Workforce Management Archives

Employee Retention – How To Keep Your A+ Employees

in Workforce Management/by Featured Author

Ah…employee retention. The topic of conversation that swirls around every HR networking event, conference and seminar. And…turnover–the subject of most leadership meetings and one of the biggest challenges facing every industry and company. Businesses that succeed and survive are typically led by adaptable problem solvers able to tackle some of the biggest challenges they face. So why is combating employee retention and turnover still such a problem for so many employers?

People–that’s why. Plain and simple, people. Since no two individuals are the same, no single retention strategy can work for all. Sure you can do standardized things that will keep some employees engaged and employed just a little while longer, but an ultimate end will ensue if you don’t customize.

All too often leaders involved in tackling the retention problem are blinded by their own idea of retention, their own personal motivation to stay. The problem is, most likely, this motivation is not the same for anyone else. Engagement and retention are personal topics and everyone has their own drivers and motives. To tackle the challenge on a one-to-one basis you must be able to grasp the motivations of each individual.

This involves a focus in two key areas:

First, you must know the wants, needs and desires of each of your employees. Then, you must decide if you are willing to accommodate those items. Hopefully, if you did your job in the hiring process, you have already identified the fit. An applicant tracking system can leverage technology to make it easy to gather the answers you need from employees to assess their potential job fit during the hiring process.
The second step is to provide the feedback and environment an employee needs to continue to grow and be successful. Both of these tactics require taking an individualized approach.

Retention is About Meeting Needs

All humans have basic needs. As such, all employees have basic needs. If you analyze Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs you can see how they apply to the workplace as well. Employees who are able to fulfill their needs are more engaged, happy and willing to put forth discretionary effort to succeed and further the business. Likewise, you are more likely to retain them.

Why We Work

Our basic physiological needs drive us to work and provide for ourselves. Fundamentally we work to earn money, pay bills, buy food and acquire shelter. Employers have the least influence on fulfilling this need as trading time for money can be accomplished in any organization, industry or career field. At this level, employees are only compliant; doing what is required to sustain a paycheck in a safe manner. You will retain an employee only as long as you can meet their compensation needs within a secure environment.

What We Do

After the basic needs are achieved, we look to contribute and belong to a community. We select a career that satisfies this “need to belong.” This is the basic premise of why people chose to do what they do. Engagement now increases as employees are doing what they want to do with desirable peers. If they can no longer achieve this need, they will go somewhere else to achieve it.

Where We Work

This is different for everyone! You’ve chosen what you want to do, now you want to do it in the best possible environment. You want the best possible support and resources to do what you love to do. We have many choices in deciding where to work. Ideally we all want to work where we feel that we can be successful and most able to build our sense of self–our esteem. At this level employees are highly engaged; doing what they want and where they want.

Why We Stay

The need employers struggle to fulfill the most, is the need for continued growth and fulfillment. This need is so individualized that there has to be a perfect match with an employee. Companies that crack this code have much higher retention rates than their peers. Employees who have achieved this level are fully engaged and more likely to put forth a greater amount of discretionary effort. An organization must take a customized and individualized approach in addressing this need.

The more of these needs you can meet as an employer, the more likely an individual is to remain with the company. So how do you work to meet these needs? It’s a simple process, really. It starts with sitting down and having an open and honest conversation with employees about their needs and what motivates them. Identify their drivers, with them, and then work together towards achieving them.

Retention is About Facilitating Growth and Success

Let’s face it, today’s workforce does not have loyalty to an employer, nor loyalty to a particular industry or career field. The term “career” is defined much differently than in the past. The traditional definition of a career was working for one company your entire life–either doing the same job for 30 years or climbing the ladder. Today’s career is more loosely defined relating to intertwining paths one would like to take which may involve multiple employers, industries and disciplines.

Some would categorize today’s workforce as full of “job hoppers.” In reality, they are “experience hoppers.” Consequently, continuous growth and development opportunities continue to rank above compensation in employee exit interviews and engagement surveys.

So what is an experience hopper? Employees will work somewhere as long as they can continue to get the growth, development and experience they need to support their defined career path. If they can’t get it at their current employer, they will go elsewhere. When today’s employee stops learning and growing it marks the point at which he starts looking for a new job.

So how do we anticipate this pivotal point and work to accommodate an appropriate growth environment to circumvent it? Two ways: constant communication and constant feedback.

Constant Communication

Employees need to feel valued and appreciated. More importantly they need to feel that you care about what they are doing and are genuinely interested in what they are doing. Nobody wants to feel like a number or a commodity. Frequent meetings with employees to discuss their work will go a long way in keeping them engaged and feeling good about what they are doing.

Constant Feedback

A core requirement for the continued growth of employees is constant feedback. Today’s employees require frequent commentary on their performance to stay motivated. In fact, most put this ahead of a paycheck. You can no longer take the approach that no news is good news or in this case, no feedback is good feedback. That’s not going to fly anymore. Withholding feedback will kill an employee’s motivation. And, only giving negative feedback will send them running for the doors.

In the end, retention is really about building a relationship with your employees. This isn’t the same as a friendship, but rather a relationship that fosters an environment of open communication, support and feedback. Which, when done correctly, will foster an environment of engagement and retention.

Maximize job fit

Leverage affordable applicant tracking technology to better assess candidates’ potential job fit. See an estimate of what your organization would pay for HireCentric applicant tracking software.

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How Does a High-Engagement Culture Drive Business Results?

in Workforce Management/by Harlan Schafir

Our world of work is evolving to become more complex and competitive every day. However, the labor force is simultaneously shrinking as a result of shifting generational patterns and a widening skills gap. This clash of variables has created an unprecedented set of dynamics in almost every business environment. Ever-changing technology, globalization, environmental concerns, resource constraints, and a host of other issues are escalating in complexity and competitiveness such that achieving business results is increasingly challenging. Meanwhile, talent pools are shrinking.

