效率工具
6 Signs That the Future of Work Is Here Today
“A great overview by Gigster CEO Chris Keene on how the gig economy is transforming work in the enterprise by making it more customer-centric and high performance. Don’t miss the stories of companies actually doing this.” Dion Hintchcliffe, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
As software continues to eat the world, companies must find ways to build more innovative teams. For these companies, The Future of Work is here today. How companies reshape the way they engage digital talent will have a huge impact on their ability to innovate. Here are six ways digital leaders are creating The Future of Work now.
1. Remote workers and work from home teams are the new normal
The best talent is not always located where you are. Even within a company, silos can prevent the right people from working on the most critical innovation projects. Making it possible for team members to work remotely is the only way to liberate talent across the company. This is also the only way to source critical skill gaps that are not available inside the company, like AI/ML engineers. Supporting distributed teams calls for adopting a common set of processes and collaboration tools, including Slack, Github and Jira.
2. Hybrid teams beat monoculture teams
Innovation requires a diverse mix of talent. The most innovative teams blend in-house employees who have industry context with expert global talent who have advanced technical skills. This is the opposite of the traditional systems integration model that outsources innovation. Hybrid teams also have the value of helping companies build in-house skills by working side by side with expert freelance talent.
3. Elastic Staffing beats fixed staffing
Many companies adopt agile team processes but staff teams inefficiently — they follow a fixed staffing model that allocates each role as a full-time position for the duration of a project. This is only half agile. Because it makes experimentation too expensive to try, and reduces employee mobility and satisfaction. Compare this to Elastic Staffing, which allocates resources based on the workload for each project phase. For example, developers can join a project after the detailed design is complete, and technical architects may only be needed part time. Elastic Staffing can reduce the total hours to deliver innovative products by over 50%.
4. Employees want to be treated more like freelancers
Top employees want the freedom and flexibility to choose how they work and what they work on. This doesn’t have to require radical organizational changes. For example, applying the Google 20% rule, where workers can choose their own projects 20% of the time, can boost morale and build skills. This lets more senior employees peer review deliverables from other projects to reduce risk. It also helps more junior employees grow by being exposed to new business and technology challenges.
5. Freelancers want to be treated more like employees
Top freelancers want stability and work benefits without sacrificing their flexibility. Companies that learn how to work effectively with freelancers will have their pick of the best global talent. This includes setting up projects for success with distributed teams, incorporating advanced technologies, and providing predictability for freelancers that helps them plan effectively. In California, laws like AB5 are beginning to mandate providing more benefits for freelance workers, and putting them more on par with the benefits that full-time employees receive.
6. Automated team and talent assessments are here
Technology will ultimately reshape jobs, but today, technology is reshaping talent ratings. Every collaborative tool – from Slack, to Jira, to Github – has open APIs that can automatically collect data about the productivity and quality of work being produced by people and teams. Tools like Pinpoint can collect this data. Applying analytics to this data enables the creation of “karma scores” by person and by team, to provide objective and trusted evaluation of skills.
Examples of The Future of Work today
A global telco created hybrid teams that mix in-house staff with top global experts to accelerate their machine learning and predictive analytics initiatives. They manage these distributed teams following Silicon Valley best practices and have been able to deliver new applications that leverage AI up to twice as fast as traditional in-house development teams.
One of the world’s largest digital agencies created an entirely new digital transformation business unit using hybrid teams that blend employees and global freelance talent. This approach enabled them to onboard over 100 engineers in less than six months, with minimal recruiting costs.
Summary
The Future of Work describes a cultural shift that companies must adopt to grow their innovation capacity. The pace of those changes is accelerating as more companies adopt new work from home rules that support remote workers. Companies that embrace a Silicon Valley-style culture of innovation can become more customer-centered, more able to tap new talent pools, and to dramatically reduce risk.
About the author:
Chris Keene: As CEO, Chris drives Gigster’s vision to de-risk digital innovation. Chris was previously VP Cloud for VMware, where he led the $400 million Pivotal spinout. Chris also founded and took public Persistence Software (NASDAQ:PRSW)
This article is originally posted on Gigster.com
3 Tips to Make Your Next Employee Meeting Meaningful and Memorable
Managing people—especially in an organization — requires a level of social, emotional, and cognitive fortitude and intelligence that not everyone can boast. This is why people-focused roles, like being a business owner or working in a company's HR department can be overwhelming.
Every step you take has to be intentional and has to work towards the good of the company. But in the same breath, you have to also keep the peace among staff members while fostering harmony and cooperation.
When engaging with a member of staff one-on-one, it's relatively easy to achieve this. But what happens during employee meetings when every member of staff is there at the same time? With all the different ideas and personality types in the room, keeping the peace or even achieving any serious objective can prove futile.
Does this mean that organizing productive staff meetings is a pipe dream? Thankfully, the answer is no. You can hold employee meetings that your staff will look forward to.
We've outlined a few simple tips to help make your next employee meeting both meaningful and memorable — in a right way. Whether you're holding the meeting in a physical room or via teleconferencing, you can take these staff meeting best practices to the bank, regardless of the business or industry you work in.
1. Keep The Discussions Within the Meeting's Scope
One of the most apparent traits of productive staff meetings is that all discussions stay focused. No one wants a meeting where the convener just rambles on about anything and everything concerning the company.
Every meeting should have a plan that should be strictly adhered to. This is not the time to address a dispute between two employees, openly rebuke an employee's shortcomings, or talk about the misuse of office equipment. Do this, and all you'll be achieving is a lower staff loyalty score.
A neat hack would be to prepare the agenda a few days before the meeting and hand it out to your employees. This way, your staff knows what the meeting is going to be about and have a few days to prepare themselves for it. This makes for a more agreeable audience when the day comes around.
All your employees have got work to do to help grow your company, so keep the meetings short and focused so everyone can return to work.
2. Encourage Employee Input
People tend to learn better when they talk less and listen more, an approach that should be taken by every business owner and manager when dealing with employees. The people that work in your establishment are much more than the roles they fulfill. Some of them have vast personal or professional experiences from their life before and outside your company.
You may be the one at the helm of affairs, and you may know the objectives of the company more than anyone else. However, having more experienced heads to brainstorm with never hurt anyone. When you let your employees give their two cents, it opens you up to a world of possibilities as to how to deal with the current problem. It may be a novel idea or a reminder of something you've heard before. Either way, it helps the problem-solving process.
Not to mention that it is suitable for the workplace atmosphere when employees know that their boss is willing to listen to their problems and their ideas and act on them. It gives them a sense of belonging and worth and increases the company's loyalty score.
This approach to problem-solving during meetings significantly reduces the possibility of the leaders coming to a one-sided and subjective decision that does not work for everybody.
3. Keep Your Focus Only On The Stuff That Matters
The best way to deal with the wrongness of a situation is not to expound on how wrong it is, but to focus on how to make it right.
This is, unfortunately, a mistake many business leaders still make when something goes wrong in the company. Say a deal goes bad, they call for a staff meeting and dive into an investigation to find out how things went so wrong. They spend all the time berating the employees and attacking all the decisions they made leading up to the bad deal. Most of the time, this achieves nothing but dampens the spirits of everyone in the meeting.
A better approach to have an effective staff meeting would be to focus on how to salvage the deal, perhaps even to make a better offer for the other party to consider—no attacks on each other, no tearing down of other people's opinions, and no finger-pointing. Focus on moving forward and delivering optimal performance.
And while on the quest to solve a problem, remember to involve all staff members that have an idea, including those who may have made poor decisions that led to the problem. Sure, not everyone's idea will be brilliant, but typically, ideas given in this context are not all wrong either. Put every idea on the table, pick the elements that make sense, and merge them. By the time you implement this, the issue will disappear.
Conclusion
As stated earlier, handling employees in any company can be a terrifying scenario, or it could be an enjoyable experience. It all depends on the strategies you apply to get them all moving happily towards the company's ultimate goal. These three tips work not only in a meeting set up but also for individual and collective relationships between employees and the company leadership. Now go out and have a productive meeting.
About Author
Frank Hamiltonhas been working asan editor atreview serviceOnline Writers Rating.He isa professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digitalmarketingand self-education.He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.
Four Tips that Can Help Improve Your Staff’s Productivity
The key to any successful business is a hard-working team. Without a dedicated staff pushing the buttons behind the scenes, businesses would grind to a halt. However, keeping teams motivated can be a struggle, especially in the midst of high-pressure environments that are filled with deadlines, problem-solving, and stress.
As motivation drops, so does productivity, so how can you ensure your staff is working at full capacity? Here are four tips on how to improve the productivity of your team.
1. Take advantage of efficiencies
‘Busy work’ is the bane of many employees’ lives. This kind of work is defined as tasks that have hours spent on them when a quicker alternative is available which could save a lot of time and energy. Take your Point of Sale proposition, for example, identifying what products are selling well and which need a push is one of the most key pieces of data when deciding to restock or not.
Cutting out manual stock checks and implementing a modern POS system not only saves time but will ensure that human error never leaves you sold out of a bestselling product accidentally.
Less busy work, fewer headaches, and more efficiency.
2. Improve workplace conditions
Your place of work can be a major contributor to productivity if it allows your employees to feel comfortable whilst they’re working. Temperature can be a major factor in this, and maintaining a pleasant working temperature, while tricky, will ensure employees keep their minds focused on the job at hand rather than wondering why they didn’t pack an extra sweater.
Creating ‘chill out’ zones for employees to enjoy on their breaks - or just to get away from the screen for a few minutes - are also invaluable. While it might seem counter-intuitive to create an area where employees are encouraged to down tools and take a period of relaxation, it’s been proven that these periods of respite more than make up for it in terms of the productivity levels they provide.
3. Provide opportunities for growth
Delegation is a tricky topic for many managers, especially if they’re one of the founders of a business. Letting go and giving employees increased responsibility will not only help spread the workload but will also give employees much needed growth opportunities.
While there is an element of risk involved in the delegation, these can be negated to ensure tasks are given to well respected and proven employees.
Handing out these opportunities will not only save you time they will also give employees a chance to prove themselves and help them to step out of their comfort zones and grow professionally.
4. Keep your employees happy
Probably the most important point of all. A happy workforce is a productive workforce and keeping spirits and morale high is proven to have a positive impact on performance. Happiness levels are also likely to lead to fewer sick days, fewer internal disputes, and create a less stressful atmosphere.
Tackling the above issues will help employees feel valued, looked after, and challenged which are three crucial components of workforce happiness.
5 Strategies for Transitioning Back Into the Workplace After Quarantine
It’s hard to believe, but we’re now going on nearly six months of some type of self-quarantined work from home (along with our spouses, kids, roommates, and even pets). It may have taken some time to adapt, but for the most part, we succeeded in working remotely.
Yet now the tides are changing again, both as schools and businesses all consider various reopening strategies.
This situation may lead to more questions than answers. For example, does your company have a plan to accommodate the “new normal?” If so have you shared it with the workforce, or similarly, held discussions with employees to let them know what to expect?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, here are five strategies to help transition back into a traditional workplace as well as ways you can fully support your staff.
1. Prepare employees for your reopening strategy
While reopening may not be as abrupt as the initial transition to remote work was, chances are good that things will still move quickly as more state governors, school districts, and local officials give their approval. Your company will have to decide how to move forward. If you don’t have a reopening strategy, take the time to formulate one now. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Do you plan to continue a remote-work model?
Will you need to use a hybrid model, with some tasks being done onsite and others remotely?
Is your workplace equipped to bring everyone back with safe distancing modifications?
Once you have a strategy in place that seems feasible, let your employees know what the plan is, so they can assess their individual situations, such as child care requirements, transportation, or other details. Whatever workplace model you choose, you’ll need to simultaneously protect your business and support your employees.
2. Determine any staffing cuts and communicate them
The global economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is an ugly story yet to be fully told. While experts are making some dire projections, no one is really sure how it will develop, but rough roads may lie ahead for businesses and individuals alike.
If the company is going to have to cut personnel or salaries to stay afloat, it’s important to communicate this to your employees so they can plan appropriately. Many will want to launch job searches, cut home expenses, examine their credit scores to see if they have access to borrowing funds with favorable terms, or make other financial arrangements. Give them the greatest opportunity possible to take care of themselves and their families.
Additionally, if employees’ roles will be changing as the result of cuts or realignments, be sure you communicate this to your employees and give them the support they’ll need during any transitions.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
3. Plan for necessary infrastructure and policy changes
You may need to revamp your physical workspace to meet your state’s or municipality’s requirements for reopening. This might include reconfiguration, physical restructuring, or installing floor markers or plexiglass barriers. Don’t wait until the last minute to start making these changes; the transition may take longer than you think to achieve compliance.
Establish and communicate health-oriented policies (i.e., taking temperatures or cleaning procedures) to employees and customers alike. Outline the new responsibilities and expectations for both your company and its employees. Remember to order enough personal protective equipment for your employees’ use: include a stock of masks, disinfectant wipes, spray disinfectants, hand sanitizer, and soap.
Be sure employees are equipped to enforce any directives that customers will have to follow to keep your business compliant, such as waiting outside your facility to limit customer numbers inside, maintaining social distancing and mask-wearing while inside, etc. For everyone to remain safe and healthy, it’ll be a team effort.
4. Offer employees tips and perks
Many workers who had to go on unemployment have been using up their savings during the pandemic and could use financial assistance or at least resources and information to help them get by.
Recognize employees for all their hard work and what they’ve endured while working at home.
Reward them with points that they can redeem for gift cards, corporate items, or other “thank you” gifts.
Evaluate life insurance plans and see if you can identify a discounted group plan to help employees feel more secure about their families’ futures.
Many schools may start with distance learning in the fall, which means many employees will need help with child care. Explore on-site options, offer financial assistance for child care, or allow flexible work schedules to support your employees.
After spending 24/7 at home for three months, many of your employees’ homes likely experienced a lot more wear and tear than they would have under normal circumstances. Suggest a good home warranty program to make sure they’re covered for problems not included in their homeowners’ insurance.
Offer training or education opportunities to help employees feel more confident about being able to maintain their marketability in an economic downturn.
Offering your employees a variety of perks or helpful ideas will go a long way toward boosting morale and confidence in a time where many feel frustrated by the ripple effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
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.”
