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Build a Remote Workplace Strategy

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If you’re a company that can’t address and handle remote working, you need to build remote workplace strategy.

If you’re not, your competition will…and it’s going to hurt you.

 

VIDEO: Build a Remote Workplace Strategy

 

 

TRANSCRIPT: Build a Remote Workplace Strategy

With the onset of COVID, lots of employers were forced to allow employees to work from home. And at first, I don’t think they really liked it very much. They were having trouble finding a decent space to work in their new home–and if there were two people at the house working, they were fighting for the quiet time they needed to handle the zoom call.

But as time wore on, employees started to like it–much to everybody’s surprise, including mine.

But for most industries today, it’s hard to find a person if you’re not offering some type of remote work in your job ads.

Remote Work Employee Perspective

Only 37 percent of employees want to work in an office full-time…37 percent. And about 23 percent are saying that they’d even take a pay cut if you let them work from home or work remotely part of the time because it adds so much to their lives.

From an employee perspective, they reduce their commute time significantly–that could be 20 minutes a day could be a couple hours a day that really adds to to their usable life during the day, and it’s pretty important. They lowered their commuting costs three to five thousand dollars a year, their child care cost probably went down somewhere between 500 and 1400 a month. This was kind of like getting a tax-free raise.

But this isn’t all one-sided.

Remote Work Employer Perspective

The employer is finding that they’re getting more productive employees, their turnover is going down, their absenteeism is going down, their productivity is going up, and they’re actually able to reduce their real estate footprint, which saves them money. And most importantly because remote work is becoming part of the equation, they can increase their geographic horizon from which they can hire–which is really important in a hiring environment like we are today.

The job ads that mention remote work are getting a lot more applicants. So if you’re a company that can’t address and handle remote working, you need to build a remote workplace strategy that works. If you’re not, your competition is, and it’s going to hurt you.

 

ExactHire provides hiring software and strategy to help employers adapt to job market changes and succeed in hiring. Learn how our software and team of strategists can help you hire and onboard a remote workforce.

Employer Considerations for Posting and Managing Evergreen Jobs

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When you think about where you spend the bulk of your time in the employee recruiting process, is a big chunk reserved for a certain type of position? If so, this role is probably an evergreen job.

Just as an evergreen tree appears green and alive all year long, evergreen positions require a constant flow of candidates because they experience high turnover and/or are positions that a large percentage of employees occupy. As a result, many companies keep these requisitions perpetually open on their job listings page in order to populate the candidate pipeline.

Evergreen jobs and turnover

Sourcing a steady flow of candidates to fill evergreen roles is essential–they are the positions critical to business success. Industries such as restaurant, healthcare, retail, call center and non-profit regularly source applicants for evergreen jobs such as server, home health aid, cashier, customer service representative and direct support professional.

Organizations often struggle with high turnover in these positions due to factors such as

  • the role being available on a part-time basis more frequently than full-time,
  • job seasonality (or seasonal availability of candidates),
  • low barriers to entry that make it easy for candidates to get a similar job elsewhere, and
  • low unemployment leading to more accessible wage increases at competitive employers.

Evergreen job hiring challenges

Hiring employees to fill evergreen positions can be tricky for a variety of reasons.

Misleading reporting

If you tend to keep the same job listings open all the time while regularly hiring candidates, it’s easy to unintentionally skew reporting in the name of ease. While the same job listing ID may remain open for a year (which can save time on reposting the job every few months), it will be harder to report on which referral sources, job description text (if you tweak it frequently with overwrites) and other factors lead to the successful hiring of multiple individuals because they are all tied to the same requisition. A good rule of thumb is to close out an existing evergreen requisition when a candidate is hired for that role, and then use the previous requisition as a template for easily creating a new one.

Job boards vs. organic search

While external job boards such as Glassdoor and Indeed favor fresh job listing IDs that aren’t reposted too frequently, search engines like Google spotlight tenured job description pages that have evergreen content (e.g. new imagery, comments, video, and other structured data). So what’s the right answer? Temporary job listing ID pages or persistent job description overviews?

You can benefit from both. Use your applicant tracking system to refresh a job listing for an evergreen role by closing old job listing IDs and using them as a template to create a duplicate job listing (with a new ID) every 60-90 days. Then, consider adding evergreen content pages within your ATS portal or on your corporate website that

  • list details about what to expect in the role,
  • answer frequently asked questions about the job,
  • highlight video testimonials from other employees in that position, and
  • link to a list of the job listing(s) currently open for that role.

With the dual approach, job seekers stand to find your recently posted job listing on external job boards, as well as via keyword-specific search queries on search engines.

Hiring compliance can be impacted

Care should be taken with determining how the frequency of evergreen requisition posting may impact an employer’s Affirmative Action Plan (AAP) compliance efforts. If the same job listing ID is kept open for an entire year–and we assume at least one candidate is hired from that requisition–then the entire year’s worth of internet applicants must be included in the applicant pool considered for adverse impact. In contrast, if a single requisition is kept open for only one quarter, and only one person is hired during that time, then the pool for adverse impact analysis is smaller which is generally preferable.

By periodically opening new requisitions–even when a hire does not take place in a period of 60 or 90 days–employers put themselves in a better position for compliance and limit their exposure. NOTE: If no applicants from a quarter’s requisition are hired, then the job ID can be closed and none of the applicants must be reported in the AAP data.

Managers at different locations

In the world of evergreen hiring, the location at which a future employee may work when he first applies to an evergreen position isn’t always apparent. And, depending on the industry and size of organization, different hiring managers likely manage candidate screening and/or interviewing at various locations.

Unless internal expectations are clearly set about how managers access a candidate pool that may be shared by different branches, the candidate experience could be hampered by poor communication from a variety of different locations vying for the same candidate. This can be exacerbated in a tight labor market with low unemployment as general managers compete for workers in high turnover, hourly, part-time positions.

Within the retail and restaurant industries, in which some brands have both corporate and franchise-owned stores, careful attention must be paid to limiting franchisor access to job applicants for franchisee-owned locations in order to avoid vicarious liability. When implementing hiring technology in this situation, it’s critical to understand how different applicant pools will be separated for administrators. At the same time, it’s important to avoid a confusing application process for job seekers who perceive all locations to be one brand.

Best practices for managing evergreen positions

Now that we’ve reviewed considerations for posting and managing evergreen positions, let’s cover best practices to improve the chances of your success in hiring individuals for these roles.

Understand what causes turnover

Only by analyzing factors that cause your employees to leave, will you be able to adjust their experience to prolong tenure and benchmark success. Consider the impact of job factors such as your organization’s

  • work schedule flexibility
  • pay rate relative to competitors
  • ability to communicate the proximity of public transportation, and
  • opportunities for continuous learning and advancement.

With an understanding of the primary drivers of turnover, you can re-imagine the employment experience to mitigate these factors. Proactively communicate how you address these items with job seekers in your career content and utilize an applicant tracking system that makes it easy for job candidates to search positions near their bus route. For example, the new hiring software platform that ExactHire is building allows candidates to optionally enter their address to see nearby locations with open job suggestions.