The ADVISA whitepaper, The Dynamics of Engagement: A Culture That Works, explores this present-day situation further. Interest in developing high-engagement work cultures has emerged as a strategic response to the tension in the world of work created by

the pace of change,
increasing complexity,
the relentless nature of competition, and
a shrinking labor force.

No letup in these pressures is in sight and research shows that high-engagement work cultures help attract and retain top performers, which ultimately grows business results. Given the dynamics of the shifting playing field, it is clear that competition for talent will continue to heat up, further amplifying the strategic importance of engaged work cultures. Even organizations with high engagement can’t stand still — the field will continue to move, and the bar will continue to be raised. The good news for managers and organizations interested in turning up the volume on engagement is that small actions can have a large impact, especially when applied consistently. The aforementioned whitepaper summarizes what leaders and managers can do to better engage their employees in meaningful ways.

In this piece, our partners at ADVISA explore

current trends and dynamics affecting today’s labor force;
the attributes of high engagement work cultures;
the four “Engagement Dials” that leaders have at their disposal as they work to turn up the volume on engagement, and specific actions that could impact each dial; and,
how engagement drives business results.

Think Before You Hire! 10 Common Mistakes Made in Rushing the Recruitment Process

in Hiring Process, Workforce Management/by Featured Author

Hiring is one of the most critical tasks and challenges an organization faces. Yet, unfortunately, too many approach it as transactional or don’t allocate the proper attention, priority and resources towards it. Even with a gainfully employed talent acquisition staff, the struggle to keep up with today’s hiring needs promotes a rushed approach to the recruitment process.

When you rush through the hiring process, you make mistakes and miss critical steps. You may be in such a hurry, you hire “good enough.” This will ultimately become a problem. If you want a top performing team you can’t settle for good enough. Fortunately there are some common mistakes you can avoid if you are aware of them and slow down enough to address them.

1 – Failure to Clearly Define the Role

Rushing a hiring decision and overlooking a few critical steps can lead to a host of problems. One of the most critical steps is ensuring a clearly defined role description that contains essential functions, skills required to do the job, competencies required to be successful, and in some cases the environmental factors. Namely, the hiring decision is not based on the use of objective data such as a clearly defined role description. In the absence of clearly defined roles and responsibilities, candidate selection is left up to opinion and extremely subjective decision making.

2 – No Interviewing Plan

Failing to plan for making any business decision is not good. Failing to plan your interviews and questions will almost guarantee an ultimately adverse outcome to your hiring decisions. When you fail to plan your interview, you end up just having a conversation. Then your decision is based on whether or not you enjoyed the conversation.

3 – Asking “Yes” and “No” Questions

Typically this is a result of not having an interviewing plan as well as an untrained interviewer. Avoid, at all costs, asking questions that elicit a yes or no answer. It doesn’t tell you anything about the candidate and he/she will almost always give you the answer you want to hear. This is where a planned process will call for behavioral based interview questions.

4 – Asking Leading Questions

In an interview, you will naturally draw a 50% conclusion by the time your first handshake is over. Right, wrong or indifferent, it happens. If that initial conclusion is positive, you will want to see one succeed in the interview. Without knowing it you will actually help the candidate answer the questions correctly. In doing so, your subconscious will take over and you’ll begin to lead him/her to the answer you’re seeking. A savvy candidate will pick up on it and give you the answer you want. Thus, you completely missed an opportunity to objectively assess the candidate.

5 – Not Involving Others

Hiring is a team sport. As such, you’re bound to make mistakes if you go at it alone. You will miss things others will see. Not engaging a candidate’s potential peers in the interview could be costly. Not only do you want to verify the candidate has the right skill set, but also will fit with the rest of the team.

6 – Falling Victim to Interview Fatigue

Interview fatigue can easily take its toll if you cram too many interview sessions into a short span of time. This can cause you to only vividly remember the first and last candidates you interview. In fact, when coaching job seekers, most are told to seek the first or last interviews of the day.

7 – Ignoring Red Flags

This is one of the most common hiring errors out there. You’ll hear and see little things during the process of interviews that will make you take pause. They will stick in your head and you’ll try to push them to the back. They concern you, but you rationalize it and figure it won’t be a problem. Then the day comes and you say, “Well…I knew that when I hired him.” These are the red flags you noticed in the process.

Always remember this. A candidate is on his BEST behavior during the hiring process. If you notice red flags then, multiply it by 10 and that’s what you’ll eventually get. Don’t rationalize red flags. They will inevitably become a problem.

8 – Avoiding an Analysis of Facts

Similar to ignoring red flags, this hiring foul will cause you a headache later. Remember, interviewees are (should) be on their best behavior in an interview. They should be prepared and ready for what you may ask them. They will seem like a rock star during that hour conversation. However, don’t forget the facts. Does their past performance align with your needs? After all, it is the best predictor of future behavior.

9 – “I Can Teach Them That”

Although this may be true, you must understand what you are signing yourself up for. Do you really have time to teach them the basic skills they need to qualify for the job? If your company does not have a great training and development program to support this, odds are it won’t happen. You can probably get away with teaching them the nice-to-have skills, but don’t think you’ll be able to teach them the core critical skills. Note, this is different than teaching them the job or teaching them how to use the resources and tools to do the job. You’ll have to teach anyone you hire how the job is performed at your company. You just want to avoid having to teach them the core skills needed to perform the job.

10 – “Maybe They Will Change”

In a rushed hiring situation, you will tend to overlook potential issues that you’ve identified in the hiring process. Due to time constraints, desperation, or whatever else the scenario may be, you may be tempted to assume they will change a behavior or environmental clash. If you’re concerned about it, and think they will change it, think again.

Staying disciplined to a sound recruitment process, avoiding too much subjectivity and focusing on a candidate’s verifiable qualifications will help you avoid these common mistakes and attain better ratios of hiring success.