5. Remember your customers
Your customers are your company’s lifeblood, and you’ll want to keep this foremost in your mind (as well as your employees’ minds) as you formulate your reopening plans. Remember that many people are struggling financially, so it won’t pay to be too aggressive in your sales approach. Some customers will be actively looking to purchase, while others might regard your offerings more as “wish list” items at this time.
But no matter what stage you’re approaching in the sales funnel, it’s always important to keep up consistent communication with your community. Send thoughtful emails, handwritten notes, or useful promotional gifts to maintain strong relationships with clients (these will prove to be well worth the investment). If you’re good to your customers — even when they’re not buying — they’ll return the favor when they’re financially able.
Moving into a post-COVID-19 era will almost certainly be unlike anything we’ve experienced before. The better prepared you are to transition to the “new normal,” the more successful you’ll be when it happens.
Additional Resources:
Protect you business with Cerity - Workers' Comp InsuranceLearn how to start your own start-up
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.”
Workmates
For even more information on employee communication, collaboration, and engagement, we invite you to learn more about our Workmates employee experience platform. Sign up for a free, no-obligation demo to see how Workmates is changing employee management, in the new normal and beyond.
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.
Five Ways to Boost Morale in a Distributed Team
As we head into fall and the uncertainty of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it’s likely that your team is still working remotely. Employees may have even moved into different states to live with family members, or they may simply be working from the comfort of their own living room. Whatever the case may be, it can be difficult to get all employees on the same page when you’re suddenly faced with the challenges of managing a widely distributed workforce.
Engaging all employees and making sure they’re highly motivated and as productive as possible is vital to your overall success. Distance should never be something that stops your company from achieving your most critical goals, pandemic or not.
To help you stay on track, here are five, simple, straightforward, yet actionable ways you can boost morale (and productivity) in any distributed team.
#1: Communicate!
When you’re in an office and have a quick question, it is easy to lean over and quickly ask a neighbor or other team member for their insight. At least it used to be. Yet now, working from home makes that type of quick information exchange difficult, if not impossible.
Most of the time, these types of questions don’t even require a formal meeting, email exchange, or even a phone call. At first glance, this may make it seem that, without the in-person connections, you could lose the valuable back-and-forth that employees need to remain productive.
This doesn’t have to be the case at all, especially with the right employee experience (EX) software. For example, modern EX platforms now include powerful messaging apps that make natural communication fast, easy, and effective. These apps make it much easier to communicate quickly and consistently, and any employee can quickly create a group chat, or even a specific channel dedicated to a certain topic.
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.”
The benefit of these apps over email is clear: Email can be clunky and may lose the valuable, real-time insights if one employee is offline or just doesn’t answer in time. Additionally, email threads with multiple participants can quickly get off track or make it hard for employees to find the answers to a specific question. A simple chat (either one on one or with a group) eliminates all of these issues and provides the ideal way to share important information.
#2. Schedule weekly team meetings
Weekly team meetings are another indispensable part of working with a distributed team.
In the past, in office-based environments, you probably held regular in-person meetings that kept everyone up-to-speed on the last updates related to projects, company details, or even employees’ personal development.
Yet now, remote team members may lose this connection and could begin to feel isolated. It may be hard for them to hear company announcements, learn how they’re performing, or how they may be able to help with a specific project or task. Holding regularly scheduled team meetings, ideally as often once once a week, lets your employees know what’s happening, any COVID-19-related changes, and even how they’re doing.
Tip: Not everyone has access to high speed internet or the right hardware, so be sure to take stock of everyone’s household amenities so you know whether anyone will have any roadblocks to completing work and attending meetings in the regular schedule.
#3. Keep the team’s eye on the prize
Another benefit of working in an office (and that can be difficult to replicate in remote-working models) is an overall sense of purpose. Whether employees are focused on hitting a quarterly revenue target, finishing a huge website relaunch, or just staying on top of their own goals, instilling a sense of community will help the entire team keep their eye on the prize.
Knowing what they’re working toward, and how they are helping make a difference can be inspiring—and could give them the extra motivation they need while boosting team morale. Be sure to send out weekly or biweekly updates on the status of the larger project, so your team knows exactly where they stand and how they can keep improving the bigger picture.
Here are a few more ways you can give your team a bird's-eye view:
Develop or subscribe to a workflow dashboard that tracks your team’s progress in real time, showing when specific tasks are completed and how that affects the whole project.
During your weekly meetings, be sure to bring up the state of recent projects, and let team members know what they can do to help keep workflow efficient and optimal.
Make a work-wide calendar that shows general due dates and deadlines that must be met in order for your project to roll out on time. This can help visual learners stay on top of their personal priorities,
#4. Reward hard workers
Once you’ve got a project rolling and your team onboard, it’s time to assess everyone’s personal progress. Back at the office, you may have had an employee of the month award, or you may have given bonuses to workers who completed their work above and beyond expectations.
It may not feel as important when you’re working remotely, but you should definitely keep these traditions going — or start them, if you didn’t have them before. Team members want to know that they will be rewarded for successfully taking on projects and showing leadership qualities. This will give them the morale they need to increase quality and output, too; it’s basically a win-win. If it’s in the budget, offer prizes or bonuses to employees who really stand out.
#5: Don’t forget the fun stuff
Finally, don’t forget to have fun with your team. Work isn’t always just about work — sometimes, letting off a little steam through a bonding event can be exactly what your team needs to feel more confident in themselves and in the company as a whole. Bonding while remote can seem like a challenge, but there are great options:
Video chat bar trivia or poll to unleash everyone’s inner nerd
Online multiplayer party games (paired with a video chat)
The simple, classic video chat happy hour
A watch party where everyone can tune in to see a streaming movie
Really, the options are endless once you get creative.
Empower remote teams
Don’t let morale sink just because everyone is working from home. With the right strategies, innovative techniques, and fun bonding events, you can boost your team’s spirits and get everyone in the right mindset to complete their work happily and efficiently.
The perfect platform for managing a remote workforce
For even more information on employee communication, collaboration, and engagement, we invite you to learn more about our Workmates employee experience platform. Sign up for a free, no-obligation demo to see how Workmates is changing employee management, in the new normal and beyond.
To learn more about giving access to vital HR and work information — even when they're not in the office. Download our ebook now.
Download now
About Author: Samantha Rupp holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and is the managing editor for 365businesstips.com. She lives in San Diego, California and enjoys spending time on the beach, reading up on current industry trends, and traveling.
The C.O.P.E. Approach: 4 Ways to Make Working from Home Easier for Your Employees
The COVID-19 pandemic has made remote working the only way to keep many businesses running as companies across all sectors have been compelled to limit site-based activities in the interest of public health.
A Gallup surveyhas revealed that the number of US employees who work remotely has doubled from 31% to 62% since the pandemic started.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an upsurge in the number of employees who were working from home as authorities impose lockdown regulations to slow down the spread of the virus (Image Source).
What’s interesting is that remote work could be the new normal even after the COVID-19 scare is over. For instance, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that “if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen.”
This is echoed by a Gartner report, which found that 74% of businesses are planning to make at least 5% of their employees work remotely, permanently.
The Challenges Newly Transitioned Remote Employees Face
While workers who have recently switched to a remote work arrangement are enjoying many benefits such as eliminating their commute to and from the office, they are also facing a number of challenges. According to Buffer’s State of Remote Work 2020, the biggest challenges remote workers face include:
Collaboration and communication issues
Loneliness
Not being able to unplug
Distractions at home
Staying motivated
New remote workers may also struggle with the above challenges. Additionally, a separate survey by the messaging platform Slack shows that those who are new to working from home struggle more in the following 3 areas compared to their more experienced counterparts:
Productivity
Sense of belongingness
Overall satisfaction with work arrangement
O - Operationalize Daily Check-Ins
Almost all successful remote teams have structured daily check-ins. The agenda may vary day-to-day. For instance, Mondays can be spent planning weekly project schedules, while Fridays can be dedicated to reviewing the accomplishments and the challenges of the week. You can also dedicate days for one-on-one check-ins.
The key is for these daily check-ins to be regularly scheduled, predictable, and to have clear agendas.
P - Practice Flexibility
One of the unique aspects of remote work is that you need structure. However, at the same time, you need to allow room for flexibility. Businesses should take into consideration that blending home-life and work-life comes with interruptions and distractions that disrupt an employee’s normal work patterns.
It’s important to be able to think beyond the traditional 9 to 5 mentality and embrace more flexible work arrangements. It may sound challenging at first, but remote teams that thrive embrace flexibility and agility. Here are a few of the things you need to consider:
Master asynchronous communication
Set certain hours wherein your team members’ work hours overlap
Use shared calendars so you know when everyone is working and when things are getting done
This is closely related to the first element of this approach, which is technology. The more strategically you use technology, the more flexible and agile your team can be. For instance, time monitoring tools allow you to ensure that employees are working when they’re supposed to, which allows them to determine their own pre-plotted schedules.
E - Ease Stress and Anxiety
These are extraordinary times. Tension is high and uncertainty is rampant. As explained by the Center for Workplace Mental Health, “Many are teleworking full-time for the first time, isolated from co-workers, friends, and family. Our daily living routines are disrupted causing added anxiety, stress, and strain—physically, mentally, and financially. It is completely natural for this disruption and uncertainty to lead to anxiety and stress.”
One of the most important and yet overlooked steps to help employees adjust to remote work is easing their stress and anxiety. Left unaddressed, stress and anxiety create hurdles for employees and businesses to truly thrive in a work from home setup.
So, what can you do?
Communicate empathetically: Employers and managers need to consistently talk to their employees in a way that they feel supported and cared for. Show empathy. Acknowledge that any anxiety they’re feeling is valid and offer support where you can.
Demonstrate transparency: This is not the time for closed-door, managers-only meetings. Be transparent about what’s going on in your organization and the steps you’re taking to ensure business continuity. Make your employees feel that all possible scenarios have been explored.
Promote self-care: Encourage employees to spend time outside of work to take care of themselves. Recommend activities that they can do in the safety of their homes such as meditation, breathing exercises, and yoga.
Create fun activities: Host virtual happy hours or online games—anything that will allow your employees to share light-hearted, non-work related moments with each other.
Help Your New Remote Employees C.O.P.E.
Remote work is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Whether you decide to have your employees permanently work from home, move to a hybrid setup, or just wait until the COVID-19 pandemic becomes more manageable, helping your newly transitioned work from home employees is pertinent so your business continues to function.
Using the C.O.P.E. approach, which combines technology, regular check-ins, flexible scheduling, and mental health management, is a perfect jump-offpoint for you to help your employees not only survive but to thrive in this new normal.
About author:
Dean Mathews is the founder and CEO of OnTheClock, an employee time tracking app that helps over 9,000 companies all around the world track time.
Dean has over 20 years of experience designing and developing business apps. He views software development as a form of art. If the artist creates a masterpiece, many people’s lives are touched and changed for the better.
When he is not perfecting time tracking, Dean enjoys expanding his faith, spending time with family, friends and finding ways to make the world just a little better.
8 Tips to Help You Manage a High-Performing Virtual Team
Every business is eager to build a group of high-performing professionals, but the task is much more challenging if you are running a remote team. After all, this type of work eliminates everyday face-to-face conversations and quick chats that help most managers solve minor issues and discuss major projects on the go.
According to the report, 84% of respondents claim virtual communication is more difficult than in-person communication, while nearly 90% of online teams typically include at least two cultures. It means that the primary task of virtual team leaders is to enable uninterrupted and effortless communication.
But that is only one aspect of the process, so let’s take it one step at a time and check out eight tips to help you manage a high-performing virtual team.
1. Give Your Employees the Right Equipment
Online workers need high-quality and reliable equipment because it’s the only way to keep the workflow smooth and uninterrupted. As a business owner or manager, you cannot neglect this aspect and expect employees to obtain the best technology on their own.
On the contrary, you have to provide employees with the latest software that is super-fast and safe to use. Each member of the virtual team should have at least a couple of devices that can be used interchangeably – laptops, desktop computers, tablets, smartphones.
You also need to think about any additional programs, tools, and platforms relevant to your field of work.
2. Goal-Setting Is Fundamental
The first tip is rather technical, but the second one is fundamental performance-wise. Namely, you need to think through your business goals carefully and determine the right objectives and deliverables for each member of the virtual team.
The thing that really matters here is to be very clear about your demands and set measurable key performance indicators. For example, an online paper writer service will set goals for every author and determine parameters such as the word count and deadlines.
3. Delegate Tasks Properly
Micromanagement does not work in the online environment, so you’ll need to learn to delegate tasks properly. Every member of the digital workforce should know his/her responsibilities and focus on a single project at a given moment. Here’s how you can delegate professional duties across your team:
Divide larger projects into smaller segments of work and hand them out to your employees. That way, each worker will concentrate on a highly specific task and make progress quickly.
Create a schedule of work that is neither too tight nor too loose. Your expectations should be ambitious but realistic.
4. Use Multiple Communication Channels
Although it may seem counterintuitive, the experience taught us that multiple communication channels can contribute to the greater efficiency of virtual teams.
How come? Well, it turns out that every communication platform serves a different purpose and represents a natural extension to some parts of the work.
For instance, email is great for official communication with strictly determined messages and clear deliverables. On the other side, live chat software is much more convenient for everyday information exchanges, while video conferencing suits complex discussions that require thorough explanations and elaborations.
5. Organize Online Meetings Regularly
The fact that you cannot meet colleagues in person does not mean you shouldn’t organize online meetings. This is the core of virtual work, so we encourage you to schedule meetings regularly and discuss the most important topics with your coworkers.
The pace of communication depends on your team’s needs, but we can give you a practical example - essay writers meet every Monday morning to talk about their weekly plans, but they also meet on Friday afternoon to make a brief summary of weekly achievements.
6. Take Advantage of Project Management Tools
Traditional means of online communication are always useful, but you can boost employee productivity with project management tools. If you are not using one already, we can point out a few options that proved to be valuable for virtual teams:
Slack brings together multiple communication channels
Trello gives you incredible flexibility in terms of communication, planning, and monitoring
Jira makes project tracking easy and transparent
Jira alternative Monday.com lets you shape workflows to fit the way your team collaborates
7. Recognize Achievements and Reward Top-Performers
If you want the most talented individuals to stay with your team for a long time, you better recognize their achievements and reward top-performers. Unlike traditional business teams, virtual colleagues don’t have the chance to meet in person, exchange praises, and celebrate professional victories.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
This is where managers need to step in and acknowledge employees’ business results. After all, we all want to feel appreciated for what we do, so it’s always a good idea to publicly praise the results of your best workers and perhaps even reward them in a way that corresponds to a given achievement.
