how to make work from home a more pleasurable while ensuring lower stress levels. Providing flexible hours may be one solution but that might not be possible for all employers due to the nature of their business.
However, it’s important to ensure that work from home is less stressful and more pleasurable in the present circumstances.
Better Communications at Every Level
Remote working or work from home also makes it necessary for employers to have better communications with employees and among one-another. Such seamless communications through video conferencing helps employers to detail their objectives clearly to employees while leaving nothing to ambiguity.
Elimination of ambiguity combined with excellent communications between a team of remote workers helps achieve employee satisfaction. Every employee is clear about what they need to do and the processes they have to follow. This results in better productivity and could help remove misunderstandings and confusion that can prevail among employees due to poor communications at different levels.
However, better communications can sometimes be misunderstood as micromanagement. And this is something an employer should avoid. The trick here is to set clear objectives and get the work done seamlessly instead of micromanaging a team of remote employees through better communications.
Online Training Programs
Training ranks among the most effective ways to achieve employee satisfaction. And it helps the employer too. We live in an era where technologies are rapidly changing. This also means the way we work has to evolve around newer technologies. The best way to ensure this is by training employees to work with latest, more efficient systems that would see the business record greater profits and customer satisfaction.
The Covid-19 pandemic triggered a surge in demand for online training courses for employees. Therefore, organizations need to look at employee training very seriously if they wish to achieve employee satisfaction. It’s a well-known fact that employees will leave an organization if they find their skills going redundant or outdated for the job market. And having employees with older skills can severely retard the growth of a business.
To learn even more about improving the employee experience and increasing your competitive advantage while providing a fast return on investment, download our ebook now.
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Internal Promotions Career Growth
Every employee takes up a job either as fresher or with some experience, expecting to create a career. They look forward to promotions that helps career growth and salary hikes that come with higher positions. Therefore, creating an HR policy that prioritizes internal promotions and offers ample career growth prospects works well to achieve employee satisfaction. This can be done even when you have a team of employees working online from remote locations.
Internal promotions and career growth prospects foster a healthy competition and higher productivity, leaving little or no space for workplace politics and undesirable attrition. Training all staff and providing them equal opportunities to vie for a higher post works well towards achieving this goal of employee satisfaction. Instead of hiring a person externally for senior positions, an organization could consider promoting someone with the right skillset and attitude, from within.
Preventing Overwork
Work from home can often lead to overwork. And often, it’s not because an employee couldn’t complete the day’s work on schedule. Instead, employers expect a work from home employee to complete some additional work, because they believe it can be done comfortably.
Nowadays, quite a large number of organizations are working with lesser number of staff. That’s because they had to trim payrolls to counter losses sustained during peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. A shorter payroll often results in longer working hours for existing staff. This should be avoided at all costs. Overwork is one of the main reasons for staff attrition and inability to achieve staff satisfaction.
Incentives Appreciation
Providing timely incentives in the form of cash rewards or pay hikes and instant appreciation of high performing employees is a time-tested and proven technique to promote employee satisfaction. Though it might sound outdated, this practice is relevant till date and works well for every organization that implements the system.
Lack of appreciation is a reason for high staff turnovers. And not incentivizing good performance causes disgruntlement among employees at all levels. Combine the two and an organization could actually face mass resignations and very high attrition. The best way to stem these undesirable situations is to incentivize good work and appreciate outstanding performance by employees.
Incentives and appreciation always works well to achieve employee satisfaction. It also benefits the employer since all employees exert extra effort to gain appreciation and avail incentives.
In Conclusion
There’re also some other known ways to achieve employee satisfaction. However, with the new normal for work, it’s best to adapt or utilize the above six ways to suit specific needs of the organization. After all, employee satisfaction helps businesses grow faster and attract the best talent. Any investments in achieving employee satisfaction are therefore, worthwhile.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly software increases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Why Every Small Business Needs Intranet
We are nearing the end of the most difficult year for small businesses in modern history. Many such businesses have shuttered, and those that haven't are still fighting to survive. Accordingly, business operations have become a major talking point. Small business owners are now looking ahead to a post-pandemic economy in which they’ll have a chance to rebuild. In that process of looking ahead though, there are a number of different strategies being discussed.Those strategies cover a number of different business practices, from basic communication to office design. However, many of them ultimately concern employee engagement and working conditions. And it’s with regard to these aspects of a business that we’d suggest that now more than ever, every small business needs an intranet. Below are a few particular reasons for this assertion to keep in mind.
1. A Digital Space for Remote Workers
The most important factor is the likelihood that remote work will continue to be the norm well into the future. Consider the following indicators that we're already seeing:
Continued telecommuting - In our home state of California, some of the most influential companies are already incentivizing out-of-office contributions. A recentNBC News report on the California Bay Areanoted that this whole region might evenrequire partial telecommuting after the pandemic.
New businesses cutting costs - It’s also highly likely thatnewbusinesses throughout the state will forego office space. This will be done in an effort to cut costs. Investment money is harder to come by in light of the pandemic, and the Golden State already has relatively high costs of operation. According toZenBusiness’s information for new California LLCs, the state’s taxes for businesses are among the highest in the country. Even operating an LLC (the most common new company structure) costs owners an $800 fee. These kinds of costs may be harder to justify post-pandemic without cutting expenses elsewhere.
These factors all point toward less emphasis on in-person work. And with more remote working and telecommuting, companies will rely on digital infrastructure to keep teams informed, engaged, and communicative. This is precisely what company intranet solutions can provide. It can put business information, communication from management, and various forms of back-and-forth collaboration all into one digital hub.
Kaylee CollinsHR Analyst of Osmose Utilities Services, Inc
“Our hiring managers now have a reliable system that is easy to navigate. Our HR team can actively monitor the process, and assist if needed, but Onboard has helped them save so much valuable time and effort while increasing data accuracy. All of this has helped us improve compliance and gives us a powerful tool to achieve even more results in the future.”
2. Social Benefits
As we pointed out in ourpost on the ‘Impact of the New Normal on the Employee Experience’, social elements matter most in difficult times like these. “Caring for your people” and “making sure they are all ok” are as vital as any business strategies. As we stated in the same post, work buddies make the work itself more bearable (and sometimes downright fun!). And yet, it’s these relationships that a lot of people are missing most in remote work situations.There are different ways to address this issue, including ideas as simple as encouraging employees to have video chats with their company friends. But this is also another reason that corporate intranet is now more essential than ever. Among other things, a company intranet provides a sense of community. People can use it for socialization, as a collaboration tool, and to generally get the sense that they’re part of a team. This is true even if people are physically off on their own.
3. Preparation for Growth
The importance of a digital workplace for growth potential should be considered also. Effective intranet fostering team collaboration can help a small business to grow more rapidly. This is the case even in perfectly ordinary times, but will be even more so in light of the remote work phenomenon.In particular, a reliable intranet system is helpful in the process of onboarding new employees. It can provide them with some of the following benefits in a seamless and immediate way:
A way to learn the ropes- If you've ever been a new employee in a new environment, you know it can be hard to ask questions. And yet, this is usually the best way to learn the ropes and figure out small problems that arise early on. With an intranet, new employees can feel more comfortable posing questions and seeking clarification. An environment built for discussion is simply less intimidating than going to a superior one-on-one.
A sense of fellowship - Building on the previous point, intranet can also serve as a sort of digital community space where new employees can gain comfort. While in-person socialization is still ideal, intranet interaction quickly makes a new employee feel like a part of the company.
A central hub - Intranet could almost be defined as a "central hub" in vague terms. For new employee engagement though this aspect of internet is crucial. It is a place where personal and business information can all be located quickly and easily, as well as one where company news is easily shared. This cuts down on some of the day-to-day complexity of onboarding, and allows new employees to focus more and more on important matters.
Those are some of the specific benefits to new employees. But the broader point about growth is also all the more important for businesses here in California also. Judging byInc.’s look at top California companies, growth in the state is still fairly explosive. Granted, this overview focused on the best of the best. But even lower on the list, massive growth rates are notable. It remains one of the best states for successful businesses to expand in. And that kind of expansion will be made easier with effective intranet use.
Conclusion
We could go on about specific benefits of intranet. But in light of present conditions, the points above demonstrate why small businesses need this sort of platform. An effective company intranet provides a digital workplace, fosters social activity, and lays a foundation for growth, specifically as regards to new employees coming aboard. These benefits will help a small business improve and thrive where it might otherwise stagnate. They will therefor be vital moving forward, as small businesses enter a competitive comeback stage in 2021 and beyond.
6 Company Intranet Examples, and How They Work to Improve Company Culture
At this point, chances are good that most of us are familiar with the concept of a corporate intranet. Yet a surprisingly high number of people still wonder why they might need one in their company, or why what they have now isn’t working.
Many more may be surprised to learn that modern internet solutions have evolved beyond traditional webpage frameworks and offer much more functionality and a wider range of new benefits.
It’s an important advantage, especially since the parallels between superior employee experiences and business performance are striking. For example, companies with highly engaged workforces are 21% more profitable than those with poor engagement levels.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at intranets, including what they are, their top features, and specific examples of how a few industry-leading companies are using the best intranet platforms in innovative new ways. We’ll also look at why yesterday’s intranets simply don’t work anymore, and how modern employee communication and engagement platforms can now extend the capabilities and benefits they can deliver.
We also give you a sneak peek at Workmates, LIKE.TG’s employee experience platform and show you how it is revolutionizing the way companies go beyond traditional intranet solutions and take advantage of all that an employee communication and engagement platform has to offer.
What is an intranet exactly and what are the best intranet platforms today? Intranets are internal hubs used by companies to store important information, communicate with employees, increase employee advocacy, streamline key processes, and encourage team collaboration.
While there are many benefits to an intranet, here are some of the most compelling:
Improve internal communications: The most effective intranet solutions encourage communication by empowering workers to efficiently access and share information. For example, individual departments can upload important documents; leadership can make announcements or provide specific updates; product teams can share launch updates and more.
Serve as a content management system (CMS): Intranets also serve as comprehensive repositories of vital information for the entire company. It encourages a community approach to sharing and managing content and gives employees valuable self-service access to all of the information they need, at any time.
Can be used with mobile devices: The most effective intranet solutions take information that exists on the intranet and push into employees’ hands on their mobile devices. This eliminates the need to search for hard-to-find information on a non-intuitive site. Instead, updates and information can be pushed directly to employees’ phones or tablets.
Drive collaboration: By providing centralized access to the tools and information workers need to perform their jobs, employees can find what they need and work better as collaborative teams.
Improve efficiency: Intranets virtually eliminates the need for cumbersome email workflows that waste time and lead to version issues and confusion. Say goodbye to emailing someone for the latest form or document; say hello to time savings that free the entire workforce to focus on higher-value initiatives.