For some advanced tools to help you avoid hiring mistakes during the recruitment process, check out ExactHire’s employee assessments.

Contact ExactHire

33 Fall Employee Engagement and Culture Ideas

in Workforce Management/by Randi Renee Doerr, SPHR, SHRM-SCP

Pumpkin spice season is here, folks, and that means my favorite time of year is upon us–fall. So many good things happen in the autumn:

beautiful fall foliage (at least in the Midwest where ExactHire calls home),
tailgating for your favorite sporting events like football and futbol (for all you soccer moms like me out there),
new fall TV show premieres, and
an early start to the excitement of the holiday season (and more frequent chances to be thankful and celebrate life with friends and family).

At least a few of the ExactHire employees love to celebrate the season, too. Can you tell? Did you know an ATS is a great way to develop and create a strong work culture, through finding good quality candidates? If you want to find out more, check out our Free ATS Guide!

Hey, we worked hard to capture the leaves in motion for this shot!

The activities our “Fun” Committee plans are great ways to break up the work week and give us more chances to connect with each other. Opportunities for connection are increasingly important for employers in today’s web-based workplace and society.

In this blog, I’ll present ideas for using the autumnal season to inspire ideas for employee engagement.

1 – Pick a day each fall month for competition and snacks

It’s easy to let time get away from you when it comes to planning culture-building activities frequently enough. Have a recurring “funday” appointment on your office calendar, and then fill in with surprise one-off activities as appropriate.

ExactHire has Monday Funday the third Monday of every month following our all-hands company meeting. In September, we honored various pro golf championship tournaments with a little putt-putt of our own. Of course the winner, our Co-Founder Harlan Schafir, was able to claim our super classy brass vase (make sure you pronounce it vahzzz to sound fancy). The giant cookies being served didn’t hurt employee attendance to this event, either!

Our Co-Founder, Harlan Schafir, putts for the Monday Funday win!

2 – Roast some office s’mores

Don’t try this one inside, friends…unless you opt to use the microwave or remember to blow out your candle afterward. But let’s be honest, a candle probably won’t get the job done. Lucky for you, mini kitchen blow torches are reasonably affordable.

3 – Have a pumpkin decorating contest

Whether you carve, paint or decorate, procure some pumpkins for all employees willing to participate. Have a small prize, display them in your office (make sure to take pictures!) and then encourage employees to take them home to friends and family.

ExactHire Company Halloween Party-Monday Funday

Employee entries from our fierce pumpkin decorating contest last October.

4 – Volunteer for a worthy cause

As the weather starts to cool (depending on where you live), many non-profit organizations, including shelters, will have a greater need for assistance and resources to help individuals fend off the elements. Organize a team or department to take time to serve in a capacity that will assist the recipient organization.

5 – Have a dance party

Does anyone really do that? Yes, I’ve worked for employers who did this periodically to destress employees. Take requests and then put a season-inspired song on the phone system intercom. Here are some tune ideas to get you started:

“Thriller” by Michael Jackson (go ahead, channel Jennifer Garner in “13 Going on 30”),
“Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo,
“Toxic” by Britney Spears,
“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by The Charlie Daniels Band, and
“Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

6 – Stock the kitchen with fancy coffee creamer

Whether it’s artisanal or just the latest Coffee Mate creation, having access to creamer flavors like pumpkin spice, eggnog, spiced latte and peppermint will perk up anyone’s morning brew.

Image credit: coffee lover

7 – Sponsor an employee team for a 5K

Five-kilometer races abound in the fall in our area. Select a race that benefits a notable cause and sponsor a team of employees who enjoy jogging and walking. Go the extra mile and have a t-shirt design competition, and then produce the winning shirt for all team members to wear during the race.

8 – Board game breaks

Don’t stop at puzzles, schedule occasional “game days” when employees get the chance to spend an hour facing off against other employees to win a game. Hint: Don’t pick Risk–it takes forever! Twister would be a good one to avoid, too. Fun, but relatively short, options might include

Uno,
Jenga,
Qwirkle,
Rummikub, and
Euchre.

9 – Make caramel apples

If you don’t want to unwrap little caramel candies or don’t have access to a stove in the office, then keep it simple with incredibly convenient caramel apple wraps.

10 – Celebrate Oktoberfest

Whether you go with a full-on German fare-inspired pitch-in or keep it simple with some Bavarian pretzels and a beer tasting, you can’t go wrong with food. Encourage any employees who are brewing and/or sausage-making hobbyists to bring in their own creations to share.

11 – Feast at a festival

The fall is a time for bountiful community festivals. Here in Indiana, the Covered Bridge Festival is a multi-day, multi-town event that combines crafts, cuisine and crowds into an explosion of autumn sentiment. I never miss it. Check your state festival guide to see if any local events would make a great extended lunch destination for your crew.

12 – Conduct meetings outdoors

Does your building have a patio space, or even a few picnic tables? If so, unplug the laptop and head outside for a group meeting or a 1-on-1 discussion. Employees will relish the fresh air and everyone can soak up some extra vitamin D.

Image credit: Picnic Table

13 – Go on a scavenger hunt outside

Plan an autumn scavenger hunt as a team-building activity and friendly competition. A recent chaperone experience I had with my son’s class field trip taught me that empty egg cartons make great containers for small scavenger hunt items. Or, if you want to go a more tech-savvy route, have participants share proof of accomplishing hunt challenges by tagging your corporate Instagram account (a great tactic for employment branding).

Handy container for collecting fall scavenger hunt items

14 – Plan a spirit week

If you enjoyed dressing up for spirit week during homecoming in high school, then you’re bound to be amused by participating in themed days in the workplace. Solicit employee ideas for themes and consider awarding small prizes each day. Our team had fun with high school day in the past when we showed off our letter jackets, senior portraits and yearbooks.

Some EH’ers showing off our high school memorabilia.