8. Keep In Mind the Life-Work Balance
You don’t have to be a top-level manager to understand that your virtual team needs some rest from time to time. A survey shows that unplugging after work hours is the biggest pain point for 40% of employees who work in a virtual environment.
Your job is to make sure that every member of the virtual team gets enough time to recover from daily duties. Do not call them after work and do not expect them to open and answer late-night messages. It will keep them fresh and energized in the long run, so you won’t have to worry about their performance anytime soon.
The Bottom Line
Virtual teams are very specific because they rely on alternative channels of communication and cannot count on traditional face-to-face interactions. In such circumstances, managers have to be careful and plan out everything in a way that suits the new business model.
In this post, we analyzed eight ways that could help you manage a high-performing virtual team. Don’t hesitate to use our tips, but you are also free to write a comment if you have other interesting tips – our readers would love to see it!
About Author: Becky Holton is an essay writer UK who regularly contributes to the dissertation service. Becky is covering a broad scope of topics, including digital marketing, HR, business, finance, and brand building. She is the mother of a lovely toddler and a passionate yoga practitioner.
Employee Referrals in Tech: All You Need to Know
Nowadays, hiring the right developer is not the easiest nut to crack. Recruiters and companies need to go through a lot to attract tech talent. One of the very first steps is to define the requirements and needs for a given job role. Another one is to make a list of places to look for some new employees. Then, good old hunting may take place.
However, this is often turning out to be less effective than it has been before. Hence, tech companies are dying to find some new solutions in light of the ever-growing demand.
This is where employee referrals come in. As simple as it seems, there are many things for you to take into consideration before you launch employee referrals in your tech company. What should you know about it, why is it worth checking out, and how can your company benefit from increasing employee advocacy? If you have ever asked yourself any of these questions, you do not have to look for the answers any further.
Employee referrals: why should you think about implementing them?
There are at least a few reasons for believing in employee advocacy. It is not free and it takes quite a lot of time to implement, but it can pay off sooner than you think. Below you will find a few things to take into consideration.
There is high trust in referrals
The numbers speak for themselves: referrals can deliver amazing results in many fields, including recruitment. According to Career Builder (via TalentLyft), 82% of employees rate referrals “above all other sources for generating the best ROI.” Additionally, 88% of them rate referrals above all other sources for the generated quality of new hires.
But why is this the case? Well, referrals coming from those we trust are taken seriously into consideration. We believe in the words or comments of those we know, while we tend to disagree or not trust those from people we do not. Simple as that. This is where the power of referrals comes from, and is what has just started being realized by tech companies. Involving employees in generating leads - in this case, potential candidates - can be like hitting the jackpot.
Employee referrals positively impact time to hire
According to HR Technologist, “employees hired via referrals come in 55% faster than those sourced through career sites and this could make a world of difference for competitive firms, tight schedules, and demanding product development pipelines”. Since it takes approximately 41 days to hire a developer, cutting this time in half is a definite win because you can snatch some candidates before your competitors do.
Referrals are based on genuine opinions
In the majority of cases, people who refer something to somebody are not likely to make a mistake in doing so. They trust what they recommend, or at least they should. How does it work like in tech? If a particular employee shares a genuine opinion about the workplace, it may have a great impact on someone who is considering applying to your company. What is more, it may have a great impact on someone who did not previously consider applying, but the recommendation is so tempting that they now want to give it a go.
You get access to undiscovered talent
We have just mentioned that by implementing employee referrals (and the right incentives for employees for doing so), it becomes a bit easier to convince someone to take part in the recruitment process. This includes people who were not likely to consider the offer if not for a recommendation.
According to LinkedIn’s research, companies can expand their talent pools as much as 10x by simply utilizing their employee’s networks. This is especially true in the case of IT professionals, who tend to know people interested in the areas they are proficient in.
Many of those people are currently employed elsewhere, without any particular desire of changing that status quo. However, a persuasive recommendation may be a great impulse for a change. According to Dice, in 2020, 38% of technologists said they would change employers, down from 45% in 2019.
This means hiring will likely become even more difficult for employers worldwide this year. As a result, they need all the tools they can get to attract new employees.
If it comes from someone they know and trust, resigning from their current job and switching to a new one is a step closer. This way, as an employer, you get inclusive access to an undiscovered, and almost unlimited, talent pool. What is more, the quality of potential applicants in the pool is really, really high, and the recruitment process can be sped up.
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.”
What to remember when implementing an employee referral program?
1. Onboard your employees
No matter what the terms and conditions of your referral program are, the rules need to be clear and everyone who is involved needs to be familiar with them. Employees who are really engaged and understand the rules and incentives can deliver results quicker as almighty brand ambassadors.
You need to double-check if your developer referral program is competitive and appealing enough for great employees to start recommending equally great candidates to join your team.
2. Remember to reward
Your employees will have to invest their time and networks in bringing you some new additions to the team. They do not have to do this at all, so by giving them some incentives, they can be more willing to encourage others to apply.
There is nothing wrong with rewarding people who send some great candidates your way. And while getting a nice reward is warmly welcomed, it may turn out that often a simple token of appreciation for your employees’ contribution is even more precious. Your employees can have a great impact on your company’s growth and you should never forget about this fact.
The most important thing is to keep the promises you make to your employees and keep the rules transparent. As an example, Netguru openly shares that they give iPads to those who successfully refer a new employee and that’s what they do.
3. Encourage applicants
Referrals are like gold, but alone they may not be sufficient! Potential applicants will surely peep at you on social media, your website or your LinkedIn Company Page. While they probably trust the person who referred you to them, candidates still want to see things with their own eyes. If your online presence is full of holes and not really inviting, it can put potential employees off.
4. Tech screening for the win
Your company might attract the most skilled people in the world, but they still do not have to be the best fit for your needs. While your employees may have nothing but goodwill to refer some great candidates, it may turn out that those referees do not meet the expectations of a particular project (for example, they do not have the required developer background despite being fluent in three other programming languages).
This is why tech screening is incredibly important. It can save you a lot of time, and effort, but also disappointment for both parties. Without precise tech screening, you could hire a person who does not suit the project, or the hiree may feel it is not their cup of tea from day one. And this is often what happens when the applicant tracking system is full of holes.
To wrap up
Developer referrals programs can be incredibly efficient if you have a strong company culture and set up the right rules. It is a win-win-win situation. You gain access to amazing talents without spending years trying to find them, your employees can get extra rewards and feel even more appreciated, and highly skilled developers are offered a great opportunity of joining your company. What is there not to like?
About author
Tom Winter is the CRO at DevSkiller, a developer screening and online interviews-in-one platform powered by RealLifeTesting™. Madly in love with everything tech, Tom specializes in streamlining the hiring process of tech talent and data-driven recruitment. He’s also an avid conference speaker.
Conduct a Job Interview to Hire the Best Candidate
Hiring mistakes are made all the time. A candidate looks great on paper, provides an amazing performance during the recruitment process; but, once on the job, that great candidate turns out not a good fit. You scratch your head and wonder, “what happened?”
Often, it is not your fault, other than you believed a candidate’s answers when they were not honest. But, sometimes, it comes down to asking the right questions in the right way, in order to dig a bit deeper into skills, personality, and improving your overall working style.
Now, on to Those Interview Questions
So you’ve done your homework: created a great job description, uploaded it to your ATS software to track the results and now you have candidates waiting in your pipeline to be evaluated during the next stage.
First and foremost, write out your questions in advance. This doesn’t mean you will use all of them during the hiring process. But it does bring consistency as you evaluate the candidates you have selected for interviews. And, take notes. This is how you can compare their answers later on and keep the candidates straight in your head. Having a certain structure to your questions will also help for a good interview.
Here are 6 questions that should get to the “meat” of a candidate for the job and allow you to make a good final decision.
1. Tell me about yourself. This, of course, is really open-ended, and it should be. You want to get a feel for what the job seeker believes are the most important things in his life. Pay attention to one’s beliefs, values, and priorities. Often, you can get a “feel” for their fit for your environment and culture.
2. Why do you want to work for us? This question is important because it will show you whether the candidate has taken enough initiative to research your organization and have learned something about the potential employer’s mission, culture fits, etc. It’s a bad sign if the answer only relates back to the job description and his qualifications.
3. Describe your strengths. Of course, you want those strengths to relate to the skills of the position opening but look for strengths that go beyond just hard skills. Do you need a “people person?” Will this position involve working closely with a diverse group of others? Does it involve leadership roles? If so, what is their approach to leadership? You can continue to ask sub-questions as they address this question, to hone in on the specific strengths you want. And always ask for examples as they go along.
4. Tell me about a failure you had and how you responded to it. Behavioral interviewing has become a common tool for determining how a person is likely to deal with a challenging situation. This question can be either professional or personal. What you are looking for is how they reacted and what steps they took to mitigate the failure or to move on afterward and stay productive. It’s the process you are looking for, not the details of the event.
5. Why do you want to leave your current position? You want valid reasons here – career growth perhaps. Beware of candidates who complain about their current position, their supervisors, team members, etc.
6. Describe your greatest career success. Here you want detail. If you don’t get it, ask for it. You want them to give real results.
Some Additional Tips
1. Spend More Time Listening than Talking.
Candidates are nervous during job interviews. It’s easy to take command and do a lot of talking yourself. Don’t do it. You need to ask questions and wait for answers. It’s okay for a candidate to take some time to think about an answer before responding. Tell him that’s okay. Force yourself to be quiet and listen.
2. Spend Some Time Digging into Job Hopping
Job hopping is more common than it used to be. So, do not see it as an upfront negative. But do explore frequent job changes during the candidate’s work history, to be certain that those changes were not because of issues with bosses, co-workers, etc. The candidate will bring that work experience into any new job. Consider getting in touch with your potential employee’s former hiring managers to ask questions and make thorough reference checks.
3. When Possible, Hold Peer Interviews
You are not the person who will work with this new hire on a daily basis. And your opinion is not the only one that counts. The need for peer interviews is really necessary. And they should have the power to come up with their own questions for the job candidates. They know what they need and want, perhaps more than you. If, for some reason, this is not possible, at least gather interview questions from them, be certain to ask those questions, take notes, and share the responses.
Final Words
If you have an engaging job description, have screened the job seekers well, and done the right pre-planning for the interview process, you can improve your chances to hire the perfect candidate in the end.
About the author:
Daniela McVicker is a career expert and an editor at Top Writers Review. She’s also a business communication coach, helping future job applicants to achieve success on their career paths.
How do I bring my employee back to work safely, and how do I help my employees feel safe?
The last three months have been a phase of anxiety and depression with the COVID-19 explosion. Moreover, countries have gone into lockdown. Employees are working from their homes. Now, the government is looking at implementing business reopening measures. Employers also need to plan to move their employees back to their physical workplace location.
COVID-19 pandemic spreads via respiratory fluids, so the guidance got from local, state, and federal government directs employers to remain closed until they are capable to execute safeguards for limiting coronavirus spread.
The safeguards according to CDC include -
Practice healthy hygiene
Social distancing
Intensify ventilation, cleaning, and disinfection
Telework cancel insignificant travel
Restrict shared item spaces
Seating distance of a minimum of 6 feet
Wear masks
Train staff on every safety actions
Other CDC ongoing monitoring protocols for business to establish before opening are -
Establish a daily routine employee health check
Sick employees need to stay home
Monitor nonattendance and have flexible time-off policy
Have an action plan to handle situations where an employee tests COVID-19 positive
Create and test an emergency communication network for employees
Establish communication with the local and state authorities
Establish disability discrimination law while deciding which employees can return back to work, according to their medical conditions
Employer’s safety protocols for staff returning to work
Employers need to formulate their return to normalcy as safely as possible. Government and CDC safety guidelines can help them prepare for workplace return, after a long coronavirus lockdown.
Some areas employers need to cover
Monitor temperature
Limit access points inside your workplace premises and check employee temperature in an outside area. The employee with temperature 100° and more must be sent home. Ask the employee to maintain a 6-foot distance from other staff members, while they move to go out.
Wear masks
The staff members, who handle the public need to wear a mask. If you are unable to supply masks ask the employees to make their own. CDC has recommended that common people can wear masks made from cotton cloth for protection from coronavirus. If you are not a needlework person wear a scarf or bandana to cover your mouth and nose.
Wearing masks at the workplace will reduce the risk of getting infected or spreading the virus [sometimes people are not aware that they are coronavirus positive because there are no visible symptoms].
Talk less and email more
People release aerosol particles while speaking. The loud you talk the more possibility of more germs and viruses get released increases. Employees need to avoid physical communication. It is wise to email a text or sends messages because maintaining 6-feet distance reduces the risk of getting infected, the best communication method is chatting online or via phone.
Disinfect high touch surfaces
Sanitizers and disinfectant wipes are not easily available but you will need to keep common surfaces like tabletops, restrooms, and doors clean. Therefore use homemade disinfectant sprays and wipes. You can find how to make it on YouTube.
Consider adding extra handwashing stations. Prepare signage or instruction for visitors and employees to avoid confusion associated with containment practices on reopening.
Shut common areas
Break or lunchrooms need to be shut down. Encourage employees to take a break at their desks or limit the number of employees in common areas for lunch, but maintain a safe distance.
Maintain distance all the time
Evaluate the physical workplace layout to ensure there is a minimum of 6 feet distance between two workstations. It is wise to stay as far as possible from your coworkers. Employees in their cubicles and offices can easily maintain distance. Employees that work closely need to maintain minimum space distance. Be creative to work efficiently with a smaller amount of close contact. Distancing is necessary to limit the spread!
High-risk employees need to be protected
According to COVID-19 data people having underlying medical issues or whose immunity is compromised are at high risk to get infected. Employees need to prioritize their health and ask for time off or work from home. Employers can offer financial relief to such employees if they are unable to return to work.