Provide better support: Many departments can either post important forms (e.g., HR forms and documents) or let intranets serve as the primary engagement point for support processes, such as IT help desks or HR open enrollment.
Unite geographically dispersed teams: Companies now use intranets to connect remote employees, field-based teams, satellite offices, and any employee who may not be in corporate headquarters. This helps avoid communication issues, critical to increasing morale, engagement, and productivity.
Recognize and reward employees: Modern intranets now include powerful functionality to promote and facilitate employee recognition and even reward them for a job well done. Rewards can range from a peer-to-peer shoutout or digital high five to a gift card or other giveaway.
All of these add up to a better overall experience and one that employees appreciate, if not love. The love goes both ways, too: Providing a better experience helps companies be perceived as a better place to work. This is an important distinction since a recent Glassdoor study found that companies named to its “Best Places to Work” list significantly outperformed the SP 500.
Six Real Company Intranet Examples, and Why They Work
Ready to see real-world examples of corporate intranets? The following six use cases, in a wide range of industries, all started with similar goals and approaches but focused on slightly different executions to provide different—yet valuable—user experiences.
Example #1: Announcements in the technology industry
One leading technology company uses its intranet to improve communications and strengthen its corporate culture using a powerful announcement feature.
In this case, the company developed a prominent company feed that it used to manage important messages and encourage the entire workforce to do the same. This feed publishes various recognition announcements, such as appreciation posts, automated birthday and work anniversary congratulations, and more.
The company also used a kudos feature to offer recognition for employees’ hard work or any examples of exemplary behavior. All of this has been extremely helpful in showing the entire workforce that the company appreciates their contributions—no matter how small—and how they support larger accomplishments.
Example #2: Informal recognition with a “kudos” in healthcare
This example is similar to the use case above, but here, this healthcare company used their intranet to really focus on employee recognition and rewards.
The company used LIKE.TG’s Workmates solution, initially as a complete content management system (CMS) to gain a better way to store and distribute important information. But it also used the kudos feature to encourage an ongoing culture of letting employees recognize and reward their peers.
In this case, any employee can publish a post at any time to officially thank any other employee. The company created a reward program where employees could receive gift cards, branded corporate items, or other thank-you mementos.
Even better: Top kudos recipients are listed on a prominent leaderboard within the corporate intranet. This lets them receive even more attention, but it also fosters an ongoing culture where all employees now strive for excellence and higher levels of job performance.
Example #3: Social feeds in real estate
A commercial real estate company created an intranet with social feeds and created a number of different channels to let each specific team send messages and updates to other departments or the entire company.
For example, an employee can post certain announcements to the social feed, including welcoming new hires, sharing employees’ personal events (a new baby!), shout-outs to other teams or employees, office culture updates, and more.
It’s a new experience and one that makes communication and collaboration fun. Employees can upload pictures from a corporate event and share them with the whole company. They can also create and post surveys and polls—for example, “what type of cake should we get to celebrate Susan’s birthday?”
Employees also post memes and hashtags to their social feed, all to increase camaraderie, collaboration, and teamwork. The company can even use a powerful analytics dashboard to track active users and the overall engagement level with the intranet over time.
Example #4: Content management system
Another company, one that provides background screening services, chose to use its intranet site as a full-featured content management system (CMS). This company used its corporate intranet as a better way to upload and store documents, which gave employees a much better way to share documents, track activity, and access important information—from any device at any time.
Additionally, this company created a new internal help center for the HR department, which was accessible to all employees. This helped workers know exactly where they should start if they had questions or issues, gave them self-service access to critical forms and documents, and eliminated a lot of confusion.
It also saves a significant amount of time over the company’s previous system where employees would call or email requests for help—and get frustrated when they didn’t know where they stood.
Example #5: Brand advocacy in fast casual dining
As the name implies, fast casual restaurants move quickly. That means there’s no time to waste when it comes to scheduling shifts. It also means that employees, like servers and cooks, may feel underappreciated. A successful company intranet can improve communication and even inspire recruiting efforts.
A chain restaurant can use their intranet to share announcements with specific updates. For example, an announcement can let employees know they can pick up shifts at another local location. This saves the restaurant from being short-staffed and helps employees earn more. Announcements can even highlight achievements by individual staff, like employee of the month, to improve engagement.
Restaurants can also make their employees their best advocates. Using a company intranet, restaurant chains can create pre-written, approved posts designed for employees to share on their personal social media accounts, including job openings. About half of businesses say their top-quality hires come from referrals, and a positive post on social media can get those referrals moving.
Example #6: Giving employees valuable new resources in retail
Retailers need to make the customer shopping experience as pleasant as possible. A company intranet site can help make sure that employees have the training and seamless technology to make that happen.
A company can create an extensive training site to make sure every employee has the information they need in one easily accessible place. A comprehensive training site also makes sure that each employee is given standardized training so everyone is prepared for the job. And if they have questions long after onboarding, employees can always refer back to the training site.
The retailer can also develop an interactive shift-swapping app so employees can easily trade shifts — without bothering busy supervisors. Employees with more connections are happier, and so are customers at a fully-staffed store.
Christopher BaggottChief Executive Officerator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
What Should You Look for to Find the Best Intranet Platform?
Corporate data hub: It’s important for the intranet solution to integrate with corporate enterprise systems to enable connected workflows and easy data retrieval. For example, LIKE.TG users can connect and use HR data with the point of sale systems using Microsoft’s Power BI.
Sharing and collaboration: A good company intranet should include functionality that promotes sharing and collaboration, such as features that enable employees to view, comment, and distribute helpful information.
Social networking and employee advocacy: These are important when you consider that today, employees create awareness about their company and can serve as valuable brand advocates.
Push notifications: Instant alerts help workers see new updates, such as new project assignments or tasks, content updates, or specific conversations.
Org charts and contact databases: These are very helpful, especially as employees may look to find or contact others in the organization.
Analytics: Many corporate intranets today simply can’t report on employee activity or other metrics to help determine how effective it is. This means companies are missing the boat when it comes to measuring employee engagement or other important usage trends. Modern intranet solutions now offer powerful analytics to see what’s working for employees—across different topics, locations, job roles, and more.
Workmates: A Comprehensive Intranet Software solution
Today, LIKE.TG’s Workmates solution delivers all of these capabilities and more. To see how Workmates is revolutionizing the way companies think about and deploy intranets—for significant business improvements—please visit our Workmates page or request a free, no-obligation Workmates demo!
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly software increases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
How to Onboard Employees While Remote
It can be tough to onboard new employees, particularly if they’re remote. They can't just pop into the office for a meeting, and you can't always quickly bring them up to speed on all the company's goings-on. But with a little effort, you can make the process smooth for both the employee and your team.
Several tools and technologies can help make the onboarding process easier for you and your new employee. For example, video conferencing software like Skype or Zoom can be used for virtual training and tours. And there are many online tools, such as Google Drive, that can be used for collaboration and sharing documents.
In addition to taking advantage of these tools, you can make the onboarding process smoother and more efficient with the following guide, designed to help you get started.
1. Have a remote work policy
If you're going to be onboarding remote employees regularly, it's important to have a remote work policy in place. This should outline your expectations for how employees will conduct themselves while working remotely and what you expect from them regarding communication and collaboration.
Having a clear policy will help make the onboarding process smoother and ensure everyone is on the same page from the start.
And it starts in the hiring process: In your application, ask candidates what aspects of remote work appeal to them. Ask them to describe their preferred working style, communication style, and technical skills. If a candidate responds that they do not enjoy the isolation of remote work, you may want to move on.
2. Send equipment and a welcome package beforehand
Few things will frustrate both you and your new employee more than having them spend the first few working days ironing out technical difficulties. So, ahead of time, order all necessary hardware they’ll need and have it delivered to their home.
Here are some items to consider, depending on the requirements of the position:
Laptop or desktop computer
Monitor
Keyboard and mouse
Headset or earphones
Webcam
Printer/scanner
External hard drive or USB drives
Phone or VOIP equipment
Charging accessories and power strips
When it comes to software, if what employees need isn’t cloud-based, ensure it's pre-installed on their device. Include passwords, usernames, and any other security information needed so remote hires can easily get up and running.
Suppose you are working on many different online marketing tools. In that case, putting together a list of recommended tools for your new employee may be helpful. Or if you’re working with a project management tool, ensure that their accounts are already set up in advance, and they’ll have access from day one.
Additionally, making remote employees feel welcome can help embed them into your organization and feel like they’re part of the team. One idea is to send a welcome package with things like:
Welcome letter from the CEO or team leader
Company swag such as T-shirts, mugs, notebooks, or pens
Employee handbook
Snack box with an assortment of treats and snacks to enjoy while working
Tech accessories like USB flash drive, ergonomic mouse pads, or laptop stands
Gift cards for coffee or online retailers
Virtual event pass to an upcoming online workshop or team-building event
Desk plant to brighten up their home office space
3. Be prepared with virtual onboarding materials
Gather all your onboarding materials and make digital copies as part of your remote onboarding program. You may also want to mail them a physical copy along with their welcome package. Here’s a list of things you’ll want to include:
For all employees:
Mission, vision, and values
Organizational charts
Employee directories
Communication procedures (how and when to use email, video calls, and chat)
Tutorials for commonly used tools
Security standards
Templates for standard documents (presentations, email invitations, sales follow-up emails, etc.)
For marketing:
Lead qualification criteria
Content style guide
Blog and SEO best practices
For sales:
CRM contact information standards
How to order business cards
Travel and expense procedures
For software developers:
How to set up a development environment
Codebase
Development processes
Architecture standards
You can help employees track their progress by making videos of everything that they need to learn in modules. Or you can set up a video call so that they’re able to ask questions on anything they don’t understand and managers can easily answer them on the spot.
Creating these learning modules might be a bit difficult, but you can contract a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) to create learning modules for any job position.
4. Leverage existing technology and tools
Use video conferencing or online team meetings to ensure a smooth transition. Companies onboarding remote employees can greatly benefit from leveraging technology and platforms such as Zoom for virtual meetings, Slack for communication, Asana for project management, LIKE.TG for HR software, and Microsoft Teams for collaboration and document sharing.
For example, you can use Microsoft Teams to welcome your new team member, outline their responsibilities, and offer support. And some apps, such as Donut, allow employees to chat with a company representative through the internet. Onboarded employees can also receive useful information about company resources, such as knowledge bases, training software portals, and cheat sheets
5. Let new hires know what to expect
Working from home can be a brand new experience to most. Ensure everyone understands what's expected of them during the remote onboarding process. What information do they need? Whom will they be meeting with? What tools do they need to be successful? You can avoid confusion and frustration later on by getting everyone on the same page from the start.
This is also a good time to set expectations for communication. Will you use email, Slack, video conferencing, or a combination of all three? Let your new employee know how you prefer to communicate and the best way to reach you.