Geo-fenced Job Listing Search | ExactHire

Set internal expectations about hiring efficiency

Recruiters will have a greater impact on organizational success when they rally hiring managers around what to expect from the hiring process. These conversations include topics such as

  • what the hiring market looks like and which factors impact organizational turnover (e.g. what it’s going to take to keep employees),
  • the current velocity of hire and a reasonable expectation for number of hiring processes that can be managed successfully at once (e.g. should we hire more recruiters or consider Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)?),
  • how promptly assigning statuses to candidates and entering hire dates in an ATS is critical to calculating time to hire and team efficiency,
  • the ideal dollar amount to plan for employee attrition in the operating budget, and
  • how to manage headcount appropriately–is it a set number of positions per job opening or can it flexibly fluctuate depending on need?

Consider job listing duration

Close out aging job listing IDs at least every three months or whenever you make a hire for the position–whichever is sooner. The impact of this practice is two-fold:

  1. By separating batches of applicants for an evergreen job into 90-day chunks–each with its own separate requisition–you limit the likelihood that the OFCCP will take a closer look at your data in an AAP audit because your data pool is smaller (i.e. a separate pool for each job listing ID) and therefore not likely to be statistically significant.
  2. By reposting evergreen jobs periodically with new job IDs, you’re ensuring that the posting date appears relatively recent to potential job applicants. However, even a 30-day old position may deter eager job seekers. Consider including text that describes the role as an evergreen position within the body of your job description. By letting candidates know that you’re always sourcing for this position, they will be less likely to overlook a couple-month-old job listing.

Create a landing page for evergreen jobs

To balance the effects of reposting job listing IDs on a quarterly basis, give your evergreen roles a surge of search engine optimization (SEO) by creating permanent job overview pages (on either your ATS or your corporate website) for the positions that are always (or soon to be) in supply. Include page elements such as

  • relevant keyword-rich content in headers and body text
  • video testimonials from employees in the same role
  • a frequently asked question section to answer common job-related inquiries
  • an overview of the steps involved in the hiring process
  • the unique benefits of the position, and
  • call-to-action buttons directing page visitors to a filtered list of the specific requisitions currently available for this type of role.

Reduce hiring funnel friction

Put yourself in the shoes of a job seeker and assess whether it is easy to find your jobs, easy to apply and easy to communicate with recruiters and hiring managers. While making the selection process efficient is a priority for any kind of job, it is mission critical for evergreen positions since a large volume of candidates must be sourced to meet the company’s hiring needs.

  • Easy to find – Easily share your job listings to external job boards and social media streams within a modern applicant tracking system, but also consider paid recruitment marketing avenues such as retargeting display ads that show content to job seekers who previously interacted with your employment brand.
  • Easy to apply – Utilize two-step applications to allow candidates to provide the basics in the first half of the application process. Shortening an application’s first phase will drive better applicant conversion. Also, select pre-employment assessments that don’t require too much time for an applicant to complete when presented at the point of application. Longer assessments can be utilized later in the selection process.
  • Easy to communicate – Meet job seekers where they are…which often is on their phone rather than a laptop. Incorporate text messaging into the candidate communication process as many individuals interested in evergreen jobs may be screening their calls and failing to set up their voicemail inboxes.

Incorporate pre-employment testing

Know what employee success in your evergreen roles looks like by assessing your current superstars and distilling their results down to the key traits that most heavily predict performance. Then, benchmark for these traits by creating a model profile within your employee assessment tool and use the assessment at the point of application or before a formal interview. To determine placement within the hiring process, consider the impact of a cognitive or behavioral testing tool vs. a job skills testing resource on your candidate funnel–which type(s) would produce the most compelling outcomes?

Nurture your evergreen pipeline

Since employers are always sourcing candidates for evergreen jobs, they must experiment with innovative approaches to engaging past applicants and attracting new job seekers. Create a special experience for people who are interested in being a part of your organization by inviting them to your talent community. These are the individuals who keep raising their hand with continued interest, like your recruiting content on social media and respond to your recruitment marketing efforts.

Here are some ideas for engaging them as applicant VIPs:

  • Use tags within your applicant tracking system to highlight their interest so that you may invite them to apply to specific job listing IDs as roles in their evergreen area of interest open at locations near them.
  • Invite them to opt in to an applicant insider newsletter with articles about new roles, culture and organizational goals.
  • Invite them to join a social media group focused on careers at your organization.
  • Create targeted recruitment marketing campaigns that reinvigorate their interest in your organization.

 

Although your organization has roles which will always be evergreen, your approach to sourcing candidates for these jobs will be ever changing.

Want to learn more? Download our guide!

 

Managing Evergreen Jobs | ExactHire Guide

Spreadsheets for Hiring | A Modern Alternative

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A while back I wrote about the employee onboarding process and its movement away from spreadsheets. In that post, I shared my love for spreadsheets, but I also pointed out the shortcomings related to their use with onboarding new employees. In this post, I would like to look at another area where, in many cases, HR also relies too heavily upon spreadsheets: spreadsheets for hiring.

Spreadsheets for Hiring

Despite the rapid adoption of SaaS software by businesses across the world, the spreadsheet maintains an important role in many organizations. Most HR departments still rely on shared spreadheets for hiring and other HR processes–even those organizations that have deployed an “all-in-one” HR solution (really, all-in-one?). So all you Excel warriors out there need not fret; your skills will remain in demand and valuable….for a while at least.

The issue today is not whether organizations should ditch spreadsheets completely, it’s whether they should seek to use the best tools for the job. And spreadsheets–love them as I may–are simply not the best solution for managing the many aspects of hiring employees.

Let’s take a look at how a hiring process driven by spreadsheets stacks up against one driven by hiring software.

Tracking Your Sources

It’s important to continuously analyze what’s working and what’s not. This is true for most things in which someone wants to excel. As it relates to improving your hiring process, recruiting sources, or channels, are one of the first items an HR leader will want to analyze.

A spreadsheet can certainly help in recording and comparing the effectiveness of your recruiting channels. The difficulty arises in how you populate the data. In most cases, this will mean manually recording the data for each applicant into the spreadsheet.

Hiring software, on the other hand, will automatically pull the applicant’s source. Built-in reports and dashboards can be configured to provide you with a thorough applicant source analysis in just one click. This makes the job of source analysis so easy, that it virtually eliminates the possibility of it being overlooked.

Summarizing Applicants

All applicants are not equal. But what are the factors that reliably differentiate applicants? There is no single answer to this question, as it will vary based on role, location, and job market conditions. This makes it difficult to standardize a screening process.

Spreadsheets are best used in summarizing standardized sets of data. Standardized data is a natural product of a standardized process. So what happens when a hiring process produces highly variable data? You get an unwieldy spreadsheet or multiple spreadsheets that make analysis and comparison a nightmare.

Hiring software simplifies the task of summarizing applicants by allowing you to review applicants based on custom criteria. This eliminates confusion and facilitates efficient applicant screening and information sharing.

Rating Applicants

When it’s time to screen applicants for an open position, HR professionals will want to look at a standard set of criteria for each candidate, and then apply a rating. Often times there will be multiple people involved in this process.