Carry lunch and beverages
Coffee machines and refrigerators in the office are high traffic areas that need to be closed temporarily. Vending machines are safe to use when everyone washes their hands before and after they hit the buttons. Businesses can ask employees to carry utensil dispensers and single-serve straw from their homes.
Modify work hours, if necessary
Shifts or staggering hours may be needed to make sure employees maintain sufficient distancing. Alternate workdays for different employee teams or groups will help in the social distancing needs.
Employee training
Employers may offer video training to employees returning to work, so they are aware of the new rules. HR needs to train supervisors on the best way to enforce the social distancing policy. Encourage employees to wash hands properly at specified frequencies.
Employers need to stay updated about COVID-19 protocols recommended by CDC and mandated by the government.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
About Author: Andrew Dominik is the founder of Quality Guest Post , the leading content marketing site. He has considerable experience in internet marketing and business development. His areas of expertise are the development of marketing goals and strengthen online brand reputation. He loves to write about social media, entrepreneurship, business growth, and startups.
5 Creative Ways to Give Kudos to Your Employees
Not so long ago when a project I worked on had a successful outcome, it was easy for my manager to stop by my office or cubicle to offer a personal thank you or job well done. She might also recognize the results of my work in a team meeting; the kudos met with a smattering of applause and even “congrats, man” from around the room.
Since March when our workforces became almost entirely remote, these kinds of opportunities for organic employee recognition are harder to come by. While we may all agree recognizing and rewarding employee accomplishments is still important, it can easily slip as we struggle to balance the demands of driving new business, managing a remote workforce, and maintaining work-life balance at a time when it has never been more difficult.
With management approval, employees can redeem their earned kudos for rewards points for things like gift cards to pre-approved vendors, corporate gifts, or other items. Employees can even transfer kudos points for an even stronger connection and culture.
Getting Creative with kudos
Rewarding staff for going the extra mile is a great way to raise performance and motivation levels, especially today. As managers and HR leaders, you may need to regularly encourage peer-to-peer recognition as your workforce continues to adjust to being remote. That means coming up with some creative ways and opportunities for employees to recognize each other’s efforts, inspire their teammates, and think outside their home office.
To help, we came up with five ways to use kudos to increase teamwork and recognize your employees for the great work they do every day.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
#1: Highlight customer-to-peer recognition.
While many of us are remote, so many employees are filling essential roles where engaging with customers, patients, and guests is especially vital. Every employee appreciates when a customer recognizes them to a manager for good service, but not every customer takes the time to do so.
Why not enable your employees to recognize each other for delivering outstanding service? Adopt a type of “see-something, say-something” policy that encourages employees to recognize and reward each other for providing good service, diffusing difficult situations, and going the extra mile for a customer.
To be specific, we’ve seen many examples where one team member will hear the customer say something great about another teammate. “Susan is so great. She was so accommodating when I was running late for my appointment and helped move the schedule around to fit me in.” Instead of letting such a compliment drop, many LIKE.TG customers are now using kudos to relay this message directly to the employee.
#2: Points for a positive attitude.
Seems like a simple expectation, but for many remote employees work and home are colliding in ways they never expected, which can make “coming to work” every day feel like a monumental challenge.
As a manager, it is important to take the time to understand what your employees may be juggling at home: small children struggling with virtual learning, teenagers with too much time on their hands or elderly parents requiring care. Don’t overlook the challenges employees are facing at home; instead appreciate their efforts to find the right balance and encourage them to ask for help when it is needed.
In this case, we’ve seen kudos given to employees managers knew were dealing with difficult challenges at home, acknowledging how much the team (and entire company) appreciated their contributions.
#3: Share your quarantine hacks.
We’re all in this together, and we’re all discovering new ways to cope with home office life and quarantine family raising. So why not have some fun with it?
Encourage your employees to share their “hacks” for working from home and entertaining their families during quarantine days. It could be creating fun backgrounds for Zoom meetings, a quick and easy recipe to feed your family or movie suggestions for young kids. With work and life blurring together, why limit recognition to just work? We’re all seeking new ideas.
Then, recognize the best contributor or anyone who submitted a good idea. Kudos even lets you create custom badges for a project like this.
#4: Highlight those who improve life in the community.
Employees going above and beyond for the business and the extra mile for their families. What about recognizing employees pitching in to help their communities during COVID-19? From delivering groceries and meals to elderly neighbors to fostering pets in need of care, so many people are finding ways to give back to their communities in their free time. Let them know you appreciate their efforts. You may also find recognizing them inspires their teammates in unexpected ways.
#5: Encourage personal improvement.
Some employees may be looking for inspiration to break up their quarantine life. Create opportunities by encouraging employees to seek personal or professional development, healthy lifestyle choices and career coaching. You may also consider how to convert these into team initiatives—weight loss or exercise competitions, or peer-to-peers training for example.
Quarantine and work from home can make employees feel “stuck” but encouraging them to try new things together can be affirming for everyone.
We hope you enjoy these five kudos tips for improving employee recognition and rewards. For other suggestions on using LIKE.TG’s Workmates solution to manage remote teams and enhance the overall employee experience, please download our eBook, “A Better Way to Communicate, Engage, and Recognize 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.
Remote Working Safety Guide
There have been major advances in information technology. Universally, the workforce is becoming more and more flexible. This means that more people are working away from the office.
Remote working has many benefits, but it also raises safety and health concerns. The real issue, however, is cybersecurity. Most companies vigilantly protect their networks and devices from security threats. Working from remote locations makes this hard.
This guide will give you tips on how to better protect yourself from cyber threats while working from remote locations.
Advantages of Remote Working Flexibility
With remote working, you are in charge of your own schedule. You have control over what time you do your work as long as you meet your deadlines. This is a major motivating factor since it makes working efficient.
Less Costly
Working remotely or from home is a cost saver! You won't have to spend money on things like transportation costs, eating lunch out, and purchasing a business wardrobe. The overall effect is increased savings on your part.
Fewer Interruptions
Remote working allows you to focus on your work without distractions like office chatter. This greatly increases productivity. Of course, there’s the temptation to be less productive at home, but in reality, it’s easy for managers to monitor workers based on output.
Better Health and Well-being
Most remote workers agree that they have more time to include daily exercises into their schedules. As a remote worker, you also won't be exposed to sick employees. On the other hand, if you are sick you'll be able to take care of yourself while still being productive.
Better Work-life Balance
Remote working doesn’t require you to adhere to strict working hours like in the past. This allows you to focus on other aspects of your life like picking up kids from school, household chores, and many other things that are important to you.
Reduces Environmental Footprint
With remote working, people don't have to travel to and from work every day. Carbon emissions from cars are renowned for causing pollution. Having fewer cars on the road goes a long way in environmental conservation.
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.”
Disadvantages of Remote Working
Personal Distractions
When working from the office, there will be far fewer personal distractions. When working from home you’re constantly reminded of family responsibilities and duties. If you’re the type of worker who needs structure and supervision, this may be hard to achieve from home.
Lack of Motivation
Since there is no strict timetable to stick to, you are likely to lose self-discipline. This will make you less motivated to do your work. This really depends on the type of worker you are and what you need for motivation.
Less Collaboration
If you’re working remotely, you won’t be able to consult with colleagues. Although working side by side with fellow employees can be distracting, it’s still helpful in achieving collaboration on projects.
Lower Pay
Companies don’t typically pay remote employees well, especially in the first-world with high costs of living. Workers in third-world countries really thrive with remote work, as they are often paid in stronger currencies. Still, they are also paid less than their first-world counterparts for the same work.
Risks of Remote Working Phishing Attacks
This is a type of social engineering attack used to steal data and information like credit card numbers, and login credentials. It occurs when an attacker dupes a victim into opening a scam email or text. As a remote worker, you are susceptible to this attack especially if you don’t use email address search tools before opening your mail.
Unsecured Networks
A reliable and secure internet connection is not always available to remote workers. Working on a public network is especially risky. Using public networks can lead to potential data breaches and other security risks.
Computer Sharing and Personal Use
At times, working remotely may mean you share your work computer with family members or housemates. This can pose a potential security risk especially if you have sensitive information on your computer.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
Safety Tips for Minimizing the Risks
Update Programs and Operating Systems
Applications and operating systems have numerous vulnerabilities. Cybercriminals can utilize this to infiltrate your device. They normally rely on people’s laziness to update software.
The latest versions of programs usually have inherent vulnerabilities. It’s therefore essential to regularly update everything installed in any device you use for work.
Using Email Address Search Tools
This will help protect you from phishing emails. All you need to do is install an email address search tool to check every suspicious email you receive. If you do not recognize the sender of an email, do not open it before using the search tool.
Protect devices with an Antivirus solution
Companies take different measures to protect their devices from malware. These include restricting online access from unauthorized devices, prohibiting employees from installing applications, and installing security solutions.
If you have work documents on your computer, you should install a reliable Antivirus on any device with corporate data.
Lock your device
It’s easy for someone to spy on your work if you leave your device unattended. It’s therefore important to ensure your screen is locked before you move away. Even when working from home, it’s essential to lock your device. Be on guard to ensure all devices are password protected.
In addition to the above, you can configure WI-FI encryption to prevent attackers from gaining access to your WI-FI network. Also, keep an eye out for advancements in security protocols. Remote working may have its fair share of cons, but when all is said and done, it’s the way of the future. Getting accustomed to these safety precautions will ensure you’re equipped to do your job without any hiccups!
About Author:
This article is written by Marketing Team ofLIKE.TG.LIKE.TG is a leading global provider of Applicant Tracking, Onboarding, Offboarding, Communications, Engagement, and Recognition solutions. Its powerful and user-friendly software eliminates manual/paper processes, increases employee productivity and engagement, improves time and cost savings, and reduces regulatory compliance risk.
HR Innovation and creativity – 3 mindset shift towards the future of HR
If you are in the HR profession and want to know how to be more creative and innovative towards the future of HR this article is for you. In this article, I'm going to share with you three mindsets that you need to embrace if you want to be more creative and innovative in your role as an HR professional.
Increasing employee productivity is the heart of the success of today's workplaces even though a lot of technology like outsourcing automation artificial intelligence and many other softwares are available yet it's the people who do most of the work keeping employees motivated and to boost productivity is a daunting task for an employer so here are some great suggestions by which an employer can bring about improvements and changes in the work environment and bring about positive results.
Now, why understanding this is important?
Because the workplace is changing, the marketplace is changing and the roles of an HR professional are also changing. So that's why you need to pay more attention to how to be more creative and innovative. Specifically in this article, I want to share with you three mindset shifts that you need to embrace. So what are the three mindset shifts you need to embrace? Let me go through it one by one with you.
1. Number one is "Think different":
Think different. That means you need to embrace a different mindset. Traditionally, HR embraced a process-driven mindset. That means HR will map out a lot of different processes and the employees need to follow. But now you need to shift the thinking. You need to think differently. Instead of thinking about the process, you need to shift your thinking from process to experience. One cannot paint all employees with the same brush as each one is different and unique there is diversity in their potential have different needs and aspirations the employer must identify each one's area of excellence encourage them and help them realize their own potential after accomplishing a difficult task successfully.
From process to experience - What does that mean?
This means you need to think from an employee perspective. You need to think from a user perspective. You need to think about how you can walk the journey together with the user or the employee, and then you map out your process and your experience journeys accordingly. So that's the first thing you need to embrace to think differently to shift from process to experience.
2. The second mindset shift is "uncertain":
Embrace uncertainty. So what does that mean?
That means nowadays, because of the technological development, because of the market development, because of the social developments things are moving at hyper speed and things are getting increasingly uncertain and that's why you need to embrace this new mindset of "Speed trumps perfection". Speed trumps perfection. That means speed is super important. You don't need to wait until the perfect timing to launch something. You don't need to wait until the perfect product or perfect policy, perfect guidelines in place before you launch it. So what we suggest is you need to embrace speed. Whenever you have some new guidelines and new policies, you may want to launch it on a small scale. Launch it. Test it among employees to get there early feedback, so that you can improve the next version. Instead of waiting for the perfect moment to do certain things, you need to embrace this "Speed trumps perfection". You have the version one; Launch it, get some feedback, improve it. Launch the version two and so and so forth. So that's the second mindset shift.
3. The third mindset shift you need to embrace is "Be Open":
Be open. Be open to what?
Be open to the marketplaces. Be open to what's happening outside of the industry so that you can adopt the borrowed creativity. Borrowed creativity: That means look at what's happening outside of the industry and see if you can adopt and use it for your own industry. Inviting industry experts to train and share experiences are good ways to create a professional flow as training does not end once an employee is on board placing employees in challenging and diverse environment enhances productivity and creativity there is excitement to perform well and think out of the box that must be encouraged allow them to experiment and be liberal in giving space as young energetic minds are hugely talented.
Traditionally our mindset was "oh that policy. Let's say it is a four-day workweek policy that is available and happening in the technology industry and you may think that oh, we are not a technology company. It won't work for us in this industry. That is their own policy because they are the technology sector. So what you can do right now is you need to be more open. Be more open to new ideas happening outside you. Instead of saying that "oh, we are different, we cannot adopt that", what you can do is "oh this policy is working well in the technology sector or in that particular industry. How can we modify and make it work for our industry? So that's the mindset shift. If you need to be open instead of saying "oh, we are different. We can't do that" What you need to do is we can say "oh it's working in that industry. How can we modify and adapt it, so that we can make it work for our own industry."
Final thoughts:
So to recap what are the three mindset shifts you need to embrace. Number one is to think differently. Number two, embrace the uncertainty so that you can focus on speed rather than perfection and number three is be open. Be open to other industries. Be open to other industry trends. So in short, "DUO" mindset - Different, Uncertain, and Open. So I hope this article sharing is something useful to you and I hope this can help you become a more creative and innovative HR professional.
Discussions HR Can Have with New Hires to Build Trust
Welcoming new hires into the office brings exciting growth and fresh faces and perspectives to a company. In order to establish a strong relationship with new hires, it is important that HR takes the time to sit down and have meaningful conversations with these employees. Here are a few of the discussions that HR can have to build a deeper trust with their new hires.
Prepare an organized onboarding process
Oftentimes, the HR team might be some of the first interactions that new hires have on their first day in the office and even beforehand. Because of these early interactions, a way to gain credibility with your new employees is to be as streamlined and organized as possible with your onboarding process.