6. Set up a dedicated onboarding space
If possible, set up a dedicated space for their remote onboarding process. This gives them a place to go where they can find all the information they need in one spot. It can be as simple as a folder in your company's shared drive or an intranet page with links to all the relevant documents.
Having a dedicated space also makes it easy for you to keep track of your new employee's progress. You can quickly see what they've read and what still needs to be covered.
As your business grows, it might be a good idea to consider tools to help during this process. LIKE.TG’s employee Onboard platform can help to automate a lot of the repetitive tasks that build up as you get the hang of remote onboarding.
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7. Use self-onboarding checklists
Self-onboarding checklists are an effective tool for streamlining the onboarding process of remote employees, ensuring they complete all necessary steps.
These checklists should include tasks like setting up company email accounts, completing required paperwork, reviewing company policies and procedures, and accessing necessary software and tools.
Additionally, the checklist can guide new hires through introductory training modules, schedule their first team meetings, and prompt them to set up virtual meet-and-greets with key team members.
8. Introduce them to the team members
One of the challenges of remote work is feeling like you're part of the team. So take some time to introduce your new employee to everyone on the team, even if it's just through a quick email or video call. If possible, set up regular virtual coffee chats or happy hours so they can get to know their colleagues in a more informal setting.
You can also give them the company’s organization chart so that they do not have a hard time trying to remember who is who.
9. Give them a virtual tour
If your company has a physical office, give your new employee a virtual tour so they can see where their team members work and what the space looks like. If you don't have an office, you can still give them a tour of your company's website, intranet, or social media channels.
Make them feel like they're part of the team by showing them around and introducing them to everyone they'll be working with, even if it's just virtually. Always make an effort to have your camera on to create a warm face to face feeling when giving the tour.
Click Trough an Onboarding Process
Click through our interactive demo to see how LIKE.TG makes onboarding easy.
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10. Assign a buddy
One way to help your new employee feel welcome is to assign them a buddy. This should be someone who's been with the company for a while and knows the ropes. They can answer your new employee's questions and help them feel comfortable in their new role.
A workplace mentor can provide initial guidance and help eliminate the anxiety many new remote employees experience. Moreover, use video coffee chats and other ice-breaker activities to break the ice.
11. Provide training and resources
As part of the onboarding program, provide your new employee with all the training sessions and resources they need to be successful in their role.
An onboarding training session should entail a thorough introduction to the company culture, key policies, and job-specific skills, along with interactive elements like QA sessions, practical exercises, and opportunities to meet and engage with team members and key department leads.
The goal is to set them up for success by providing everything they need to hit the ground running and make sure you’re both on the same page once their onboarding plan is complete.
12. Encourage communication and feedback
Working remotely makes it easy to feel like you're out of sight and out of mind. To avoid this, schedule regular check-ins with your new employee. This gives you a chance to see how they're doing, answer any questions they may have, and give feedback on their progress.
You should also be open to getting feedback from your employees. This helps you figure out problems and come up with solutions. Feedback will show you places where your new employees have problems. There are different ways in which you can collect feedback from your new employees. You can use surveys, meetings, or performance tracking software.
Check-ins also allow your new employee to bring up any concerns or issues they may be having. By addressing these early on, you can help them feel more comfortable in their role and prevent any potential problems down the road.
You can also ask them to turn on their video during conference meetings to make them settle in properly so you become aware of their onboarding experience. Since employees are not able to meet face to face, online meetings and daily communication are essential in team building and creating healthy remote team relationships.
13. Give them room to grow
Finally, remember that your new employee is still learning and growing into their role. They may make some mistakes along the way, but that's okay. What's important is that you give them the space to learn and grow.Encourage them to ask questions, try new things, and take risks. This will help them become even more successful in their role and feel like they're truly part of the team.
“As soon as we saw LIKE.TG’s Onboard demo, we knew this was the perfect solution for us. We loved that it was extremely simple and powerful out of the box, but that we could customize it with advanced capabilities to make it work in our company setting.”
Elisa Garn Vice President, HR and Talent Christopherson Business Travel
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About Author:
This article is written by our marketing team at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is dedicated to providing powerful solutions for your HR teams and creating an exceptional employee experience. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, onboarding, and to save you valuable time!
Best Practices for Effective Remote Working
As the world hunkers down to weather the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), work is shifting gears as well. In many industries, working from home (WFH) is going mainstream. It’s a smart way for companies to limit the potential exposure to the virus and keep employees safer while at the same time remaining productive.
Working from home is not a new concept. Most of us, especially those in the tech industry, have worked from home occasionally, but it is uncharted territory when the entire company is working remotely. This poses several challenges and opportunities - and there is a lot to determine in setting up the right systems for company-wide WFH scenarios.
A New Set of Challenges and Opportunities
Working remotely has its benefits - it allows people to focus on individual deliverables and often provides the time and space for people to concentrate on difficult or intense tasks. Modern open-office layouts have stripped workers of quiet spaces, and WFH can be a refreshing break from the buzz of the workplace.
However, WFH makes a lot of things more challenging, especially communications. Remote teams often miss out when it comes to the critical conversations and relationship building that are so important to team cohesion. While video conferencing and collaboration technology do bring teams together, remote work makes it harder to read body language, hear what people are saying, read in-room dynamics, ask follow up or side questions, or drop by and quickly sync with a coworker at their desk. It is even more difficult to conduct a brainstorming session when everyone is on a phone or logged in via video.
The good news is that most people save a significant amount of time by not commuting. Some people now may use the time they would normally spend commuting to talk and message with their colleagues more, which could overcome communications challenges.
Below are some of the best practices for remote working, segmented them into company-level, team-level and individual-level tips. These suggestions may work best for startups, but there should be some things that work for departments in a larger organization as well.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
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Best Practices for the Company
Keep the same goals as you normally would, but provide more clarity. Customers must remain top priority - we don’t have the option to be less aggressive on achieving our business goals, just because we’re working remotely. Since remote workers have a harder time dropping in to clarify things, each level of leadership should take extra effort to make sure their teams have a clear understanding of expectations.
Ensure you have critical coverage for the most important areas of business at all times. Working remotely gives people the flexibility to walk the dog or take lunch whenever they want. This can lead to gaps in coverage if people don’t coordinate schedules - this is especially important in mission-critical areas of the business.
When working remotely is uncharted territory, managers need extra tools and training. For example, consider using bots to help monitor the level of communications across teams, review velocity, and help in other ways.
Executive office hours are important - especially when there isn’t a physical office. Make sure executives and teams hold a time on their schedule when they’re available to answer questions from anyone in the company.
Maintain transparency - establish a communications channel visible to the whole company where key initiative leaders can submit weekly status reports and get feedback from executives. This will help ensure everyone is up to speed.
To learn more about giving access to vital HR and work information — even when they're not in the office. Download our ebook now.
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Best Practices for Teams
Continue to host meetings as if you were in the office. This is an important factor in maintaining a productive cadence. Schedule and budget your time around meetings. Delaying or canceling meetings will not only impact the way a team spends time but also deadlines and work back plans.
Use team channels on Slack, Hangouts, WhatsApp or whatever tools your company uses as much as possible. Avoid small group chats and one-on-one threads unless it’s a confidential or personal conversation. This way everyone can benefit from the dialogue and have access to fuller context for their work. Don't worry too much about message overloading. In a remote working environment, making sure people are sharing enough information is more important than word economy.
Establish standard routines. Start the day with a 9 am standup meeting over Slack or Zoom. Some have found the Slack standup app helpful for tracking progress. When people can’t make these “meetings,” have team members post their daily top three priorities in the team channel.
Start a team-wide Zoom session throughout the day for those who are not bandwidth-constrained so that people can talk to each other easily. People should feel free to leave the session for other meetings.
Do not forget about fun. Relationship building is such an important piece in our professional life. Since we cannot have happy hour or hallway jokes and laughter anymore, we need to be more creative. Try to find something suitable for your team, such as personal storytelling or watching funny YouTube clips together during lunch time.
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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Best Practices for Individuals
Effectiveness is tied to having the right tools and using them the right way. Install commonly used apps on both your laptop and phone so that you can join remote meetings from your phone when the NordVPNon your laptop slows down your video conferencing. Add phone numbers to Slack profiles or email footers so people can reach you for quick answers if needed. A short phone call is not an excessive interruption and can replace the quick in-person drop-by conversations you would normally have at someone’s desk.
Strictly follow your normal daily routine. Avoid delaying meetings with the hope you will meet in person at a later time.
Flag issues or slow-downs to your manager or function leader right away - not doing so may just compound delays for you and your team. When you flag an issue, you’re benefiting the entire team.
At the end of the day, ask yourself two questions:
"Am I as productive remotely as I am in the office?" If not, figure out why and explore ways to improve.
"Are all critical communications done?" If not, finish up before you log off.
Step away for 10 minutes: Find time throughout the day to step away from your desk - stretch, get some exercise in, or grab a cup of coffee. Taking short breaks every couple of hours will help improve your productivity and focus.
By ensuring that efficiency and communications remain high at the company, team and individual levels, remote work forces can be as productive, if not more so, than traditional work forces.
About Author:This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Thisarticleoriginally appeared onEarnin.
How Technology Can Attract Top Talent
All companies want to hire the best employees, yet only some are able to consistently achieve this. Many times, it’s because they are offering things that other companies don’t. Some companies try to attract people with free breakfasts or company “swag”; This alone isn’t enough to draw in the talented employees that people are looking for. Combine these offers with higher-quality technology and access to programs that increase efficiency and make their job more rewarding and fruitful.
Technology to automate the repetitive tasks
Repetitive tasks can often be the bane of an employee’s existence, and can often be a major factor in the type of job that people want to take on. A study commissioned reveals the “world's most hated office tasks”, and one of the most surprising aspects was just how much of the day is dominated by these repetitive tasks. According to the study, on average, employees spend over three hours a day on manual and repetitive tasks. Automating these tasks can allow your employees to work on more rewarding projects, ones that further the company more.
The removal of these manual and often monotonous tasks creates opportunities for your employees to complete more fulfilling jobs and more creative opportunities. Employees look for a job that would allow them to have a gratifying work experience, and feel as if they are contributing in a meaningful way to something bigger. The more opportunities that you can provide them that give them that feeling, the more attractive the position.
Kaylee CollinsHR Analyst of Osmose Utilities Services, Inc
“Our hiring managers now have a reliable system that is easy to navigate. Our HR team can actively monitor the process, and assist if needed, but Onboard has helped them save so much valuable time and effort while increasing data accuracy. All of this has helped us improve compliance and gives us a powerful tool to achieve even more results in the future.”
Utilize the cloud as much as possible
Many companies are still not taking full advantage of the opportunities that the cloud can provide. The flexibility of being able to access all of your important information from anywhere with an internet connection, not to mention the speed, is an incredible asset for any business. The companies that don’t use the cloud may view it as a passing fad, or not quite grasp the versatility of what the cloud can offer, but it’s been around for a while now, and it’s still evolving to offer the best services it can.