15 – Have a potluck tailgate

Set up a grill in the parking lot and have employees pitch in by bringing tailgate-themed dishes. Depending on the date and time of the event, consider streaming a favorite sporting event for all to watch while eating. Don’t forget to have everyone wear their favorite jersey, and have a drawing to win a couple of tickets to a college or pro sporting event.

16 – Make some microwave caramel corn

Growing up, the only way I’d eat caramel corn was if it was made in a brown paper bag in the microwave. There’s something about that warm, gooey deliciousness that puts it near the top of my comfort food list. The best part about it is that it is easy to clean up after your office teammates dig into it. Just fold up the bag and toss it in the garbage.

17 – Nerf gun turkey shoot

Looking for inspiration for silly office games? Look no further. Gather up a few Nerf guns from employees’ children, and set up bowling pin-style targets that complement the season on a conference room table. Go for turkeys, pumpkins, ghosts or leaves.

Turkey Targets | ExactHire Monday Funday

All set with turkey targets in place!

18 – Produce a Thanksgiving card or video

This is one of my favorite ExactHire traditions. Instead of sending a winter holiday card to clients, we always send a Thanksgiving note. In the beginning, we sent cards in the mail, but then we transitioned to a collaborative video production to show thanks. We can’t wait to put one together for this year, too! If you’re nervous about getting started with this kind of project, we have some video production tips for you.

Wicked witch legs on a previous ExactHire Halloween work day.

19 – Have a costume contest

What would a fall activity list be without a reference to Halloween costumes? Incentivize employee participation with kooky prize categories such as

best homemade costume,
most tech-savvy costume,
best unconventional materials costume (yes, I’m channeling Project Runway), and
best pop culture-inspired costume.

20 – Take a group trip to pick apples

Go on an outing to gather up ingredients for some red hot applesauce (a favorite from my childhood) or apple dumplings.

Image credit: Time well spent

Recruiting Ninjas: 5 Ways to Build a Niche Network

in Hiring Process, Workforce Management/by Featured Author

Sales and recruiting have a lot in common and I think just about any recruiter out there would agree with that. Given this similarity in function, you can imagine the path to success for both is likely similar. All good salespeople and recruiters know that networking is the key to any long term success.

Successful networking involves repetitive and constant effort. All plants will eventually die if you don’t water them. Just like sales, all recruiting networks will eventually dry up if you don’t nurture them. As a recruiter you most likely already have a technology solution to let you manage job openings and applicants. If not, you need to get one! An applicant tracking system like HireCentric ATS from ExactHire is what you need to track and manage all your leads and applicants resulting from your networking efforts.

Recruiting is a “results-based” endeavor. Meaning, placements and hires are what matter. However, all recruiters know there is a significant amount of activity that goes into it. Since you don’t have unlimited time, you need to make sure your activities are focused on what will get you results and what will help you build your network.

Building a successful network requires focusing and fine tuning your efforts. In order to focus your network efforts you need to pick a niche. If you are hiring software developers, your networking efforts need to focus on those groups, activities and associations. Focus on the following five activities to build your niche network, be more efficient, and reduce your time-to-hire.

Niche Job Boards

Focusing your efforts is critical to getting the best return on your [time] investment. Job boards can take some getting used to and none of them are real easy to post openings on or search for candidates. So how do you make your use of job boards effective? There are a few steps you can take.

First, find a job board that is very specific to the target market for which you are hiring. Do your research on the volume of jobs posted. If it has a resume database, evaluate the number of resumes it contains. Do some searches for your target candidates. How many are in the system, when were their resumes last updated? These are questions to ask when evaluating the system.

Hint, hint! If you’re an agency recruiter or independent recruiter, look at the companies that are posting jobs on these boards. These are potential leads and you can clearly identify their needs. Use it to your advantage.

Attend Niche Professional Organizations

Building a network must involve–you guessed it–networking. Forget about recruiter networking groups. After all, you aren’t hiring recruiters. Identify networking groups that are associated with your target market. If you are seeking candidates, focus on groups and associations in which they would be involved and attend those events. If you are seeking clients, focus on groups and associations to which those hiring managers [decision makers] would belong.

Hint: Most of those groups will have both potential candidates and clients as members.

Speak at Niche Events

Speaking is always a great way to network with many people at once. It’s also one of the toughest areas to break into and you usually need a network to get started in speaking. That being said, many professional organizations are always looking for speakers at events. As long as you’re competent and you know the material you are presenting, speaking is the best way to get branded an “expert.”

Tailor your message to your audience. You have a captive audience for networking so take advantage of it. This is more than an elevator pitch, it’s a full commercial. Continue the conversation with those who come up to speak with you afterwards. If you’re speaking to potential clients, this is great exposure to your services.

Give Career Advice

Since you are a recruiter you should, by default, be an expert in career advice. Since you live and breathe job placement everyday, you have unique insight into what employers seek, how they make decisions, what candidates want, etc. Share this knowledge and information with both potential clients and candidates.

You should use a variety of mediums to share your knowledge such as blogging, writing articles and short books, speaking (as mentioned above) and volunteering at career centers and workshops. These are all fantastic ways to build your network. Focus your advice on interviewing, resume writing and job searching. You’ll also have the side benefit of getting first glance at potential candidates before they even apply to other jobs.

Know Your Stuff

A recruiter who is competent and credible in the industry in which they recruit will achieve greater levels of success than his peers. Some of the most successful recruiters have actually practiced the trade for which they source candidates. Being able to talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk will not only help you win instant respect from clients, but also from candidates.

Now demonstrate your expertise and knowledge. Seek out any opportunity to write for blogs, submit articles, etc. Sign up for opportunities to be an expert source or reference for different publications at the site Help A Reporter Out (HARO). Brand yourself and your social media presence as an expert in the fields for which you recruit. Actually take the time to learn the jobs of those you are recruiting. Know what goes into their daily activities. Know the good and the bad. Understand the typical struggles. Most importantly know why your candidates typically look for new opportunities.