This guide was designed to help you navigate through those difficult tasks and help determine the right software for your organization, download our ebook now.
Download now
With advancements in onboarding software, companies now have the opportunity to drive employee engagement from day one. Whether this includes utilizing electronic signatures, mobile app notifications, or effective payroll and tax form management, finding ways to help employees adjust to a new work environment and taking the hassle out of mandatory onboarding procedures can go a long way. Onboarding provides insight into your company’s culture and can act as a way to make a great first impression for your new hires.
Be transparent with growth opportunities
The opportunity to grow within an organization is something that most employees prioritize. But considering they are just entering into the office, they may be less likely to ask questions about how this process works within your organization. One way that the HR team can develop trust with new hires is by outlining this process early on in their employee onboarding experience.
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.”
Equipping workers with the correct and adequate amount of knowledge surrounding the procedures, requirements, and opportunities available within your organization creates a united front. Similarly, outlining the specifics, such as conducting annual performance reviews, sets the stage for fair promotion and leadership opportunities. This open communication from HR can help give employees a better idea of the timeline and what to expect in their career advancement opportunities.
Provide an in-depth explanation of benefits
Employee benefits are something that new employees will certainly be interested in learning more about—especially considering that a benefits package differs from company to company. Of course, reviewing this benefits package is typically part of the onboarding process, but you can better build trust with your new employees by spending extra time to ensure they are maximizing their benefits. This exemplifies your commitment to helping them reach their full potential in and out of the office.
To promote transparency and build that trust, you can even discuss the areas where the benefits your company offers may not be enough to fulfill the new employee’s specific needs. For example, while many employers offer some sort of group life insurance coverage, this amount is oftentimes not enough to adequately cover the needs of their entire family.
Being transparent about your company coverage is important when building rapport with new hires. Discussing your company limits regarding additional coverage or even recommending other life insurance companies for a private policy outside of your network shows your capability to help a new employee feel more secure when starting a new position.
Discuss the future of the company
An HR department carries many responsibilities, but a critical role to consider especially when welcoming new members to your organization is discussing the future of the company. While it may seem premature to discuss big changes, such as shifts in management, business strategy, or internal workflow, this sense of transparency in any upcoming changes ensures that everyone is on the same page. While this level of communication is key, deciding the best way to effectively communicate based on the department and employee also creates a personalized approach in incorporating everyone’s needs to not only help your employees grow but the company as well.
With the nature of HR, it is essential to maintain a level of professionalism. With that being said, it does not mean that you don’t have the opportunity to have meaningful and memorable experiences with new hires. Considering the stresses that come along with starting a new job and how an HR department can help ease the transition and create trust with new hires from the start.
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 an Intranet? And How Can You Benefit from the Right One?
Company intranets have been a part of corporate life since the mid-'90s. But in the last half-decade or so, they've evolved to include many social, relationship-building features. Naturally, the merit of these developments is hotly debated.
While we can all agree that strong company relationships are important, how these relationships are developed is a point of contention. Is social intranet software a productivity killer, or an important business tool?
In this blog post, we'll explore the main benefits an intranet provides, and whether or not your company should invest in this type of application.
No credit card needed Less then 5 min to set up
15 Benefits of Integrating a Company Intranet
Wondering whether to use a company intranet platform or not? You're not alone. The topic has been picking up steam lately. Clear and concise communication is essential for any role in a business, and the quality of a company’s internal communication sets the stage for the future.Here are, in our opinion, the 15 biggest benefits:
1. Increased Productivity
It’s easy to think that the availability of socializing or sharing personal information via social intranet may lead to distractions and decrease productivity. However, the reality is quite the opposite. The benefits of easier collaboration, efficient communication, and enhanced organization are far more important. Also, it should be noted that social intranet software allows for conversation monitoring. Making this known to employees will often discourage any inappropriate sharing without ruining company culture. In addition to serving as a central point of communication, the intranet ensures prompt distribution of key company updates and information, reducing employee search time.
2. Improved Collaboration
Email, for all its advantages, is not an ideal internal correspondence tool. Messages are easily lost, buried beneath a mountain of other emails.
Social intranets separate internal and external communications, allowing team members to easily send large files when necessary and respond to each other in a more timely fashion.
Lastly, the community aspect of social intranet software encourages employees to share ideas in a transparent and streamlined way. Different thoughts and suggestions often make for better businesses.
3. Enhanced Employee Satisfaction
Employee satisfaction is an important component of any organization. Studies show that the average employee tenure at a company is a mere four years, and employee turnover costs businesses an average of six to nine months' salary per departed worker.
By implementing solutions like a social intranet, organizations can improve employee engagement and satisfaction, therefore reducing turnover rates. Studies have shown that 60% of companies found increases in employee engagement through intranet use.
4. Facilitates Internal Communication
Communication Effective communication is the foundation for success within any organization. An effective company intranet solution encourages communication to flourish across your organization:
Teams can have an open dialog
Colleagues can share and contribute knowledge
Leadership (managers/supervisors) can stay in touch
Different departments can provide and share updates
The best part is that communication moves in both directions. Anyone can share, comment, and provide feedback. An intranet both streamlines communication by bringing it into one place and entrusts individuals with a voice and company knowledge.
It is important to note that intranets today not only facilitate information sharing between employees and the company but also encourage employees to collaborate and share information among themselves.
5. Personalized User Experiences
Unlike traditional intranets restricted to a one-size-fits-all approach, modern social intranets customize channels, page content, and company portalsbased on employee roles, departments, or groups. Tailoring the intranet experience to individual employees according to relevant criteria increases their interest and engagement levels in the platform's information.
6. Builds a community of self-service
Previous approaches to company intranets were made up of collections of web pages and links to disparate documents and systems. Over time documents would become outdated and links would be broken or expire, leading to frustration for employees and HR admins.
Modern intranets are designed from the ground up to be a repository of vital company information—secure, accessible, and easy to maintain. The community approach to sharing and managing information gives employees self-service access to content and applications they need at any time and from anywhere.
Social intranet by Workmates takes the community a step further, making information easy to find with powerful search capabilities and easy to promote with viral content sharing from intuitive libraries and repositories. Plus the integrated employee directory makes finding and sharing content with groups, teams, and individuals a snap.
7. Connecting Across Locations and Time Zones
Globalization has led to an increase in organizations with remote workers or those who work across time zones. Companies now use intranets to connect remote employees, field-based teams, satellite offices, and any employee who may not be in corporate headquarters, keeping everyone aligned and improving overall employee performance. By serving as the central online hub for the company, intranets provide insights to employees across locations, enabling seamless communication regardless of physical distance. This connectivity, available through desktop and mobile apps, ensures that remote employees, field-based teams, and satellite offices can stay connected, leading to improved morale, productivity, and engagement.
8. Recognition and Rewards
Employee recognition is a fundamental part of the employee experience, and it helps to improve employees’ engagement levels and overall satisfaction. According to the SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey, effective peer-to-peer recognition is 35.7% more likely to have a positive impact on financial results than manager-only recognition.
Employee recognition software empowers every employee to recognize and be recognized on an equal playing field. Employees can recognize and be recognized on an equal footing, ranging from peer shoutouts to tangible rewards. This culture of appreciation and motivation enhances the overall employee experience and boosts morale.
9. Boosts Employee Efficiency
A unified communication system significantly enhances efficiency in the workplace. Nearly half of US workers prefer to communicate with their colleagues online, saving time and increasing productivity. Modern intranets eliminate the need for cumbersome email workflows, reducing time wasted on version control and confusion. By providing easy access to the latest documents and forms, intranets save valuable time and allow employees to focus on more strategic initiatives.
10. Comprehensive Content Management
Intranets serve as comprehensive repositories of essential company information, encouraging community-driven content sharing and management. This approach empowers employees with self-service access to vital information, ensuring they have access to necessary content and applications whenever needed. Modern intranets like Workmates enhance content sharing with search capabilities, intuitive content libraries, company announcements, and integrated employee directories, simplifying content discovery and sharing among groups, teams, and individuals.
11. Cultivates a Culture of Workplace Happiness
Amplify the office atmosphere and experience through increased employee recognition and engagement. A company isnot a company withoutits people and most intranets are about the people. Bringing them together, bringing out the best in them, and enriching your company culture in the process. Transform your organization with intranets that cultivate connections, nurture talent, and enrich the company culture, leading to increased retention rates and improved performance.
12. Improves Employee Engagement
Fully engaged employees are far more likely to be satisfied, motivated, and committed to their work and company.
Overall, an engaged employee is more:
Positive in their work approach
Committed to developing and maintaining careers at their organization
Creative in solving problems
Motivated to meet and exceed goals
Proactive about learning new skills and starting new projects
Connected to the mission of the company
By incorporating social features such as likes, comments, and sharing, social intranets promote interaction and engagement among employees. Gitnux report shows that 74% of intranet users access their intranet daily, and the shows that intranet can foster a sense of community and belonging, leading to higher employee morale and productivity.
13. Simplified Implementation and Usage
Employees typically embrace social intranets because they mimic the same usability and features they are accustomed to with the social media sites they use every day. Like any new application, familiarity is critical to success and maximizing your company’s investment. Training is significantly reduced as a barrier to adoption, and employees are more likely to revisit the intranet regularly to explore the tools and information available to them.
By offering centralized access to essential tools and information, social intranets drive collaboration and provide enhanced support by serving as engagement points for various department functions like HR documents or IT support processes.
14. Mitigated Security Risks
It is crucial to address the security advantages provided by social intranets. Without an internal system for communicating and sharing important documents, employees will be forced to use other solutions such as Dropbox and Slack.
These are wonderful tools, but they aren't controlled by your company's IT department and may be more susceptible to hacks than an internal system.
By investing in a company intranet platform, your private company details will remain "in-house" and more secure. Isn't that worth the investment?
15. Seamless Integration
Modern intranets make integrating critical applications like document management and payroll systems simple, enabling seamless information sharing and access. For instance, integrating intranets with payroll systems streamlines processes for HR teams, ensuring accurate and up-to-date employee data across all teams and applications. This integration fosters trust among employees regarding the security and accuracy of their data.
Conclusion
Today, intranets are a constant reality of the current workplace, and social intranets provide many benefits to companies, as we've just seen. To be productive and enhance corporate growth, intranets should be user-centered yet also designed such as to achieve corporate strategy. In addition to content delivery, intranets are used to enhance team collaboration and productivity, increase employee engagement, and minimize security risks, ultimately, developing a successful corporate strategy.
About Author:
This article is a collaboration between LIKE.TG and Ben Hadfield, a writer and editor who specializes in producing quality content across a wide spectrum of mediums. We hope you enjoyed the wealth of knowledge and experience that went into writing this post!
4 Tips for Effective Background Check Of a Remote Worker: for Employers & Employees
A background check is a part of normal life for those who work remotely, and almost anyone can run one. Often a job applicant provides references of previous employers to give evidence of their successful work history. Many companies have been compromised by candidates who take advantage of a trusting relationship though, so further steps are taken to ensure their next person hired is of great caliber. This quick guide will give all the information you need to know about employment background checks.
Working Remotely
Especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, working from home has never been so popular for employers and employees. Even leading up to the pandemic, almost five million Americans were working from home. Coronavirus likely sped up a shift that was already gaining momentum.
Common Mistakes When Hiring Remote Workers
Not every employee has habits that are conducive to working from home and not every employer is made to have the ideal working from home environment for beginners. Like so many aspects of employment, there is no such thing as a fundamentally bad employee or employer. However, they can be ill-suited though.
Risks and Difficulties Hiring a Remote Worker
Hiring a remote worker still means having someone who will be a member of the team and get the job done. Consider making it so the candidate can have at least one face-to-face interview, find out if they have experience in the remote working software programs that your company uses, and conduct a thorough background screening.
Working from Home Means Working
The biggest concern when hiring someone to work from home is having them actually work from home. Boundaries should be made clear between employees and employers, and it could be the case that the traditional nine to five working model needs revision. Flexible work hours or even a result-orientated work ethic could be considered if it’s fitting with both parties.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
Remote and On-Board Hiring
Remote hiring means hiring someone who is to work remotely from the office. Remote onboarding is the follow-on from that process. To ensure that the new hire is fully invested personally in the operation, it may be worthwhile having them come to your head office for a day or even up to a week. Get them familiar with the rest of the operation, even consider having them spend some time with another remote worker. This will give them a feel of the culture and what is expected as a member of the team.
Tips on how to conduct an effective background check on a remote candidate?
There are many ways to conduct an effective background check, but the three main records that can get checked are driving records, criminal records, and drug screening.
Driving Records
Every state has some way of checking someone’s driving records. Driving record checks will reveal any incidents that the employee may have had while driving a car, as well as any encounters with law enforcement.
Criminal Records
Criminal record background checks will reveal whether or not the prospective employee has had any interaction with law enforcement, as well as the nature of that attention.
Drug Screening
Drug screening can be done remotely by a number of providers. It involves collecting a urine sample from your prospective employee to find out if they dabble in illicit substances.
Tips on how an employee should Prepare for Employment Background Screening
The reason why employers conduct background checks is to ensure that they are hiring a strong member of the team who will have a positive influence. If you’re applying for a position where you are working remotely, chances are the prospective employer is conducting a background check. In order to be prepared, it is best to know what they are going to find out first.
1. Get a copy of your credit report
Getting a copy of your credit report is quick and easy. It will tell you whether you have had any failures in paying bills, whether you have a mortgage, and how you are rated as a financial citizen. Many employers use credit reports to get an idea of who they are hiring.
2. Check your motor vehicle record
There are ways to copy driving records in your state so that you can check your history. It is recommended to also see what you might be able to do to rectify any past incidents. You can quite often contact your DMV to have points removed or records expunged.
3. Check court records
Go to your local court and find out what records they have. This will be a good way of finding out what is potentially on your criminal background check.
4. Stick to the facts
You know how good or bad you are as a citizen, and what is on your record. Getting hired is not an interrogation, and potential employers often value absolute transparency. If you know there is something on your record, it may be worth being upfront about the facts and raising it before they do.
Conclusion
There are many ways to increase productivity, Encourage employees who are working remotely to set a schedule and take regular breaks. It’s also crucial that you check-in with them from time to time to ensure that their morale is high. Don’t just monitor them for productivity. Keep an eye on their well-being and morale as well. That’s a win-win for everyone.