Organizations that rely on spreadsheets for the rating of applicants will run into a number of obstacles when trying to record, compare, and share those ratings. Some of the more common challenges are:

  • Manual data entry is often the only option.
  • Multiple spreadsheets for different roles and criteria–or lots of filters.
  • Complex sharing/viewing permissions or, again, multiple spreadsheets.

Contrast the above challenges with the value-added opportunities that hiring software can provide. Once again, the system will hide the messiness and confusion inherent in a spreadsheet-driven approach. Hiring software will allow for:

  • Automated data entry. Data flows from the application to the database.
  • Create rules to automate initial ratings based on customized criteria.
  • Quickly drill down to a set of applicants you wish to compare and refine ratings.
  • Invite colleagues to view limited sets of data based on predefined permission rules.

Managing The Candidate Experience

There are a number of ways to enhance the hiring experience for job seekers. One way is through personalization. Over the past decade, consumers have become accustomed to highly personalized marketing, sales, and customer service experiences. This has created the expectation of a personalized experience in almost everything–including the hiring process.

However, maintaining a personalized experience for your job applicants and candidates can be difficult. It, naturally, requires collecting a lot of personal information. But, perhaps, what’s even more challenging is the integration of personal information into your hiring workflow.

It’s likely a given by now that some of the barriers to managing a candidate experience with spreadsheets include manual data entry, role and location-based nuances, and information sharing. However there are a number of additional challenges that spreadsheets present in this scenario as well, like:

  • Exporting required data to communication platforms
  • Delivering reminders of incomplete internal tasks
  • Managing the timing of action items against delays

It’s in addressing challenges like the ones above where hiring software really shines. Integrated communication channels allow for instant communication with applicants right from their digital file. Customized permissions ensure that all internal stakeholders have the necessary (and only the necessary) access to candidate data and statuses. Finally, task reminders can be triggered from within the system and pushed via email and text. In this way, hiring software can do more than assist with the tasks of hiring, it can elevate job seekers’ perceptions of your entire organization by ensuring that your processes are timely and seamless.

Facilitating Employee Onboarding

Too often, job seekers enjoy an impressive experience in moving from applicant, to candidate, to hired employee…only to face an abrupt and troubling reality; they’ve landed in a mess. Employers–not the seemingly friendly, competent faces of the hiring process, but the actual people and faces–are not prepared to onboard new employees in the same seamless, timely way as they hire them.

Those employers that rely on spreadsheets and deal with low-volume hiring can sometimes survive by adding more columns, adjusting viewing and sharing permissions, and maybe dipping their toes into some more advanced areas like VBA. Unfortunately, this approach still leaves an organization open to the metaphorical risks of “dropping the ball” and “letting items fall through the cracks.”

Hiring software ensures that the information initially collected through the hiring process is passed through, intact, to the appropriate onboarding forms and documents. From there, it’s a simple matter of having the new hire complete electronic signatures and check boxes for consent. There is no duplicate data entry on the part of HR personnel or the new employee.

A Modern Alternative to Spreadsheets

As I said at the top, spreadsheets aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. There is a whole generation of workers that has embraced their utility and flexibility. Furthermore,  with spreadsheets, organizations don’t have to worry about whether a vendor will maintain the code and integrations, or raise prices at a later date. Spreadsheets are a safe bet.

However, for employers that find themselves in a competitive job market, any risks associated with implementing hiring software should be weighed against the risk of losing good talent and the costs of maintaining a revolving employment door. Successful employers will exercise great diligence in choosing the right vendor for their organization.  With a trusted vendor in place, the risks of implementing hiring software fall away. What’s left is a modern alternative to spreadsheets that keeps the energy and focus on people and not the processes.

 

ExactHire provides hiring software for small and growing businesses that are seeking ways to enhance their hiring and employee onboarding experiences. We’re often the first step in helping businesses move away from spreadsheets for hiring and other HR processes. To learn more about our current and future solutions, contact us today!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Not Screw Up Remote Employee Onboarding

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Whether your team’s hiring its first remote employee or its 79th, don’t skimp on putting thoughtful intention behind your new hire onboarding program for remote workers.

Go ahead, pick out your worst fear about hiring remote workers below.

  • If I can’t see them, will they just do their laundry instead of work?
  • Our employees need to be “on” during our regular working hours, how can they if they’re roaming coffee houses around Europe with a 6-hour time difference?
  • Company culture and connectivity will suffer if we can’t play ping pong in person together, won’t it?

Did you have trouble picking just one? That’s okay, so did ExactHire when we started allowing employees to work remotely over seven years go. Our organization has come a long way since then, and–with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic–we have adopted the mentality of “remote first.” That is, truly distributing the workforce in such a way that remote work is the default setting–not just an option available to some. SaaS companies like StackOverflow and HelpScout are worth further investigation if you’re considering this cultural pivot for your employer

Remote first = distributing your workforce in such a way that remote work is the default mode.

Another relevant read is Remote: Office Not Required by Basecamp Co-Founders, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. This book details Basecamp’s evolution into a remote first organization, including both the pitfalls and unexpected wins along the way. There’s no shortage of inspiration on how to make remote working arrangements possible for your organization these days.

In this post, I’ll focus on how to not screw up employee onboarding once you’ve committed to hiring a new fully-remote employee. For someone who is brand new to your organization and away from the office from the start, consider these items for your onboarding checklist.

1 – Make expectations and goals crystal clear

In the absence of in-person onboarding activities, picking up on body language and being a bystander to water cooler talk is more challenging. Therefore, organizations should put themselves in the shoes of new hires and brainstorm the details that new employees won’t necessarily absorb on their own.

Being transparent about expected working hours (despite time zone of new hire), explaining how organizational culture manifests itself and sharing milestone targets about what job success looks like at three months, six months and beyond are just a few of many possible details.

For example, in Remote, the authors talk about how it’s important for Basecamp to give its new hires a heads up that they may be bombarded by social media follower requests when joining the organization. Because their company is remote first, it has become common for employees to connect with one another on social media in order to get to know each other more quickly in the absence of traditional face time in the office.

2 – Make over communication a way of life

Nothing can trip up a remote working arrangement more quickly than a shortage of sufficient communication. If your company wants to make remote work work, then you need to embrace many modes of communication (“different strokes for different folks”) and in particular, abundant written communication.

Particularly if your remote employees are spread across different time zones, a bigger portion of your company’s internal communication will be asynchronous–with employees reading email, chat messages and Slack updates anywhere from minutes to hours after they are originally sent.

To amplify the effectiveness of asynchronous communication, be clear about your needs and consider capturing screenshots and creating short videos to better explain tasks and challenges to co-workers when big time zone differences diminish the ability to connect in real time.

Consider your communication culture and whether it makes sense to go to the extent of asking people to update their status when away from Slack, instant messenger, etc. While ExactHire doesn’t quite go this far, we do have an internal document that lists general working hours for all employees since individual availability varies widely depending on the day of the week.