When using cloud services, it’s important to make sure that you are connecting safely and securely, and a lot of businesses use a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) in order to guarantee that. SD-WAN helps keep all your information private by offering a secure and fast connection to various cloud applications.
What’s so appealing about the cloud to potential employees, is the fact that it opens so many doors in regards to flexible work arrangements. Our HR solutions provide a cloud system to help human resources manage remote employees, a huge perk for candidates looking to work from home.
The cloud allows employees to have access to their data while on the road, working from home, or anywhere they can connect to the internet. This often lends itself to a more flexible work arrangement, which is great for anything from family emergencies to something more serious like the current predicament, shifting people to a work at home environment. This is a great option for employees, and one that lots of top talent are interested in.
Offer remote-ready technology
In a similar vein, allowing your employees to work remotely is a great solution for both them, as well as the business. Maintaining high levels of productivity while giving them the ability to retain their job. According to the OWLLabs State of remote work 2019 report, out of the 1,202 full-time workers surveyed, 80% of the people that responded to the survey said that the ability to work remotely “would make them less stressed.”
In addition, 80% also said that having the ability to work remotely “would make them feel like their employer cares.” Having at least the option to work remotely is a massive draw for potential employees, and one that could attract high-quality workers. Remote work is even more important in the current landscape, and companies who were not remote-ready are struggling to keep up with their competitors.
Equipping company computers and technology with video conferencing software, such as Google Hangouts or Zoom can allow your employees to maintain a high level of communication even while working remotely, which is one of the biggest challenges. Without communication, the wheels tend to fall off of the proverbial train, but allowing for easy face-to-face interaction can help reduce that possibility, while keeping your employees sane.
Remote-ready technology is especially important as you scale a business; simply put, more people means more potential problems. More chains of communication, more groups and meetings, but hopefully more productive work of a higher quality. Making sure that they have the tools they need to work most efficiently, and from anywhere, is an attractive asset to potential employees, especially if you are looking to hire employees who will not be working on site. If you have multiple branches, this can also help ensure that all your employees are on the same page and firing on all cylinders.
Michael HawkinsFranchise Owner of Interim HealthCare SLC
“Interim Healthcare SLC needed HR technology, and we’re pleased with the results we’ve gained from LIKE.TG’s solutions for recruiting, onboarding, and employee engagement. Yet it’s an opportunity for all Interim franchises. It would be so great if each franchise owner could implement similar solutions to replace legacy systems that might not work as well as they should.”
Make sure employee’s data is secure
With more and more information and data being transferred to the cloud, the protection of that data is more important than ever. While the digitalization of the workplace is encouraged, it’s also necessary to make sure that you are taking the right precautions to protect not only the company's data, but also the data of its employees. Data breaches are very much a real thing, and they can happen to companies of any size. They are not a one-time problem that goes away after some time, but rather can cause long-lasting damage through a lack of trust not only from customers, but also from current and future employees.
Many companies offer high-level security options for their employees, which is highly encouraged. If any employees are traveling due to company work, providing them with options that work while outside of the office is recommended as well. Connecting to any type of public wifi or internet connection brings with it a slew of potential security issues, most of them however, can be addressed through the use of a VPN. A virtual private network can help your employees keep their connection secure, and in turn, keep any of their personal or company information out of the wrong hands.
Having a company that takes steps to keep the private information of their employees secure can be a great factor for hiring future employees. Knowing that the company puts the security of their employees as a top priority is especially important in an age where almost everything is online.
Use simple software to streamline processes
It’s no secret that using outdated technology and antiquated programs can cause a great deal of unnecessary stress and frustration for employees, especially when working remotely. This can be a large factor when it comes to choosing where potential employees would want to work, and companies that are constantly looking for the smoothest and most effective ways to work can often have a leg up on the competition.
One of the most important pieces of technology you can offer your employees, especially for growing businesses, is some kind of project management software, one of the most commonly used being Hive. Project management tools are invaluable when you are trying to keep track of multiple projects which each have multiple tasks that need to be completed by certain dates.
Often it can become very difficult to determine and retain the knowledge of who is responsible for what, and how many different tasks need to be completed. Hive and other project management tools can allow you to create separate workspaces for each task, break it down into different “sub-tasks” and assign tasks on the lowest level. There are multiple different views you can work off of ranging from seeing tasks sorted by the individual responsible for their completion, or by the due date and so on.
It’s also important to make sure that you have a company-wide messaging system in place. This allows for quick and agile communication between employees and departments, to make sure that everyone is communicated to properly. Alignment between teams at a company has been identified as one of the “top management and culture challenges globally” in the State of Work study conducted by Slack and GlobalWebIndex.
Creating more efficient ways for communication to be conducted across all aspects of the company, from project management to general information, can help employees feel more included in decisions and the inner workings of the company. Understanding the decisions that a company makes, and how they are being made, is an important factor in choosing a workplace. Many employees highly value transparency and the ability to identify the change that their work is creating, all of which are highlighted and encouraged through simple software and streamlined communication.
Ensuring that your company can attract and retain the highest quality employees means that you have to offer them the highest quality technology. Allowing for more impactful work though automation or giving them flexible and efficient working environments is a big draw. Maintaining communication while remote, securing their data, and creating additional roads of modernized communication can all show potential employees that your company is prepared to give them the best work experience that they can’t find elsewhere.
10 Ways The Cloud Improves HR Processes
What is the cloud?
If you are using “the cloud” it simply means your programs and data are on a vendor’s servers, not your own. The advantage is that you no longer have to manage the technology yourself. Another advantage is that the vendor has economies of scale. The vendor may have dozens, hundreds, or in the case of Gmail, millions of clients sharing the service.
The cloud is here and that is a good thing for HR professionals
The difficulty is that it forces HR to wade into a new technology—and that takes time. This blog helps HR quickly get on track by exploring 10 reasons that are driving the decision to move HR processes onto the cloud.
This blog can be used in three ways:
Identify what matters most. Usually business decisions are driven by one or two issues that override other considerations. There may be a long list of relevant pros and cons, however the first step is to identify the few factors that are likely to tip the balance.
Use the list for due diligence. HR needs to have a fact-based opinion on each of the ten items on this list. HR has to be sure there are no issues that could derail a project.
As an educational guideline. The list points to many of the issues relevant to cloud-based HR; use it as a guide for exploring the topic.
For convenience, we break down this top ten list into three categories:
Valued-added reasons
Financial reasons
Risk mitigation reasons
Now, let us dive into the details.
Kaylee CollinsHR Analyst of Osmose Utilities Services, Inc
“Our hiring managers now have a reliable system that is easy to navigate. Our HR team can actively monitor the process, and assist if needed, but Onboard has helped them save so much valuable time and effort while increasing data accuracy. All of this has helped us improve compliance and gives us a powerful tool to achieve even more results in the future.”
The Value-added Reasons
While cost and risk are important, the most exciting reason to move HR processes to the cloud is that it will make HR work better. Here are three value-added reasons HR may want to embrace the cloud.
It might be the only way a process will be automated. In the real world of limited time and constrained budgets, the choice might be between a cloud-based solution and no solution at all. Cloud-based solutions can be implemented quickly with little IT support. If the reality is that an in-house solution simply will not happen then do not beat around the bush; make the case that a solution is needed, and let the cloud get you there.
Because it supports the employment brand. The sizzle of cloud-based solutions is that they have the look, functionality, and mobile-accessibility that employees (and their managers) have come to expect. People are impressed when an organization has the latest tools and disappointed if tools feel out-of-date. A sizzling employment brand may not be the primary reason to go to the cloud, however it can be a powerful supporting argument.
Improved ability to measure. In the past, organizations would launch a process and hope it improved outcomes, now there are constant demands to measure those outcomes. Any move from a manual to an automated system should improve reporting, and in this realm, cloud-based software has good measurement, analytics and reporting baked-in. That improved ability to measure can seal the deal for a cloud-based application.
Universal access. We are in an era where employees expect to be able to access tools from home and mobile devices; cloud infrastructure solutions typically have this capability. This is dramatically illustrated in cloud-based onboarding solutions where new employees can begin the onboarding process before they ever set foot in the office. And lest we think onboarding is merely a nice-to-have, recall that “research on new employee onboarding shows that when onboarding is done correctly, it leads to: higher job satisfaction; organizational commitment; lower turnover; higher performance levels; career effectiveness; and lowered stress”
What is software as a service?
Software as a Service (SaaS) is another way of framing the move from in-house computers to vendor run computers. SaaS stresses that instead of buying software (which one might imagine being delivered in a box) one instead buys an ongoing service. If it is SaaS, then it is on the cloud.
The Financial Reasons
HR needs to be careful how it communicates financial-factors. If HR downplays the hard costs then it loses credibility; if it focuses too much on cost then it creates the perception that the main function of HR is to cut spending. The trick is to emphasize value creation while showing one has a good handle of the total cost of the project.
Delivers value to the top line. Cloud-based HR processes create value for the company, and that value needs to be near the top of any list of reasons for moving to the cloud. For example, if the process is performance management, the value may be freeing up managers’ time so they have a better chance of hitting their targets. If the process is onboarding then it may be reducing turnover that is affecting customer satisfaction. Where a cloud-based HR process can support outcomes the business cares about, such as manager’s targets and customer satisfaction, then that reason is as important, probably more important than the cost savings.
Saves money that lands on the bottom line. Cloud-based computing has some inherent efficiencies over in-house computing and those often translate to less expensive solutions. The main efficiency comes from the fact that many different companies are in effect sharing the software vendor’s infrastructure and those savings are passed back to the customer. Cloud solutions can be cheaper, especially for small and mid-sized companies.
Cheaper in volatile times. While we often focus on the total cost for serving the current employee population, what often has the biggest impact on costs is volatility. For example, at one time, people promoted the value of recruitment process outsourcing on the basis of lower cost per hire. However, organizations eventually learned that the big cost savings came in times of volatility: in busy times they would have too few recruiters, in slow times far too many. Outsourcing solved that problem. Similarly, cloud-based solutions are often “pay by use” so a company can scale up and down as needed. Particularly, for areas like onboarding and recruitment tool, this can be the telling factor. If HR shows this kind of financial sophistication by assessing the total cost of ownership under different scenarios, it will go a long way to winning the backing of the CFO.
The Risk Mitigation Reasons
Will not break. It is common to hear the term “scalability” when people mention cloud solutions; it means the same solution will work even if the number of employees being served increases dramatically. However, rather than lean on the technical term, think of the benefit of cloud-computing being that it will not break if demands increases. It is embarrassing and expensive to implement a solution and find that by the time it is in place the company has outgrown it. Cloud solutions mitigate that risk. Furthermore, due to their overall scale, cloud solutions are often more fault tolerant and have better disaster recovery than in-house solutions.