About Author: Patrick Peterson is a writer/editor at AutoDetective. Born and raised in the automotive world. He’s a passionate writer who crafts exquisite content pieces about everything related to cars and bikes.
Ways You Can Hook in New Hires with Your Company Culture
The competition for jobs nowadays becomes tighter and tighter year after year, with more and more graduates joining the workforce. But, the difficulty is not just experienced by the applicants. Hiring companies also sometimes encounter some problems in finding the right people for the job and keeping excellent talents in their roster. This is why it’s important for organizations to inculcate the value of company culture from the get go. Every time new hires are onboarded, they should be made familiar with how everything works in your business and how their role is crucial in your organization. Here are some ways for you to hook in new hires with your company culture.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
1. Build your organization’s image and reputation.
One of the most important things a business should work on is building a positive reputation as a business. This helps you invite high quality and motivated talents who will be willing to stay with your company and learn about your organization’s culture. Nowadays, building an online presence can be very helpful for businesses, especially since more and more people are relying on the internet to learn about various things, including companies to whom they can work for. Make the most of your online marketing efforts and get your name out there so that aspiring applicants will know what to expect as soon as they become a part of your organization.
2. Highlight employee stories.
People love success stories. If you have employees who have been in the company for years and worked their way up towards success in your company, and if you think they can inspire your current and future employees, then you might want to grab this opportunity to share their success with the whole organization, especially with your new hires.
3. Set up meetings with their future teams in a less formal setting.
A great way to welcome new hires and help them embrace your company culture is by scheduling their first team meetings in a positive and memorable way. Some companies set up lunch meetings, pizza parties or small welcome parties for new hires. You can come up with your own method of welcoming your new team members in a less formal manner, so that they will feel more welcome and at ease with their new workmates and their new environment.
4. Let them feel that they are a valuable addition to the company.
Another way to give your new hires a positive welcome is by making them feel that they are important to the company. They should know the importance of the position they are filling up and why it’s important that they embrace the work and the culture of the company. Making them feel valued can improve their morale and encourage them to adopt your company’s culture.
5. Challenge them to be a productive part of the team.
To help motivate your new hires to be more productive and more open to a new culture, it will help if you challenge them. Encourage them to be more focused on work and help build a positive work environment for everyone. Setting up their work attitude as soon as their first day at work is a great way to help them understand they are now a part of the company and that they are expected to adopt the work culture that you have.
6. Make your benefits and work environment worth their while.
Another important thing that you should prioritize if you want your new hires to be more receptive towards your company culture is by providing them with work benefits and an environment that is suitable for the work they have to accomplish. This includes their work tools, co-workers, work space, health care, compensation, rewards, recognition, and more.
7. Encourage new hires to ask questions.
You should also remind and encourage your new hires to ask questions. It’s important that you make sure the new members of your team are aware of everything that they should know as soon as they become a part of your team. This way, they become more familiar with your company and with all of your processes. Asking questions will help them learn more, absorb information better, and get clarifications on things that might not be clear for them. A good way to approach this is by assigning a point person your new hires can ask questions from. Encouraging them to be inquisitive and to know when and how to ask the right questions will also help you avoid any costly mistakes that may hurt your organization and your reputation.
8. Invest in Your Employees
One of the best investments that you can make for your business is your manpower. To make the most of the talents that you have in your roster, you should provide them with as much knowledge and resources that you provide to help them become effective and productive members of your organization. Provide them with training and quality work tools, and to motivate them to do their work well, see to it that you reward them for their productivity and for doing high quality work.
Christopher BaggottChief Executive Officer of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
Bottom Line
Hiring new people into your organization is a great way to replenish your manpower anytime someone leaves. Whether you are hiring an experienced worker or a fresh college graduate looking for work at a job fair, it’s important to make sure that you have the right people doing quality work to help your organization grow. Getting new hires fully acquainted with your company culture can sometimes be very challenging, but with the right approach and strategies, you can win your employee’s loyalty and dedication to your organization’s goals.
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 Ways HR Can Promote Workplace Health and Wellness
Workplace health and wellness is critical to a healthy, happy workforce. Sick or unhappy employees aren’t operating at 100%, which means neither is your workplace. Building a culture of workplace health and wellness can take a bit of work to implement and get employees on board, but it’s worth the effort.
If you are an HR professional who is looking to build a culture of wellness, promote health, and improve the health of your workplace, here are six tactics you can use.
1. Create a flexible working environment
We’ve all heard about the term “work-life balance” but in reality, achieving that balance isn’t feasible. It’s more of a sliding scale, which is why we should strive for flexibility over “balance.” If your employees are chronically stressed, this can lead to many deadly illnesses. By working to eliminate or at the very least mitigate their stress at work, you can help boost morale and show them how much you care about their wellness.
So how do you achieve that? Consider the following:
Meditation rooms
Flexible schedules
Summer hours
Outdoor workspaces
Remote work options
Encourage employees to use their PTO (and mean it)
Mindfulness training
Unlimited PTO
All of the above help reduce stress, promote health, and work to achieve flexibility for your employees. If they have the option to work remotely or create their own schedules, then they don’t have to feel stressed about getting their car serviced, taking their kids to the doctor, or running errands that need to be completed during standard business hours.
Related Reading: The Remote Workforce is the New Normal
But this starts at the top. Employees need to see their bosses taking time off, working remotely, disconnecting, etc. It needs to be a part of the culture for people to feel comfortable actually taking advantage of some of these flexible options.
2. Ensure employee healthcare is a top priority
Employee health and wellness is an attempt to take a proactive approach versus a reactive one. The first line of defense when it comes to your employees’ health and wellness are the benefits that you provide to them.
Employees need to be able to afford their health care. How often do we hear about people not going to the doctor because they can’t afford it? By providing employees with affordable, low-cost insurance plans or even an onsite clinic, they can take advantage of preventative care. This allows them the ability to stop avoiding putting things off until they get so bad they become much bigger issues down the road.
3. Establish or reinforce an employee health and wellness program
If you’re looking to increase productivity, reduce sick days, improve employee health, increase retention, boost morale, promote health and have happier employees, we encourage putting an employee health and wellness plan in place. If you have one in place already, be sure you encourage employees to take advantage of it and actually participating. If you don’t have one and you’re looking to get serious about improving workplace health, now is the time to draft a plan.
Related Reading: What HR Leaders Must Include in Employee Wellness Programs
4. Get employees moving throughout the day
According to the Mayo Clinic, sitting for long periods of time is linked to a number of health issues: increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels, obesity, and more. Prolonged sitting can also increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Many jobs today require working on a computer leading to prolonged sedentariness. Encourage employees to get up and get move throughout the da. It can help break up the amount of time they’re seated.
Here are a few ways to encourage your employees to be physically active throughout the day:
Give extra breaks for people to get up, move around and stretch
Provide employees standing desks or under-desk ellipticals or cycles
Bring in a fitness instructor a few times a week. Things like yoga, Zumba, martial arts, or barre are all great examples of active exercises that don’t require much, if any, equipment.
Again, this is one of those things that management and HR need to practice what they’re preaching. If your employees see you taking advantage of the extra breaks to get up and move around, they’re more likely to follow suit.
5. Stress the importance of your safety policies
If you have safety policies in place, that’s great. If you don’t, you should. But your policies are only as helpful to the degree that your employees know about and practice them.
Job incident prevention is a key piece to working towards a positive workplace environment. Every seven seconds a worker is injured on the job, according to the National Safety Council. That equates to over 12,600 injuries every day!
How can you work to prevent your company from becoming part of that statistic? By providing ongoing safety training and additional training for management. Empower your management team with the tools they need to reinforce the policies and takeaways moving forward. Display visible reminders around your workplace on the safety guidelines. Especially in hazardous areas where accidents might be more prone to occur.
6. Encourage communication
All of these ideas are great to try and promote health and wellness, but if they aren’t working for your employees, they need to feel empowered to speak up. By the time most employers notice an employee is burnt out, physically, mentally or both, it’s often too late. Establishing an open line of communication can help you know about these issues well before they become an actual problem.
You can implement an open-door policy and make sure you have regular check-ins and connection with everyone on your staff. Encourage employees to express concerns. This can help foster healthy relationships so employees will feel comfortable telling you when they’re beginning to feel burnt out.
Key Takeaways:
There are many ways to promote health and have a happier workplace. We recommend starting with these six:
Create a flexible working environment by allowing work from home and adjustable schedules
Make employee health a priority
Establish an employee health and wellness program
Encourage employees to get up and move and exercise during the workday
Stress the importance of your safety policies to try and prevent workplace injuries
Establish open channels of communication to avoid employee burnout
About Author: Joe McErlane is the founder and CEO of NeoPath Health, where he has worked to improve employee health for companies looking to control the spiraling cost of employee medical plans. NeoPath establishes and manages onsite clinics that improve care, reduce costs and attract and retain employees.
3 Reasons Your Employees' Productivity is Lacking and How to Help
Have you ever shown up to work, but all day you just feel like you're in a fog? You can't concentrate, you feel like you might be getting sick, but your to-do list keeps growing instead of you being able to check things off of it. You don't feel like you're at 100% but you know you can't go home because you have so much work to get done. So, you continue to sit there and stare at your screen and try to get through it all. That is an example of presenteeism from an employee's perspective.
By definition, presenteeism is when an employee shows up for work but is unable to fully perform or function because they are sick, tired, stressed, injured, or any other number of conditions or distractions.
The issue of absenteeism is more commonly known, which refers to people being physically out of the office, oftentimes an ongoing issue, with no good excuse. Absenteeism is much easier to recognize and track than presenteeism. If you have low rates of absenteeism, that may actually be a warning sign that your employees are showing up to work when they are unwell.
Are you unsure if your employees are suffering from presenteeism? Here are three reasons they might not be productive and ways you can help them and your bottom line:
1. Insufficient Health Insurance and Time-Off Policies
America is behind the rest of the working world when it comes to paid time off. The US averages 10 paid holidays per year, while the highest 6 countries come in at 30-37 days. Many European countries provide several months or even years of paid maternity or paternity leave while the U.S.’s Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) only mandates that an employee can take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, only covers an estimated 60 percent of the workforce, and disproportionately excludes working parents.
In 2017, 27.4 million nonelderly Americans didn't have any health insurance coverage due primarily to the lack of affordable options. The American unemployment rate is at an all-time low, but millions of workers are actually working more than one part-time job to make ends meet. Typically, most part-time jobs do not provide any health insurance.
Insufficient health insurance leads to people visiting the doctor less and doing less preventative care which leads to more illnesses, chronic or otherwise, and the lack of time off leads to workers coming into work when they are sick so they don't miss out on paid wages.
2. "Sandwich Generation, " Single Parents, Dual-Earner Households, Unpaid Caregivers
Another reason your employees might not be as productive is if they fall into the “Sandwich Generation.” The "Sandwich Generation" is a group of people typically in their 30s or 40s who are raising their own children while also being responsible for the care of aging parent/s. According to Harvard Business School, three out of four (73%) employees reported having some type of current caregiving responsibility for the care of an elderly or disabled family member, relative, or friend. Caregivers working at least 15 hours per week indicated that this assistance significantly affected their work life. As baby boomers continue to age, the number of elderly people needing assistance is expected to continue to grow rapidly.
The need for caregiving and working individuals to contribute so much at home, either as single parents or dual-earner households, leads to workers saving their time off to care for others and coming into work sick, injured, or otherwise indisposed.
3. Nonexistent Focus on Mental Health
Things in the U.S. are improving regarding mental health awareness, but mental health issues are still largely stigmatized. If a workplace expects people to come in when physically ill, there is no way they are going to understand or respect that someone might need time off for "invisible" illnesses like anxiety or depression. In fact, a culture of presenteeism can lead to higher rates of anxiety and depression in the workforce.
American Medical Association studies found that on-the-job productivity loss (presenteeism) resulting from depression and pain was roughly three times greater than absence-related productivity loss (absenteeism) attributed to these conditions. Mental health issues can cause a lack of sleep which leads to chronic fatigue as well as memory and concentration issues.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
What Can You Do to Help?
1. Offer Adequate Time off
This may seem obvious, but it is important that you provide your employees with paid time off. If you absolutely can’t offer paid time off, at the very least, don’t allow a culture of shame and blame around taking an unpaid day off when someone is unwell, whether or not the reason behind the request is visible or invisible.
2. Invest in Comprehensive Health and Wellness
As a company that cares about the wellbeing of your employees, you should provide comprehensive health and wellness offerings that cover both physical and mental health as well as fitness and overall wellness in the workplace. Low-cost, value-based health coverage is a large factor. If you're having trouble finding what you need within traditional health offerings, you could consider a more contemporary solution like offering an onsite or near-site clinic.
3. Build a Culture of Trust and Understanding
One of the reasons employees may not feel comfortable taking time off when they are unwell is they have seen others come in in a similar state. They feel like everyone does the same, so who are they to stay home? This may be a result of a lack of communication and trust between employees and management. One way to build understanding and trust between coworkers is to encourage teamwork and cooperation. If the whole team helps cover when someone is out, it doesn't add a ton to each individual's workload. But it does take a huge amount of stress off of the person that needs it. Management can also jump in to help cover when someone needs to be out.
4. Educate and Empower Direct Management
It's important that all of management, especially your employee's direct managers, fully understand the issue of presenteeism and how they may be directly contributing to it. Consider holding a seminar with all of management to educate them on the warning signs and actions that exacerbate employee presenteeism.
Once all of management understands the issue, they need to lead by example. If employees see them coming in early, leaving late, and working even when they are sick, they absolutely won't feel comfortable staying home themselves.
5. Offer Tools for Employees and Their Managers
Paid time off can help take care of your sick employees, but what about those who have stressful issues they constantly handle while at home and can’t forget about while at work? Learning how to support working caregivers, single-parents, and employees trying to make ends meet is critical.
Presenteeism is a major issue within the workplace currently, costing trillions of dollars per year. But, with a little understanding and some direct action, it can be minimized or even eliminated.
Author Bio: Michelle Chaffee is the founder of Connected Caregiving, a comprehensive solution to help employers recognize and support working caregivers.