3 – Organization is everything

While we’ve already established that communication is critical, committing to written communication goes deeper than the one-off messages and company announcements that happen on a daily basis. In the same way that ExactHire maintains a support knowledge base full of training documents for our customers about our products, employers with remote workers have an even greater responsibility than traditional employers to document policies, project statuses and resources in an internal knowledge base.

And, it’s not just about basic documentation, but also the style or approach you take for documentation and communication. For example, at a previous employer I was quickly indoctrinated into the organizational norm of referring to all employees by just their initials in written communication, as well as the practice of hiding unwieldy URL addresses behind anchor text in interoffice emails. Mind you, this was a decade ago…before it was a tech-based cultural norm to go to such formatting lengths.

Internal consistency in communication supports effective organization.

Additionally, having easy-to-use tools to track items is essential. For example, in addition to Slack, ExactHire has leveraged platforms such as Google Docs, Trello, Basecamp and Jira for internal collaboration on a daily basis in recent years.

4 – Paperless employee onboarding

For both new hires and existing staff members, the employee onboarding process is full of opportunities to miss details. Take the pressure off of remembering which employees should be prompted to complete which new hire documents, tasks and forms by leveraging employee onboarding software.

An effective onboarding platform automatically presents the right paperwork, onboarding tasks and training prompts to different new hires based on factors such as their geographic location, FLSA status, security clearance and role type. Because additional to-do items are only presented to new hires and internal onboarding process stakeholders when certain basic prerequisites are already satisfied earlier in the process, the experience for the new hire is positive and stress for the staff member is minimal.

5 – Create inspiration with preparation

It’s stressful enough for a new hire on her first day at a new job in a traditional office. Now imagine how much more awkward a remote employee’s first day on the job can be if the employer is unprepared for her arrival.

Prepare new hires to hit the ground running quickly by sharing a super detailed onboarding plan and training schedule with them before their first day. Include links to your internal knowledge base and make resources for additional learning easy to find and searchable. This written documentation will easily fill the gaps between video conference calls and virtual job shadowing sessions with co-workers.

From a hardware standpoint, outfit new employees with the equipment they need to start work on day one. Your approach to this will vary depending on whether you ship a computer, phone, headset, etc. to your remote employees or have a policy in place that allows them to bring their own device (BYOD) to work. Regardless of your approach, make sure that all equipment and software access follows internal security protocols and that new hires are trained on how to handle secure data and what to do in the event of a breach.

Be sure to give new hires access to relevant communication groups, recurring calendar events and internal online resources in time for their first day–along with instructions or a description of each item’s objective. There’s no quicker way to alienate your remote employees than to forget to add them to your monthly all-hands meeting call, and then interrupt it fifteen minutes in to invite them to join last late.

6 – Tell your culture story

Fostering connectivity can be a struggle in a remote-driven workplace–especially in an organization that has transitioned from a traditional in-person office to a distributed workforce. While veteran employees instinctively understand the core values, mission and unwritten ways of doing things, newly hired remote employees won’t become a thread in the organizational tapestry without understanding its roots and also being prompted to share their own background.

Create a series of videos about key aspects of the company’s past that can be embedded into the onboarding process. Host a monthly company trivia session where employees log into Google Meet or Skype to answer questions and compete for swag.

Telling the organizational story to new hires is a best practice, but savvy employers will also build in the opportunity for its diverse new employees to make their own mark and share their own background. This might be accomplished with a virtual employee directory that features fun facts about new hires; or, occasional “lunch and learn” webinars that invite new employees to do a show and tell about their own city/country or hobbies and interests.

7 – Promote peer mentoring

Mentoring is not a new concept for employee onboarding; however, adopting it as a practice for a remote workforce is an emerging trend. From job shadows with veteran employees in a new hire’s first few days to monthly milestone check-ins with a designated “buddy,” virtual mentoring has a great deal of possibility for remote-friendly workplaces.

When creating a virtual mentoring program, account for factors that may influence likely success between mentor and mentee; such as, time zone difference, job role, interests and behavioral tendencies as evident from an employee assessment.

Take 1-on-1 mentoring a step further and invite mentors and mentees to quarterly tweet-ups or video conferences in which newer hires have a forum in which they can ask questions of mentors in real-time and within a group format. By listening to the questions and answers of peers, as well, new hires will likely shorten their own learning curve.

8 – Make time for face time

When done right, remote work allows employees to focus for longer periods of time without interruption. While distractions may occur in both the office and at home, there’s a distinct difference between immediately responding to someone knocking on your door versus waiting a few minutes to finish a task before responding to an email.

Utilize video conference platforms such as Zoom or GoToMeeting to allow all employees to synchronously connect whenever the need arises. Perhaps your cultural norm is even to ask employees to always use video chat rather than voice-only phone calls when connecting for a meeting. However, when planning such video calls, and to be considerate of potential time zone differences, be intentional with the time allotted to focus on social connectivity rather than just covering things that might be more efficiently discussed via email.

Even in modern, 100% remote first workplaces, there’s a place for in-person interaction. Many employers that have largely distributed workforces still make time at least once per year to gather in person for social connection–as an entire organization. And while this type of event can inflate the company travel line item significantly, that is the tradeoff between having the overhead attributable to a physical office location versus employing a remote first approach. If that approach would break your budget, then consider smaller meetups between departments instead.

9 – Feed off of feedback

Emojis were once reserved for text-happy teenagers lamenting their latest breakup; however, in recent years they’ve earned their place as a remote work mainstay because they help express tone and emotion in a situation that might otherwise omit context for one’s mood.

And while it might still be a stretch for some to include them in email messaging, they thrive in messaging platforms such as Slack. And, they’re particularly helpful in a remote workforce when employees may have never met in person and do not yet understand the nuances of their peers’ personalities. Emojis are one way of leveraging feedback on a micro level so that remote employees can gauge how they’re communicating or performing.

On a macro level, employers hiring remote employees must give and receive feedback early and often throughout the onboarding process.

  • Gather new hire input in the pre-boarding phase to make sure that incoming employees have a firm grasp of the resources available to them to get started.
  • Hold virtual town hall meetings for new hires three months into their employment tenure for ideas on how to improve remote employee onboarding.
  • Make sure that supervisors have a regular cadence of offering constructive feedback to direct reports throughout the first year of employment, especially.

Successful Remote Employee Onboarding

Make your objective to create experiences in which remote employees feel as assimilated and supported as traditional in-office employees. Remember that it will take some experimentation, careful hiring and an open mind. If you don’t get it exactly right the first time, gather feedback to make an adjustment and try, try again!

Download ExactHire's Employee Onboarding Checklist

Say ‘No’ to HR Inertia – Make a Case for Change

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Making a business case for any kind of human resources process change starts with a discussion on how the change can make the company more profitable–though identifying the improved outcomes that lead to potential profit isn’t always an easy task. Furthermore, change naysayers may be mired in the mindset of “this is how things are done around here.”

In my experience, inertia is the most formidable obstacle to adopting new HR technology. It manifests itself in many ways, and in this blog I’ll share how comments ExactHire recently collected during software research calls substantiate inertia’s insidiousness. Additionally, we’ll discuss potential responses to act on that inertia in such a way that change is possible and more profit is realized for the organization.