It will not become out of date. After the excitement of implementing new software comes the tedious effort to keep it up to date. In fact, the vast majority of IT resources are devoted to simply maintaining existing systems. The risk for any in-house system is that IT will not have the resources to apply updates, and the system will fall behind. Cloud-based solutions are updated centrally and do not require in-house IT resources. This is especially important for any solutions that need to be kept up to date on regulations.
Because organizations need a foot in the future. Organizations take a risk if they lag too far behind in new technologies. Given how fast the world is moving to cloud-based technologies, it makes sense to ‘put a foot in the future’ and get HR process up to the cloud.
Ten items does not exhaust the list of factors to consider. HR needs to check-off factors like performance, customization, and data integration. However, in all the factors, cloud-based services are typically as good as or better than alternatives. The one area where using the cloud may be trickier than in-house is regulatory compliance on “data residency”—the cloud may not care about where in the world a byte of data is stored but some regulators do. HR needs to understand the relevant local regulations, especially if some employees are based in Europe.
How to move forward
The challenge for HR is doing a thorough review of options and doing that analysis in the available ‘free’ time. The trick is knowing what to focus on. Some factors are about the value-add, some about the financials, and some are risk mitigation issues. Use this top 10 list to guide your thinking on whether it makes sense to move your HR processes to the cloud. Whatever you do now, recognize that technology is increasingly important to HR and that the time you invest in understanding cloud-based solutions will pay off.
About Author: David Creelman is CEO of Creelman Research. He does research and writing on the critical issues in human capital management. His clients include think tanks, consultants, academics and organizations in Canada, Japan, the US, the Middle East and the EU. In 2013 he won the Walker Award for his work with Andrew Lambert on Boards and HR.
Weekly, Monthly & More: How Your Pay Schedule Affects You
Let’s say you had a job as a cashier at your local grocery store that paid every two weeks. You quit that position and got a new job in an office, but this one pays once a month instead. What gives?
There are different kinds of pay schedules that determine when and how often you receive your paycheck. Businesses usually set their pay schedules to benefit themselves. Payroll management entails labor and costs, so companies will go for the option that is more convenient and saves them money. Employees (as opposed to freelancers) don’t normally get to decide how often they get paid, so it’s critical to factor your pay cycle into your weekly or monthly budget, especially if you live paycheck to paycheck. Will you have your money when you need it?
Here are four common types of pay schedules:
Kinds of Pay Schedules : Weekly Payroll
Some businesses pay their employees weekly, which means employees receive their income on Fridays. This schedule is more common amongst freelancers, contract workers, and trade industries like construction and manufacturing. These job types commonly have irregular hours, so it makes sense to pay workers according to a shorter time frame.
While weekly schedules are a favorite amongst employees because it means you have more regular access to your money. If you drained your bank account on bills last week because it was the end of the month but want a night out with your friends, no worries — you get paid on Friday, so you can afford that night out as long as you save enough for your upcoming expenses.
However, most businesses avoid the weekly system. Payroll vendors frequently charge money every time a company (their customer) runs payroll. Doing so weekly takes extra time to process, so companies will opt for more extended periods to reduce costs and add convenience.
Bi-Weekly Payroll
A bi-weekly pay schedule means you receive your paycheck every two weeks. This cycle amounts to 26 or 27 paydays per year. Many businesses prefer bi-weekly timelines because they save money processing payroll and can calculate overtime more easily (each paycheck accounts for approximately 80 work hours). As such, bi-weekly payroll is more common amongst businesses that pay their employees hourly.
Bi-weekly schedules are not challenging to manage, but two months out of the year will have three paydays instead of two. Accountants need to factor in these paydays when calculating voluntary employee deductions, like healthcare, which are equal in a bi-monthly pay schedule.
Bi-Monthly Payroll
Bi-monthly pay means your employer pays you twice per month, also known as semi-monthly. As such, you might receive your income on the first of and in the middle of the month (likely on the 15th), or in the middle and end. A bi-monthly pay schedule entails 24 payments per year, which makes it distinct from bi-weekly. If you earn $45,000 per year on a bi-weekly cycle, your paychecks (not accounting for taxes and deductions) will be around $1730.77 each, whereas your paychecks will equal $1,875 on a semi-monthly schedule. It’s the same amount of money but divided differently.
Bi-monthly payroll is common for salaried employees. Calculating deductions is easy for accountants, and you always know which dates you will receive your income.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
Monthly Payroll
You guessed it — monthly payroll means your paycheck comes in once a month. This format is ideal for businesses because it makes accounting easy and reduces processing costs, but it’s disadvantageous for employees and contractors because they have less frequent access to their money. If you work a job that pays monthly, you need to be extra careful with budgeting because you’ll only receive your income in lump sums 12 times per year.
How Does Your Pay Schedule Affect You?
Your pay schedule does not affect how much you get paid in a year, assuming you work the same number of hours either way. However, your pay cycle does influence how often you have access to your hard-earned money, and therefore the way you budget.
For example, let’s say you paid all your bills last month and now don’t have much left in your savings. Your job pays you bi-weekly, so you’ll have enough money to pay the first round of next month’s expenses, but your next paycheck won’t arrive in time to pay the rest. Now you’re in a tight spot.
One option is to make an early paycheck request from your employer. If your employer agrees, they will provide you all or part of your paycheck before they usually would, allowing you to pay your bills, but it lengthens the time between your next paycheck.
Another option is to use financial apps. Your job’s pay cycle is out of your hands, but you can control when you get paid with apps like Earnin. Earnin allows you to take out up to $500 of your earnings per pay period. This way, you won’t have to worry about missing a bill because your employer’s pay schedule isn’t in your favor, and you won’t have to pay mandatory fees for the convenience.
Your pay schedule affects your ability to pay expenses and for recreation, so it’s important to know how often you’ll receive your income when applying for a job or managing your finances. Though your pay cycle might not always work in your favor, there are ways you can control having access to your money.
This article originally appeared on Earnin.
About Author:This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly software increases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
7 Recruitment and Onboarding Tips to Ensure a New Employee is a Good Fit for Your Remote Team
As your business turns to remote work, you would also need to adjust your recruiting and onboarding processes. Traditional methods might no longer work in this new setup. Factors such as the lack of face-to-face interactions mean it will be harder for you to determine whether your new hire is a good fit for your company.
According to Owl Lab, 80% of workers expect that they will be working from home in the coming months or years. It is highly possible that you might be recruiting and onboarding your new hires remotely as well. It is high time that you adopt new recruitment and onboarding strategies for remote employees.
With that, here are some tips on how you can effectively recruit and onboard new employees for your remote teams.
1. Leverage technology to go digital
Working remotely means moving away from the traditional pen-and-paper method and fully embracing the digital space. This would require you to digitize your documents, paperwork, and processes. A hiring manager needs the right tools to ensure everything you need remains accessible anytime and anywhere.
With technology nowadays, you can easily do all your HR tasks virtually. Various tools and software can help you recruit and onboard new hires remotely. Some examples are different types of HR software, video conferencing tools, recruitment and onboarding applications, and e-signing tools.
These software solutions also offer additional functions to help streamline your processes. For example, your HR software can automatically schedule onboarding orientations for your new hires and notify them for every step in the process. This way, you can focus on making sure your new hire is the right fit for the company, starting right from a successful onboarding.
Kaylee CollinsHR Analyst of Osmose Utilities Services, Inc
“Our hiring managers now have a reliable system that is easy to navigate. Our HR team can actively monitor the process, and assist if needed, but Onboard has helped them save so much valuable time and effort while increasing data accuracy. All of this has helped us improve compliance and gives us a powerful tool to achieve even more results in the future.”
2. Consider individualizing experience
Something you need to consider when you recruit and onboard remote employees are their respective working conditions at their home offices. In the case of remote work, there are many factors affecting their productivity and efficiency that you cannot control. This can come in the form of a family member or pet demanding attention, an urgent household chore, and many more.
Some of your new hires might not have the privilege of having a conducive environment to work in. To make sure that you give everyone equal footing, you should consider individualizing or personalizing your recruitment and onboarding experience. New hires feel valued by being able to choose the best and most optimal way to get to know your company and the culture within it.
Personalization can come in the form of booking their own interview schedule during the application process. You can provide an asynchronous orientation on your remote onboarding process, allowing the new employees to take in new information at their own pace and time. This way, you can assess all your new hires fairly.
3. Make onboarding materials always accessible
The benefits of going digital with your HR process is the opportunity of making important documents, files, and data more accessible to your employees. You can use this advantage to improve your virtual onboarding and the new hire experience.
By using software, you can make onboarding programs and materials always available for your new employees. You can put them in a cloud-based storage system which your remote workers can access anytime and anywhere. This allows them to easily pull out any information they need in between tasks.
After all, a one-time orientation might not be enough to cover everything they need to know about the company, its culture, and policies. By making essential onboarding materials accessible, they have something to go back to in cases they have questions about the processes or policies within the company.
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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4. Create a buddy system for your new hire
Alone, your new hire might have trouble approaching the rest of your remote teams. They might even find it intimidating. But with someone at their side, the process can become a whole lot easier and seamless.
By using a buddy system, you can provide a more focused onboarding process with your new hire. Their buddy will guide them throughout their adjustment period while also acting as their mentor. This way, your new employee will always know who to turn to whenever they have questions during the process right from their start dates.
Their buddy can also act as a bridge that connects them to the rest of the team. They can introduce new hires with the members and explain the processes and dynamics within the team.
5. Schedule frequent check-ins
Effective employee onboarding can sometimes take time. First day orientations are just the beginning of the journey. It will take some time for them to adjust fully and get to know the organization and their colleagues more. Just make sure to keep track of their progress along the way.
This would require frequent check-ins to see how your new remote employees are acclimatizing to the organization. You can conduct a survey, asking how well they are adjusting and getting along with their colleagues. You can also ask feedback on their performance from their buddies or other team members.
Doing so will let you know whether your new hire is a perfect fit to the company. Likewise, it helps you determine the strengths and weaknesses of your onboarding process. This way, you can improve and optimize your strategy along the way.
6. Provide opportunities to bond with the team
One of the biggest questions when recruiting and onboarding new remote workers is how to make them feel welcomed to the team. After all, your new hire has little to no opportunities to interact with their colleagues personally. There are no team lunches or team building activities to get to know each other more. This can make it harder for them to connect with the rest of the team.
Keep in mind that face-to-face interactions aren’t the end all be all for team bonding. There are numerous ideas for onboarding remote employees to make them feel connected with the rest of the team.
For one, you can hold social events virtually. You can conduct simple team building activities online such as an introductory meeting where the new hire gets to interact with the rest of the team, weekly quiz or game nights, or just simple video chats where team members can catch up. This will make your new employee feel more welcomed and settled with the company, improving employee retention in the long run.