11 Ways to Rebuild HR to Support Fast Growth and Happy Employees
The Human Resources department has been perceived as a static aspect of running a company that can’t be upgraded or redeveloped for heightened efficiency. But the developments in the last decade or so have completely revolutionized the function. The latest research and technologies suggest that it is possible to make it the ‘key department’ that management takes notice of.
As a business owner or HR representative, there are many ways you can rebuild HR to support fast growth and happy employees. From setting policies to theonboarding process to the exit process, HR has an impact on how employees perceive the company. And the best way to meet their expectations is by creating plans to enhance their growth in the company. Here are the 11 best ways this can be done:
1. Promote agility and internal career development
Agile workforces that promote internal career development are the crown jewel in successful companies. An agile workforce promoting internal career development looks for ways to uplift and empower employees before searching for talent elsewhere.
There are many employees doing jobs they are not passionate about. That is why some companies have adopted the principle of allowing current employees to bid on new opportunities within the company. For example, if a new junior software developer is required, an ad might be sent to every employee.
Who knows? Perhaps Jim from accounting has been studying software development after hours and this career boost is all he needs to do what he loves. Promoting this kind of environment will keep employees on their toes and also give them unexpected career boosts that contribute to their happiness and satisfaction.
2. Be flexible when searching for talent and onboarding employees
If you are searching for real talent and would like to get the best cut, it is imperative to be flexible. Approaching this aspect of HR with a binary mentality of purely right and wrong can lead to losing real talent. For example, a lot of companies demand degrees or other qualifications from potential candidates.
Failure to produce the required qualifications means all bets are off. In some cases, this approach is just an unnecessary evil that creates a bottleneck to finding real talent and onboarding them. Instead, HR departments should have some flexibility and assess each case on its own merits.
Of course, certain jobs require a qualification to be produced when applying for the vacancy such as electricians, doctors, etc. However, some do not and in those cases, HR should be more flexible.
11. Improving the employees’ experience
HR departments should adopt a hands-on approach to defining a great employee experience. Unfortunately, some HR departments are not even aware of their employee experience and that is a huge mistake. Map out the journey of employees right from talent attraction to their exit strategy.
Mapping out the employee experience can improve their well-being and increase the number of retained employees. You should fully understand what contributes to a great employee experience to be in a better position of suggesting and implementing necessary changes.
Doing this can benefit both employees and the company because the workforce will be more dedicated to working because of being well-taken care of. Defining the employee experience can also help direct HR departments to appropriate talent search pools.
Christopher BaggottChief Executive Officer of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
Final thoughts
HR departments can be rebuilt using these tips and techniques that support fast growth and happy employees. Implementing various technologies can help rebuild this department, such as using AI, VR, and analytical dashboards. At the same time, HR departments should not forget to map out their employee experience and improve the engagement of new recruits. If a company needs more hands on deck, it should consider establishing a remote workforce to have a cost-efficient solution.
Author Bio: Ashley Simmons is a professional journalist and editor working with a daily newspaper in Salt Lake City and has an experience of 4 years. She’s also a top-rated academic writer withbest essay writers UK. Her expertise is in writing essays, thesis and dissertation in finance, economics, statistics, sales and marketing and fintech.
The Era of Machines: What Automation Means for HR
What is Workforce Management?
Workforce management (WFM), sometimes known as Human Resources Management is simply the process of ensuring that you have the right number of right workers operating at the right time and place, and performing the right tasks. And the objective of this process is to meet your company's goals in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Workforce management software handles a broad range of HR tasks including employee time tracking, employee scheduling, demand prediction, payroll administration, talent management, benefits administration, training programs, vacation and leave planning, performance monitoring, and crisis preparedness.
Changes to the workforce has also made automation a real lifesaver for HR. No longer do we have long-term, full-time employees. Today’s workers are made up of full-time, part-time, freelance, and contingent workers. There’s also the increased importance of providing a work-life balance. Without automation, how would HR ever schedule these workers’ shifts in such a way that would mean less cost for the company but favorable outcomes for both the employee and the company? Naturally, with the rise of new types of workers comes rules and regulations that govern the pay and benefits that each type receives.
Automating workforce management does not only deal with recruitment, scheduling, and time tracking. With the right tools, HR can foster ongoing employee engagement and increases talent retention. Some companies use time tracking applications with pop-up survey questions which allows upper management to keep their finger on the pulse and provide appropriate reactions/programs.
In short, workforce management is not just about scheduling, time tracking, planning, and forecasting. Today, HR is required to strategically manage the workforce to ensure that the people are productive in their work. And what that means is that they are happy or content with their pay, their schedule, their benefits, and everything else that they’ve deemed important enough to influence their “employee experience.” Without automation, a company will have to employ another company just to perform HR functions and manage big data analytics correctly to ensure its profitability and success.About Author: Meggie is a freelance writer and communication manager atAMGtime. Meggie is deeply convinced that marketing is a key to get success in all spheres and it’s a crucial part of our lives. Regularly, she delivers various concepts on how to market products, services, and events effectively. Meggie believes in a win-win formula and utilizes it on a daily basis in staff management.
How Technology is Making Remote Work Easier
Prior to the current working situation, very few companies had active remote work policies in place. However, working from home has now become a routine practice used by all types of businesses and industries. A survey conducted by Buffer even found that 99% of current remote workers would like to work remotely, at least some of the time, for the rest of their careers. This new type of working condition has led to advancements in technology used by businesses for enhancing remote work.
Technologies like Zoom and Slack have already had a large impact on business’s ability to communicate and monitor their employees, but there are still more on the way. As companies switch to permanent or longer periods of remote work, managers are looking for ways to continue to connect with their employees and alleviate certain problems associated with working from home. But there is hope on the horizon as new technologies come into play.
Remote Training and Tracking
Although some businesses have had to cut jobs, others have had to bring in new talent. Onboarding new employees remotely is a challenge for both the trainee and manager. However, tools like video conferencing, instant messaging and webinar are making this process easier to execute. Screen sharing abilities and prerecorded training materials are also features that more businesses have turned to for onboarding procedures.
All these technologies help engage new employees. In addition, specialized tools like employee engagement software focus solely on team members, which helps reduce new-hire frustrations. HR managers can track individuals through this type of automated technology, and can upload all information to a data cloud for other team members to review.
Shirley GarciaAuditing and Operations Administrator of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“I can’t say this enough: Without LIKE.TG, we could not have communicated important project information or demonstrated that we could take on an increased workload. We now provide real-time workforce statistics and productivity reports that have helped us win more projects.”
Once individuals have been onboarded, businesses need to know that they are working. The same goes for current employees too. Companies need to be able to facilitate feedback and check in on their team members. This is critical for maintaining engaged and motivated individuals, and helps acknowledge an individual’s hard work which in turn boosts working motivation and productivity. Checking in with team members frequently can identify any challenges they are facing, how they’re feeling and refocusing on goals. Tools like the Employee Experience Platform can make executing employee recognition easier for leadership.
Administrative Automation
An issue some organizations have with remote work is relying on employees to report their daily activities. Luckily, automation technology has stepped in to assist managers and individuals with monitoring remote work. Time tracking platforms can generate accurate timesheets for employees, scheduling applications can book meetings around each person’s calendar. Using receipt templates can help you keep your records organized and track your expenses and expense apps can scan receipts into a database via a mobile device.
In addition to reporting daily activities, there are tools to help people stay on task during the day. These platforms are meant to not only make employees focus on their jobs, but optimize their workflow, too. Certain tools review a person’s work patterns to provide insights on where improvements can be made. Anti-distraction tools can also turn off notifications when employees need to buckle down on a task.
Internet of Things (IoT)
Some companies are able to run all of their operations seamlessly thanks to the Internet of Things. Being connected to all of their machines and computers means workflow is not interrupted, and adjustments can happen in real time. Other types of businesses are using IoT to connect all of their owned mobile devices includingpostpaid and prepaid SIMsin order to rollout software updates to the whole system.
IoT also allows employees to work from home in comfort. Devices like smart refrigerators can keep lists of food to order, and in some cases order the food as well. Google Home and Amazon Echo act as a centralized hub in certain homes for controlling other smart devices
such as thermostats and plugs which can reduce energy usage. Having IoT connected technology in a home can also be a selling point in certain cases for remote employees buying a new house. Since the outbreak of COVID, many employees have started the process of buying a new home. There are numerous factors behind this home buying drive, including remote work, but as employees relocate, they still need technology to do their jobs.
5G
The rollout of 5G is still happening, but it promises to make cell networks better. With speeds up to 100 times faster than 4G, and made to handle more devices on a network, 5G will help people work from anywhere they can get a signal. That’s where remote work comes into play, people will not be limited by their connection to Wi-Fi or ethernet, but can work wherever they get a signal opening up more opportunities for distributed working. 5G will assist businesses with adding new talent to their teams no matter where they are located.
Remote work has been going on for some time now, but COVID has added all types of industries to the work from home category. Technology has been a driving factor in helping companies make this switch. From monitoring and onboarding employees to helping order groceries, technology is here to make working from home an easy task.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
10 Ways to Keep Telecommuting Workforce Engaged
Telecommuting has become a necessity in this current situation of the ongoing pandemic- Covid-19. Thus, organizations across the world have made a sudden shift to adopting themselves to the culture of work from home. Among all these organizations, many are experiencing the remote working culture for the first time. As a result, the HR professionals are wondering about ways to keep the telecommuting workforce engaged.
To learn even more about managing remote teams and keeping employees working at home highly engaged, download our ebook now.
Download now
This article elucidates 10 ways through which the HR professionals can keep telecommuting employees engaged.
1. Beginning the day on a positive note with motivation.
Motivation is an elixir which nourishes employee engagement. Thus, HR professionals hold a great responsibility of keeping the employees motivated to work. This responsibility gets further heightened, when the same employees are working from home. This is because the employees may not feel motivated to work in the restful and comfortable environment of home. Under such circumstances, the HR professionals can instill a wave of motivation in the employees by beginning every day at work with inspiring messages, audio clips and videos. Furthermore, it depends on the HR professional whether he uses individual communicating platforms or group communicating platforms to address the employees.
2. Letting the employees create their own work-schedule.
After having shifted to the remote working culture, it is also important to let the employees create their own work-schedule. This is because every household runs with a different kind of setting and thus, different employees may have a different set of hours during which they can work at the peak level of their productivity. Furthermore, flexible working is even more essential in the current period of pandemic. This is because many employees need to shoulder multiple responsibilities all at the same time such as handling the kids, taking care of the elderly and managing household chores. It is with the introduction of flexible working that the HR professionals can help the employees achieve a fine work-life balance and thus, succeed in keeping them engaged while telecommuting.
3. Keeping the employees involved through virtual meetings.
HR professionals are well aware about the importance of making the employees feel valued in keeping them engaged. Thus, they put their best efforts in making the employees feel important by involving them in decision making activities through meetings. No doubt, the current work from home setting has made it nearly impossible for the HR professionals to have real time meetings with the employees, but they can still keep the employees involved through virtual meetings. There are many online applications available on the internet, which offer the feature of conducting virtual meetings online such as GoToMeeting, FaceTime and ReadyTalk.
4. Instilling some fun with online group gaming.
Making the employees play games together is an effective way to cultivate cordial relationships, enhanced trust and mutual understanding among them. All these factors together work wonders in promoting the employees’ engagement at work. In fact, HR professionals can continue making use of the fun gaming strategy, uninterrupted by the commencement of remote working culture, amidst Coronavirus outbreak, with the help of online group gaming. It just needs the HR professionals to create a list of some virtual games which can be played together on group video calls such as Pictionary, Word games and charades.
5. Investing in the employees through online training sessions.
As discussed earlier, making the employees’ feel valued is an effective way to keep them engaged. Investing in the employees’ professional growth is an influential way to make them feel admired. Thus, the HR professionals can offer online training programs to the employees and promote their sense of being treasured assets of the organization.
6. Taking charge to keep employee communications intact.
HR professionals leave no stone unturned in promoting cordial interactions between the employees. This is because the work culture of an organization is built upon the basis of the employees’ conduct with each other. When the employees possess a friendly demeanor, the work culture of an organization gradually blooms into a cordial one, and thus, the rate of employee engagement witnesses an increment. Further, the current state of remote working due to the pandemic, has introduced the HR professionals with the challenge of preventing the relationships between the employees from being disrupted. Under such circumstances, the HR professionals can keep the communications between the employees intact by initiating conversations in the office group. This will ultimately stimulate the employees to interact with each other.
7. Refraining from micromanagement.
Micromanagement may pose a threat to employee engagement in the current situation. This is because the global lockdown has made it really challenging for the employees to manage their work from home while having to handle their kids and household chores simultaneously. Thus, micromanaging at such times when the employees are already struggling to establish a fine work-life balance, may negatively impact their engrossment in work. Thus, it is advisable for the HR professionals to refrain from micromanaging the employees under the current situation.
8. Extending words of appreciation.
Appreciation is a constructive tool through which the HR professionals can keep the telecommuting employees working with their absolute engrossment in work. Amidst situations like that of the ongoing pandemic, which has left the employees struggling to shoulder both their household as well as work related responsibilities with perfection, appreciation becomes even more important. Therefore, the HR professionals should make it a point to appreciate the employees who are performing consistently well, even while handling multiple responsibilities at home. Moreover, by appreciating the deserving employees, the HR professionals can ignite a spirit to work even better, within the rest of the employees.
9. Having a supportive conduct.
The employees devote all their heart and soul in their work, only if they feel a sense of emotional connection with the organization. This implies that an emotional connection plays a significant role in the employees’ engagement at work. Being supportive of the employees is the best way to promote their emotional connect with the company. Further, it is even more essential for the HR professionals to be naturally soft and understanding towards the employees in this ongoing situation of the pandemic. Thus, if at times any employee is unable to complete his target for the day because of his heightened responsibilities, the HR should be considerate of his situation and refrain himself from being angry or harsh.
10. Holding virtual get- together through video calls.
As discussed earlier, cordial relationships among employees are necessary for promoting the employees’ engagement at work. Telecommuting amidst the global lockdown has acted as a big interruption in the employees’ regular interactions with each other and thus, resulted in increased responsibilities of the HR professionals towards keeping the employee relationships intact. Conducting virtual get- together on conference video calls is an efficacious way through which the HR professionals can strengthen the bond between the employees. It is advisable to avoid discussing professional matters in the get-together sessions as they will make these sessions appear more like meetings. Instead, the get-together time should be focused on promoting informal interactions between the employees.