Software Cost

Particularly in the case of a full human resources information system (HRIS), the cost of HR technology can quickly increase as modules for many aspects of HR are adopted by employers. While cost is a common objection that derails well-intended HR departments from exploring the latest technology options, in ExactHire’s 2018 Tech-Based Employee Experience Survey, a notable 40% of respondents indicated that their budget for HR technology spending had increased over the past year. Additionally, 48% of respondents had the same budget in 2018 as the previous year. Consequently, at least the majority of respondents aren’t experiencing contracting financial resources in their quest to find affordable HR technology.

88% of respondents maintained or increased their HR technology budget in the past year.

Nevertheless, cost is often the first red flag management throws when the topic of new technology is broached. Here are some of the stumbling blocks we uncovered in our research calls:

Objections

  • “We have been using our existing HRIS for 7 years now. I have shopped other systems, but management won’t agree to move away from our current application because they feel we haven’t gotten our money’s worth yet.” – Director of Human Resources, non-profit industry
  • “Our applicant tracking system was here when I arrived and there’s not a strong desire to move to anything else within our budget. As far as onboarding goes, spreadsheets and email are not ideal, but our lower volume of hiring makes it doable.” – Director of Talent Acquisition, software industry

Approach

Get at the heart of others’ concerns about cost. For example, there should be a difference in approach if others feel you’re already overspending for current software compared to if they are content with an existing software application and not in enough “pain” to make a change that may cost more.

Armed with an understanding of others’ motivations for objecting to change, consider how your organization’s future growth plans should impact any changes you make today. Ideally, the technology you use should be capable of meeting your needs for tomorrow, too. However, the optimal scenario exists when you can scale a platform to meet those needs over time without overpaying for features you don’t need prematurely.

Do you need all the bells and whistles now? If not, is it easy to add them later? Making a case for change is easier if you plan to implement functionality over time so you aren’t drinking from the fire hose–or paying through the nose.

And while financial “hard costs” (e.g. software implementation charges, monthly access fees, etc.) are the most apparent expenses associated with technology change, motivate management to consider new technology by focusing on the opportunity cost of not making a change and its potential long-term impact, too.

Scarcity of Time and Staff Bandwidth

In the same way that scarcity of time can be an advantage in an opportunity cost discussion, it can also perpetuate inertia. For many employers, allocating the staff resources necessary to explore and implement a new software platform is usually a bigger obstacle than an increase in access fees. A significant barrier to coaxing employers away from HRIS platforms they don’t like that much is time…the time associated with the implementation process and the training that stakeholders must undergo to use a new system effectively.

And even when an HR application isn’t liked that much, inertia may still be victorious as prospects implement additional native modules (e.g. recruiting, performance management, learning management, etc.) just because they are already part of the existing system–even if the system is poorly suited to the employer’s overall needs.

Objections

  • “I don’t know if we are going to stay with our existing software vendor…the more we tap into its various modules, the harder it is to pull away from it; meanwhile, the service is poor.” – HR Generalist, retail industry
  • “I actually had another vendor come in and give us a sales pitch…but the others in the room were reluctant to consider an alternative to our existing software at this time because the idea of a three- to four-month implementation process is daunting.” – Human Resources, physician group industry
  • “We handle recruiting manually with spreadsheets and do posting to third party job boards ourselves. We have applicant tracking, onboarding and other HR components in our HRIS, but they are too difficult to set up. It’s not worth our time to set them up. We would have to hire another full-time person just to set those modules up.” – HR Manager, portfolio company management industry

Approach

While it’s human nature to avoid situations that are expected to be unpleasant or even painful, to address the “change will take too much time” objection you must focus on the long-term impact of staying with a solution that is a mismatch for your employer’s needs. This approach can be aided by hard data on how many man hours are spent working around a system, redundantly entering data and/or manually completing tasks that could be automated for better efficiency. Then, calculate the cost of those man hours to come up with a quantitative answer for considering the return on investment for a new application.

Data is the key to determining whether a short-term disruption associated with software adoption is less expensive than the financial wake left by your existing software-assisted workflow. Bear in mind this takes a fatalistic approach of HR software vendors’ ability to successfully support clients through implementation in a reasonable time. However, employers’ fear of system change can be minimized by selecting a vendor with a strong track record of timely implementation assistance and ongoing support.

What if being short on time is significantly compounded by a small HR department? While you may be able to get over the hump of increased access fees, and you’re willing to dig in to switch systems, you still only have so much staff bandwidth to get it done along with all the other fires that pop up in the world of HR.

Ask this question: If there were no budget or manpower constraints, what would we be doing differently to support our employees and our organization’s mission? Even though you may think shirking the reality of budgets is like living in a fantasy world, your brainstorm will paint a picture of the ultimate vision for employee experience and clarify which HR-related tasks are most important for organizational success. Remember: retaining the best employees supports profitability.

With true vision in mind, process stakeholders have a starting point to examine the opportunity cost of individuals’ collective time. The true priorities of the department become evident and draw attention to the resource constraint that may be created by doing things the existing way relative to the cost of implementing change.

Buy-in and Support

Lastly, the inertia of static HR processes is often maintained by a difference in perspective between HR, employees and managers. One of the primary reasons making a business case to senior management remains a challenging task is because the language and analytics traditionally used by HR professionals may not be as intriguing to others in leadership roles. For instance, while turnover percentage and time-to-fill are reliable indicators to many in the human resources arena, these HR metrics don’t necessarily translate well to CFOs, COOs, or presidents.

Objections

  • “At the beginning of 2017, my organization needed to fill 70 open positions. We hired way more, but voluntary terminations have increased by dramatically more than the number of hires made–it’s the nature of the difficult work. In fact, we hired almost 400 people. Full time employee turnover is at 48%, and part-time turnover is an embarrassing 201%. Our management thinks we need to fix recruiting, but turnover is more attributable to poor experience. Our stats don’t lie.” – Director of HR, non-profit industry
  • “The three big barriers are: the bandwidth for our HR department to implement something new; getting buy-in from the field (it takes bandwidth to get buy-in); and, the cost to make those changes.” – Director of Human Resources, healthcare industry

Approach

Getting buy-in and support for technology change starts with HR software product owners getting on the same page as employees and senior managers. As the two comments above illustrate, different factors can be at play when it comes to stalled out tech decisions. However, the remedy for both objections starts with telling others what’s in it for them–and with language that is easy to understand.

Organizational decision makers care about the bottom line, and so remember that when attempting to alter their inert opinion on your existing software tools. For example, when adding applicant tracking or employee onboarding software, some HR leaders focus primarily on justifying these new applications by focusing on efficiencies gained and/or staff time saved.

While these metrics have merit, they also fall outside the common terminology of many finance and operations leaders. Because efficiency and staff time saved in HR are difficult to quantify and not as directly attributable to the bottom line, these savings may be discounted or dismissed entirely.

However, focusing on what direct impact those efficiencies can have on the revenue growth or profitability of the organization changes the conversation completely. Identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that impact business outcomes and then describe how those business outcomes can be positively changed as the result of new technology implementation.