7. Keep communications line open
According to a Mitel report, 15% of employees’ total work hours is wasted on inefficient communications. This can be in the form of unclear set of instructions or the lack of effective communication channels within the team.
Keeping your communication line open is one of the most important remote onboarding tips out there. Fortunately, there are many ways for your remote workers to reach out to the team despite the distance. This includes emails, instant messaging apps, centralized dashboards, and SMS messaging.
Your new hires will have a lot of questions during their first few days or weeks in the company. And sometimes, these questions aren’t found in your employee handbooks or manuals. So, you must make sure that they can get all the support they need to adjust to their new environment.
The future of recruiting and onboarding
Times are changing. Many believe that remote work is the future for almost all businesses worldwide. Your company must be ready to adapt to such changes if you want to remain relevant and competitive in the market.
The challenge now is how to optimize and streamline your recruiting and onboarding processes for remote employees. You can start by leveraging technologies to help you migrate your usual processes into the digital space. And with these tips in mind, you can make sure that your new hires will fit perfectly with your organization despite the challenges of remote hiring and onboarding.
About Author:This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
6 Advantages of an Employee Tracker Software
It doesn’t matter what kind of job you have, the employer is always going to expect his employees to be productive for their assignments. Tracking employee productivity plays a critical role in developing the productivity of your business and its growth. Both employees and the employer have to be aware of the benefits of using employer tracker software for their company. It helps them in improving their working style for enhancing productivity. Although tracking the employees of your company might seem like you do not trust them, it is a wrong belief. Let's take a look at the benefits of using this software.
Better project management
Employee tracking software allows you to manage company projects by planning, organizing, scheduling, and prioritizing different tasks. These tasks are then assigned to all company resources.
The software helps in planning and scheduling the different tasks by analyzing the time the resource will take for completing the assigned task. This is how you may organize and prioritize various tasks according to the planned schedule. The software allows you to track the productive time spent on different tasks and it leads to more effective project management. It is also useful to the PEO services working in places such as Singapore for instance that provide employee management solutions such as Singapore Payrolls.
One of the main objectives of having employee tracking software is for creating correct attendance records of the staff. You can find several factors associated with the attendance of an employee such as start time schedule, off time schedule, leaves, arrival time, break time, etc. All this apart, the hourly work attendance is significant for analyzing the performance of an employee. It is even easier to record employee attendance when all the employees are required to report to the same manager. However, you need many supervisors for various departments for recording the attendance of several members of the staff and workers scattered across the globe. In such cases, it is this work of recording the attendance that becomes a big problem. Therefore, while planning the leaves of the employees, it is necessary to monitor their attendance via a proper system. If a few minutes delay or latency is involved in finishing a job by employees, it can lead to a huge downfall.
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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Establishes an effective and streamlined communication channel
Everyone is aware that you are required to interact seamlessly with different members of your team for fixing the issues you face during project development or while the work is in progress. By using the advanced technology for implementing the streamlining of all communication tools into one platform, they are in reality providing the software in the form of service. The employee productivity software is also useful for sharing files, handling text messages, video conferencing, emails, etc. by using a single platform. The effective communication channels that are used together with productivity tracking apps are beneficial throughout the project.
In most cases, the employees do not commit mistakes on purpose. They are also human beings and they may commit some errors without realizing that they have done so. This is a pretty common scenario when the employees have misunderstood the instructions provided to them by the managers for completing an assignment. But, many times it doesn’t matter whether the mistakes were made intentionally or unintentionally. The consequences involved in the errors can turn out to be drastic for the organization. Due to this, the team manager has to keep a close watch on the work completed by the employees so that he or she can identify the errors quickly before things get out of hand and it is too late. Some of the advantages of using the employee tracking software for this are that you can send them reminders, check the progress occasionally, and ensure that they are on the right track all the time. If you are using a properly structured employee tracking system, this whole process of rectifying the employee errors in the early stages becomes straightforward.
To learn more about giving access to vital HR and work information — even when they're not in the office. Download our ebook now.
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Simple employee evaluation
If the employees are using a productivity monitoring software, things become simple for the management to spot all the mistakes they are making during project execution. This software is useful for evaluating the performance of all employees in real-time. It will not only highlight the errors but the problems can be easily rectified on the spot. This leads to better quality at work and makes things simple for accomplishing successful project deliverables.
All business owners dream about having a creative and hardworking team at their disposal. However, in reality, it is extremely difficult to assemble such a competent team for any business. There are always going to be one or more members of the staff that do not follow the rules of the company and do not work according to the instructions provided. Therefore, it is the top priority for the supervisors to identify these incompetent employees and try to weed them out from their teams before they can corrupt the other members of the team with them. When you are monitoring the employees working in a place, the supervisors can get real-time notifications about the behavior of the employee and they can quickly and simply assess how engaged the employee is in his or her workplace. The process can filter out all the unethical members of your staff so that the management can take swift disciplinary action against these employees.
Assess the employee performance in real-time
Different managers will be able to see the real-time performance of employees by using perfect employee tracking software. The errors made by the employees are highlighted but, the good work they have put in will also be noted by the team managers. The team management can take screenshots of the work completed by the staff and motivate them to perform even better. When the manager has a clearer picture of employee real-time performance it is extremely beneficial to him for planning the appraisals and creating performance reviews.
One of the more significant aspects of maintaining a satisfied workplace will be promptly handling all the time off requests from the employees. In case an employee has to face an emergency at his residence and is forced to leave the office on short notice, then no employee is going to be happy about going from one office to another department to get the grant for a leave request. It will adversely affect the morale of the employee as well. Therefore, if a company introduces employee tracking software in its operations, it will allow the employee to keep track of their leave history and if required request a leave. This is a great boost to the morale of the employee. In addition to this, it will also save the time of his or her superior because there is no need to meet the employee personally for granting the leave request. By using just a single tap of the finger these leave requests can either be granted or denied.
Develop a stronger relationship
If you can understand the employee performance and interact with them for improvement in their skills at work, it allows the employers to develop a stronger relationship with the staff. The software allows the managers to conduct a one-to-one chatting session for highlighting and rectifying the errors instead of discussing these errors in front of all the team members. It makes the staff more comfortable with the employer and can motivate them to keep being productive at work.
The management can't judge the strengths and weaknesses of their employees in a single meeting. The employee tracking software allows the managers to provide a tangible, real, and accurate performance analysis to their employees. To systematically comprehend the decision-making, creativity, and communication skills of a staff member, the management has to closely monitor their employees in various situations. By using the employee tracking software the supervisors can take a look at the bigger picture and they can evaluate a person thinking out of the box. This will enable the management in their understanding about an employee that is capable of handling a specific situation. Full data about the strengths and weaknesses of the employee helps an organization in using his or her qualities at the time of crisis.
Provides employee recognition
Normally the employees feel that they are being monitored to find out their mistakes. But, the productivity tracking software also provides an opportunity for employee recognition.
The real-time performance of the employees is recorded as evidence of their performance for the appraisal and it also allows the managers to appreciate their good performance on the spot. This software allows the employees to feel happy and comfortable in their work environments.
Conclusion
The software generates productivity reports that are real-time for all the employees. The list of more productive employees is also displayed on the software dashboard. It allows all other members of the team to compete and maintain their position on the list. The software is a perfect platform for the employer and the employee both.
About Author:This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
8 Benefits of a More Integrated Employee Communication
The dynamics of the modern workplace demand more integrated communication. There is a lot of information to pass around in an organization. Managers need to communicate to employees about new policies, instructions, upcoming changes, and much more. On the other hand, employees need to communicate with each other when collaborating in completing tasks.
How well such information passes across significantly affects how successful an organization will be. You see, there can’t be any progress if people in an organization don’t work on the same page. And, only integrated communication can be able to bring everyone together.
Besides that, here are 8 benefits an organization stands to gain with more coordinated employee communication.
Enhances innovation and knowledge sharing
Employees tend to withhold their ideas in a place where they feel they might be ridiculed or downplayed. On the other hand, an organization that encourages good communication manages to put confidence in the employees. As a result, they share ideas on projects, brainstorm on solutions to come up with killer end products. When employees pull together skills and knowledge, it results in a highly innovative team.
In addition, this sharing of knowledge and expertise results in employees learning new things, which enhances their skills. This can also be beneficial especially when onboarding new employees. The need for training is reduced significantly.
Innovation is critical for the success of your company. When the employees working in the organization are proactive in suggesting newer initiatives it will have a dramatic effect on the outcome of your business endeavors. Not only will the efficiency be improved you will find that the work quality has also taken an upturn. All this also provides a larger customer base. Innovation is critical for every definition of internal communication within an organization.
However, keep in mind that innovation doesn’t come from the top down. Many times it is the ground staff working on the shop floor that comes up with some of the more groundbreaking ideas. You just need to provide an opportunity to them to make their voice heard.
By using a good reliable strategy you are going to get the internal communication channels into place. These will in turn allow the employees to contribute their ideas to the long-term benefit of the organization and develop company culture. When quality feedback channels are available to the employees you will discover that the members of staff are more willing to offer their suggestions for improving the work environment. Once these employees begin to drive the change and make it their own, the employer is sure to benefit from an uplift in the engagement level.
Reduces turnover and builds teamwork
Integrated employee communication ensures that the company goals and objectives are communicated clearly. Employees know how their roles align with these goals. This gives them a sense of belonging and pride knowing that their work is important in realizing the bigger picture. Their loyalty and commitment to the organization are heightened, which reduces employee turnover.
In addition, when employees understand each other’s roles, it eliminates unnecessary competition. Every employee is focused on optimizing his or her role as well as working together in harmony, which enhances teamwork.
Christopher BaggottChief Executive Officerator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
Increases productivity
Employee productivity can be directly linked to employee satisfaction. When there is proper communication, employees feel free to express their concerns and ideas. When employers address these concerns, employees feel heard and valued. Consequently, it boosts their motivation and morale and hence productivity.
In such a case, employers don’t have to worry about their employees’ productivity regardless of where they are working. However, working in workspaces that are designed to enhance productivity would only complement employee satisfaction with the employer. If a business is located in Denver, for instance, employers can look for coworking spaces in Denver, and further enable employees to work in optimal productivity.
Everybody is aware of the fact that the employees have to feel engaged if you are to get the best out of them. But, how can this be achieved? Even though engaging appears to be similar to communicating, actually there is a big difference between the two. Many times there is a one-way info stream happening where the leaders are delivering organizational info using communication tools and there are not communication platforms for the employees. But, what any internal communication design can deliver is a crucial two-way dialogue taking place between the leader and the employees. One of the key elements of better practices in internal communication is this reciprocating flow of information and it should never be ignored.
For driving employee engagement to business success, different leaders have to show that they value employee feedback and the ensuing discussion. Similarly, the employees are going to need evidence about their voices being heard. After ensuring this, you can get a workforce that is highly engaged and is aware that their voice matters. When you are thinking about improving internal communication you will discover that active engagement of the employees will have a tremendous effect on the productivity and attitude of the employees.