To conclude, the HR professionals can successfully keep the telecommuting employees engaged by following the 10 effective ways which have been discussed above.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
Tips to Make Employee Self-Evaluations an Effective Part of Your Performance Reviews
In this article, we wanted to take a closer look at one important (but often overlooked) part of the performance appraisal process: the employee self-evaluation.
What is the employee self-evaluation and why is it important?
While the name alone may make it seem self-explanatory, the employee self-evaluation is an important step to make sure each employee thoroughly evaluates their performance and is as prepared for the performance review itself.
Employee self-evaluation can also serve as the essential framework in helping each worker think through their overall performance. For example, by asking employees to answer common questions, managers and HR will receive consistent assessments that include areas where employees think they can improve, feedback on achievements, and many other important insights.
This becomes important because, without the employee self-assessment, it’s possible that this information may have come as a surprise to those conducting the review, or it may also present information is a valuable new light that can contribute to improving future processes or outcomes.
What is the purpose of an employee self-evaluation?
The main point of the employee self-evaluation is that seeks to expand the amount of information covered in a traditional performance review by considering the employee’s point of view. This can be an extremely valuable way to give managers insights into details they might not have known before, or gain visibility into a project or employee achievement that they may not have considered as important (as the employee does).
Employee self-assessments also give you a great way to collect direct feedback from workers. This can include their point of view on specific goals, milestones, challenges, successes, and much more. HR can also ask for feedback on peers or even the manager themselves as part of a 360-degree performance review.
Not only is this important to get more information, but you will also get employees to be more involved in the performance appraisal process. Engaging employees and sending the message that you value their feedback is an important part of the process and will help employees feel that the process is fair and equitable by including their feedback and responses.
What should an employee self-evaluation include?
While there are no hard-and-fast rules, and it’s inevitable that employee self-evaluations will vary from company to company, there are many best practices to consider. For example, think about including the following categories in your employee self-assessments:
Key highlights from the past year (or review period), including specific accomplishments, milestones, project successes, and more. Ideally, this should also include clear details related to their role and how they influenced these results.
Career path, including how they’d like to grow, what they see as next steps, or even the chance for employees to request mentoring in this area.
The employee’s goals for the position and ideas for how they can improve.
Feedback for managers, which can include peer, process, or even manager feedback. All of this should help provide a more honest, open look at the organization.
Resource requests, which can include areas like training/certifications, learning, mentoring, or other ways for employees to get what they need to improve throughout the year.
How can you start implementing employee self-evaluations at your company?
If you haven’t used employee self-evaluations yet, we recommend starting by discussing the idea with your HR team. Chances are good that HR has valuable experience in this area and is likely to turn your good idea into an even better practice.
Additionally, you may want to include the leadership team in these early discussions. For example, it’s generally a good idea to let them know that this will be happening, but also to give them the opportunity to add additional ideas or even their own requests. If executives are not sure about using employee self-assessments, you can use this as an opportunity to compare the benefits of this approach, the opportunity it presents, and describe in specific detail how the entire process would be implemented.
You may also convince the leadership team to participate in the process in a high-profile way that demonstrates their buy-in and support. This helps send the message that “this is important” and encourages employees to take part in the process.
Once you’re committed to going forward, you should create employee self-evaluation templates, which may even consist of forms, questions, and templates for each position. These resources should include suggested questions to ask, areas to cover, and examples of “good” answers to help employees envision what the ideal self-evaluation looks like.
You should also establish the evaluation cadence. While many companies default to the once-a-year annual performance appraisal, many other companies see the value in asking employees to complete self-evaluations on a bi-annual or even quarterly basis.
Train HR managers who will conduct the evaluations. This is important to know what to look for, create baselines for reactions, how they can constructively process the information in the self-evaluation, and finally, how they can collaborate with the employee to focus on improving in the next time frame.
Finally, you may want to plan how you’ll communicate this information to all of your employees. You may want to hold an all-hands meeting and support the news with information in your portal or employee communication platform. Give them a chance to ask questions, hear any concerns, communicate the value (that it’s in their best interests) and more.
LIKE.TG can help
LIKE.TG offers a full suite of HR solutions, including specific applications to help manage employee performance and conduct more effective performance reviews. To see how we can help—with employee self-evaluations or other HR processes—request a brief, no-obligation demo of LIKE.TG today.
A Better Way to Communicate, Engage, Recognize, and Reward Remote Workers
An effective employee communications and engagement platform can help you make sure your employees are happier, more engaged, recognized, rewarded, and more productive.
As an HR professional, how can you make sure remote employees (or any worker) are happy, engaged, and aligned with your company’s objectives?
It’s an important question. Today’s employees want rewarding work and to feel valued and appreciated for their efforts. They also want to be connected to your company, especially when they’re not in the office, so they know they’re still an important part of the team and contributing to a common goal.
Communication is key. In fact, effective communication should be the cornerstone of any successful employee-engagement strategy. Yet in today’s workplace, “more” is not necessarily better. For example, many employees are already overwhelmed by the amount of emails they receive each day. This means sending important information by email may only add to the clutter and could miss the mark.
The same result is true for other tools and platforms, such as instant messaging, wiki pages, portals, or more. Employees may lose track of whereto find critical information or become frustrated by how many steps it takes to find what they’re looking for. These challenges only become exacerbated when employees are out of the office.
All of this adds up to an important question: What can you do to improve employee communications, especially with remote employees or field workers who may not even have access to a laptop?
The Value of Workmates
An Employee Communications and Engagement Platform: The Right Tool for the Right Results.
There is an answer. Innovative new employee communications and engagement platforms use mobile apps to improve the way you communicate, collaborate, and engage with remote employees and your entire workforce.
This blog will take a closer look at the traditional challenges companies face when trying to communicate and engage with remote employees or field workers. It will also introduce Workmates, LIKE.TG’s powerful employee communications and engagement platform. You’ll see how Workmates is changing the way we all think about employee communication and recognition, and in doing so, helps drive productivity, engagement, and advocacy to new highs.Most importantly, we’ll connect the dots by demonstrating how an employee communications and engagement platform such as Workmates delivers very real, and very significant, business benefits.
A Remote Workforce Requires New Communication Strategies
Today, more than 63% of companies rely on a remote workforce of some kind, whether it’s employees working at home; mobile or field-based workers; or just about any other employee who doesn’t come into the office on a regular basis.
For most companies, giving employees the opportunity to work remotely helps attract and retain top talent while also serving as a tangible perk to promote work-life balance, drive productivity, and enhance employees’ job satisfaction.
Workplace flexibility, and the option to work at home, has become increasingly important to the entire workforce, especially as employees become more tech-savvy and productive. Whether they’re looking to eliminate commutes, work outside of traditional 9-to-5 schedules, better manage childcare, or just generally gain more favorable work-life balance, working remotely delivers these benefits and more.
The concept of a remote workforce is here to stay and enables employees to continue to be valuable resources for their employers while gaining the flexibility and balance they crave. Yet many companies need to develop new communication strategies to make sure these employees consistently feel informed, valued, recognized, rewarded, and part of the larger team.
To learn more about giving access to vital HR and work information — even when they're not in the office. Download our ebook now.
Download now
Even if Employees Are Out of the Office, Keep them Close to Heart
According to the same research, a majority of companies (57%) report that they do not currently have an official remote work policy in place.
Without clear policies and effective tools, companies could face communication and collaboration issues that could even snowball into larger challenges. Currently 60% of employees admit to not knowing their company’s strategic vision.
This makes it difficult for traditional remote employees who may have a hard time staying up to date on new announcements or policies, but even more challenging for field-based workers who may only have access to a mobile device.
All of this points to a growing gap. On one hand, in order to recruit and retain top talent, employers should continue to offer the perk of remote work flexibility to increase productivity, encourage employee advocacy, and reduce costs. Yet if they’re not careful, or don’t embrace proven communications, engagement, and recognition tools—they run the very real risk of disengaging valuable employees.
Employee Engagement is a Valuable Advantage
Why should you care about disengaged employees? For starters, you could be in danger of losing top performers if they’re not engaged and motivated in their current role.
Yet to look at it another way, employee engagement can become a powerful competitive advantage.
According to research from Aon Hewitt, those companies with high levels of engagement (65% or greater) outperform the stock market, posting total shareholder returns 22% more than the average. On the other hand, companies with low engagement (45% or less) had total shareholder returns that were 28% lower than average. Additionally, from 2002-2012, the Top 40 Best Companies to Work for in the U.S. enjoyed nearly 4x better financial returns than the SP 500.
Clearly companies with higher levels of employee communication and engagement are proven to achieve higher growth rates, productivity, and financial success.
LIKE.TG’s Workmates: Effective Employee Communications and Engagement Starts Now
Now there is an extremely effective way to improve the way you communicate and collaborate with remote employees.
LIKE.TG’s Workmates solution is a powerful, proven employee communications and engagement platform that can help any company overcome common issues related to managing a remote workforce.
Workmates is so effective because it puts communication directly in employees’ hands. Say goodbye to trying to force cumbersome new processes on busy employees. Instead, Workmates becomes a tool they want to use since it naturally facilitates information sharing to keep employees in sync and improve overall performance.
With Workmates, employee communication and recognition becomes easy and fun and encourages mobile collaboration with any employee, no matter where they happen to work.
Christopher BaggottChief Executive Officer of Medlinks Cost Containment, Inc. and Medlinks Staffing, LLC.
“Our staff has praised the increased communications level Workmates delivers. We use it to communicate important project matters and give staff specific ‘kudos’ or even recognize their birthdays. More importantly, we use Workmates to clarify important project details that needed rapid dissemination among the entire team.”
Happy Employees = Engaged Employees
With Workmates, we have designed and delivered everything you need to foster an ongoing culture of communication. Workmates includes real-time social feeds, company announcements, an employee directory, direct messaging, surveying, and more—all to get teams talking. Employees can post light-hearted messages or animated GIFs on the feed. Share a company announcement for an upcoming team meeting. Or even give a shout-out to a fellow to recognize a specific accomplishment. With Workmates, employee engagement feels like fun, not work.
Keep Employees Motivated
Praise and recognition are extremely effective ways to keep the workforce motivated, productive, and aligned with your company’s goals.
Workmates now helps your company improve the overall employee recognition experience and keep the workforce as motivated as possible. Now a manager (or any team member) can recognize any employee’s accomplishment or contribution with a well-timed “kudos,” thank-you gift, prize, or other rewards. It all becomes the digital equivalent of a high five and will help drive employee engagement to new highs. Workmates offers customizable badges and other options to reward employees, share accomplishments, and celebrate milestones and successes with the entire team.
Workmates Fosters Communication, Collaboration, and Better Business Results
Managers and HR professionals simply can’t meet with employees individually to keep them informed and up to date on the latest company news. This is especially true when employees are not in the office. Workmates now overcomes this issue and enables all team members to communicate effectively in the way they prefer to get the information they need when they need it. This comprehensive employee communications and engagement platform delivers many advantages and benefits:
Streamlines communications
Personalize employees’ content experience and give them access to the latest company information on a variety of channels.
Promotes real-time messaging and feedback
Deliver critical information to the right employee in the right moment as constructive feedback, not after the fact, or worse, not at all.
Recognizes employees and says thanks
Workmates lets any employee reward a peer for any contribution or achievement. Highlighting exemplary behavior becomes fun and encourage future recognition and effort.
Increases employee advocacy
Happy, engaged employees will now become company advocates, willing and able to embody your company’s best interests, promote your products or services, and contribute to a stronger culture.
A Closer Look at All that Workmates Has to Offer
Company’s media hub:
Spread company culture and share information with pictures, GIFs, videos, and polls.
New hire announcements:
Automated email reminders help admins, IT, and the rest of your team welcome new employees.
Employee engagement surveys:
Whether they’re in another office or working remotely, keep a pulse on your team’s engagement levels.
Kudos and rewards:
Recognize employee accomplishments and motivate more with instant feedback and recognition.
Automated birthday and anniversary announcements:
Show your team appreciation and never forget to buy cake again.
Like, comment, and discuss capabilities:
Get information to employees quickly through a single, streamlined source, direct from the company.
Share knowledge with a team approach:
Connect teams and groups to the information they need to get the job done with personalized portals on desktop or mobile apps.
Easy customized integrations and reporting:
Integrating with and reporting on other applications is easy through LIKE.TG Custom Objects™.
Workmates in Action: Real Companies, Real Results
A Leading Management Consulting Firm Improves Employee Engagement and Transforms Its Company Culture with Workmates
A mid-sized healthcare management company recently determined it needed a better way to communicate, collaborate, and engage with all employees. This was important because the company has hundreds of employees in multiple offices in four different states as well as a large remote workforce constantly out of the office serving clients.
The company’s HR Director remembers what led the company to consider an employee communications and engagement platform. “First, we definitely wanted to improve the way we shared information with our entire workforce, even when employees weren’t in the office to make sure they were happy, informed, and fully aligned with our goals,” she says.
The firm also wanted an employee engagement solution that could begin to transform the culture. HR envisioned a new platform that would go vira throughout the company and let employees post pictures, celebrate achievements, and have fun posting pictures, GIFs, surveys, polls, and more.
To learn even more about improving the employee experience and increasing your competitve advantage while providing a fast return on investment, download our ebook now.
Download now
Summary and Conclusion
Improved Employee Engagement Starts Now
Companies of all sizes need a better way to communicate with remote employees, field-based workers, or any employee looking to feel more connected. This idea is much more than a “nice to have” improvement on HR’s wish list. Instead, improving communication with remote employees is proven to increase engagement, retention, productivity, and financial performance.
LIKE.TG’s Workmates platform helps promote and foster employee communications and engagement. With Workmates, employees communicate and collaborate more effectively, positioning your entire company to achieve results that matter most.
About Author: This article is written by a marketing team member at LIKE.TG. LIKE.TG is a leading provider of proven HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee communications engagement, and rewards recognition. Our user-friendly softwareincreases employee productivity, delivers time and cost savings, and minimizes compliance risk.