Don’t forget to be prepared; come to management with a solution, not just a problem. Record benchmark levels for your KPIs and organize your findings in a manner consistent with how management prefers to process information and make decisions. Consider a SWOT Analysis supported by cost projections in which you are illustrating strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

It’s also important to get buy-in from existing employees–particularly those who will be heavy users of new software. And, in the HR technology space, that often includes all employees when you consider the self-service options available with employee onboarding, time and record keeping, payroll and performance management interfaces.

Spread the word to gather internal support by regularly communicating about potential change, conducting research with potential users and assuring others that due diligence now will likely prevent the organization from finding itself with a need to adopt new technology later–when it’s potentially more painful to do so.

Most importantly, create triggers to constantly re-evaluate how technology is aligned with your organizational goals and how it is impacting your employee experience. Take action on lessons learned and communicate the impact of changes made to others so that your HR technology system is considered legitimate and positive to your workforce.

It Takes a Village

Don’t fall victim to the tendency to put off what you could do today until tomorrow. In addition to rallying the support of senior management and employees, look to your technology vendor to help you make a case for change.

Ask your vendor partners if they have case studies, blogs, e-books or other content that provide tips on how to make a business case, as well as specific ideas on which KPIs might be the most effective in demonstrating the financial impact of a potential change. If it’s important for your vendor to partner with you in discussions with your management team, make that request.

Daunting as new technology adoption may seem, know that you and your HR team don’t have to go it alone. Even when your existing system isn’t necessarily broken, fight the inertia of not wanting to bother with change, or not considering the exponential impact that additional efficiency may have on the employee experience.

Is Your HR Software Hurting Your Employee Experience?

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Human resources technology is in a unique position to not only provide employers with employee experience data, but to also influence the quality of the employee experience, itself. For years software applications have allowed HR departments to more efficiently manage the administrative tasks associated with people management, but now through next generation interfaces, applications are enabling employee self-service in new and exciting ways, too.

From automatic prompts for new hires to schedule mentoring luncheons to instant access to an interactive, virtual organization chart, modern talent wants information on the go and on demand. But, despite the increasingly innovative ways in which automation can empower both employees and HR to process data, there should still always be a place for “actual human” engagement between applicants, employees, HR and management.

With so many options available in the HR tech space, and numerous factors impacting a successful vendor selection outcome, it’s no surprise that HR software often turns into a love-hate relationship with employers. The key to whether you have the most suitable HR software in place certainly depends on the degree to which it aligns with your people strategy, but also its ability to turn stored HR data into impactful workforce insights.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the following HR technology considerations for evaluating whether an application will have a positive impact on your organization’s overall employee experience.

  • Product implementation
  • Support and training
  • Integration vs. all-in-one
  • Employee self-service
  • Communication
  • Reporting and predictive insights

Product Implementation

You might ask how relevant the initial implementation phase is to the entire employee experience. After all, arguably it may only touch a handful of administrative users in human resources before the product is unveiled to an entire organization for use. However, how many of us have heard about painful software implementations that have taken (gasp!) more than a year!

While hopefully this is the exception more than the rule within your HR tribe, even month-long implementations can adversely impact the employee experience when you consider the hasty stop-gap plans that are used while waiting for a new product.

When selecting a technology vendor, verify whether implementation is likely to take weeks or months. Also, do research to substantiate whether this expectation has been accurate for other customers. If your plan is to implement more than one module of an application at different points in time, have a good understanding of how the vendor partner supports you in the first phase versus subsequent implementation phases (once the new client “honeymoon” may be over).

Support and Training

For many employers, the quality of the employee experience is influenced by the timeliness with which information is made available to employees upon their request. Some requests must be addressed by pulling data from HR software applications. Your organization’s ability to process these requests will depend not only on staff members’ ability to use the software effectively, but also the vendor’s responsiveness when your team needs assistance.

Take a hard look at your organization’s true support needs while thinking about the tech savviness of your own team as well as the quantity and quality of the vendor resources available. Will you be content to wait three days for a support ticket response from your vendor, or do you usually require same-day assistance? Is it easy to search for the training resources you need to learn how to use new software features? The faster you can get the information you need as an internal product champion, the faster you will be able to serve the needs of your own employees.

Integration vs. All-in-One

 

Should my organization adopt an all-in-one human resources information system (HRIS) or a series of stand-alone specialty applications?

This may be the most polarizing question in the HR technology space, and your preferred camp will depend on the needs of your employer. It may also depend on what you inherited from your predecessors when joining your organization. In fact, the chart below shows that many respondents from ExactHire’s 2018 Tech-Based Employee Experience Survey use both an HRIS and other stand-alone specialty applications. In fact, the two camps are not mutually exclusive.

  • HR Technology Product Mix
  • HRIS + stand-alone recruiting
  • HRIS + stand-alone onboarding
  • HRIS + stand-alone payroll
  • HRIS + other HR software
  • % Respondents
  • 38%
  • 8%
  • 13%
  • 22%

The following factors may help you determine which product mix is right for your organization.

Administrative pain points

Which pieces of the talent management process are taking up the most time for HR? When HR is buried in administration, “actual human” engagement suffers. If recruiting is the priority due to adding a new office location, for example, then a robust applicant tracking system may be desirable compared to a payroll company’s HRIS recruiting module. However, if hiring happens relatively infrequently but payroll is complicated, then an employer may prefer an HRIS with basic recruiting capabilities for the occasional job opening.

Data gaps and data redundancy

If end-to-end integration of data is the priority for your organization, then consider whether any sacrifices you make on features outweigh the opportunity cost of time spent on potential data export/import activities.

Or, if you plan on integrating separate solutions, understand how employees move through the virtual employment life cycle and make sure data remains accurate across systems and easily accessible.

Feature wish list

Will the functionality that applicants or existing employees expect from your organization (relative to your competitors) be available in an all-in-one system? Or, is there an application that you can use as your data change “single source of truth” that pushes information to periphery applications via one-way integration?

Growth plans

Do today’s tech needs look similar to your tech needs one to two years from now? If not, consider the scalability of any stand-alone applications and/or the ability to easily incorporate additional HRIS modules later.

Price

When evaluating different types of systems, think about what you need today and whether you are paying only for your needs today…or also for things you might need some day. Finding the balance between paying for scalability vs. paying for unnecessary feature bloat isn’t always easy. Spending more money on ultimately underutilized technology means less money available for other programs that may positively impact the employee experience.

Employee Self-Service

Customer self-service options abound in the information economy. From scanning your own groceries to using Alexa as your modern mix tape, consumers’ ability to help themselves is a killer advantage in the competition for market share. The same dynamic exists in the employment arena–employers that implement the right combination of personal interaction mixed with savvy self-service options are winners in the war for talent.

And not only does giving employees the ability to help themselves engage them, it frees HR to work on other experience initiatives. Additionally, it ensures the accuracy of HR data since it is regularly verified by the true authority on the data–the employee.