Helps in positive adoption to change
They say change is the only constant thing. However, a sudden change in an organization can be disruptive and cause a sink in performance. On the other hand, employees accept change quickly and respond positively when it is communicated in a timely manner. The good thing is that integrated communication fosters open communication between managers and employees. In such an environment, managers choose to involve employees in everything rather than waiting for the last minute to drop the bomb. This especially eliminates rumors that can cause panic and anxiety in the workforce.
Fastens delivery time
Integrated employee communication fosters a timely and clear communication of instructions and expectations. Ideally, the successful completion of tasks depends on how well instructions are communicated. If employees have to go back and forth seeking clarifications, it eats into precious time that can otherwise be utilized constructively. Additionally, when expectations aren’t clearly communicated, employees tend to rely on their knowledge. This can have negative effects on the final product or even cause delays in deliveries. Employees can get better at internal communication by taking the online job training courses that specialize in business and management.
Enhances employer brand image
One would think that employees have nothing more to ask for in a place where they are compensated well. Surprisingly, a big percentage of employees would rather choose a workplace where integrated communication is fostered than a place with competitive perks. The modern worker is fixated on working for an ideal employer. If you are to attract top talents, you must embrace the efforts to improve your employer image which is possible by using social media platforms. Moreover, open employee communication is one way to get there.
Employee retention
One of the more significant benefits of using effective employee communication is that it has a positive effect on employee retention. Employee retention has quickly become a major challenge for employers. The majority of the employers admit that they are finding it hard to retain key members of their staff. Apart from that, you will find that the costs involved in replacing the highly-trained member of the staff are close to 200% of their annual salary. This indicates the economic benefit of retaining the existing employees. For achieving this, effective internal communication is your answer.
Many experts have indicated that what increases employee retention level to as high as 40% is the use of effective communication. In the end, the employees that do not feel engaged or involved in the company proceedings are likely to be disconnected. Different kinds of internal communication have to be prioritized. But, making sure that the employees are well-informed must be on top of your list of priorities. When you have a solid internal communication guide in place, you can move on to ensure that various employees working at different levels of a company feel that they are also in the know. Your aim must be to make your employees feel as if they are insiders who know as much about things as the employer and other top-level decision-makers in the organization.
Builds leadership
Keep in mind that all members of senior management are not natural communicators. They may be good are analyzing a spreadsheet or developing a strategy, but this does not necessarily mean that they can easily disseminate information from the employees in a resonating fashion. A leader that is no good at communication is more likely to cause harm to a project than do any good. It is one of the more common internal communications errors made. For driving engagement, the leaders have to show that they value the team members’ feedback and discussion.
Any internal communication strategies can put effective channels into a place that will facilitate the necessary interaction. The employees must see that the members of senior management are involved, active, engaged, and approachable. When you open a two-way dialogue which could be through a meeting, emails, or through a good internal communication app, you are making the leaders more accessible to everybody. This is particularly true while conducting communication during a crisis. A sense of direction and a strong voice coming from the team leader can make a massive difference between swim and sink.
Final words
Gone are the days when communication in the workplace involved employers talking and employees listening. Such a practice today can see employees abandoning their roles or working unmotivated. You can imagine how bad that can be to an organization. That’s why there is no other way around it, employers must embrace integrated employee communication if they are to achieve a successful workplace.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly software increases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Employee Experience in the New Normal
The COVID-19 pandemic drastically upended everyday life, causing prolonged physical isolation from loved ones, extra-vigilant cleaning routines, and mask-wearing practices as people did their best to follow health and safety procedures and stay protected from a deadly virus.
Even with vaccines now available, it could be a while before things return to relative normalcy. That reality led many people to say modern society must adjust to a new normal. What might that mean for the employee experience moving forward?
Different Desk Configurations and Safeguards
As kids gradually returned to school after transitioning to remote learning, many found the classrooms looked different than they remembered. School administrators often placed desks at least six feet apart to support social distancing. Some also installed plastic shields so teachers and students could remove their masks. Workplaces will introduce some of the same measures. They might even use entirely new desks.
For example, Nissan recently debuted the NV350 Caravan Office Pod. It’s a van with a cargo area that converts into a workspace. The automobile’s interior features a desk, office chair, and electrical outlets. That vehicle could work well if a company hires a short-term consultant or other service provider but does not have the interior space to safely accommodate them while they work.
Moreover, MojoDome announced its MojoDesk. That product features a retractable privacy shield surrounding the top and sides of a person at a standing desk. The company initially provided the product as a solution for having professional-sounding phone calls in noisy offices. However, besides helping block sounds, the product’s design could reduce germ spread.
If an office had an open plan before COVID-19, a business leader might decide this is the most cost-effective way to redesign without substantial remodeling.
The employee experience in the new normal may also avoid hot-desking, which lets any worker use designated unoccupied workspaces. Government guidance from the United Kingdom advises against the practice. Additionally, hygiene experts warn that hot-desking makes it more challenging to track and stop infection spread.
A Permanent Departure From a Shared Workplace
During the early days of the pandemic, HR teams quickly realized that the safest solution was to have people work from home whenever possible. Activities that ordinarily occurred in offices, such as onboarding, team huddles, and educational talks scheduled at offices during lunch breaks happened remotely.
People who got new jobs during the pandemic didn’t always head into offices for interviews, either. Human resources managers began more frequently using video-based meeting tools to screen candidates. Those who received offers often stayed at home to work rather than getting acquainted with new office spaces.
These emerging realities have also forced decision-makers to evaluate the need for massive physical offices. Were they still necessary, especially in high-rent areas? This shift has significant implications for advertising in the USA, as firms reassess their physical presence.
David Corns is the managing director of the San Francisco branch of global marketing and advertising agency R/GA. After discussing the matter with fellow directors at the firm’s other locations, he pulled out of the property’s lease agreement and transitioned to an entirely virtual San Francisco office.
Six months after the pandemic disrupted most of the world, the company’s employee experience team polled the collective 1,600-member worldwide workforce to learn how people felt about remote working. Many workers liked it and found they could easily stay on task. Only 7% of people said they got less done while at home, while 30% of supervisors reported increased productivity from teams.
Next, a set of surveys conducted in June and July of 2020 asked R/GA employees to envision the post-COVID-19 office. Most people preferred returning to a physical space for 1-3 days per week rather than following the previous five-day schedule. Also, major companies including Microsoft, Twitter, and Spotify recently started letting employees work from home permanently if desired. That’s more evidence people view office space differently and perhaps as non-essential.
New Specifics Written Into Contracts
The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc in industries where companies often hire workers on contract to fulfill short-term obligations. For example, Boston’s mayor halted most construction during the pandemic, affecting billions of dollars’ worth of projects and leaving thousands of workers without jobs to do.
The novel coronavirus also introduced new situations where one or many parties may wish to terminate their contracts due to challenges caused by the global health threat.
These incidents made company leaders think differently about the legal ramifications of future pandemics or other circumstances that could affect how work gets done. For example, a business leader may decide it’s more sensible to hire people on a short-term contract first, using the associated time to see if circumstances improve in hard-hit industries.
Contracts will spell out employer-employee obligations during long-term work-from-home scenarios, too. For example, must a worker start their day at the same time throughout the week, or does flexibility exist? If an employee spills coffee on their laptop that doubled as a work machine, who pays for a replacement? Must an employee meet minimum internet speed requirements to receive permission for remote work? Will an employer use a performance management tool to monitor a worker’s output?
Clarifying those stipulations in contracts improves the employee experience by minimizing doubt. It could also show the way forward if things don’t turn out as planned with the work environment. Perhaps a worker signed a six-month contract for a remote position. They may realize three months later that their abode doesn’t let them stay productive due to noisy kids, cramped spaces, or another reason. Could they come into an office or use a coworking space for the remaining three months?
Employers Taking Holistic Approaches to Promote Worker Well-Being
Employers will likely start to examine health and well-being more broadly, too.
A March-May 2020 survey asked for employees’ feelings about how their workplaces handled the pandemic and how the health threat affected their lives. The responses from more than 24,000 workers indicated that more than 60% of those feeling highly satisfied with their workplace’s response believed that the respective companies put people first.
Happy, healthy workers typically have better output. However, leaders will need to look at new ways to support workforces. For example, remote work can negatively impact employees by making them feel less connected to their colleagues. Human resources teams might boost morale with interactive virtual games, book clubs, or other off-the-clock events that go beyond Zoom happy hours.
Additionally, keeping people performing at their best may mean offering them access to mental health services. The pandemic left many people grieving lost friends and family members. Others suffered so-called “long-COVID” effects that made them feel demoralized and unable to do activities they once loved. If the novel coronavirus created circumstances where a person can never go back to the “normal” they knew, mental health support could help them cope.
Maybe a company offered gym memberships for a business that permanently closed due to COVID-19. Alternatively, some people may not feel safe returning to fitness facilities for a while, if ever. In such cases, employee incentive packages might include an option to have the business pay for a workout app subscription. Then, a person could stay active from home.
COVID-19 Changes Will Persist for the Long Term
Employees and customers alike will probably notice that many companies keep taking precautions first implemented during the COVID-19 crisis long after it passes.
For example, retailers that once cleaned the premises daily may shift to sanitizing some highly trafficked areas more often. Employers may avoid keeping open containers of food in break rooms for anyone to grab. Keeping consumables out like that makes it easier for people to spread germs — coronavirus-related or not.
Additionally, employees who helped provide a business’s new services during the pandemic may continue doing so for the foreseeable future. For example, Nielsen recently reviewed Americans’ shopping habits to see what’s different. The data indicated a 100% increase in click-and-collect orders. Moreover, home deliveries increased by 57%. These trends may mean human resources teams hire more workers to accommodate these trends or assign workers to new roles.
The customer experience could feature more ongoing efforts from businesses to keep people loyal, too. A global survey of consumer sentiment in more than a dozen countries examined how people changed how and where they spend since the pandemic.
In the United States, 73% of consumers tried new brands during these challenging times. Moreover, 75%-83% of those intended to keep purchasing from them. In India, only 4% of consumers did not try new brands during the pandemic.
COVID-19 lessons may guide future workplace learning topics, too. Besides providing tips on customer service practices that help people stay loyal, employees may learn relevant cybersecurity practices for working at home.
United Nations representatives warned that the world must start preparing for the next pandemic now. Succeeding in that aim means understanding what worked and failed this time while getting people well-equipped for the future.
An Evolving Situation
This overview shows some of the most likely aspects of the employee experience in the new normal. However, the pandemic is still changing workplace responses and will continue to for the long term.
Employers must stay abreast of how things develop, plus continually listen to employee feedback. Doing these things will help company representatives take the most appropriate actions.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly software increases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Why an Organization Needs 90 Days to Observe Employees
The HR department has one of the most challenging yet critical jobs in the organization. The people you hire determine the success of the company. Every single day the department receives applications from job seekers.