Building a niche network will not only help focus your precious time and efforts on the activities that will actually generate better results for your recruiting efforts, but it will also brand you as a career expert in your area. When you are a defined expert, people will seek you out. In recruiting this means not only will candidates seek you out, but clients will as well.

Want to leverage your recruiting network? See how ExactHire’s Applicant Tracking System can quickly get your postings to the niche job boards you need.

Contact ExactHire

Photo Credit: OpenClipart-Vectors

5 Recruitment Tools That Give You the Advantage

in Hiring Process, Workforce Management/by Featured Author

The competition for talent requires organizations and their armies of recruiters to maintain a competitive advantage and a sharp edge when it comes to their recruiting and hiring practices. The modern day recruiter must be proactive, responsive, open-minded, and a little bit competitive. An applicant in your pipeline has also applied to other places so it’s imperative you’re on your game.

There are a number of things that can give an organization and its recruiters a competitive advantage in the gladiatorial arena of today’s hiring environment. Whether you face lack of applicants or lack of qualified applicants makes no difference. The fact is, the best applicants aren’t just dropping on your door-step.

An ace recruiter realizes that speed to hire without jeopardizing the process or quality is critical to winning the recruiting war. You have to be able to attract the best active job seekers to apply and make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Likewise, as a recruiter, you need to be able to sort through those applicants efficiently and recognize the best fit quickly.

Fundamentals of an Advantageous Process

There are some basic considerations when establishing a process aimed at giving you the upper-hand in hiring active candidates. The combination of speed, information requirements, accessibility and recruiter decision making all come into play.

Reducing the complexity of applications is probably one of the most critical aspects of the process. Allowing for a “quick app” collecting the minimum information needed for you as a recruiter to make a “call / no-call” decision is about all you need initially. Making your application mobile friendly is a good first step in this process as it forces you to abbreviate the information you are requesting.

Many times an application process is bogged down with irrelevant and excessive information. This can be a turnoff for some candidates and they may leave the process. There’s nothing more frustrating for an applicant than spending a lot of time on a resume, uploading it to your ATS, only to find out you want them to fill out a digital application as well. Limit the information you need to collect from them to the essential information you need for a “call / no-call.” decision. You will get more applicants!

Mobile friendly application processes will place your opportunities in the hands of more people, literally. If they they can apply with a few taps of the screen and a little bit of initial information (e.g. via Indeed or LinkedIn), you are sure to gain the attention of more people. This also means you can’t purely rely on the artificial intelligence of most applicant tracking systems. AI features are great at flagging applicants, but a human decision is still required.

Gain a Competitive Advantage with These Five Functions

Be sure that the applicant tracking system you select provides for these five key functions, which when leveraged properly, will grant you an extreme competitive advantage. A system like ExactHire’s HireCentric ATS will provide all these features and more giving you a robust platform with the functionality you need to compete in the recruiting space.

User Interface

As mentioned earlier, the less painful you can make an application process the better. A mobile application is a must and an abbreviated process is critical. You don’t want to lose applicants before they’ve even completed the application. Take a hard look at your ATS of choice. Is it just an infinite amount of text fields requiring manual data entry?

A fast application should provide for the critical information necessary for you to make a “call / no-call” decision. This may include name, phone number, email, current position and brief summary, and any “knock-out” questions you may have. Caveat – make sure knock-out questions are actually relevant and matter.

Social Recruiting

It goes without saying that integration with social media sites is a must for every recruiter. A modern and effective ATS needs to interact and leverage social media. You should be able to push jobs to and share jobs on social media sites. As well as allow current employees to do the same. This allows a more active approach to recruiting rather than relying on the “post-and-pray” method.

Applicant Management

Your applicant tracking system is the heart and sole of your hiring process. If you’re fortunate enough to get high double-digit or even triple-digit applicant counts, you will need an efficient method for keeping them organized. Top line features allow for the integration of applicant assessments and questionnaires. Your information gathering process should rely on who the applicant is and what they are capable of more so than a labored list of previous jobs, duties and functions. Assessments and questionnaires will provide you with an interactive look at who you’re considering for employment.

Paperless Onboarding

The hiring process doesn’t stop once an offer is made. Your onboarding process is the first impression your new employee will receive from your company. Remember, they have nothing invested yet, so a bad first impression could be the difference between a fully accepted offer and a rejected offer. Allowing for e-forms, digital signatures, video tutorials, etc.; will set you apart from the labored and antiquated new hire paperwork.

Analytics and Sourcing

What good is an ATS without the ability to leverage and mine the data that exists? Continuously improving on your process is sure to improve your speed to hire and attract more of the right applicants. Basic information such as time-to-hire, workflow, interviews, hiring yields among others, should be expected. Advanced information that gives you the ability to more precisely target your most successful applicants is what makes a significant difference.

The application process is the first impression an applicant gets of your company. Make it a good one. If you keep these fundamentals in mind and choose an applicant tracking system with some key competitive features, you will surely be on your way for winning the war on applicants. Remember, in today’s labor market, you typically need them more than they need you!

Want an advantage? Contact ExactHire to learn how our Applicant Tracking System can give you the edge you need.

Contact ExactHire

Photo Credit: trainer24

7 Signs Your Company Culture is Corrosive

in Workforce Management/by Christian Willey

Should your organization be successful and productive when you consider your products, market outlook and available resources? If your company is not making the headway you’d expect, you could have a silent saboteur–corrosive culture. To see whether your company culture is thriving or diving, here are seven signs that may suggest danger ahead.