Be sure and have a clear understanding of how any software application’s self-service options may empower your own employees to do more. For example, look for applications that provide subsequent prompts for users to take advantage of other features that would be of interest based on their existing system usage or profile. By providing employees prompts to provide more information over time, software improves the user experience and avoids leaving employees feeling like they are “drinking from the fire hose” just to start using an application.

Communication

Think about your employees’ primary means of communication within the organization. Is it predominantly email, or do many conversations live in chat windows or even in Slack? Wherever correspondence lives, it probably does so because that channel is comfortable, well-established and easy-to-use.

The same must be true of your HR technology in order to engage applicants or existing employees to use communication tools to collaborate on the employee lifecycle. Consider the following questions to assess a software application’s communication tools.

  • Is it easy to email someone from the software application? And if that person responds, is his response also documented in the software interface?
  • Can users easily connect with one another and take action on pending items within the application (e.g. assign tasks, make notes, update progress)?
  • Is it possible to schedule events within the software via calendar integration?
  • Do other integrations exist between the software application, social media sites and other related third party sites?

The more your human resources technology aligns with the communication style already preferred by your employees, the better. You want the tools you make available to your workforce to enhance its productivity…not disrupt it.

Reporting and Predictive Insights

One of the most exciting aspects of smart technology is how it enables us to transform stored data into actionable information–allowing employers to spot trends and take action. Emerging HR technology goes a step further and uses artificial intelligence to analyze existing data to predict future outcomes. These predictive insights are the competitive advantage employers need to attract talent that is the best fit for the organization and retain that talent for maximum productivity.

Insights traditionally originate in the reporting dashboard of your HR software. And, the degree to which you will be able to run customized reports and use existing data to make decisions about new hires or new HR processes will vary across software applications. In fact, in the aforementioned survey, only 42% of respondents indicated they have no issues extracting the information they need from their existing HR software.

  • Reporting Ease
  • Easy to report on desired information
  • Struggle to report on desired information
  • Cannot report on desired information
  • % Respondents
  • 42%
  • 43%
  • 15%

Many HR professionals regularly struggle to pull the reports they need even though the data is stored in their system somewhere. Causes of this struggle are often attributable to

  • siloed data living in different systems that are not integrated,
  • a complex HRIS that doesn’t have an easy-to-use reporting interface,
  • redundant data between system modules that is up-to-date in one module but not the other, or
  • having access only to canned reports without the ability to build custom reports on demand.

Your software shouldn’t be holding your employee data hostage.

Best-in-class HR technology gives administrative users access to a virtual workforce explorer to pull incredibly specific data insights on their employee population. Additionally, look for more functionality to marry data from one aspect of the employee life cycle to another to make better decisions. For example, do insights about your best performing existing employees allow you to better vet applicants with similar attributes? More specifically, does your software application prompt you to easily make those correlations?

Alleviating the Pain to Improve Employee Experience

Employees’ opinions about their own experience constantly evolve, and even the smallest radar blips can cause significant declines in satisfaction and engagement over time. The good news is that human resources technology is your tool for measuring the employee experience and capturing insights on how to improve it.

If you have reservations about your current system, then use the considerations presented in this blog to begin evaluating your next steps for incorporating HR software that is better suited to your organization. In our next blog, we’ll address strategies for making a business case for new technology adoption.

 

4 Plays For Payroll Service Bureaus To Close Prospects

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Independent payroll service bureaus, it’s time to put on your game face. Your competition isn’t getting any weaker these days, and technology innovation and adoption is moving at a breakneck pace. So, what do you do…sit down and relentlessly review game tapes to study your competitors’ every play? Well, not exactly, but it is critical to understand your competitors’ potential appeal to your existing clients and potential prospects.

In this blog, we’ll take a quick look at how large national payroll providers might try to remedy your clients’ payroll–and general human resources–pain. Then, we’ll examine how each pain point can be turned into an opportunity for your business to compete on a level playing field with the big providers when it comes to serving the needs of your small- and medium-sized prospects and customers.

Don’t Let Prospect Pain Lead to Competitor Gain

Take a closer look at what large national payroll software providers will typically bring to the table in order to win over the organizations in your market.

 

Gain Promised by National Payroll Provider

A fully loaded software platform with a variety of HR service-related add-ons beyond basic payroll.

  • Administrative burden is alleviated.
  • Single sign-on is provided.
  • “Free” applicant tracking module is available to streamline the process of posting new jobs.
  • “Baked-in” new hire paperwork automation exists to make employment paperwork paperless.

Your Pain as an Independent Payroll Provider

  • You’re outmatched when it comes to ancillary HR service software features.
  • Your potential clients are seduced by flashy bells and whistles touted by the national providers.
  • Your prospects are led to believe that only a big provider is going to meet their needs.
  • The national providers aggressively push technology, though you want to keep service as the emphasis for your conversation with prospects.

 

Opportunities for a Good Offense

In this section, we’ll examine each of your pain points as they relate to your prospects being recruited to use national provider solutions instead of your services. In doing so, opportunities for you to score more points in your market space will be presented, as well.

1 – You’re Outmatched Technologically

When faced with the prospect of playing basketball against a squad of seven footers, and you’re only 5’8”, it’s time to run some innovative plays–or, find some sturdy stilts. The challenge is no different when you’re competing against mega payroll software providers that have a one-stop shop software platform to meet every human resource need of your small- and medium-sized business clients.

Your Play: You can make your product offering look “big” as well by partnering with an HR software provider that specializes in systems that fall outside of your core product or service. Not only will your payroll function remain strong as you continue to make it your primary focus, you’ll give yourself additional reach with clients by incorporating options for recruiting, employee onboarding, reference checking, background checking and/or other HR-related tools.

2 – Their Flashy Bells and Whistles are Seductive

The big providers’ long list of customers, features and their share of the market can be impressive accomplishments in the eyes of your prospects. However, upon closer inspection sometimes the sizzle is just a smokescreen for a lack of substance. Specifically, while the big providers give users access to a suite of HR tools in addition to payroll processing, when individually examined these tools may be regarded as afterthought ancillary systems that get added onto the provider’s original payroll code.

Your Play: By forming a strong relationship with a best-in-class HR software provider, your business can match the feature offerings of national providers to get a foot in the door and generate initial interest. However, the especially important benefit of a strong partnership is that your business will have a better track record of customer retention, as it will be providing robust systems with a proven record of continuous development and innovation.

3 – They Throw Their Weight Around

Flashback to fifth grade P.E. class, and I bet your memories include witnessing the biggest, strongest kid always being picked first to be captain of the dodgeball team. The choice was natural as the kid was obviously athletic and a seasoned competitor. Your prospects and clients are thinking the same thing…they want the biggest- and strongest-looking payroll provider to take care of their needs. They want to be in capable hands.

Your Play: When everyone wants to be on the big kid’s team, it’s going to be hard for the captain to customize his coaching to each individual teammate. So, in the interest of efficiency he may adopt a one-size fits all approach. Your prospects may face the same cookie-cutter mentality once they partner with a large payroll provider.