The team must go through each to determine whether the potential employee is a good fit for the company.
In the end, the HR manager may find an ideal employee. But, the reality is the new hire may not always be the best fit. Some people are very good at job interview planning.
They may impress the interviewing panel with the ability to answer questions. Some may even fake their CVs. The 90-day performance review can weed out such people. It is a crucial onboarding tool that many HR departments use.
Let's look at the importance of the 90-day performance period in greater detail.
Why You Need 90 Days to Observe an Employee
The first few months for new hires are especially critical. For the company, it is the opportunity to gauge whether they made the right decision. The same goes for the employee. They must also determine whether the company and roles fit their expectations.
The HR departments use the first 90 days as a review period. It has become a popular management practice. It is critical for onboarding new employees. Let's look at some of the benefits to the organization.
It Provides an Opportunity for Orientation and Evaluation
90 days is enough for the employee and organization to know if the partnership works. The HR determines whether they have the relevant knowledge and competency. There should be a lot of communication between HR and the direct supervisor.
The supervisor is in the best position to give accurate reports. Some Industry reports show that up to 28% of new employees will leave within the first 90 days. Some of the reasons may surprise you. They include:
Unmet job expectations - 43%
Bad experiences within the job - 34%
Inability to fit in the culture - 32%.
Some new employees also have issues with the onboarding process. Lack of clear guidelines and need for more training accounted for 22% and 21%, respectively. Others felt that the co-workers were not welcoming, resulting in them leaving the jobs.
The HR department must pay attention to onboarding. The process of hiring new employees is costly and time-consuming. Once you have the right talent on board, it would be a pity to lose them for things that you can avoid.
Opportunity for Feedback on Performance
In 3 months, a supervisor will have enough feedback on the abilities of the recruit. You get to see how they are progressing within the roles. HR can also put in place things like training if they realize a knowledge gap.
It also provides time to shape the recruit into the organization's culture. Within this time, the HR and supervisors should institute an open door policy. The recruit should feel comfortable asking relevant questions.
It could be about expectations or even areas that they are facing challenges. They may also take the opportunity to ask for resources. They may also raise areas of concern that could impact their ability to do the job well.
It Provides Great Insights to the Company
A successful onboarding provides a fantastic opportunity for the company to learn. The process includes data collection that can be the basis for future decisions.
Some companies do not use the 90 days to observe employees. They depend on annual performance reviews to know how the employee is progressing. It could be a costly mistake if you have the wrong person on board.
The company also misses the chance to know what they can do to improve employee productivity. Within this time, the company should have benchmarks to measure the new employee. It helps with accountability and an easy way to check progression.
You Get To Avoid Any Surprises
You can liken a 90-day performance period to an early warning system. An employee can only pretend for so long. After 30 days, you will start to see their real self-emerging. By 60 days, all pretense will be gone.
By 90 days, the management will have all the information it needs to make a decision. The same goes for the employees. Three months is enough time for them to learn the company culture.
They will have a good idea about how management works. For both parties, it removes any surprises in the outcome. For the company, think about how much you could save. Instead of waiting for one year for the annual review, you get all the feedback you need within 90 days.
If an employee is not adapting well, you can release them early. You do not waste time and money on a partnership that will not work out in the end.
It is a Crucial HR Assessment Tool
The onboarding process lies primarily in the HR department. It comes up with the rules and regulations surrounding new hires. The aim is to ensure a smooth transition of the new employees into the company. The 90-day performance review is critical because of the following reasons.
It is the best way to determine the future performance of the new hire.
It provides an opportunity to share with the recruit company goals and expectations. That is why it is vital to have open communication lines.
The company uses the feedback to adjust or tweak relevant job performance metrics.
It is an opportunity to get insights on the company from the recruit's viewpoint.
It sets the ground for future communication between the employees and management.
Opportunity to Avoid Bad Hires and To Increase Staff Retention
Industry reports show that it could be as expensive as $5000 to hire a new employee. Yet, the cost of a bad hire can be as high as $25000. 41% of the cost goes to their productivity.
36% accounts for poor morale amongst other staff members due to a bad hire. 37% of the cost goes to recruiting or training another worker. 40% refers to the time you spend on new recruitments.
Some HR managers will hire because they need to fill a job position quickly. They do not take the time to review the performance within the past few months. It can be expensive trying to correct such a mistake.
Ninety days can provide the company enough time to keep good talent. If you show that you care about helping the employees progress in their careers, you win positive points. Training opportunities are a good starting point.
You may also offer company benefits like medical cover in pension plans. Other companies go further to offer things like childcare and wellness benefits.
Tips For A Successful 90-Day Performance Review
We have looked at the benefits of the 90 days observation period for new employees. But what are some of the tips you need to have in mind for successful completion? Take the following into account when coming up with your plan.
It Is Not a Probation Period
There is a negative connotation to the term probation. Probation sounds like the aim is to correct the employee. It can make the new hire feel under excess pressure to perform.
It could cause them to leave if they feel that they are failing in any way. Instead, the thought process should be that it is a time for learning and adapting to a new environment.
It should be all about open communication and feedback. The recruit should feel comfortable approaching management for help when they need it. All this, without feeling that the managers are questioning their knowledge or competence.
Let It Be a Strategic Process
It helps to have a plan and to put everything down on paper. It should not be a time when the HR and direct supervisors do things as they wish. It also helps to clarify to the recruit what will happen during this time.
Also, it is an ideal time to share company policies and any other important information. Look at it as an avenue for continuous conversation and improvement.
Final Thoughts
Does an organization need 90 days to observe an employee? The answer is a resounding yes. It provides a fantastic opportunity to determine whether the company has made the right choice. You look at their competence and ability to fit in and carry-out expected roles.
But, the employee will also see its benefits. They can decide whether your company is the right place for them. They also get an opportunity for the positive feedback that can improve their productivity. It is important to be strategic about the implementation of the 90-day review. In the end, you want a fair process for both the organization and the recruit.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly software increases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
How to Get Your Employee Onboarding Process Right
When a potential buyer visits your store, company, or organization and gets inefficient service, your chances of them becoming a customer are slim to none. This is all highly dependent on the company onboarding process. However, a disgruntled employee is not necessarily that way because they lack skills. A lot of the time, this is because of the employer's inability to train and guide their new staff.
Proper company onboarding process takes time and is a work in progress. You need the right leadership, some technology-driven training and quality communication in the workplace. In return, you can get higher employee retention, job satisfaction, and with it – happier customers.
What is Employee Onboarding Process?
According to Guru, a quality employee onboarding process lifts the hire performance by as much as 30%. Moreover, according to some other surveys, new hires will be much longer if the introductory experience is good. But, what does this mean?
This process is a purposeful, systematic, and strategized transformation of a selected and promising candidate into a good employee. Why is it so important? Just imagine, you come to a new place, where you meet new people; you don`t know the customs and rules, so you try to choose each word so carefully, that it could even sound unnatural. Actually, in just a few minutes you turn from self-assured, qualified professional into a shy and uncertain outsider. This inner feeling influences a new employee`s abilities stay focused and think straight. If you put your new employee` shoes, you will understand how unsecure and powerless you feel by losing control of the situation. That is why succeeding in your employee onboarding process is a prime element of making everything work right. So, companies that have such a system function as flawlessly as possible, offering quality services to customers and excellent work conditions to employees.
How you approach your newest employees sets the tone for their entire experience in your company. Like any other important process, this also requires well-thought, deliberate steps. Here is what they include.
Attracting and Recruiting New Employees
The satisfaction and performance of employees depends greatly on the recruitment practices of the employer. First impressions aren't only important for you as a recruiter, but also for the person who has shown interest to work in your company. It is more than just a tiny moment; it is a vital element that launches a chain of events – the butterfly effect.
The tone of the conversation depends on two people, so when you recruit new people, you need to prepare yourself just like they prepare for the interview. Think the job interview questions carefully to sound confident, create a comprehensive and detailed job description, and review the information potential employees will find on your website.
If you need some assistance with creating your job description, crafting the questions, emails you send to interested parties, your terms and conditions, as well as policies, or even your website content, you might want to hire a professional like Study Clerk. Appearance is crucial for your business. Many of the people who will see your job description will want to learn more about the company before they apply to work there. The most qualified talent will be picky about where they'll work. As an employer, you must make sure that they are impressed from the moment when they read your ad.
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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Employees' First Visit
Once you get people interested in your workplace, you'll want to invite them in for an interview. This is your opportunity to meet them. But, it is also their opportunity to see where they'll work and who they'll work for.
The work environment is more important than ever. People who work in bad conditions are less motivated, productive, and more likely to look elsewhere for a job. That is why creating good working environment is a key element of a fruitful task accomplishing. So to get something from your staff, you need to offer them good work conditions.
The workspace compatibility has a huge impact on the work of your candidates. With that in mind, make sure that their first impression of your offices is positive. Give them a full view of the places they'll be seeing on a daily basis. Show them their office and desk. Introduce them to some of the people they'll work with. Tell them about the breaks, activities around the office, as well as their parking space. In other words, help your future employee feel comfortable in a new workplace.
Your Offer
If you find that a candidate is a good fit for your company, you'll want to give them an offer. You might even get a positive response from a rock-star candidate, one with excellent qualifications that gets to be picky about where he works.
When this happens, you need to send an attractive offer. This doesn't only refer to the sum you'll offer them as a salary. It is about the key things that create the whole picture of your company. For instance, language – it should be direct, positive and honest. Moreover, your offer letter needs to be detailed, specific, and enticing. It should show not only the needed information, but also mention the value of the employee, that they can bring to the company. In other words, it needs to welcome your new member of the company.
Continuous Onboarding
Hiring an employee is just the first step of the onboarding process. You need to continuously stimulate employees to work at their best and make them feel like they've made the right choice when applying to work at your company. The best and reliable way to help your employee professional development is not to make them improve their skills and perform the needed tasks, because you say so, but to create the atmosphere where each employee will be responsible for their actions and feel themselves an important part of the working process.
That is why you need to be accurate regarding each detail of an onboarding process. Make the most of your staff's first days in the office. Share relevant information, request their feedback, provide them with accurate and detailed information, allow them some time to adjust, and provide the necessary training. Remember, that each person likes attention and the feeling of value. The best motivation is not about money, it is about the spirit of the company and its culture that inspires to march ahead.
Treat your employees with respect and make them want to come to work.
Conclusion
If you want to increase employee retention and keep your staff happy, you need a good strategy for onboarding. This will, in return, allow you to attract more customers, save more money, and help run your business smoothly.
About Author: Helen Birk is a Human Resources manager at a popular company. She works side by side with employers and staff to assist them and motivate them. Birk holds a degree in Psychology and has a Master's degree in Business Communications.