1 – Difficulty filling jobs relative to your competitors

Your local competitors are hiring talented employees, so why aren’t you? Toxic company culture may be to blame. Some websites allow potential employees to investigate culture within a company before stepping foot on their first day. Glassdoor, The Undercover Recruiter, and Yelp are just a few that allow job seekers to peer into topics such as a typical day for current employees, the reasoning behind termination, and management review protocol. These options can make it difficult to find a new hire if you have poor reviews. Unfortunately, there is no quick or easy fix for poor reviews’ influence on new or potential hires.

To improve morale and stimulate positive feedback, plan events that encourage a sense of comradery. Another way to woo potential new candidates is to enhance your company’s career page to allow easy, seamless applications.

2 – Frequent short-term turnover

A “there are no problems when things are growing” mindset can be a symptom of a struggling culture when a business is growing rapidly. A few issues could be at play if your company is frequently hiring new people to fill the same positions. Though new hires in new positions can be a positive sign, repetitive single position hires may be a sign of poor pay rates, a lack of excitement or passion for the business, or just a bad employment match for both employee and employer. Address the cause of poor job fit with a planned hiring strategy. The company must decide what it wants in a candidate and seek applicants who display such qualifications and traits.

Fast, uncontrolled growth can lead to “Band-Aid” fixes, as the company tries to solve problems by slapping on short-term solutions. But, by defaulting to the fast fix approach every time, you cut corners and severe issues may emerge later. As a result, short-term turnover could become frequent, causing both wasted resources and time for everyone involved. Also, hastily sourced hires might lose interest in the employer if adequate job expectations are not set or if the employee onboarding process is rocky.

3 – Lack of organizational and individual value alignment

While an employer must understand that individuals on the team each have unique values, it is paramount for organizations to convey and celebrate their own organizational values, too. Without clarity around the behaviors and ideals that drive business objectives, it’s difficult for employees to judge whether their own personal values complement those of the company.

Embed your company values into every aspect of operations so that you hire the right people who will be excited about what you have to offer, and who will strengthen the direction in which you wish to head as an organization. Your team should be a community, and communities are made of single residents, each with their own lives.

4 – An idea-sharing shortage

Are your teammates compelled to share new suggestions? If few people in the office are contributing, it may be a sign there isn’t engaged work going on throughout the day. Not only is a lack of new ideas an obstacle to a healthy organization, but it could signal a major mental absenteeism issue throughout the company. Sure they are coming into work, but are they checking out mentally?

Encourage employees to share and express ideas, whether they are a new hire or veteran within the company. If sharing ideas is viewed negatively within team meetings, candor will become suppressed. Value employee contributions by supporting suggestions to encourage the development of a solid idea pipeline.

5 – Lack of collaboration

If you’ve noticed a work setting full of information silos, then you may have a “me first” mentality on hand. Employees are motivated to hoard information for personal gain, rather than share knowledge to elevate everyone’s productivity. To combat this phenomenon, examine incentives that may motivate selfish behavior. Eliminate those incentives and then design processes to encourage employees to share knowledge, instead.

6 – Little to no participation in culture-related activities

Sometimes people are legitimately busy or unable to make every single potluck. But, if there’s a pattern of spotty attendance at occasions especially designated to be culture-building events, then you have a problem. Lack of interest may be due to poor senior management support, excessive work responsibilities or a disconnect between options and what is actually meaningful to employees. Examine the potential causes and then communicate a new plan of action to employees to stimulate future interest.

7 – Gossip and closed door talks

Discouraging gossip and talk behind closed doors seems like a no-brainer, but it may not be as easy to spot as you may think. If there are cliques or negative rumors around the office, it’s important to address them. Then, spend time contemplating why this type of behavior is occurring. Are some people in the wrong jobs? Are people creating their own reality due to a lack of communication from management?

Model desired behavior and communicate in as transparent a way as possible for your organization, based on its values. To end negative gossip and rumors, speak to the affected parties to mediate a solution.

Half the battle of improving work culture is identifying the behaviors and outcomes that flag a problem in the first place. Now that you know what to look out for, partner with senior management to make a plan for change.

Image credit: Rust Corrosive Texture by L.C. Nøttaasen (contact)

A Strengths-Based Culture Drives Performance

in Workforce Management/by Featured Author

Why are sports analogies commonly found in business? Because nurturing talent in sports is all about finding out what someone is good at and then making them really great at it–strengths-based culture. Coaches rarely focus their effort on developing the weakest part of an athlete’s game or ability. They will always find their best attributes and strengths and apply those–hence the term positional player.

Too often in business we place an individual in a position, give them performance reviews and identify the areas they need to improve on. Then we spend time and money working to improve the individual’s weaknesses while spending no time developing their strengths or placing them in positions that utilize their strengths to the fullest extent possible.

A strengths-based culture is developed by focusing on aligning strengths with requirements. To do this, a company’s talent management strategy must focus on hiring based on strengths, developing those strengths and applying those strengths appropriately. You must also adopt the tools and resources necessary to identify and evaluate those strengths.

Download ExactHire Company Culture E-book

Strengths-based Hiring

The interviewing process needs to be swift, targeted and effective in the limited time you have available. This doesn’t mean sacrificing quality, rather it means being intentional and focused on what you are trying to achieve. The intent of most hiring managers in an interview is to identify if someone is qualified for the position. Qualifications are also considered abilities. So ultimately you want to understand their abilities.

What you don’t want to achieve is a list of all the things a candidate is not good at. Interviews that focus on weaknesses will almost always lead the hiring manager to find reasons not to hire someone. Instead, focus the interview on strengths and then identify how those strengths fit the requirements of the position, or another position. Look for the reasons to hire somebody.

A good method to conduct a strengths-based hiring program is to have a few layers to the process. First, interview for strengths that fit the organization as a whole. Don’t get blinded by the exact requirements of the position they are interviewing for. Second, interview for strengths as they relate to the position. Even then, stay focused on the critical few required for success in the position.

Develop Strengths and Forget about Weaknesses

Don’t fall into the trap, and don’t let your employees fall into the trap, of strictly focusing on improving and developing their weaknesses. Be aware of weaknesses and avoid situations that highlight them. Instead, be keenly tuned in to strengths and actively seek to apply them in various situations.