Therefore, consider reinforcing your own coaching excellence with a partner that rounds out your perceived weaknesses as they compare to your larger competitors. In doing so, give your clients a scalable system that can be customized to their payroll needs and current size, and that also includes integrations to the additional recruiting, onboarding and reference checking tools they desire for improved HR efficiency. Better yet, assure them that these additional modules are provided by a partner that is constantly improving its own core offerings while you focus on your bread and butter – payroll. Everyone wins.

4 – They Lead With Tech; You Focus on Service

Think of your competitors as the flashy, private school team with the latest style of uniform and top-of-the-line sporting equipment. They step on the field and you instantly fight off hearing “We will, we will, rock you” in your head. If your business doesn’t pick up a teammate with the right equipment to compete, then your new internal soundtrack will be “I’m a loser baby” as your customers walk out the door…before they even get a chance to be raving fans of your service. They won’t even know what they missed, because you won’t even get an at bat.

Your Play: Add some dazzle to your own pre-game warm-up routine by bringing a solid recruiting and onboarding software partner to the table to assure your prospects that you can fill the same kinds of HR service technology gaps as your competitors. Only then, will you get the opportunity to elevate the conversation to focus on service comparisons where you can further differentiate your firm.

The level of service your competitors offer doesn’t even rival the stellar support that you extend to your customers, right? By allowing your trusted partner to focus on tech development outside of your payroll offerings, you still have time to make servicing your clients a priority. Additionally, with the right teammate, you determine which is your better play: being first tier support on your partner’s products or introducing your clients to your partner’s close-knit team of U.S.-based support specialists that are used to working with small- and medium-sized (SMB) clients.

Game Time Decision

Your customers don’t want to experience employee turnover as a result of missing out on the latest, most engaging HR technology. And you don’t want turnover in your client base, either. Find a trusted partner that helps you provide best-in-class HR service add-on software to delight your customers. Check out ExactHire’s guide to choosing a partner below.

HR Software Provider Partnership Guide

Image Credit: 4 by Rosmarie Voegtli (contact)

ExactHire Named a Nominee for 2016 TechPoint Mira Awards

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It was a big year for the ExactHire team in 2015, full of many exciting developments including the addition of brand new positions and a steady stream of product enhancements. The positive momentum is continuing as we’re thrilled to announce that the Indiana technology growth initiative, TechPoint, has named ExactHire a nominee in the Innovation of the Year category for the 2016 Mira Awards.

In its 17th year, the Mira Awards annual program honors “The Best of Tech in Indiana” each year. This season, 98 nominees in 14 award categories were selected from 168 applications by an independent judging panel comprised of 40 subject matter experts who evaluated and ranked the applications.

It’s an exciting time to be a part of the tech community in Indiana, and we’re honored to be included in the following list of ground-breaking Indiana organizations:

Innovation of the Year

To learn more about the TechPoint Mira Awards and the organizations represented in each category, click here.

Want to bring more efficiency to your recruiting, onboarding & hiring processes? Schedule a demo today.

Schedule Demo

 

Applicant Tracking System User Access Levels [VIDEO]

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In this Q&A video chat, Jessica Stephenson discusses the common differences between applicant tracking system user access levels. In particular, she reviews manager and assigned user ATS access in detail — including feature availability and ideal timing for involving new users in the selection process.

Video Transcript:

Hi, I’m Jessica Stephenson and welcome to another episode. Today we’re going to focus on best practices for determining the appropriate level of user access within the applicant tracking system for the many stakeholders involved in your hiring process. And we work with small and medium-sized businesses, so this question often surfaces during the implementation process. And, while commonly people are familiar with an administrative level user, or the super login I Iike to say, they might not be so sure of the different types of user access levels for people outside of the HR department, in particular.

So usually HR staff members will be administrative level users within an applicant tracking system, and sometimes I see that expand to include owners or CFOs at smaller companies, as well. And the administrative level user can certainly manage applicants across all business units that are established within the system, and then do things like change settings, add or edit job listings, access reporting, leave HR-visible notes so that lower level users can’t see those notes, and then add and edit other users to the system.

When it comes to employees that should access the system outside of the human resources department, I divide those into two categories. The first one being manager-level users, and the second being candidate-specific assigned users. So, with manager-level users, they can access all applicants across their own business unit or units, and for your organization that might mean a department or a geographic branch, so on and so forth. Larger organizations that are rigorous about training hiring managers on the recruiting process may wish to optionally allow these manager-level users the ability to add, edit and post job listings, as well. However, many smaller organizations will tend to leave job edits to those in human resources and lock down that access so that managers can’t touch job listings. In addition, in general, manager-level users in applicant tracking systems can’t access reporting, change settings or add or edit users within the system.

Now candidate-specific assigned users are what I would call “bare-bones” access level users, in that they login and they don’t see any other dashboards like jobs or settings or users, and they will only see candidates that have specifically been assigned to them by other users. Think “minimalist” when you think of this type of user, and know that it’s ideal for organizations that are ready to empower non-HR staff to make applicant notes and decisions within the ATS…as opposed to via email correspondence back and forth with HR, for example. The other compelling benefit of making wider use of this very restricted login type is that in a reputable ATS, it should support a complete view of the applicant record including: who at any point in time has looked at that applicant record; to whom it has been forwarded via email; the email correspondence history with the applicant; and, any time someone has been an assigned user for that candidate so that they could review the candidate’s credentials. This benefit is especially critical for those organizations that are subject to affirmative action plan compliance, as well.

So now depending on the applicant tracking system in use, these two broad user level categories that I’ve discussed will likely have various toggles available for further customization, as well, especially at the manager level login. So for example, an administrator may choose whether or not that manager can initiate job requisition requests; or leave notes and view notes on the applicant record; update the EEO information for a candidate; and, optionally edit the status or disposition assigned to a candidate, or the date on which it was assigned.

In terms of timing, and what I mean by that is, how soon various non-HR users would start using the system during a specific hiring process…that will of course depend on the level. When a manager-level login is created, because they can access all applicants across all business units, and sometimes even job listings, as soon as their login is created they are going to be able to at any time go in and view details. And so, certainly the organizational expectations and culture surrounding hiring managers’ participation in the selection process will help dictate when those hiring managers should actively start to participate and perhaps leave comments and assign status codes and so forth.

Now, with more restricted assigned users, their scope is more limited since they are only going to be able to start taking action once candidates have specifically been assigned to them. So if you choose to exercise the most control and/or wish to make the review process as simple as possible for those non-HR folks, then the assigned user is the ticket.

And with both types of user-level access, the great aspect about using an ATS and not making them administrative level users is that you don’t have to have any worry about them inadvertently accessing sensitive information related to perhaps the candidate’s employment history, any kind of red flags that might be on their record that you’re not ready for other people outside of HR to see, and that sort of information…because you can lock that down. And so, the timing of their access becomes not as important a factor as it might be otherwise.

So, above all, I want to reiterate the value and certainly the security piece of mind organizations will see when they handle all applicant documentation, including screening activities and correspondence with candidates, within an applicant tracking system…not via email, for example. I hope you enjoyed this episode of video chat and please stay tuned for answers to further questions. Thank you!

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