In, “Strengths Based Leadership,” by Gallup authors Tom Rath and Barry Conchie explain their research that demonstrates effective leaders know their own strengths and invest in the strengths of others. The point being, you can get much further aligning strengths with objectives than you can developing someone’s weaknesses.

Have you ever been in a relationship where you focused on the other person’s faults and forgot about their features? Worse yet, you thought you’d be able to change them. How well did that work out? Investing in strengths is no different.

Develop Roles and Teams Based on Strengths

Your typical job description usually consists of all the things an employee is required to do — known as essential functions. There’s usually some ceremonial skills, education and soft requirements thrown in there, but usually without much thought.

Approach job descriptions from the “one-thirds / two-thirds” perspective. One-third of the job description should be the core essential functions only. The other two-thirds should consist of how success will be measured and the competencies and strengths required to be successful in the position. Evaluate employees and potential employees against these for strength-based placement.

How to Choose an Assessment

There are hundreds of assessments out there to chose from. They range anywhere from full day interactive processes that cost a few thousand dollars to 15 minute survey based assessments that can cost less than $100. After determining your budget and needs, you can begin the hunt for an assessment.

Choose an assessment that allows an employee to self learn such as the Strengthsfinder 2.0. ExactHire offers an array of assessments available to achieve the right job fit. If you’re making an organization wide push for a strength based culture, utilizing assessments associated with books allows everyone to receive the same information and be speaking the same language. Additionally, these well established assessments typically come with training and development tools.

The downside to online only assessments is that they rarely provide an interactive learning process. A summary will be provided to the respondent, but that is usually it and leaves the employee guessing what the results were. You want to be able to sit down with an employee and be transparent about the results. Highlight their strengths and establish a collaborative plan to apply and develop those strengths.

Things to Remember When Using Assessments

Assessments are a tool in the toolbox. This is very important to remember. You should never use an assessment as the ultimate decision factor in hiring or placement. Think of the decision as a three-legged stool. You need all three legs for the stool to stand. The assessment is only one of the legs. The other two legs consist of the person’s experience (what they’ve actually accomplished) and their competencies or abilities (what they can actually do). You must bring these three things together and evaluate them against the environment in which the employee will be performing.

Make sure the assessment is applicable to what you are trying to evaluate and achieve. Also, keep the assessment consistent across the organization. Using different brands of assessments for different individuals can be problematic. However, you may need to identify different assessments for different levels within the company, such as leadership assessments for leaders.

If you are able to align your core talent management practices of hiring, training and development, and placement with individual and team strengths you will see much better overall performance. Additionally, employees’ motivation and satisfaction will increase as they will succeed more often, be more engaged in their roles and satisfied with the work they are doing.

Looking for tools to improve your employee selection process? Contact ExactHire to learn how our assessment tools can connect the right employee to the right position.

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Photo Credit: www.historicalstockphotos.com

How to Motivate Management to Support Company Culture Improvement

in Workforce Management/by Randi Renee Doerr, SPHR, SHRM-SCP

Hopefully you’ve had the pleasure of working for an employer with a deeply rewarding work culture. One of the reasons you enjoyed the experience probably had something to do with the actual work you accomplished there, but that likely wasn’t the only factor. Or, maybe you long for culture improvements at your existing employer, but struggle to make a business case to senior management to win their support and resources for what can sometimes be deemed as a “fluffy” back-burner endeavor.

However, the impact of corporate culture is anything but fluff. In fact, Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi, the authors of Primed to Perform, have repeatedly done work with organizations to quantify the marked impact that company culture has on employee motivation. They’ve based their work on research initially presented by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan a few decades ago, that suggested that there are six primary reasons why people work–three of which are direct motives being related to the work itself, and three of which are indirect since they are not connected to the actual work.

Direct Motives

Play – the extent to which you love the work itself
Purpose – the extent to which you identify with the impact of your work
Potential – the extent to which you stand to gain from the impact of your work

These direct motives tend to increase performance, with those motives being closest to the work itself having the most significant impact (i.e. play is more powerful than purpose, and purpose more powerful than potential).

Indirect Motives

Emotional pressure – the extent to which you work to avoid your identity being marred by some external force
Economic pressure – the extent to which you work to be rewarded or avoid penalties
Inertia – the extent to which you work simply because it’s what you’ve always done and not because you have any other sound reason

Unlike direct motives, indirect ones generally weaken performance. Emotional pressure doesn’t weaken it as much as the subsequent indirect motives because it is still connected to your identity even if it’s not connected to the work itself.

So Why Does This Matter?

Simple. Engaging senior leaders to your company culture improvement cause must start with applying the very same motives that will eventually drive your actual culture improvement efforts–once they’re approved, that is.

Let’s break down six common objections human resource professionals may hear when trying to make a business case for work culture change. Each of these objections will touch on one of the six aforementioned motives. By reframing each objection into an opportunity to maximize a direct motive or minimize an indirect motive, HR professionals stand a much better chance at creating total motivation (ToMo) to convince senior leaders to invest the time and resources necessary to engage employees via culture revolution.

6 Senior Leader Culture Development Excuses

Culture is warm and fuzzy. We have bigger fish to fry.

PLAY

Do you sometimes think your company’s owners are singing “Shiny Happy People” by REM when your HR team brings up anything culture-related in conversation? Or, maybe their version is “Shiny Happy HR People.” They’d rather relegate warm and fuzzy culture development to the people who are more likely to enjoy that kind of work. It’s not their idea of play.

Maybe some senior leaders don’t love the work of cultural activity planning themselves, but maybe they do love enabling their department heads to do the work that invigorates them so that they find their own sense of play. Perhaps the owners’ idea of the play motive is entrepreneurial at heart…getting the right people on the team and then giving them the reins to do great things, to experiment and fail, but most importantly to learn what works and what doesn’t.

If this describes your relationship with management, then brainstorm ways in which you can appeal to your company owners’ work passions. That might include an experiment with trying a new, entrepreneurial approach to teaching the workforce how to play the game of business, or using business analytics to find patterns in what has engaged employees in the past.

I don’t understand what good will come from making changes.

PURPOSE

The purpose motive highlights whether you personally identify with and are motivated by the outcomes of your own work. If your senior management team is skeptical that anything will materially change as a result of getting new swag for employees and holding a foosball tournament, then I wouldn’t fault them. They may not have experience with knowing what specific impact a focus on culture may have on the organization (and therefore on their identity as the leader of that organization).

Of course the previously mentioned cliche culture activities are not a sound solution to your employee engagement problems. Many other moves may fall short, as well, if you fail to set expectations with ownership about the desired positive outcomes that you hope to realize as a result of any changes. Help them identify with the potential impact of the organization’s focus on culture improvement on others and themselves.

Here are positive outcomes to which businesses often aspire when endeavoring culture evolution:

Greater sense of shared purpose (does your work save lives, help people in need, make life more efficient, etc.)
Intrinsic motivation (employees are self-directed)
Knowledge sharing (no department silos and selfish data hoarding)
Momentum for change; enhanced learning leads to richer workforce skills inventory
Expanded opportunity for “play” which leads to innovation
Better adaptive performance; or, the ability to be flexible with unanticipated demands and not just tied into rigid tactical performance
More productivity; higher revenue
Healthier workforce; fewer costs related to health insurance and absenteeism
Less turnover; faster time to productivity (this outcome alone is very easily quantifiable to the CFO)
Wide span of idea sourcing; really good suggestions come from all areas of the organization
Increased access to A-player talent when sourcing new hires

Frame your conversation in a way that makes it clear that these positive outcomes will result, in large part, from the owner’s own work to publicly support culture development initiatives.

I fail to see a link between the investment required and a future financial gain.

POTENTIAL

To be successful, you must quantify how culture change will move the organization from point A to point B in a financially lucrative way. But how do you quantitatively benchmark culture…that warm and fuzzy, you-have-it-or-you-don’t organizational je ne sais quoi?

The good news is that you can assign a ToMo score to organizations using an analysis of employee responses related to the six work motives. In their consulting work, the authors of Primed to Perform have done this over and over again at many different organizations. And, they found that “in many industries, the most-admired cultures tend to have 15 points higher ToMo than their peers” (e.g. Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Apple Retail Stores).

The research suggests that a focus on having a positive work culture can materially move the needle and deliver a positive ROI. By sharing examples of these kinds of organizations and painting the picture of the impact your organization might have not just on employees, but also on your industry, potential will become clear to your leadership team.

I don’t think we have a culture problem. / I’m worried we’ll try and fail.

EMOTIONAL PRESSURE

It’s not really my thing. I don’t want us (or me) to look dumb. I don’t want to acknowledge the cultural elephant in the room. Reframing excuses that relate to one of the indirect motives can be a bit trickier, but never fear. Any of the aforementioned comments reek of emotional pressure and are understandable, as we’re all human.

To overcome the insecurity that they seem to suggest, don’t just explain the “why” of culture improvement to your senior leaders, but supplement your plan with the “how.” You’ve heard it before: come with a solution, not just a problem. Letting your senior management team know that you’re in it to win it when it comes to improving your work environment alleviates some of the emotional pressure (or burden) they may have been feeling about it themselves all along. Double down by enabling senior leaders (and others) the opportunity to “play” to brainstorm ideas on how the culture change might go down. Acknowledging to others in advance that a change is desired, and that it might not be perfect the first time round, is okay. It’s a step in the right direction.

Additionally, during the brainstorm process make sure that managers’, employees’ and customers’ motivations are aligned to succeed. For example, if customer and management expectations for service involve a customized, hold-my-hand relationship, but customer service representatives are paid based on the number of cases handled, then emotional pressure is sure to weaken organizational performance.

It will cost too much.

ECONOMIC PRESSURE

Not every company is going to even come close to Google’s budget for culture. However, every company needs to set aside either some funding and/or employee time to intentionally focus on culture development. Focusing on ToMo score in this scenario is helpful in making an argument in favor of culture change, as well. When you think about companies that are admired for their culture like Southwest and Whole Foods–companies with leading ToMo scores in their industries–you’re also reminded that they’re highly successful.

So then the compelling argument to senior leadership becomes, what’s the opportunity cost of doing nothing? Surely, that type of economic pressure warrants consideration relative to the cost of endeavoring change (given that you’re reading this article). In fact, budgeting for culture and engagement may end up eliminating costs in other areas…areas that may include incentives that are eventually found to create the wrong behaviors that weaken total motivation.

It’s how we’ve always done it.

INERTIA

The dreaded inertia might as well be called “insanity” in the context of this conversation. After all, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. But inertia is comfortable, familiar, it doesn’t make waves. It’s insidious.

While on its face, this motive seems like the mildest of the three indirect motives, it is the most harmful to total motivation and performance. In fact, it may even be the culture itself…“the way” things get done around your organization.

Tackle this senior leader objection head on with proof that what has always been done no longer (or has never) produced the desired results when it comes to engagement and performance. This may involve an honest look at how your organization stacks up against his competitors in terms of market share, ability to source top talent and length of customer relationships (among other indicators). You may lessen the likelihood of continued inertia by disrupting the status quo with clear suggestions on how opportunities to incorporate play, purpose and potential can be baked into the change process.

Convincing senior management to support your company culture improvement endeavors doesn’t have to be a cringe-worthy event. By bearing in mind that the six main reasons people work are the same six reasons your owner works, you can isolate objections and counter with objectives that will both maximize direct motives to support your plan, and minimize indirect motives.